TALES FROM THE PIZZAPLEX: HAPPS. ЭПИЛОГ ВТОРОЙ КНИГИ (АНГЛ. ВАРИАНТ)
In a roiling auditory overload of screams and laughter, shouts and music, and bells and dings, one more shriek shouldn't have stood out. But this one did. Lucia stopped dead when she heard the shrill screech; it felt like the keen was spearing into her ears and drilling through her brain. All the hairs on the back of Lucia's neck stood up, and a shiver trickled down her spine. Her legs went weak.
Lucia looked toward the direction of the screech, up at the apex of the Zero Gravity ride. As she did, thick clouds that had been swallowing the night's stars for the last hour, gulped down the three-quarter moon, too. Suddenly, in spite of the carnival's thousands of glaring lights and the mild sixty-degree temperature, the night felt heavy and oppressive.
It was a bad omen. A very bad omen.
Lucia flinched when a hand gripped her upper arm. She shook off the hand, took a step back, and forced herself to look. Jayce's face—her date's face (how weird was that, to be on a date?)—came into focus.
"Hey. Sorry," Jayce said. "You looked like you were going to faint or something. I was just trying to help. I didn't mean to . . ."
"It's okay," Lucia said. She dug deep and managed a smile she hoped didn't look as freaked as she felt.
I'm just on edge, Lucia told herself. She never would have chosen a carnival for a double date. A carnival wasn't just auditory overload; it was total sensory overload. Pressed by the crowd streaming through the midway, Lucia felt penned in by all the kaleidoscopie neon lights and garish colors of the spinning and whipping rides. And she cringed at the intrusive shouted chatter of the carnies who ran the games. Just a few feet away from Lucia, a tattooed man with a heavily creased face bellowed, "Three balls for a buck! Try your luck!"
Lucia liked quiet, not cacophony. She wasn't in her element.
But the screech that had disquieted Lucia was only a screech, one of hundreds emanating from the thrill rides. Thinking it was an omen was just her being "fanciful," something her logic-based parents would have scolded her for.
Lucia took a deep breath and started walking, knowing that Jayce would fall in step beside her. He was malleable, like an eager puppy.
When Lucia had stopped, she and Jayce had fallen behind their friends, Adrian and Hope. Zigging around a group of little kids arguing over cotton candy. Lucia scanned the crowded carnival midway and caught sight of Hope's bouncy strawberry blonde ponytail up ahead. Lucia could see dirty-blond curls a few inches above the ponytail. Even from this distance of twenty feet or so, even past the darting kids and sauntering teens and scattered families, Lucia could see the way Adrian's curls lay against the neck of his dark blue polo shirt, which fit him perfectly... as did his faded jeans. Or maybe she was just going from memory: Lucia could re-create the minutia of everything Adrian in her mind's eye. This wasn't a good thing. Adrian was her friend, not her boyfriend. He was with Hope. And now, thanks to Adrian's bizarre matchmaking efforts, Lucia was with Jayce.
Lucia walked faster. Jayce followed suit. They caught up with Adrian and Hope next to a funnel cake stand. Lucia inhaled the scent of fried dough and cinnamon. Somehow, the aromas managed to overpower all the other carnival scents —buttery popcorn, sizzling burgers, and sickly-sweet cotton candy; people's sweat and perfume; the rides' engine grease and sawdust. Lucia's nose was having to work overtime to keep up with all the olfactory input.
"I really shouldn't." Hope was saying as Adrian stepped up to a stainless-steel counter to order one of the oily, sugary things that Lucia thought looked like a dismembered donut that had been glued back together with oil.
Adrian turned and spotted Lucia and Jayce. "There you are. We thought we'd lost you. You want a funnel cake? I'm buying." Adrian flashed his perfect, white-toothed grin.
Lucia shook her head, but Jayce said, "Sure."
"Yo, dudes!" a deep voice boomed from behind them.
Lucia didn't bother to turn. She knew that voice. It belonged to Joel, the six-foot-six center on their school's basketball team.
"I had one of these funnel cakes last night," another deep voice said; this voice was crisper, filled with self-importance. "Eat at your own peril. I barfed mine up on the Orbiter ride."
