Mad enough to chew and scratch and tear up their own body.

  The laughed ceased, abruptly, fading into echoes.

  I waited, counting to ten in my head.

  Then I counted to ten again.

  Listening.

  No sounds. Only quiet.

  I took another step.

  Giggling.

  Closer than before. Maybe ten meters away.

  Again I waited.

  Again the titters ended.

  I counted to ten, slow and silent, then continued along the wall.

  “Ere are you going?”

  Rita was within five meters. Talking to me, unable to pronounce where because she’d gnawed off her own lips.

  Could she see me somehow? Had she been down in this pit for so long that her giant eyes could spot things in the dark?

  I squinted, trying to sense movement. Trying to feel the air around me shift. Trying to hear stealthy bare feet on uneven, dirty ground.

  Trying to hear the moist sounds of her chewing on herself.

  The quiet was so loud.

  And then—

  “Rita… aunts… ood…”

  Aunts. That must be wants. She can’t say the W.

  Ood? Does she want food, with an F?

  The cookies that Larry threw down?

  “I have the cookies.” I held them out in front of me and shook the bag so it made noise. “They’re yours. Take them. It’s okay. I won’t hurt you.”

  I held my breath, listening to the soft footfalls of Rita’s approach.

  Her smell got stronger. Body odor and rotten meat.

  Why did she smell like rotten meat? Was it her breath?

  A bad tooth? Abscess? Infected gums?

  Oddly enough, when I’d seen Rita’s teeth, they seemed like the only part of her that wasn’t monstrous. She wasn’t missing any. They were relatively clean and white.

  So why did she smell like—

  Rita sprang, shoving me against the wall, riding me down to the ground and staying on top of my chest.

  My head shook like a bowling ball that had just rolled a thunderous strike, vertigo making me feel like I was sinking, flying, and spinning all at once.

  I began to throw up again, part from dizziness, part from pain, the worst headache I’d ever had, times ten.

  And then Rita did something that made my prior misconceptions instantly vanish, the puzzle pieces rearrange themselves, the full picture of my dilemma coming into clear, horrible focus.

  Larry wasn’t keeping people as pets or as zoo attractions.

  This prison was for one single person.

  Rita.

  Rita had to be Larry’s sister. Not dead. Just very, very sick.

  And Larry wasn’t feeding her cookies.

  He was feeding her people.

  All the stacks of bones were from people Rita had devoured.

  And I was her next meal.

  I knew this, with immediate, alarming clarity, when Rita began to chew on my arm.

  JACK

  In my nightmare, I had gone ten rounds with Mike Tyson. His younger version, before the face tattoos. I hadn’t been able to hit him back, because my arms were tied to my sides. I hadn’t been able to scream, because I couldn’t catch my breath.

  Also, I’d been hung upside down.

  In the dream, he must have hit me two dozen times, working my body, arms, and legs, until every square inch of me was on fire.

  Without a doubt, the worst dream I’d ever had, and I’d had some nightmares that were legendary.

  But waking up… that was worse.

  Panic came first. Opening my eyes in semi-darkness, disoriented, unable to move.

  As awareness returned, the panic blossomed.

  My body had been beaten, with my right arm in exceptional agony.

  The darkness wasn’t the room lighting. I was caught in some sort of body bag, and light barely filtered through the rough fabric.

  And, most horrible of all, I was upside down.

  I couldn’t tell what pain was damage and what was unbearable muscle cramps, but I managed to shift a shoulder, and the bag swayed slightly.

  I was hanging.

  My right arm useless, I tried to adjust my body with my left arm, take some pressure off my neck. My head was kinked to the side, with most of my body weight on my shoulders.

  I tried to right myself, but there wasn’t enough room inside the bag for me to wiggle into an upright position.

  Snippets of earlier came flooding back.

  Visiting Larry.

  McGlade getting hit with a board, a spring trap attached to the bathroom ceiling.

  Being stunned.

  Being injected.

