Page 131 of Confessions of the Dead

The mattress turned like an old stone marking a tomb.

Buck had been right—that single thick branch had gone right through the mattress, down through the floor, and left a jagged tear in the hardwood.

Ellie knew the house didn’t have a basement. There wasn’t even a crawlspace. It had been built on a giant slab of granite ledge, and while it was physically impossible for a tree branch to punch a hole through something as substantial as solid stone, somehow this branch had. Beneath the splintered wood, there was a gaping maw, a crack in the rock so deep it only swallowed the beam of the flashlight when Evelyn drew closer.

“That smells disgusting.”

The edges were thick with black mold. The spot on the floor was nearly twice the size of the ones on the mattress and ceiling. Frigid air rose through the hole, misty white tinted with flecks of black.

“Not so close,” Ellie told the girl. “Probably shouldn’t be breathing—”

Air burst up. A belch. An unearthly geyser from deep within the bowels below and Evelyn fell back. She instinctively grabbed the gnarled branch to keep from falling, and Ellie knew that was a mistake even as it was happening—she grabbed at the girl, tried to stop her. Mason did, too, but neither was fast enough. The instant Evelyn’s fingers found the bark, they went white as icy frost glazed her skin, enveloped her—

My God, it’s eating her!

Ellie’s brain went to a childlike place at the sight of it, because her adult brain didn’t understand. Didn’t want to understand, as if not understanding could keep it from happening. But it did happen—the frost raced up Evelyn’s arm, over her shoulder to her neck and head. The girl froze mid-scream, and while that should have silenced the shriek echoing through the room, it did not, and Ellie realized it was because she and Mason were both screaming, too, as the ice not only engulfed Evelyn but took them where they touched her.

102

Cody Hill

STU PETERSON JUST BLEWa hole in Keith Gayton. Did it like it was nothing. Even when bits of Keith sprayed Peterson’s face, he didn’t bother to wipe it away, didn’t acknowledge it at all, he just smiled and kept talking. For that brief second, Stu Peterson was Cody Hill’s hero. But then Peterson called out Cody’s name.

Cody and Marcie were sitting in the fifth row. Half the crowd had gotten up to get in line, the other half jumped up with the shot, but the two of them had stayed down and were, for the moment, concealed. Marcie was making this godawful whimpering sound, and it was becoming increasingly clear she wasn’t up for what would come next, not unless she grew a pair, but sometimes you had to improvise. You had to work under the gun. When Peterson called Cody’s name a second time, Cody pulled the Motorola radio from his pocket and pressed it in Marcie’s cold hands. “I need you to do me a favor. Think you can?”

Marcie whimpered again, and that would have to do.

“If I yell out your name, I need you to switch that radio to channel two and press the Talk button. That’s it. You can do that, right? Easy-peasy?”

Cody had his vest.

The other bomb was set to go off at 9:05, but that was six minutes away, and six minutes was a very long time when it came to things like this. Six minutes was a lifetime. He couldn’t risk something going wrong. He knew he wasn’t leaving this gym—he was all good with that. As long as nobody else left, either, he was perfectly good with that.

“Marcie? Can you do that?” When she still didn’t answer, he added, “I saw Malcolm Mitchell.” Cody lied. “He’s practically sitting on top of the bomb. You do this, and you’re finally taking back what’s yours. None of us are leaving, but you’ll have peace. I need to know you can do it.”

Marcie finally nodded, and her slender fingers wrapped around the radio.

“That’s a good girl.”

People were screaming. Shouting. Trying the doors, finding them locked. Finding Stu’s men guarding the doors. Others were still in line, as if that were perfectly fine. Perfectly normal. Shock was a crazy thing. But this was all good. It was what Cody wanted.

Panic.

Panic was like chugging a Red Bull.

Someone grabbed Cody by the shoulders and lifted him to his feet. “He’s up here, Stu! I got him!”

Cody twisted but couldn’t see who it was. He became far less concerned with that when the man reached into Cody’s pocket and yanked out the vest’s detonator with enough force to tear the wires right out of Cody’s damn near perfect welds, rendering it useless. He shoved the detonator in his own pocket, then shouted back down to Peterson, “Got the other thing, too!”

His face still speckled in blood, Peterson nodded up at them. “Bring ’em down here.”

The man did.

He was twice Cody’s size. No way he could break free. Theman shuffled him around like he was some kind of rag doll, got him to the gym floor, and forced him to his knees in the bloody puddle left behind by Keith Gayton. This insanely beautiful girl was looking down at him, and so was Stu Peterson.

Peterson bobbed his head toward the girl. “She showed me the vest. That’s how we knew. We found the other bomb, too. I didn’t want to fool with disarming it—that seemed a little risky—so we just reset the clock. It’s set to go off at three in the morning now. Six hours should be plenty of time to figure it out. If not, we’ll just bump it again. That was a ballsy move, kid. I don’t need her to touch you; your judgment has come and gone.”

Peterson raised the shotgun and pointed it at Cody’s head.

---