Lucia sighed loudly as the two guys, both dressed in baggy jeans and team T-shirts in their school's unfortunate purple and gold colors, pushed past her. They each slapped Adrian on the back. He gave them a friendly smile, but Lucia knew Adrian well enough to know that he wasn't thrilled to see them. She didn't bother to smile at them. Why pretend you liked someone when you didn't?
"You must have decided to come at the last minute," Joel said to Adrian. He crossed his apelike arms in front of his barrel chest and cocked his big, bushy, sandy-haired head. "And you lost your phone so you couldn't call and let us know." He elbowed Wade, the self-professed barfer. "Think we're not welcome?"
Wade grinned. "Oh, sure we are. The more the merrier. Right, Hope?" He winked at Hope.
Hope gave Wade a stiff simile and took Adrian's arm. Wade nonchalantly ran a hand through his long brown hair as if Hope's lack of interest didn't bother him. His narrowed brown eyes and stiff thin lips gave away his true feelings.
Lucia had an odd moment of empathy for Wade. She didn't like him, but she could relate to how he felt. Wade, who thought he was the king of their class and all girls should treat him accordingly, had wanted to date Hope for years. He probably thought it was his right to date her. He was the celebrated quarterback of the football team, the head jock in the school, and Hope was the head cheerleader. Lucia was sure that in Wade's mind, he and Hope were royalty; they should have been together. But even though she was a statuesque cheerleader, almost supermodel beautiful with five feet, four inches of athletic curves, shining hair, and big cartoon-princess eyes and rosy lips, Hope wasn't stuck-up and elitist like Wade was. She was actually very nice. And she was with six-foot-two sculpted Adrian, the star of the school's basketball team. Adrian was also one of the senior class "royalty," but he didn't think of himself that way.
Adrian was the reason why Lucia's senior year was going a lot better than she'd thought it would when she and her parents had moved to the town just before her last year of high school. Given that she was a straight-A student, a science and tech geek with an incongruous obsession with the supernatural, and not at all interested in looking and acting "normal," Lucia figured she'd be an outcast. But she wasn't . . . because she and her family happened to move across the street from Adrian, a nice guy who made sure Lucia felt welcomed and included.
Lucia watched Adrian's friendly blue eyes crinkle as he accepted a tray of funnel cakes and began passing them around. He was so gorgeous—his face belonged on magazine covers: Lucia never tired of watching him, except when her wish that he was more than a friend was too much for her.
"Hey, Hope! Are you really eating fried bread? Shame on you!" Nick, one of the five males on their high school's cheerleading squad, came up behind Hope and bumped her good-naturedly.
A tall, slender girl who looked like she was trying to be invisible trailed behind Nick. Hope smiled at her. "Hey, Kel. I didn't know you guys were coming here tonight."
The girl shrugged. She looked at the group and then dropped her gaze to her feet.
Hope, who had just taken her first bite of funnel cake, quickly wiped sugar and grease off her lips. She chewed, then giggled. "Join me for a couple extra laps in the morning?" she asked Nick. "I'll have to work this off."
"Only if you share," Nick said. He reached out and pulled off a piece of Hope's funnel cake.
"Take as much as you want," Hope said. She looked past Nick. "You want some, Kel?"
Kel—Kelly to everyone except Hope—blinked and shook her head as she toyed with her long, brown single braid. Poor Kelly, Lucia thought. Kelly was so excruciatingly shy when she was in groups. She was Hope's best friend (or one of them—Hope was close friends with Nick, too), and she was a nice girl, bright and funny. Kelly wasn't a cheerleader. Apparently, she and Hope had been friends since they were in kindergarten together. Lucia had overheard Kelly when she thought she was alone with Hope or Nick. Kelly had a lot of interesting things to say because she genuinely liked to study and she read all the time. Pretty, with exotically slanted hazel eyes and soft, freckled features, Kelly dressed well—if you were into current fashions. Tonight, she wore ankle-hugging olive pants with a cropped tan top that revealed her flat stomach. Lucia wondered what had happened to Kelly to steal her self-confidence.
