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  Six people had intruded on Dakota’s revenge—six people who had no business, no right, being there. She had found that shack. She’d dragged Tyler’s bound, unconscious body a couple hundred yards over rough terrain. The wheelbarrow she had found inside the shack had gotten them most of the way, but when it tipped over a bump and spilled out Tyler still sixty feet out, she had lacked the strength to lift him by then and had to drag him by his ankles the rest of the way. It had been hard, but she’d proven herself up to the task.

  Everything had been going just as she planned it. Dakota had been moments away from avenging her brother.

  Then who, of all people, ruined everything? Mark. As if she didn’t already have enough reasons to hate him, the fucker had been stalking her.

  She couldn’t look at him without reliving the night she had woken facedown in a pool of her own vomit, Mark on top of her, thrusting away with his little cock. He had finished before she had the chance to fight him off, though a bloody gash in his face showed that she’d tried before she passed out.

  He acted like it was the funniest thing when he threw her panties in her face and told her to clean herself up. She had passed back out then, but she remembered.

  Humiliation. Revulsion. Despair.

  She’d wanted to kill herself after that. Ashamed of her drunkenness and her degradation, she filed no reports and pointed no fingers, instead retreating into herself, wallowing in the emptiness. She couldn’t count how many creative ways she had contrived for killing herself. In the end, she chose the most clichéd way of exiting the world and her pathetic life.

  But as she lay naked in her bathtub, holding the razor against her wrist, she found that she wasn’t completely empty after all. A structure had risen from the shambles of her soul, not quite proper and certainly not whole. It had room only for one thing: anger.

  Dakota started to dwell on all those who had done her wrong. She shouldn’t have to die while they went on living, perhaps even enjoying the damage they had done. When she thought about Tyler, it made her hit things, lots of things, wishing each one was him.

  She made a list—“People Who Should Fucking Die!”—and checked it often. Tyler earned the top spot. She added the “friend” who had abandoned her at the frat party and the people with whom she’d been drinking and drugging. She added her dealer, remembering all the coke he helped into her nose. That was her fault, she knew, but in killing him, she would be doing a public service.

  Of course, she couldn’t forget Mark. He was a close second to Tyler. Her blood roiled whenever she thought of that son of a bitch. Dakota had never gotten the chance to fight back, not the way she wanted to. If she could have, Mark wouldn’t still be alive.

  Talk was cheap. She knew that. It was one thing to say she’d kill the bastard and another thing entirely to go through with it, but she had learned a lot about herself that night in the cabin. What she had done to Tyler was proof positive she had the strength to go through with it.

  Tyler.

  Everything was his fault. He was responsible for everything that had happened to Dakota in the last six years. Before a bullet had taken her brother’s life, Stevie had always looked out for her. He kept her away from drugs and alcohol and boys like Mark. When Stevie fell, he didn’t fall alone. Dakota plummeted into an abyss of her own creation.

  Tyler’s creation.

  Tyler’s action had torn her world apart, pushed her toward alcohol, into dulling her pain by the bottle, and when the bottle wasn’t enough, ecstasy and cocaine filled the void. Half the time, she didn’t know what she had taken.

  The drugs had led to blackouts. The blackouts led to blacker things. They led to Mark.

  Dakota had wanted to die. She couldn’t cope with her brother’s death or the violence that had taken him from her. After that night with Mark, she only wanted to kill. If she hadn’t drunk so much, Mark would never have even… no, it was his fault. He was a deviant little fucker who had taken advantage of a defenseless girl.

  Well, Dakota wasn’t defenseless anymore. She no longer drank or used. She no longer wallowed in depression and self-pity. She no longer filled her void with drugs but with sharp knives and thoughts of revenge.

  Maybe tonight is a blessing in disguise. Kill two fuckwads with one stone… or any other weapon I can get my hands on.

  Dakota shuddered. Every so often, her thoughts frightened her. Was she a killer? Maybe. But if she killed Mark or Tyler, it would be justice, not murder.

