Ethan said, “I know you’re scared, but you’re our light, Maggie. No matter what you see coming down that tunnel, stand your ground. If you run, we all die. Understand?”

The splashing was getting louder, closer.

“Maggie? Do you understand me?”

“Yes,” she whimpered.

Ethan pumped the shotgun.

“Hecter, is your safety off?”

“It is.”

Ethan glanced back, tried to spot Theresa and Ben in the crowd, but they were too far away and the light was shit.

Ethan tugged the black synthetic stock into his shoulder and stared down the barrel. The sights were a self-luminous tritium unit that popped nicely in the dark—three soft green dots.

Ethan said, “You’re shooting slugs, not buckshot.”

“So there’s no spread?”

“Exactly. Be accurate.”

“What if I run out?”

“Cross that bridge when—”

It came out of the dark at a full sprint, barreling low on all fours at an astonishing rate of speed.

Greyhound fast.

Ethan aimed.

Hecter fired.

Muzzle flash electrifying the tunnel and wrecking Ethan’s vision for a millisecond.

When Ethan could see again, the abby was still coming, twenty feet and two seconds away.

Maggie hyperventilating, “OhGodohGodohGodohGodoh—”

Ethan fired, the stock jerking back into his shoulder, the report of the shotgun in this confined space like a cannon going off.

The abby tumbled to a stop three feet from Ethan’s boots, a large chunk of skull blown out of the back of its head.

Hecter said, “Wow.”

His voice sounded muffled against the ringing in Ethan’s ears.

They began to jog up the tunnel, chasing the end of the line, which was now just a point of firelight in the distance. As Ethan’s hearing returned, he picked out new howls echoing through the tunnel.

“Faster,” Ethan said.

He could hear the abbies’ footfalls in the stream, closing in behind them.

Kept glancing back into the dark, kept seeing nothing.

And they were running, Maggie out in front, Ethan and Hecter abreast, elbows grazing every few strides.

They crossed a junction.

Through the tunnel to their right came screaming, shrieking, wailing—

HAROLD BALLINGER

HAROLD BALLINGER

The people at the back shouted first.

Screams in the darkness.

Human.

Inhuman.

“—Run, run, run, run, run, run—”

“—Oh God they’re here—”

“—Help me—”

“—No no no noooo—”

A great surge pushing through the line, people falling in the water.

More cries for help.

Then agony.

Everything unraveling so goddamned fast.

Harold spun around to go back, but there was nothing to go back to. All the torches had been extinguished. Only darkness and screaming—an explosion of noise ricocheting off the walls of the culvert—and all he could think was that this must be what hell sounded like.

He heard gunshots in an adjacent tunnel.

Kate?

Tiffany Golden screamed his name. Shouting at him, at everyone to come on. Hurry. Don’t just stand there.

She was thirty feet up the tunnel and clutching their group’s last torch.