"Kelly and I just gorged on corn dogs, popcorn, and milkshakes." Nick snatched another piece of Hope's funnel cake. He opened his wide mouth and popped in the bite. The sugar that remained on his lower lip made him look like a little boy, but then, his soft, smooth features always gave him a boyish look. Green-eyed, ginger-haired Nick was cute in a kid-next-door kind of way.
"And you're still eating," Hope said affectionately.
Nick chewed and swallowed. "But of course. My muscles need fuel." He struck a bodybuilder pose, and Hope laughed.
Although he wasn't a jock, Nick's muscles rivaled the bulging brawn of Joel and Wade. Adrian was ripped, too, but in a less in-your-face way. He was just fit, not muscle-bound.
Jayce nudged Lucia, startling her. She whipped her head toward him. Oh yeah, her date. She forced a smile and shook her head at the piece of fried dough he offered her. It didn't look appetizing in the least. All lumpy and shiny and tangled—it reminded her of intestines. Another shiver rippled through her. She put her back to Jayce and the others and turned to watch the roller-coaster cars clatter past on their downward swoop into a loop-the-loop that jutted out fifty feet above the roof of the funnel cake stand.
"So now what?" Joel asked as the whole group moved on and eventually clustered at the edge of the Balloons and Darts game. Lucia joined the others, her gaze on the dart-throwing kids standing at the game's counter. She mentally calculated the optimal trajectory that would pop the uppermost red balloon. She could visualize the perfect are in her head.
"We've been on all the rides and played most of the games," Hope said. She grinned up at Adrian adoringly. "We had to walk back to his truck to leave all the prizes he won for me."
Adrian didn't react to the praise. He was too humble to be cocky about his game prowess. He concentrated on eating his funnel cake.
Wade rolled up onto the balls of his feet and puffed out his chest. "I won a bunch of stuff last night, so I didn't even bother to play tonight. Joel and I just wanted to go on the rides again."
Lucia rolled her eyes. As if, she thought. If Wade won anything, it was probably one of the little rubber duck prizes they gave out at the Duck Pond game. Wade wasn't nearly as awesome as he thought he was.
How did I get here? Lucia wondered. She didn't even like carnivals.
But what could she do when Adrian told her he'd set up the double date? He was being nice, and she'd figured saying no would have been rude. And it wasn't like she didn't like Jayce. He was a nice guy, too.
Jayce was Adrian's unlikely best friend. Unlikely because Jayce was the antithesis of a jock. About five foot, six inches and skinny, Jayce looked like the consummate nerd. He had thick black hair that was never properly combed, equally thick, black-rimmed round glasses that he constantly had to push back up on his nose, and a pale angular face that couldn't be called good-looking by anyone, probably not even his mother. On top of his unfortunate looks, Jayce dressed in checked dress shirts paired with dress slacks, and he always had at least a dozen pens and pencils stuffed into a pocket protector. He looked like he was the male version of Lucia, a science nerd, but he wasn't all that bright. He was more creative than intelligent. Jayce was an artist, a pretty brilliant one actually. He could draw and paint the most amazing portraits. He'd done one of Lucia that had made her look downright pretty.
Without Jayce's artistic talents to help her, Lucia wouldn't have described herself as pretty. She'd always thought her face was too thin and angular to be attractive. She also had odd features—one eye was much bigger than the other, her nose was slightly crooked, and her mouth was too wide for her face. All this was part of a head she thought was too big for her petite five-foot-two frame—accentuated by her wild, kinky black curls, which she could never fully contain but didn't have the heart to chop off. Lucia's late grandmother had loved Lucia's afro-like hair; so, Lucia let her hair radiate from her head like a black nimbus in honor of her beloved nana. Her clothes were a tribute to her nana, too. Lucia had a closet full of woven vests in a variety of colors and patterns, all handcrafted by Nana; Lucia paired these vests with men's black shirts, ankle-length skirts, and hiking boots. Even under the protection of Adrian's friendship, Lucia's wardrobe raised eyebrows on a regular basis.
A kid eating a slice of pizza walked past, bumping into Wade. "Hey," Wade said. "Watch where you're going."
The kid, who looked to be ten or so, stuck out his pizza-sauce-covered tongue at Wade and ran off. Wade looked as if he was going to give chase, but before he could, Joel grabbed his arm.