  And there Tyler stood, still feigning innocence and claiming his crime had been an accident. No one would accidentally shoot a running man from thirty-plus yards away. Dakota could kill him before anyone there could stop her. She doubted they would stand in her way as she went for the door with her bloodied knife in hand. She could walk away, head toward whatever came next, and reinvent herself, leaving Dakota Coogan behind her.

  If those worm things weren’t outside. Those creatures promised only death. For most of the people present, she would welcome that—and worse. But the park ranger had asked for her help. His plea had made it all too real for her that the situation was bigger than her own grudges. She could let the worms take Mark and Tyler, and even herself if necessary, but she couldn’t abandon innocents to a horrifying death.

  She relaxed her grip on her knife. “Okay,” she whispered. “For now.”

  “Guys,” Frosh called. Dakota had never seen him before that night. He looked to be about sixteen and not done growing, though he was probably closer to Dakota’s age, nineteen. Mark, the twins, and Tyler were all in their early twenties, the same age as her brother would have been. Abigail was a little older. Merwin could have been her grandfather. His hair was not yet entirely gray, though his mannerisms and body language suggested more virility than his appearance did. He looked like an emaciated hillbilly, but he had presence. When he spoke, people listened, including Dakota.

  “I’ve found something,” the kid said.

  Tyler’s attention diverted away from her. Dakota let her gaze linger a bit longer. She was always suspicious, expecting his demons to emerge. She remembered her brother’s wounds. She had insisted upon seeing him at that morgue. Stevie had been grotesquely disfigured, and his wounds had been inflicted pre-mortem, pre-gunshot wound. The bullet hole had only been the cherry atop a whole shit sundae.

  Dakota had wondered then what kind of monster could mutilate a man as if he were meat on a chopping block. Her monster had always had a name: Tyler Kendrick.

  Sizing up Tyler now, she couldn’t see how he could have disfigured her brother like that. She shook her head, quashing her doubt. The bullet didn’t lie. She couldn’t question Tyler’s guilt, not now, not ever. That psycho had shot her brother, and she had to see that pain returned. It was all that drove her forward.

  But first, to deal with those fucking slug things. If they ate Dakota, she wouldn’t have her revenge. If they ate Mark and Tyler first, perhaps she’d salute them as foot-long harbingers of righteousness. Somehow, she doubted the creatures were such picky eaters. They’d take everyone, not just the assholes.

  So it was up to her to stay alive longer than her enemies. That sounded simple enough. Maybe the kid had found something to help her achieve that goal. Everyone stared down at the kid’s feet. Dakota joined them to see what all the fuss was about.

  Frosh’s foot slid over a small metal clasp. It looked like a handle for a dresser drawer.

  “Let’s get it open,” Bo said, bending over the handle. He wiped the dust away from the cracks, revealing a square approximately two feet wide carved into the floor. “Maybe it’s a way out.”

  “That door there is no way out,” Merwin said. “Nothing good can come from a hole in the floor. There ain’t no reason for a shack like this to have a cellar. And if that’s what it is, cellars are dark, dank places. They’re great breeding grounds for nasty things.”

  “Well, we can’t just hang in here until those things decide to come in after us. We’re sitting ducks.”<
br />
  “The ogre has a point,” Tyler said.

  “Thanks… wait—”

  Tyler didn’t wait for Bo to work it out. “It can’t hurt to see what’s down there. Maybe there’s a bulkhead. It would be nice to know if there’s more than one way in and out of this place.”

  Merwin stroked is beard. “Okay. We check it out. If anything down there moves that ain’t human, we hightail out of there quicker than a rabbit running from a pack of wild dogs.”

  “I thought you said we were safest in here.” Dakota didn’t like the idea of opening any doors. Things were quiet outside. She preferred to keep it that way. “Maybe we should just hole up here until morning, like you said.”

  “She’s chicken,” Bo said, tapping his brother. Luc laughed.

  Dakota smirked. On second thought, let those things on in.

  “She’s smart,” Abigail said. “No one should be going down there. But if you guys want to kill yourselves, be my guest.”

  “So who’s going to open it?” Merwin asked. The ape twins kept quiet. Tyler pushed his way forward.

