Free Dark Screams, Volume 1 by Brian James Freeman Page A

wall. Like Katy, Nev wasn’t shackled to another prisoner. Apparently I was the only one to get buddied up with someone else. He explained that he’d only just woken and hadn’t seen either of us being brought in here. He told us that he worked at night, riding a pizza-delivery scooter. When he’d left an apartment block after making a delivery he thought he’d felt a pain in the back of his shoulder, but he wasn’t certain.
    “Even so,” he said, “I think I was injected with something that knocked me out.”
    “I don’t remember being injected,” I said.
    “Nor me,” added Katy. “But what if the drug caused short-term amnesia as well as rendering us unconscious?”
    “You mean the drug actually erases memory of the injection?”
    “It’s possible.”
    Nev peeped out from his recess. “Katy’s right, you know? What she said earlier? You’ve got to kill big feller there before he kills us.”
    “How?”
    Nev leaned out a little more, revealing the manacles on his wrists. “Kick him as hard as you can, John. Kick him in the head. Keep on kicking.”
    “That guy’s head will be as hard as granite. If I don’t knock him unconscious with the first kick he’ll tear me apart.”
    “I’d do it, if I was as close as you.”
    “I bet you would.” The way I said it plainly sang out:
I bet you damn well wouldn’t!
    Nev got all twitchy as excitement fizzed inside him. “Choke the bastard to death. Use the chain.”
    “Yeah, right.”
    “Stick your fingers in his eyes. Blind him.”
    “Why don’t you just ride over him on your pizza-delivery scooter?”
    “Don’t argue, you two,” Katy whispered. “John, please, we must do something. If we don’t, he’s going to hurt us.”
    “Okay. Okay. Let me think.”
    “Stand on his throat.”
    “Nev, shush—just shush, all right?”
    What if I could drive my fingers into Goliath’s eye sockets? Maybe I could gouge away until he couldn’t see? I’d have the advantage then. Sighted vs. Unsighted = no contest.
    I took a deep breath. “Okay, both of you stay quiet. Here goes.”
    I took a step toward the sleeping killer. He didn’t move, so I took another step.
Now…if I
jab both my thumbs into his eyes at the same time…
Then disaster struck. A loud clank reverberated around the chamber. This was followed by the hum of electric motors.
    “The claw!” Nev shouted.
    Goliath’s eyes snapped open and he was up on his feet in a heartbeat. Instantly Nev and Katy vanished from sight. They didn’t want the psycho spotting them.
    His fierce gaze raked the place, searching for the source of the clanking sound. When he saw the huge steel claw, which must have been big enough to hoist a car, he immediately marched toward it. He dragged me along without even noticing I was there. I grunted as the collar painfully jerked me forward. All I could do was follow. He approached the pile of detritus that must have been dumped by the claw on earlier occasions.
    Goliath watched the machine at work. Cables lowered the claw into the water, so that it clunked up against the metal grille that covered the river’s exit tunnel. Sticks, branches, plastic bags, bottles—all kinds of junk had accumulated there, after being washed into drains by rainfall earlier in the day. There was even a child’s sit-on tractor made from bright red plastic. Goliath carefully watched as cables lowered the open claw from the ceiling until it splashed down into the river. Now cogs spun as they closed the massive claw around debris that had accumulated in front of the grating. This was like a gigantic version of those machines found at funfairs where children use a claw to try and grab toys from inside a glass case. A moment later, the cables hoisted the claw upward. Water cascaded from its booty that had been grabbed from the river. The claw then trundled along a rail that hung beneath the basement’s ceiling until it was over the concrete deck. There the claw opened. All kinds of debris