"I've got a great idea," Joel said loudly. He turned and pointed past the roller coaster, toward the dome-shaped metal skeleton of Freddy Fazbear's Mega Pizzaplex. "Let's go over there and look around."
Lucia gazed toward the well-lit construction site. She shivered.
The town had been buzzing about the massive entertainment center for months, ever since Fazbear Enterprises announced its intention to create a coliseum-size arena filled with games, rides, restaurants, and stages that would feature all the Fazbear animatronic characters. Everyone thought the project was wonderful; it was an economic boon for the town. It was supposed to create tons of new jobs and bring in thousands of tourists. Lucia wasn't so sure the place was a great idea. She'd read stories about the old Freddy Fazbear pizzerias. There were rumors, dark ones. She'd even heard that the pizzeria was being built over the top of one of those pizzerias with a checkered past.
"Why would we go over there?" Hope asked. "It's just a construction site."
"Yeah, but it's a good one. I've checked it out a couple times. Now I hear they've already started bringing in animatronics," Joel said. "Maybe we can find one and get it turned on or something."
"Maybe we'll get arrested and go to jail," Jayce said .
Joel curled his thick upper lip and looked down at Jayce. "You a scaredy-cat, runt?"
"Joel," Adrian said, "knock it off."
Jayce stepped forward and put his shoulders back. "It's okay, Adrian. I got this." He pushed his glasses up on his nose and tilted his head back so he could look Joel in the eye. "Just because I'm small and I draw doesn't mean I'm a scaredy-cat, you neanderthal."
"Wanna bet?" Joel poked Jayce in the chest. "I bet if we go over there and we find one of those animatronics, you'll pee your pants."
"I don't know if going over there is such a good idea," Nick spoke up. "I heard something weird happened not that long ago, something hush-hush."
"Great!" Joel said. "A mystery. Let's make like Scooby-Doo and the gang and go solve it. What do you say, dudes?"
Lucia opened her mouth to say she wanted to go home, but she never got the words out because Kelly—big shock—spoke up. "I like mysteries. I just read a book on urbex . . . urban exploration. It would be cool to poke around an old site."
Joel raised an unruly eyebrow and looked at Kelly as if he was seeing her in a new light. "Now, that's the spirit."
"I'm in." Jayce said.
Lucia took his hand and leaned over so she could whisper in his car. "You don't have to prove anything."
Jayce whispered back. "Yes, I do. If you don't stand up to them, they end up pounding you down."
"But Adrian won't let that happen," Lucia persisted.
"Adrian isn't always going to be around to fight my battles," Jayce said.
Adrian looked at Jayce as if he'd overheard the comment. "Are you sure, Jayce?" he asked. "We can just leave."
Jayce nodded. "I'm sure. Let's do it."
Adrian's sculpted nose twisted as he thought. He looked down at Hope. "What do you say? Are you willing to go over there?"
Hope's big blue eyes shifted from Joel to Jayce and back again. She wasn't stupid. She understood the dynamic at play. She looked over at Kelly. "Do you really want to go over there?"
Kelly flushed and wrapped the end of her braid around her fingers, but she nodded. When she spoke, her words were barely audible. "It could be fun."
"Or not," Lucia muttered.
Kelly's eyes flickered. She obviously heard Lucia, but she didn't say anything else.
"Then let's blow this carnival and go have some fun," Joel said. He threw an arm around Wade and began pulling his friend along the midway.
Nick looked at Hope and Adrian, his full cheeks sucked in as if in deep thought. Adrian gestured at Jayce. "Your call."
"Let's go," Jayce said.
Lucia couldn't help but notice that her date hadn't asked her what she wanted. Should she call it a night and head home on her own? She shrugged. No, she had to admit the idea of finding an animatronic kind of appealed to her. She was fascinated by robotics.
So, Lucia followed her friends and her not-friends through the carnival revelers. She tried not to think about the screech that had unnerved her earlier.
The Pizzaplex construction site waited, still and silent, in the mottled shadows cast between sporadically spaced security lights. Surrounded by a twelve-foot chain-link fence that was plastered with DANGER—DO NOT ENTER signs, the construction site looked, at first glance, to be out of reach. But Joel knew how to get in.
"There's some loose fencing down this way," he said, leading the group to the side of the site farthest from the carnival.