  Firing a shot.

  I must have missed. How else did I wind up in a body bag, beaten up, in a stress position that was worse than any torture I could imagine, hanging there to meet some unknown, terrible fate?

  Is this what had happened to Phin? Was this how he spent his last moments?

  What about Sam? Was Sam okay?

  Panic, and pain, and my life history, and total helplessness, all conspired together and amplified one another and I began to scream, completely out of control, unable to stop, full-blown hysterical for perhaps the first time in my life.

  Then someone touched my hip, and the screaming turned to sobs.

  “It’s okay,” someone whispered, soft and kind. “It will be over soon.”

  I didn’t recognize the voice. Couldn’t even tell its gender. But I was sure it wasn’t Larry.

  “Rita?” I guessed.

  “No. Rita’s locked up in the basement.” The whisper had a singsong quality to it. Like parents would use when reading nursery rhymes to their babies. “You and your friend are going to nourish her.”

  The realization hit like a speeding truck.

  We were food. Harry and I were food.

  For Larold’s cannibal sister.

  I literally shook with fear, the tremors uncontrollable.

  Dread seeped into every cell, building and building until it was going to crescendo. A tiny, rational part of me, hidden like a sprouting seed buried in a burned forest, knew I needed to gather information. Try to escape. Not give up hope.

  Another seed also grew. A bad seed, germinating into a terrible idea.

  Larry had drugged me.

  If escape wasn’t an option… if death was truly certain… then I didn’t want to die like a panicked, caged animal, in unescapable agony. Unable to focus on my life, or my family. Unable to reflect or remember. Reduced to nothing but flaring chemicals without any reason or humanity.

  I didn’t want to die that way.

  I’d rather be drugged again.

  The fact that I even had a thought like that was overwhelming. I was a fighter. I was a thinker. Giving up wasn’t in my DNA.

  But I couldn’t take dying upside down in a bag, every muscle weeping in pain, waiting to be fed to a cannibal.

  My mind would snap before my body gave up.

  Begging to be released never worked with these kinds of people. Many of them got off on it.

  Begging for death usually backfired, too.

  But before I gave up all hope and lost myself to hysterics, maybe I could get some information.

  Maybe I could buy some time.

  Maybe I could talk myself out of a complete mental breakdown and find a little bit of hope.

  And if not…

  Then maybe I could get another shot of drugs to knock me out so I didn’t have to die in just absolute agony.

  I swallowed my fear—not easy to do while upside down—and tried to speak normally and rationally.

  “What’s your name?” I asked, keeping my voice even.

  “Blood.”

  “Your name is blood?”

  “I am Blood.”

  “Blood, my name is Jack. Is there someone else in here? In another bag?”

  “Yes,” Blood whispered.

  My breath caught, and a sob almost slipped out, but I suppressed it. “Is he… still alive?”

  “Yes.”

  Maybe there was hope.

  “Listen to me, Blood. His name is Harry. Harry McGlade. If you check the Internet, you’ll see he’s a celebrity. Rich and famous.”

  I felt hands on my legs, moving down my hips. The bag that contained me was made of waxed canvas, a grey color, and it let in just enough light for me to barely see Blood’s silhouette.

  “Would you like to be rich, Blood? We can make you rich.”

  “Blood doesn’t need money.”

  I swallowed. “What is it that Blood needs?”

  No response.

  “Please. Please, Blood. Tell me what you need.”

  Blood clenched my arm. “Blood needs blood.”

  I remembered the urban legend Harry mentioned earlier. “You’re the Destiny Drac.”

  A soft chuckle. “You’ve heard of me. I’m flattered.”

  I felt the pinch, then yelped.

  I’d been stabbed with something.

  But not by something large. And not very deep. It went into my shoulder at an angle. Like a meat thermometer.

  Or…

  An IV needle.

  I began to shake again, feeling another scream welling up in my cramped lungs.

