Chapter 4 - Kidnapped

  The flare went out about five minutes after we got moving. As it started to gutter, I grabbed one of the glow sticks from my bag, cracked it, and tied it to the end of my spear with some of the spare gauze from the first aid kit. Manuel had picked up the other glow stick, the one Gerald gave Amanda. It was starting to fade some, but gave us a little more light. At this point, I figured anything helped.

  I moved with some caution. The rat creatures had come from this direction, after all, and I knew there was still at least one of them out there in the darkness. I wanted to avoid the monsters entirely, if I could, but if that was impossible I’d settle for not getting ambushed.

  The dark tunnel wasn’t the most peaceful place out there, but compared to the carnage of the train itself, it gave me a lot of time to think. I kept having to shove thoughts of Amanda out of my mind. If I spent too much time pondering what happened to her I was going to break down crying in the middle of this, and that wasn’t going to save the kids. It probably would call every monster within earshot, if there were any.

  Instead I tried to focus on what the hell was going on. I’d never heard of anything like this happening before, not in the real world, anyway. In movies? Sure. Books also. That’s why I used the comparison for the kids, and it was apt.

  The lights were out, but it wasn’t just the power going down. If that were the case, my phone would still work. No, this was something bigger. A solar flare or EMP were the only things I could think of that would wipe out all electronics like that.

  But neither of those events explained the rat-monsters. That part still made no sense at all.

  Then there were those crystals that popped out of the dead monsters. That also defied logic. As soon as I touched the dead creatures, the crystals just appeared in my hand. Then one of them had sunk into my palm, like I was absorbing the thing. Any other day, I would have checked myself into the hospital over that one, because it had hallucination written all over it. But today? With all the other weird shit happening? Crystals appearing and vanishing were nowhere near the most questionable things I’d seen in the past hour.

  It wasn’t something I was going to resolve while underground. I needed to get the kids out and get more information. But even thinking about what might happen after we left the tunnels made me wonder just what would be waiting for us, out there. Was the power out all over the city? Were there monsters above ground, too? There was no way to know until we got there.

  We’d gone at least a few hundred meters before I realized that I hadn’t warned the kids about the third rail. I jumped halfway out of my skin, whirling around to face them.

  “Hey! Watch out for the rails. They can be dangerous,” I said.

  “Are you sure?” Mike asked. He kicked one with a foot. “I think the power is still out.”

  I walked over, laid a hand on his shoulder, and crouched down so he could see my face. “That’s true, and you’re lucky. With no power down here, how are we going to know if it comes back on, huh? If they manage to restore power to the tracks? We’re too far from the train, so we won’t see the lights there, and we’re too far from the station, too. We won’t know. You could have just fried yourself, kid.”

  “Oh.” He looked small and scared for a moment, and I knew at once that I’d laid it on too thick.

  I ruffled his hair. “It’s okay. Any mistake you walk away from is one you can learn from. Ready to keep moving?”

  He nodded.

  “Good. And let’s keep everyone closer to the tunnel wall, away from the tracks, eh? Just in case.”

  The kids all moved away from the rails as I’d asked, and I did a little mental head-count as they shifted position. One, two, three…all the way up to ten, then eleven.

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  Wait. I should have twelve kids.

  I checked faces. It was Emmy who was missing. “Where’s Emmy?”

  The kids all looked around, then back at me with blank faces. She wasn’t there, and they didn’t know where she was, so she hadn’t just wandered off. I bit back a string of curse words that I didn’t want to say in front of the kids.

  I knew what that had to mean. Something had taken her as we were walking. Some creature was hidden out there in the dark, had slipped in close and simply snagged her so quietly she hadn’t even been able to cry out as she was taken.

  There were only two ways to handle this, and both of them sucked.

  I could keep going. Emmy’s parents would be devastated if I came back without her, but at least I’d be able to get the other eleven kids home. Probably, anyway. The best chance for the most people would be to keep moving and leave Emmy to her fate.

  The only other option would be to go back and see if we could find her. If I tried that, we might find her, we might not. I also might lose more kids. If we ran into enough trouble, we could all get ourselves killed down there.