It had taken just ten minutes for them to walk from the carnival to the construction site, but it took another ten to circumnavigate the unfinished domed structure because the fencing was set a hundred yards or so beyond the edges of the building itself. Lucia gazed past the chain-link barrier as they traipsed over the dusty earth extending from the fence. Within the fencing, Lucia could see the hulking shapes of a couple dump trucks and excavators. A crane's boom extended toward the metal skeleton of the unfinished dome. It looked like a giant robotic arm was reaching out, searching for a connection.
Isn't that what we're all doing? Lucia thought. Lucia looked around at the others. They were all here because they were trying to connect, trying to be part of something, even if they would never admit it . . . not even to themselves.
Lucia's rubber-soled boots made hushed scuffling sounds as she walked. Hope's dainty sandals sounded like tap shoes. The others' athletic shoes chuffed at the earth. Occasionally, someone would kick a piece of gravel, and it would ping off the metal fencing.
In the distance, they could hear the over-the-top gaiety of the carnival but it was strangely muted, as if the construction site acted as a sound dampener. Lucia could no longer smell all the carnival aromas. Now, all her nose detected was the arid smell of the earth and a sharp whiff of gasoline.
Joel suddenly stopped, and so did everyone else. He reached out and tugged at a section of fencing. With a metallic scrape, it pulled back from one of the fence's metal poles. "Here we go," Joel said.
No one responded to him. They just slithered, single file, through the opening. As Lucia squeezed through, a sharp chain-link edge scraped against the back of her wrist. She winced at the sudden pain. She couldn't see the cut, but warmth trickling down the back of her hand let her know the skin was broken, though not seriously. She pulled down the sleeve of her black shirt to staunch the flow.
Nick was the last one through the fence. As he let the chain-link fall back into place with a twang that made Lucia stiffen, he looked around worriedly. "Are you sure there are no dogs?" Nick asked.
Joel shook his head. He waved an arm toward the Pizzaplex. "I've been all over the site. No dogs. No guards." He pointed to a spot about a hundred feet away. "There are some security cameras over there, near the office trailer and the construction materials, but we don't need to get anywhere near them to see inside the dome."
Lucia gazed at the piles of rebar and stacks of metal beams. Beyond them, a cement truck sat, it's mixing drum bulging like it was pregnant. Lucia's imagination suddenly provided her with a vision of alien insectoid-like nanobots pouring from the mixing drum. She blinked and mentally chastised herself. The deserted site was creepy enough without her brain adding to it.
No one spoke as Joel led the way past a steamroller to an opening between two half-finished cement walls. "There's an enclosure just past here. I think that's where the animatronics are being stored."
Thankfully, more security lights were set up within the unfinished structure. The metal floodlights didn't flood so much as they spurted into darkness here and there, but they provided enough visibility to get around . . . and enough visibility to reveal a flat, red metal roof surrounded by the concrete floor Lucia and the others now stood on.
"Is that the roof of the old pizzeria?" Kelly asked.
Lucia was again surprised to hear Kelly speak up. But, gazing at Kelly's wide eyes, Lucia could tell Kelly was really excited, so excited that she'd apparently forgotten to be shy.
"What pizzeria?" Hope asked. She was clinging to Adrian's arm. She obviously didn't want to be here, but she was trying to be a good sport.
"It's an old Freddy Fazbear pizzeria site," Lucia said. "I read about it. I think they're going to turn it into a museum or something."
"Look over there," Nick said. "There's a ramp that looks like it's heading down, maybe toward the pizzeria's entrance."
"Come on." Joel's shadow stretched twelve feet ahead of him as he started toward the ramp Nick had pointed out. "I never noticed that when I was here before."
Their footsteps crackled and echoed as they all followed Joel toward the ramp. When they got closer to it, though, they realized the ramp led to nowhere. A couple feet down the ramp's slope, it ended at a bulging mass of hardened concrete that swelled in a knobby mass from somewhere farther down the slope.
"We're not getting in that way," Wade said. He started to turn away.
"That's the worse concrete pour I've ever seen," Adrian said. He moved down the ramp, leaned over, and poked at the clot of cement.
"Maybe it was a spill," Jayce said.