  I squeezed my eyes shut. Fighting the pain and the claustrophobia and the fear and the panic and the horror of what was happening, willing myself to stay sane, using every bit of my strength to not give up.

  Then I heard a slurping, sucking sound.

  “Your flesh will nourish Rita,” Blood whispered, smacking his lips. “Your blood will nourish me.”

  From that point on, I couldn’t control my screaming.

  SAM

  Mr. Wintergarten’s chocolate chip cookie tasted good.

  But it didn’t make my tummy happy.

  When he sat down in the easy chair and wasn’t looking, I spat it out into my hand. Then I gave it to Duffy, along with the rest of the cookie. My basset hound gobbled it up so fast he didn’t even chew.

  Harry Junior unpaused the game, and we kept playing. But I couldn’t focus on it fully because I was keeping an eye on Mr. Wintergarten, wondering what he was going to do.

  And wondering what I was going to do.

  Part of SPAP involved two parts. Preparing for emergencies that might happen, and reacting to things that do happen.

  A common emergency was a fire. There were over 358,000 home fires every year in the US.

  Prepping for a fire involved detection and prevention. Like setting up fire alarms and regularly checking their batteries. Making sure the house had enough fire extinguishers, and that they were the correct class because there were different types for wood fires, electrical fires, grease fires, and flammable liquids.

  If a fire alarm goes off, first thing you do is look for flames and try to smell smoke. If you don’t see it, check the door to see if it’s hot. If it is hot, find another exit, because opening the door will feed it oxygen and spread the fire. If it isn’t hot, look for the fire and assess if an extinguisher can put it out. If the fire is too big, get out, and know which exits to take, and where to meet with your family once you escape.

  Smart People Are Prepared. Preparation, and reaction.

  But sometimes, even SPAP didn’t have the solution. How should I react to something I hadn’t practiced and trained for? New threats had to be approached with critical thinking.

  Mom and Dad hadn’t prepared me for a situation like this.

  A stranger came into my house, uninvited, saying Mom and Dad were at the hospital.

  He didn’t use the SPAP code word. And he technically wasn’t a stranger, he was our neighbor.

  Was he a threat?

  He did bring cookies.

  And he did have a reasonable explanation.

  What should a Smart Person do in this case?

  I could sneak away, and run to a neighbor’s house and ask for help.

  But my neighbors might have COVID-19.

  Heck, I might have COVID-19. I didn’t want to infect anyone.

  I could call the hospital, to see if Mom and Dad were there.

  Or I could call the police.

  If Mr. Wintergarten was a threat, calling the police would be the smartest thing to do.

  If he wasn’t a threat, it might get me in trouble. But the police could confirm where my parents are, so it would be worth it.

  I stood up. Mr. Wintergarten’s head snapped in my direction. “Where are you going?”

  “The bathroom.”

  He watched me walk out of the room. Once I got into the bathroom and locked the door, I took out my cell phone and dialed 911.

  “This is a recording. You have reached emergency services. We are experiencing an unusually high volume of calls. Please stay on the line and your call will be answered in the order it was received.”

  I didn’t know that 911 put people on hold. That defeated the who idea of having a number to call when there was an emergency. I turned down the sound of the repeating message, sat on the toilet, and waited.

  And waited.

  And waited.

  And waited.

  What if they didn’t pick up?

  Was there some sort of way to trace this call?

  Would they call me back?

  The call time passed three minutes.

  Then four minutes.

  The knock at the door startled me so bad I almost yelped.

  “Samantha? Is everything okay in there?”

  “I’ll be out in a second.”

  What was I supposed to do?

  What would a smart person do?

  What would a strong person do?

  I could put the phone in my pocket, still waiting on hold. Then, when they answered, I could talk to them and watch to see how Mr. Wintergarten acted.

  But that might end badly. He was big and strong. If he got mad, I might not be able to get away from him.

  I could leave my phone in the bathroom, hidden. Eventually emergency services would pick up. Maybe when they did, they would track the call and show up at my house.