  “I’ll do it.”

  Oh, this just keeps getting better and better.

  “You sure?” Merwin asked. “I mean, I don’t hear nothing down there, but that don’t mean there ain’t nothing down there.”

  Tyler nodded.

  “Merwin, don’t.” Abigail’s face had gone white again. “You’ve seen what they can do.”

  “It’ll be okay… I hope. All right, Tyler. I’ll cover you as best I can. Open it now, nice and easy.”

  Everyone except Tyler took a step back. Dakota held her breath. She held her knife out in front of her, wishing it were a chainsaw. Merwin aimed his rifle at the trap door. Most of the group stood battle ready, armed with the weapons Dakota had meant for Tyler.

  Tyler cracked open the trap door. A musty, damp odor rose into the shack. It smelled like bloated corpses washing up on shore after days at sea. Dakota imagined a horde of faceless mutants moaning and clawing beneath them, waiting for those above to join their ranks in hell. Maybe she’d get lucky and they would just pull in Tyler.

  The door rose slowly. The air thickened with moisture. It tasted sour. Dakota covered her mouth, not wanting whatever spores infested that air to get into her lungs.

  Other than rank air and a pissed-off spider or two, nothing hideous sprang from the opening. Still, Dakota kept her distance. She’d watched enough documentaries to know that some predators let their prey come to them.

  Tyler peeked into the opening. “It’s pitch-black down there. I can’t see a thing.”

  To Dakota’s surprise, Abigail inched closer. She was the last person Dakota expected to see near that hole in the floor. She crouched behind Tyler and pulled her key ring from her pocket. Attached to it was a small penlight. She clicked it on and shined its light into the darkness below.

  Tyler nodded his appreciation. “There’s water. I can’t tell how deep it is. There’s a ladder leading down.”

  He stood. Abigail leaned away from the opening but kept her light shining on it. Tyler walked over to the table where the lantern sat. Before he could grab it, Mark’s hand latched onto his wrist.

  “That stays up here.” Mark released his grip. “Frosh, give him your flashlight.”

  Frosh hesitated then pulled out the flashlight he had tucked into his back pocket. He handed it to Tyler but was slow to release it when Tyler grabbed it.

  “You sure you want to go down there?” Merwin asked.

  “I know I don’t,” Abigail said.

  Tyler let out a breath. He looked Dakota straight in the eye. Then he got down on his belly and slid feet first into the hole.

  Dakota watched him disappear. Oh no, you don’t. A hollow feeling came over her. She followed Tyler down the hole, not yet willing to let him out of her sight.

  The rungs of the ladder creaked beneath her weight. They were damp and rotting like the rest of the shack—maybe worse—but they didn’t break.

  At the bottom of the ladder, Dakota plopped down into ankle-deep water. It was icy and filled her sneakers. She shivered. As she walked toward Tyler, the water rose halfway up her shins. Her hand tightened around her knife’s grip. Tyler’s back was to her. All she had to do was—

  “What do you see?” Abigail called from above. She pointed the beam at Dakota, who suddenly felt small.

  Tyler threw out a hand, signaling for Dakota to stay back. Her eyes followed the path of his flashlight’s beam as it circled four clay walls. It stopped on the wall to her right.

  “There’s an opening.”

  Tyler shined his flashlight into an arched passageway that resembled the entrance to a doghouse. Its lowest point was about three feet up the wall. Dakota thought she might be able to crawl through it.

  The thought made her uneasy. There was no telling if an animal had claimed that awful spot for its home. What if those things lived in it? The idea of having to fend off those creatures in such close quarters made her claustrophobic. Dakota wanted nothing to do with it.

  “Let’s check it out.” Tyler moved toward the opening but didn’t get far before tripping. Breaking his fall with his hands, he barely kept his face out of the water.

  “Tyler?” Despite how it might have sounded, Dakota was far less concerned about her enemy than whatever had caused him to fall.

  “Everything okay down there?” Merwin called.