Adrian shook his head. "I don't know," He frowned then shrugged. "It's just weird is all."
"Hey, look," Wade called from a few feet away. Everyone turned.
Wade pointed toward the far side of the flat red roof. "Come on. I think I see a vent opening that might be big enough to get through."
Wade trotted a few feet to their left and stepped from the Pizzaplex's concrete floor to the corrugated surface of the red metal roof. His feet grated against the uneven surface as he landed. When he started striding across the red metal, the cadence of his steps echoed through the dim enclosure of the fledgling Pizzaplex. The rhythm became uneven and chaotic as everyone else followed him.
About fifty feet from the blocked-off ramp, Wade knelt next to a square metal protrusion. Gripping its edges, he yanked . . . and it easily came free; he lost his balance and landed on his butt.
Jayce chuckled, Joel turned and glared.
Wade didn't seem to care about Jayce's amusement. He immediately got to his knees and grabbed the steel vent grating that the metal square had concealed. It didn't come free easily, but when Wade jiggled it back and forth several times, it groaned and grumbled, and finally, with a loud snap, let go of the roof. Beneath the grate, a narrow, dark chute led downward.
Wade immediately stuck his feet into the chute. He looked up at the others and grinned. "Ready for an adventure?"
"I'm not going down into that hole," Hope said. "We don't know where it goes."
"That's the fun of a mystery," Kelly spoke up.
Lucia mentally shook her head. Kelly was surprising Lucia right and left tonight.
Wade looked at Kelly with interest. "That a girl," he said.
Joel reached into his pocket and pulled out a tiny flashlight. He shone it down the chute.
They all leaned forward to peer into the chute. The light didn't help them much. It revealed a narrow metal enclosure slanting downward toward a bend that hid whatever lay beyond it.
"Give me that," Wade reached for Joel's flashlight.
Joel shrugged and gave up the light, "Okay. Lead on. I'll be right behind you."
Wade slid feetfirst into the chute. Joel did the same. Within seconds, they both disappeared around the bend.
An anemic beam of light managed to make it back up to Lucia and the others as Wade's and Joel's progress was marked by metallic thuds and clanks. A few more seconds of that noise passed. Then they heard a muted thump and a loud "Ouch!" "Whoa, dude," Joel said, his voice echoing up the chute.
Adrian and Hope exchanged a concerned look.
Lucia rubbed the goose bumps on her arms. She glanced around at the Pizzaplex's vast darkened expanse.
"You guys need to get down here!" Joel called out. "This is seriously dope!"
Kelly crouched down and quickly slid down the chute as Hope called out, "Kel!"
More thuds and clanks. An "oof" and then Wade said, "I've got you! Great job, Kelly!"
Hope leaned over the opening in the roof. "Are you okay, Kel?"
"I'm fine." Kelly's voice sounded tinny and distant, but her eager excitement was obvious. "It really is wicked down here. You need to see this."
Hope looked at Adrian. "I hate to leave Kelly down there alone with those two."
Adrian released a resigned breath. "I agree. Let me go first."
Hope nodded.
And that was when Lucia and the others lost their minds.
What do you do when five of your group of eight have already charged into the breach? Do you retreat, looking like a total wuss? For Jayce and Nick, the answer was a resounding no. Lucia had to think a little harder but not for long. Adrian was down there.
When Lucia slid out the vent chute, Jayce did his best to catch her. His best wasn't great, unfortunately, and the two of them ended up tumbling across the floor together. They landed next to a stack of old, sagging cardboard boxes. Lucia's long skirt tangled around Jayce's shoulders. She quickly whipped it free and smoothed it over her legs.
"I think we're in the storage room," Kelly said. "There's a hallway out here." She pointed. "I'm pretty sure it leads to the dining room."
Jayce immediately popped to his feet and offered Lucia his hand." Sorry about that," he said.
Lucia smiled at him. "No problem."
She suddenly realized how well she could see.
Although the light that surrounded her was dim, it was adequate to reveal that she and the others were now in a red-walled room filled with old boxes. They had to be in a Freddy Fazbear's pizzeria. Even in the shadows, she could see the infamous black-and-white checkered floor.