  But what if Mom or Dad called? If I left my cell in the bathroom, I’d miss their call.

  I decided to keep my phone on me. But if I put it in my pocket, with the volume down, I wouldn’t know if they answered the call.

  So I had to disconnect. I’d try again later.

  I tucked the phone into my pocket, flushed the toilet, washed my hands, and opened the door.

  Mr. Wintergarten was standing right there.

  “Your mother wanted me to keep an eye on you. I thought something happened.”

  “I was just going to the bathroom,” I said.

  I walked past him, and he followed me back into the living room. I sat on the sofa, between Harry Junior and Duffy. My dog was snoring.

  “I’m going to try calling the hospital,” I announced.

  “You can try, Samantha. But remember, this is a pandemic. The hospital is very busy.”

  I looked up the number and dialed it.

  They put me on hold.

  I hung up, feeling ready to cry.

  Harry Junior noticed. He smiled at me. “It’s okay, Sam. Papa won’t let anything bad happen. Play with me.”

  I coughed into my hand, then picked up the game controller, and we continued to destroy the city.

  “I don’t understand this television show,” Mr. Wintergarten said.

  “It’s a video game,” Harry Junior told him. “Gunface Death Warrior 3 on the GameMaster 2. Do ya wanna play?”

  “Gunface death what? This is a game? What kind of game?”

  “We’re on a mission in this tank. If we blow up three more water towers, we’ll flood the valley. But it’s hard, because the Army is after us.”

  Mr. Wintergarten seemed confused. “Why do you want to flood the valley?”

  “It has a population of seventy-eight thousand,” I explained. “That’s a lot of kill points.”

  “Kill points? This game gives you kill points?”

  “Yep.”

  “Your parents let you play this?”

  “It’s just a game.” Harry Junior yawned loudly. “All pretend. People aren’t really dying. My papa, he killed people, for real. He says that’s not fun at all. He says it’s scary and sad.”

  “My parents have killed people, too,” I admitted. “But they don’t talk about it. When I ask, they just tell me it’s the worst thing ever.”

  “Sometimes killing needs to be done,” Mr. Wintergarten said. “But you shouldn’t glorify violence.”

  “What do you mean, glorify?” I asked.

  “Death is natural. Killing is natural. Everything that lives is alive because something else died. The tiger eats the antelope. The antelope eats the grass. When the tiger dies and decomposes, that feeds the grass.”

  “The circle of life,” Harry Junior said, yawning again. “Like Mufasa said.”

  “I don’t understand.” Mr. Wintergarten’s face crinkled up. “Mufasa?”

  “In The Lion King,” I explained. “We eat to live. But everything we eat has to die. Plants and animals. Plants need nitrogen and nutrients to survive. That comes from bacteria, from waste, from dead things. The circle of life is actually a nitrogen cycle.”

  “I don’t know anything about a nitrogen cycle, but I grew up on a farm. Do you children eat meat? Hamburgers and hot dogs and chicken?”

  “Sure,” I said.

  “I once ate seven hot dogs,” Harry Junior boasted. “Papa told me when I pooped, it would come out of my butt in hot dog buns. It didn’t.”

  “Where do you get your meat?”

  “At the store,” I answered. “Or in a restaurant.”

  “We got our meat by slaughtering it ourselves. We raised chickens and cows and sheep, and we killed them and ate them.”

  “Weren’t they like pets?” I asked.

  “Some of them were. But surviving is more important than making friends. Surviving is all that matters. If you don’t eat, you don’t live. Simple as that.”

  “I could never eat one of my pets, even if I starved. How about you, Harry Junior?”

  Harry Junior was slumped over. I gave him a shove, and he fell onto his side.

  He was sleeping.

  “Looks like he’s taking a nap.” Mr. Wintergarten stood up. “Are you tired, Sam? A nap seems like a good idea. I’m sure, by the time you wake up, your mother and father will be back.”