Free Ghost Hunters by Sam Witt Page B

open.
    Dick shouted in surprise and jammed the pistol into her mouth. Her front teeth sheared off on the gun’s barrel, flying away like ivory toothpicks. She gagged as the barrel slammed into the back of her throat and her eyes widened in pained surprise.
    He pulled the trigger, and the back of her head erupted in a fountain of gore. The camera’s light caught chunks of scalp, greasy hair still clinging to them, fly through the darkness. Scraps of yellowing bone and globs of splattered gray matter seemed frozen in flight, captured by the blazing light.
    The girl sagged to her knees, dragging Dick’s gun arm down. Her death convulsions had locked her teeth around the barrel, holding it captive inside her ruined head. Her face was turned up toward him, eyes bulging from the pressure of the bullet’s passage, chipped teeth framing the barrel. He leaned against the wall and shoved her off with a boot, grimacing at the squeal of her broken teeth against the metal barrel. She fell to the floor, face down, revealing the gory crater in the back of her head. Dick stared down at the dead girl, revulsion and pride at war in his gut.
    Dick turned and headed into the tunnel, ignoring Randall’s cries for help and Amy’s echoing screams.

14
    A my spat out her gum and ran until her lungs were on fire. The ledge was narrow and the slope severe, which made every step a neck-breaking hazard. She didn’t have any time to consider the danger, though, and kept running as fast as she could. Her lead was narrow to begin with, she didn’t know how long it would take her pursuers to catch her.
    She hated Dick for stealing from her, for dragging them all down into this subterranean hell. If I ever see you again, she swore, I’ll chew your goddamned face off.
    The thought of killing Dick put an extra spring in her step. She could do this. She was young and healthy, in the best shape of her life. She hadn’t spent two hours on the treadmill every day just to keep her ass tight for the cameras. She could outrun the pack of cannibals. She would .
    If the blue light didn’t run out. The blue made everything seem flat and washed out, but it was better than the darkness. As she ran up the ledge, Amy realized the tunnel ahead of her was not bathed in the same flickering glow. She fumbled in her front pocket for the little LED flashlight she always carried, losing precious seconds as her hand stuck in her pocket and she had to hobble instead of rushing headlong away from her pursuers. She pinched the little light’s case, and a narrow cone of pure white chased the darkness from her path.
    Fingers scraped at her ankles as one of the freaks leaped at Amy. The contact threw her off her stride, sending her stumbling ahead. She could feel them behind her, so close it would only take one more stumble to end her life. Being so close to death pushed Amy beyond her limits, lent strength to her legs that she’d never known she had. She found herself drinking from some deep well of desperate energy that had always been inside her, hidden beneath the surface, waiting for circumstances to reveal it to her.
    As she ran, lungs pumping with practiced efficiency, flesh moving beyond the reach of pain, Amy changed. The mask she wore, all wide smiles and bright eyes, cracked and fell away to reveal a feral snarl. The thin layer of her humanity peeled away to reveal the animal within, the bestial essence of survival. Amy liked it.
    But she knew she couldn’t run forever. She had to be smarter, not just faster, than the things on her tail. She stopped holding the light on the ground ahead of her and began flicking it on the ceiling and walls, looking for some nook to duck into, a side passage to escape down. She saw it at last, a narrow defile ahead and to her left. As quick as the light hit it, she swung it away. She had to surprise the assholes on her tail if this was going to work.
    One step, two steps. She killed the light, hoping the image she held in her