  “We’re fine.” Tyler stood, his face red with embarrassment. He had managed to hold on to the flashlight, and it was still working. Nothing appeared to be broken, though his clothes were drenched down the front. Dakota stared at him, her brow creasing.

  “I’m fine,” he said, apparently mistaking her curiosity for worry. “Just wet.” He twisted the front of his tattered T-shirt into a knot and watched as the fabric oozed out rancid water.

  “What do I care?”

  “Don’t sound so disappointed. That water can’t be good for my insides. It’ll probably speed along an infection.” Tyler pointed to where Dakota has stabbed him deepest. He smirked. “You may kill me yet.”

  “I wouldn’t bet against it.”

  Tyler shrugged and laughed, but she heard no humor in it. She could tell all the others were afraid, no matter how each of them tried to hide it. Tyler, though, was unreadable. It was as if everything that had happened to him that day was no different from any other day of his sicko life. She wished she could borrow his indifference.

  Tyler squatted. “I tripped over…” He splashed around in the dark water. “This!” He pulled an object from the depths. It was long and narrow and smooth like a cane.

  Dakota covered her mouth, immediately recognizing the object for what it was—bone. If she had to guess, she would have pegged it as part of a human leg, a thighbone probably, chipped all over and broken at its end.

  Tyler examined it as if it were some curious relic, his face reflecting none of the horror Dakota felt. He had to know what it was, yet he didn’t drop it. Instead, he walked with it farther into the cellar, waving it in front of him like a blind man would his cane. In his other hand, he aimed his flashlight’s beam low.

  “There are more of them,” he said matter-of-factly. “A lot more.”

  Dakota crept up behind him, trying to disturb the water as little as possible. When he stopped suddenly, she bumped into his back. The collision caused the water to slosh, sending miniwaves in all directions. Like a tremor on a spiderweb, the vibrations of the water were sure to be felt by anything living in it.

  She turned around. The square opening was like the sun parting the gloom, but it was far away.

  Why the hell did I follow him down here?

  Tyler fixed his flashlight on a mound against the far wall. Dakota peeked around him and stifled a shriek. She shut her eyes and prayed that they had played a trick on her, that they didn’t see what her mind told her they’d seen.

  But when she opened her eyes, the bones were still there, degrading and void of tis
sue, piled high in the corner. Dakota recognized the skulls of cats and squirrels. Others came from larger animals. A fair share were undeniably human.

  Black specks skittered away from the light. Other things slithered away across the water or sank beneath the surface. Everywhere on the mound, yellow larvae squirmed.

  “We shouldn’t be down here,” Dakota whispered.

  “I think you’re probably right.”

  Tyler turned. The flashlight’s beam spun with him. It hit upon something Dakota hadn’t noticed when she had examined the pile, something mixed in with the bones—a flash of color, nothing more.

  “Wait. Let me see that,” she said.

  Tyler handed her the flashlight. She pointed it at the pile and illuminated something green and mostly obscured. She inched toward the pile. The floor seemed rockier the closer she came to the object, and she knew she had found the pile’s beginnings. Bone cracked under her feet, her every step snapping it like peanut brittle.

  A moment later, the green object was within her reach. Dakota just had to stick her hand into a heap of dead things to get it. Without letting herself stop to think, she punched her fist into the gap between the bones. When she pulled her hand back out, it held a purse.

  A millipede uncoiled and crept out of the partially opened zipper. Its sudden appearance startled Dakota, but she was hardly squeamish. If the human-animal graveyard hadn’t turned her stomach, a harmless bug wouldn’t do the trick either. She flung the millipede aside and reached into the purse.

  Inside it, she found what she had been looking for. Her hand withdrew a thin wallet. Behind a shield of lamination, someone’s personal identification was hidden. She wiped the grime from its plastic covering, revealing a Kansas driver’s license several years expired.

  “Melanie Sullivan,” Dakota read aloud. The name brought back memories. So did the face that matched it. They reminded her of all the pain that had led her to Galveston State Park earlier that day, the anguish she wanted Tyler to feel. She struggled to maintain her composure.

  “That name mean something to you?”