Thump.
Thump, thump.
He could feel the impacts all around, like punches landing in his metaphysical energy.
Thump.
Thump, thump.
Thump.
Evan stared down in horror. He had no weapon, no idea how to stop them. He knew the wounded glassy surface would not hold much longer.
Thump.
Thump, Thump.
Chapter Seventeen
ABCs made slow progress in the tunnel. Clay/Evan had absolutely battered him. Working together, they had beaten his face into a bruised and bloodied mess. One eye was swollen shut. Parts of his neck and back were locked in cramped pain caused by Clay’s vicious tackle. What could have kept him moving after three shots to the body?
ABCs hadn’t paused at the hatch. He just took off down the tunnel. He wasn’t sure if someone had chased him. He kept moving as quickly as his battered body would allow. Once underground, the strength he’d gained from the mist waned. Something his Shaman had said about the energies of the red mist that existed everywhere, floating a few feet above the earth. Maybe underground, he couldn’t connect as well. Whatever. He was about to walk out of this mess. He’d lost everything in the taking of this little girl. He told himself that he would get his price for her as he continued to move through the tunnel.
Elena had begun to tire. Although she still resisted him, her cries became less frequent. ABCs moved through the tunnel with brutal purpose. His wounded right hand clenched Elena’s wrist and the other held the handgun in front of him. The forks—the place where the tunnels split and then split again—were not far. If he could make it to that point, he was sure no one would catch him even if they were stupid enough to follow him down.
𓂓
Dewey wasn’t sure how long he had sat at the forks of the tunnel system. There were random gunshots from the direction of the hatch, but they sounded distant. He looked down, the ash had gone out at the filter of the cigarette between his fingers. Did I pass out? In the distance, he heard more gunfire. Someone was near the hatch. Were they coming down? He pulled himself up and paced around the fork. At the point it opened up at the first fork, the tunnels formed a T shape. He might be able to hide behind the bend of the T. Maybe he could see which way to go. But not without being discovered. There was nowhere to hide. Unsure what to do, he knelt down in the corner of the fork, out of view of the oncoming single path. Then, from the direction of the hatch, he heard a high-pitched yelp. And another one. Then the distinctive growl of a low curse. Shuffling.
The Alphabet King was in the tunnel. He had the girl. Dewey cursed his luck and shifted nervously on his haunches, then a flash came over him. He remembered the wide scared eyes of the little girl. He pushed down a knowing of what lay ahead for her if ABCs made it through the tunnels. More cries, struggling. Shuffling footsteps getting closer.
Dewey’s mind began to race when he heard ABCs approaching him with Elena. A few things became clear. He had little chance of survival. But maybe he could make it right. Like the story he learned as a boy about the ‘good thief’ who had lived a life of crime until the day he was to die. That man accepted his fate and was forgiven on his final day. Maybe he could save a little girl, and in doing so, save his own soul. He dismissed the thought. He wasn’t a church guy. He was a coward, not a hero, he reminded himself.
Time passed in a way he’d never felt before. The horror of ABCs rushing toward him while simultaneously taking an eternity to arrive. The cries had died down. Maybe they’d turned back. Then he picked up on the sounds of labored breathing, the quick pants of a frightened girl, feet sliding along the ground as she was surely being dragged against her will. Dewey shrank into the corner as they approached. ABCs walked past Dewey in a huff as he entered the fork and made to turn into the tunnel opposite him.
In a split second, Dewey saw ABCs’ battered face from the side. Everything slowed. His eyes fell to the little girl, a grimace on her face as she fought her captor. ABCs paused at the opening of the other tunnel and turned to Dewey.
Suddenly, a sense of purpose welled up from inside him. Dewey knew he was at the end. He would die here. The energy of his soon departing spirit welled up from the depths of his being and threw him forward in a desperate lunge for the arm holding Elena.
Sensing the movement, ABCs turned and tried to deliver a quick blow down on Dewey’s head, but it only glanced off him. Dewey latched his hands around ABCs’ forearm and wrenched on him as hard as he could, twisting his hands in opposite directions, pulling, and stretching the skin of his arm to the point of sharp pain.
ABCs bellowed in agony. On impulse, his hand released Elena as he focused on swinging at Dewey, who somehow dodged his panicked swings with the gun. Elena fell back on her butt. Dewey turned to her as he struggled to hold on and gave her a small smile. He’d never felt more alive. “Go!” Dewey yelled.
Elena scrambled to her feet and stumbled back a step but paused.
𓂓
The Alphabet King looked shocked. He kept looking back and forth from Dewey to Elena, confused by her inaction. He had finally struck Dewey hard enough for him to release his forearm. He now held him by the upper arm, but he still squirmed under ABCs’ grip, and he struggled to keep the gun pointed straight down through the top of Dewey’s head. “Stop moving!” ABCs demanded.
“Why didn’t you run?” Dewey pleaded.
She said nothing. With her feet planted and arms straight by her sides, hands made fists as she stared down at the dirt floor of the tunnel, long hair fallen around her face.
“One more word and you are dead,” ABCs said to Dewey. “You can still be of use if you are smart.”
Dewey tried to speak but was interrupted by Elena, who shuddered in her stance. They both turned to look at her—an instinctual response. A soft orange glow emanated from between the strands of her hair. Her head jerked up in a strange sudden motion and locked in with ABCs’ pulsing red eyes. “Do not harm him,” she demanded with a slightly garbled voice not entirely her own, as if her childlike vocal cords were attempting to create sounds they were not yet mature enough to articulate.
ABCs shifted in his stance, then looked down at Dewey. “Get back against the wall over there. Do not move.” Then he turned the gun on Elena.
She tilted her head, eyes feral orange, upper lip curled in an adult expression of disgust. “You would shoot and kill me again, poco hefe?”
ABCs could only stare, confused.
“Think,” Elena implored him. “After the things you told me, I do not believe that even a man possessed as you are by evil can shoot and kill an innocent child.”
ABCs stared at the dirt floor while she spoke. She speaks as a woman would.
“You were once an innocent child yourself, weren’t you, Little Armando?”
His head shot up at that. “Carmen?”
“It is time you remember, once again, what happened in the desert those many years ago.” As Elena spoke, she seemed to draw nearer to his psyche, although she did not move. ABCs tried to resist but could not, like he was being drawn into the gravity well of her energy field. He had no power to withstand... the innocence of a child...
𓂓
Clutching the Cackling Coyote’s pants, Armando stood to face the woman with the snarl of violence still distorting his face. She struggled to keep herself propped up, wincing in pain. He stepped toward her and she cowered in fear.
Armando saw her suffering, remembered her stories of hope shared around the campfires, and his expression softened. He stepped back and looked around to find his shoes and dressed himself. He found a blanket and knelt down beside the woman. Her lower leg was bloody. Her foot at a grotesque angle, bone sticking out the side where blood leaked.