She could also see piles of metal endoskeleton parts. Mounds of robotic arms and legs and torsos and skulls were strewn through the space, along with the boxes.
"I'm surprised there are lights down here," Hope said. She was brushing a smudge of dirt off the pale-yellow blouse she wore with her tight jeans.
"They must have piggybacked the power from the Pizzaplex construction lights," Adrian said.
"Come on," Joel said. "Kelly's right. The dining room's down there." He pointed.
Joel started down the hall, his footsteps heavy and loud. The others followed him. Lucia took up the rear.
Within seconds, the group stepped into a big room filled with more endoskeleton parts. These were scattered among broken tables and chairs and a few brightly-colored plastic plates and purple-striped tablecloths.
"What's that smell?" Lucia asked.
The odor had hit her the minute she'd landed on the floor in the storage room, and she hadn't thought much about it. You'd expect an old buried restaurant to smell dank and musky. But now the stench seemed to be getting stronger.
"It smells like something dead." Nick said. "Maybe a rat."
Hope squeaked and pressed against Adrian. He pulled her close as he gazed around the room. "What happened down here?" he asked. "Why are all these robotic parts all over?"
Jayce started poking around. Metal clacked against metal as he picked up parts and shifted them. "Maybe they're using the place as a storage area until they get the rest of the Pizzaplex built."
"Yeah, but why are they storing old, broken robotic parts?" Lucia asked.
Adrian let go of Hope. Clearly curious, he, too, began looking around. Hope hugged herself and pressed back against the edge of a small semicircular stage, which was next to a long, rectangular one. The small stage would have been Foxy's stage, Lucia thought. The animatronic fox had been a fixture in the old Freddy Fazbear pizzerias.
Lucia left Hope and joined the others. Jayce had pulled out his small sketch pad and was drawing a robotic skull. The rest of the group was traipsing through the robotic rubble, shifting a metal arm here, a metal leg there. Lucia's gaze shifted from part to part to part. The heads were the most unsettling parts. Their dead eyes . . .
Lucia stopped and stared.
She realized that the head she was looking at wasn't made of metal.
It wasn't an animatronic head.
It was . . .
Lucia stumbled back and covered her mouth. The burger she and Jayce had shared at the start of the evening churned in her stomach. She turned and threw it up.
Jayce was at her side immediately. "Lucia! What . . ."
Lucia, so chilled she felt like she'd stepped into a freezer, lifted a shaking finger. She pointed at the head that was still lying on its side, its clouded eyes staring. She opened her mouth, but she couldn't get a word out.
Jayce looked in the direction of Lucia's finger. He frowned and stepped toward the head, shoving his sketch pad back in his pocket. "Is that some kind of prop?" He leaned over and touched the head.
He yelped and fell, landing on his hands and knees. He started scrabbling away from the head.
At the same time, Kelly let out a scream even more ear-splitting than the one Lucia had heard at the carnival. And because Kelly's scream wasn't entangled with other screams and carnival sounds, it pierced through the silence like a scythe.
Lucia and Jayce, already shocked, had to struggle to their feet before they could head toward Kelly. Everyone else, even Hope, was at Kelly's side in an instant.
In that same moment, Hope's screams joined Kelly's. The guys' gasps were the base to the girls' soprano cries.
Lucia and Jayce finally reached the others. Reluctantly, Lucia looked in the direction of their gazes. And she blanched. Her stomach flipped over again. She gagged but managed to keep from heaving.
Piled together in a macabre pyramid, a gruesome tangle of human limbs, torsos, and heads were rotting next to a snarl of ragged metal endoskeleton parts. Lucia, unconsciously, did an inventory of the parts; at least eleven bodies were lumped together, in pieces.
Lucia's brain—against her will—took in the details. The severed heads and dismembered arms and legs hadn't been cut away from the limbless torsos. The ends of the exposed bones were jagged; they'd been snapped, not sawed through. Torn tissue and mangled veins revealed the same thing. These bodies had been wrenched apart. What could do that?
Unable to look away from the savagery, Lucia noticed dark, rust-colored stains sprayed across the floor and the walls. Dried blood was everywhere, even spotting the metal robotic parts.
Adrian recovered himself first. He grabbed Hope's hand and pulled her back from the grisly heap. "We need to get out of here."
