Page 57 of A Better World

They went left. Loud speakers, flashing lights.

In the dark, something lurched. The music got staccato, reminding her of stab scenes from old screenies. The lurching thing limped on a stiff leg, pulling himself with the good one. A chain connected its wrists. She didn’t think it was Keith. Probably, a volunteer actor. Of course a volunteer actor. Who else would it be?

“I’m not usually scared in real life,” she said as she froze and would walk no farther, loudly answering a question whose time had come and gone.

“She’s scared!” Rachel shouted, her voice compassionless as a toddler’s. She was blitzed out of her mind.

About three meters out, the lurching thing reared, standing tall, and scream-howled. Rachel laughed. Linda’s stomach dropped. His lurch and limp gone, he charged full speed. Being good at his job, he picked the person who was terrified. He rushed at Linda, suddenly standing over her, heavy chain links rattling. In her mind, the sound carried, resonating through every hall, waking all the monsters that lived down there.

Time slowed. She understood that she was attending a fun festival in a wealthy company town filled with pleasant people who made a ceremony of everything they did, because they had nothing of true importance on their minds. Still, she also thought that this wasn’t an ordinary festival at all, or an ordinary tunnel. Monsters lived here. They weren’t human. This place wasn’t human. And if you lived here long enough, you became inhuman, too.

The man bent down over Linda. He smelled clean, like toothpaste. Up close, his face was clear, his brown eyes bright. This wasn’t a monster, she rationalized as she tried to squeeze her ears shut from theinside. It was someone she’d met or would meet on Main Street or at the hospital. He wasnotgoing to murder her.

“Beware, the sacrifice!” he called in a distinctly human voice, then scrambled past them down the hall.

When it was over, they found themselves standing between speakers in the relative quiet. Daniella and Rachel fell into each other with laughter. The laughter was infectious and Linda laughed, too, only it was cry-laughing.

“You guys, I just peed my pants,” she said.

“Did you?” Daniella asked.

“—Dirty Kitty,” Rachel said at the same time.

“Almost. A little bit. Was that like what Keith’ll do?”

“Oh, no,” Daniella said. “He’s much worse.”

They went right. Sprayed in shining red against the hay:Beware the sacrifice.

A breathing thing came up from behind. She whipped around to find a very convincing zombie, like one you’d see in a nightmare. Teeth impressions coated in congealed blood marked its abdomen from where it had been made zombie, and blood glistened on its mouth and chin from a fresh feed.

Registering her fear, but doing the opposite of the last guy, he said, “Excuse me,” very politely, and lurched down the row. This time, Linda laughed, even as she held her heart, and noticed the sticky corn syrup blood he’d left on her arm. “Do men dressed like ghouls pop out and grab you the whole time? What the hell? No wonder Cathy won’t go inside!”

Instead of answering, Rachel bent down, hands on knees. Gently, Daniella grazed her back with red-painted fingernails, a contrast to her white angel costume.

Rachel vomited. Linda saw her retching, shoulders widening and contracting, between flashing black lights. “What if I get in there and nothing changes? Why don’t we just admit nothing ever changes?” she mumbled, then pulled out a handkerchief that glowed under the black lights and wiped her mouth with it. She was wearing soldier camouflage that was two sizes too big.

“You’ve got to stop doing this to yourself. It’s not just your reputation on the line here. This affects all of us,” Daniella pleaded with her friend. It was the most genuine emotion Linda’d ever seen her express.

“Let’s just keep going,” Rachel said. “It’s the flashing lights.”

“I know the back way out,” Daniella said. “Where the staff comes through.”

They moved forward. Science fiction music played. The kind of eerie stuff you hear upon approaching a black hole or alien ship. They went right, the opposite direction of the crowd ahead of them. A mannequin attached to a zip line plunged overhead. All three yelped, dropping hands and jogging ahead.

They came up behind a large group, all in plague costumes. A zombie volunteer waved her arms and fake-bit the lead plague victim’s shoulder. Another arm reached right through the hay, and grabbed the second in the group.

Linda held her heart and pushed down on it like it was an excited animal in a small box. She didn’t like being scared, she decided. She wasn’t ever doing this again. She turned to say this, but Daniella and Rachel were gone. They weren’t behind her. They weren’t ahead. She jogged down the row, passing the masked people and the zombie, wrenching her leg away hard and fast from the hand that had reached to grab it.

She turned left, entering an empty row. Percussive music built, pushing her forward like a hand on her back. Then, she was at the mouth of a great room where the music crescendoed. Lit up along the back stone wall was a massive altar. People knelt on long slats of wood that looked like prayer pews.

A bad thing was here. She could feel it, watching. A bad thing that had been woken and was waiting. She remembered, then, the thing from the shelter on her tour that Zach had told her was a large caladrius. Butrememberwasn’t the right word. It surfaced from her consciousness like a floater full of gas.

The people ahead of her filed out the far doorway, their mouths red now, their hands slick and red, too. Fear crept inside Linda like an animal with its own will.

Up ahead, a space opened. It came too soon. She was scared. Shewanted to be home. But where was home? Nine Sunset Heights? Kings? The crowd behind pushed her forward and she knelt, nearly weeping. Against the stone were bones. No, not bones. Skulls. Rows and rows of skulls. Hundreds of them, the bones cleaned and smoothed.

A joke, she whispered to herself.Samhain decoration. But like the bone crown, they appeared real.

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