  What to do? I had eleven kids looking to me for guidance, hoping I could get them all out of this mess. How could I lead them back into danger? On the other hand, how could I just abandon one of them? I tried to think about what Amanda would do, and my gut said she’d be loathe to abandon any of her charges while there was still even a slight hope they were alive.

  I decide to check in with them. I crouched down and gestured for them to come closer. “Okay, guys. Emmy is gone. She’s back that way somewhere, back the way we came. Maybe she fell down. Maybe she’s hurt. I think we should go back for her, but I want your thoughts, too.”

  “The rails aren’t as dangerous as back there,” Mike pointed out.

  “Yeah, but Emmy is part of our team,” Manuel replied. “We can’t just leave her down here, right?”

  The kids went back and forth for a minute, exchanging feelings, but they came to a decision pretty quickly.

  “Listen, Mister Castle. You told us this is like a movie, right?” Manuel said at last. I nodded, and he went on. “In stories, the heroes always do the right thing and go save the people in trouble, so we think that’s what we should do, too.”

  “All right, if you’re sure. Maria, why are you crying?” I asked.

  “I was Emmy’s buddy. It’s my fault she’s gone. I didn’t see her.” The kid sniffled and gave another quiet, body-shaking sob.

  I reached out and pulled her into a hug. “It is definitely not your fault, Maria. But you can walk up front with me while we go find your buddy, okay?”

  She nodded and flashed me a shaky smile. Having her up front with me felt like the right call. Obviously the buddy system hadn’t worked perfectly, but having one of the kids with no one watching out for them just felt like a truly awful idea.

  “You can be my buddy until we find her,” I said.

  We set out again, back-tracking along the tunnel. I held the tip of my spear low, toward the ground. If something ambushed Emmy quickly enough to take her out so silently, they had to have knocked her out or something, right? I figured whatever captured her had to have dragged her off, so we’d probably see tracks, or a trail from Emmy being dragged. There ought to be some sort of sign.

  I was hoping the sign we found wouldn’t be a puddle of blood from where Emmy was killed and eaten by monsters. If we ran into that, I wasn’t sure I’d ever sleep again, but I desperately wanted to keep the kids away from visuals like that. They’d already seen too much.

  We pushed ahead, but it didn’t take me long to spot the place where she’d been taken. Thankfully, there was no blood at all. In fact, I almost missed it entirely, only barely spotting the two lines where the heels of her sneakers made divots in the dirt. Something must have snuck up on her there, grabbed her, and dragged Emmy off toward—that wall, there.

  I followed the trail. It led to a gap in the concrete wall where something had broken out into the tunnel. Whatever it was had left a crack about four feet tall and two feet wide. The tracks left by Emmy’s heels led directly into it.

  Moment of truth time. There was no blood on the ground, so I felt like the odds were Emmy was captured alive. Whether she was still breathing, I had no idea. But abandoning her didn’t feel right, and neither did bringing the kids with me into even greater danger.

  I had to make a choice, though.

  I looked back at the kids, all standing in rows behind me, side by side. The buddy teams were watching one another much better now, so with luck we could avoid more ambushes. But going into that side passage would be a massive risk for everyone. I could defend myself some. Hell, with that Strength thing I’d absorbed, I felt twice as strong as I’d been before. Whether that was real or some kind of placebo effect, I didn’t know, but it sure felt real.

  The kids all stared up at me, waiting for my next move. We’d already talked over the course of action and made a decision. Who was I to second-guess them now?

  “Whoever took Emmy went in there,” I said, pointing to the trail left by her shoes, then the crack in the wall. “We’re going to go get her back. I need all of you to stay close together and watch out for each other, okay? Your buddy is your focus, but watch for everyone else as well. If anyone sees anything that looks weird or dangerous, call it out. We need to work as a team here. You tell me if you see more monsters, and I’ll take them out. Good plan?”

  I got a bunch of nods and mumbled answers. The kids were scared, but they were still game to play hero. It was time to get in there, get Emmy, and get the hell out.