No one argued with him. When Adrian turned, everyone followed him. They all ran back across the dining room, pounding into the hallway and scrambling past the boxes in the storage room.
There, however, they all stopped. The bottom of the chute was no longer open. The metal had collapsed, crushed together as if crimped by a giant hand. Their escape route was blocked.
Everyone stared at the closed-off chute. They panted in unison and exchanged wide-eyed, pale-faced looks.
Adrian was the first to get a grip. "There has to be another way out. Come on."
Adrian led the group down the hallway away from the dining room. The hallway ended at an exit door, but the door was engulfed in cement blocks and more robotic parts.
"Help me." Adrian squatted next to a cement block. He and the other guys tried to lift it. It wouldn't budge.
Adrian stood and took a deep breath. "Okay. There have to be other doors. Windows. Something."
And there were other doors. And windows. But they were all blocked. Some were actually cemented closed. Nothing would open. Nothing would give way, no matter how much effort the guys put into it. And a search of the entire restaurant didn't reveal any other vertical chutes. It also didn't reveal any tools that would have helped them pry apart the closed-off chute. Adrian suggested they use robotic arms to try and peel back the metal blocking their egress, but his idea didn't work.
They were trapped.
Unwilling to return to the dining room, where the decaying body parts seemed to pulse with malevolent intent, the group started down the hall leading to the storage room. Their footsteps made skirring sounds as they all shuffled, flat-footed in defeat, over the grit-covered floor.
By now, they were all dirty and sweaty and breathing heavily. Lucia hadn't stopped shaking since she'd seen the first head.
Adrian put his arm around Hope. "Don't worry. When the construction crew returns in the morning, we'll hear them. We can bang on the metal and they're sure to hear us. They'll get us out."
Hope gave Adrian a little hesitant nod that belied her name. Trailing behind the couple, Lucia wished Adrian would put his arm around her, too. Maybe reading—or misreading—her thoughts, Jayce sidled close and took Lucia's hand; she didn't protest.
About halfway down the hallway, Adrian stopped. He held up a hand. "Listen," he whispered.
They clustered around Adrian as he turned back toward the way they'd just come. As soon as their steps ceased, they heard it . . . a creak. Everyone strained to see into the dimness of the dining room.
The creak sounded again, loudly. Now, it was an unmistakable creak, a creak of moving metal.
"What is that?" Joel asked.
"Shh," Adrian said. He cocked his head to listen.
The creak repeated itself. It sounded like a metal gate swinging back and forth in a breeze . . . sort of. It was an odd sound. The creak was caught up in a faint hiss.
Adrian pressed his lips together the way he always did when he was thinking deeply. He looked at the others. "Come on. Let's go check it out." He didn't whisper, but he kept his voice low. "It sounds like it might be a vent cover, maybe a ventilation system? Might be a way out."
Lucia frowned, but she didn't say anything. The desire for the sound to lead to a way out was stronger than her intuition that the sound wasn't anything as benign as a ventilation system.
They took a few paces toward the dining room. Without discussing it, everyone stepped lightly, as quietly as possible. Lucia listened hard. The others must have been listening hard, too, because when the sound changed, they all stopped as one.
The creak beyond the doorway to the dining room gave way to a series of footstep-like taps, followed by another metallic creak, entwined with a long hiss and a rasp.
The sounds were getting closer. Each tap brought the hissing creak nearer to the hallway.
Hope clutched Adrian's arm. Lucia held her breath.
A clunk came from just a few feet beyond the doorway.
Adrian grabbed Hope's hand and started running back down the hall toward the storage room. Hope went along without question. So did everyone else.
Lucia's heart was lurching up toward her throat as they all tore into the storage room. She was sure the others could hear the pounding beats thumping against her rib cage.
As soon as they were all through the door, Adrian closed the door quietly . . . and locked it.
Everyone stared at the door.
"What if it's someone coming to help us?" Wade whispered.
The very fact that he whispered revealed the doubt behind his words.
The others didn't answer the question. They just looked at one another with wide eyes. Clearly, everyone was realizing what Lucia had known as soon as she'd heard the first creak.
They weren't down here alone.
And whatever was down here with them wasn't here to help them get out.