"Ted?" he panted, voice small. He felt around his back where the beam had struck. Wincing, he hoped he hadn't broken anything.
Evan stumbled to his feet. Floorboards clattered away, settling on other sections of rotting wood. He looked up at the hole through which they'd fallen. It seemed a mile away.
"Man, we're lucky ...we're lucky we weren't killed," he breathed.
Evan glanced around for his gun. He didn't see it anywhere. Probably buried under the avalanche of junk.
"You lose your gun, too, Ted?" he asked. No answer.
"Ted?" he called again, the first hint of concern creeping into his voice. He suddenly felt very alone. It was dark in the basement. There was no sign of a door anywhere nearby. The only light spilled down from the hole through which they'd fallen.
As he tripped anxiously through the awkward piles of wood, Evan spied Ted. He was kneeling a few feet from the pile of rubble.
Ted's back was to Evan. Unmoving, he appeared to be engrossed in a spot on the floor.
"You scared the shit out of me, Ted," Evan exhaled, relieved. "Hey, have you seen my gun anywhere?"
One floorboard was jammed into the soft dirt floor, angled up over another. When Evan tried to climb over it, he tripped, slamming down onto the angled wood. The far end rose out of the dirt, dragging something into the air behind it.
Sprawled over one end of the long board, Evan glanced up at the thing that had risen from the soil... And felt his heart freeze.
The board had impaled the corpse in its hollowed stomach cavity. The body hung from the rotten board-a gruesome playmate on the far end of a macabre teeter-totter.
And as the first brush of shock and horror pummeled Evan's reeling mind, he realized he knew the man.
Bob. His friend's head hung slack over his dirt-smeared chest.
In panic, Evan scurried off the board. The bloodied body collapsed with a horrible, meaty sigh to the dusty floor.
"Ted!" Evan gasped, backing away on palms and feet. His hand sank into something slimy.
With sick eyes, he looked down. A face stared up at him through the earth. Rictus-tight lips curled away from yellowed teeth. Mottled hair dragged across gray flesh.
There were more. Hands here. Legs there. All exposed by the collapsed ceiling.
They had fallen into a graveyard.
Fear overpowering horror, Evan stumbled over to Ted. He found his friend still kneeling in the same spot. Ted's gun rested on the floor near his boots.
Beside him now, Evan finally saw the thing that had turned Ted into a terrified statue.
A tiny hand poked up from the floor. The face and torso of a young child had been exposed by a falling rafter. The stomach had been ripped open. Dirt filled the hollow cavity.
Ted was clearly in shock. Frightened, Evan was trying to figure out how to get him out of there when he heard a soft footfall behind them.
On his knees, Evan wheeled. And felt the world drop out from beneath him again.
Judith White had crept stealthily from the shadows at the periphery of the basement. She stood a breath away from both hunters, teeth bared. In the wan light, her green eyes glowed red.
"Nice of you boys to drop in," she growled softly.
Evan dove for Ted's shotgun.
Clawing hands were snatching for the stock when he felt a blinding pressure at the side of his head. He was too slow. She'd clubbed him over his left ear. And as the blackness of eternity collapsed around him, Evan Cleaver prayed for swift death. He did not wish to awaken on Judith White's buffet table.
The hunter crumpled to the wood-strewn cellar floor without so much as a sigh.
Abandoning the unconscious Evan, Judith padded up to the kneeling shape of Ted Holstein. "Remember me?" she taunted, stealing around from behind.
His glazed eyes gained focus. Something seemed to spark far back in their shocked depths. He blinked, as if awakening from a long sleep. It was as if he were seeing Judith White for the first time.
Ted's expression instantly switched from one of shock to one of horrid fear. His next reaction was instinctive.
Ted screamed. His voice was loud and piercing, carrying out beyond the confines of the basement mausoleum.
Judith leaped forward. Unfolding fingers revealed something in her hand. A test tube. Thin light from upstairs reflected yellow off its glass surface. While Ted continued screaming, Judith dumped the thick brown liquid from the test tube down the hunter's throat.
Quickly, she clapped her hands over his nose and mouth, forcing him to swallow the sick-tasting fluid. "You've sobered up since this morning," she hissed approvingly in his ear. Her breath was hot and vile. "That'll make this that much easier."
Ted heard the words as if they were coming at him down a long tunnel. The liquid had hit his stomach. The reaction was instantaneous. His rapidly beating heart spread the brackish fluid throughout his body.
He shivered uncontrollably. His head felt as if it were being whipped around the confines of the cellar-a lead weight swung on a long rope. It spun away, coiled, then whipped back in. In all, it took no more than ten seconds.
When it was over, a menacing calmness overtook Ted. A low rumble rose from the primitive depths of his empty belly. A growl.
Judith released her grip. She smiled a gleaming row of white teeth. Human flesh filled the spaces between.
"Doesn't that feel a whole lot better?" she purred.
Ted nodded, arching his back. He began sniffing the air experimentally. A tantalizing smell filled the musty basement. It was human blood.
As Ted padded over to the corpse of Bob, Judith hopped on all fours over to the unconscious form of Evan Cleaver. While Ted began gnawing at the belly of his dead friend, she pulled another test tube from the pocket of her tight slacks.
"Don't get too settled over there," she warned Ted. He looked up, a sheet of dirt-smeared flesh hanging from his mouth. "You have work to do," Judith directed.
Picking Evan's head off the floor, Judith dumped some of the brown liquid into his mouth. She massaged his throat as he slept, forcing the syrupy fluid down into his stomach.
As she worked, Judith raised her nose, sniffing carefully. The hunters were getting far too close. Including Remo and Chiun.
"High time I evened these odds," she purred. With an open paw, she slapped awake the creature that had been Evan Cleaver.
THE GROUND around the muddy pothole yielded nothing but hunters' boot marks. Near Remo and Chiun, water seeped up into a fresh Survivor sole imprint. A crushed Budweiser can lay next to it.
"Dammit, why don't these rummies take their clog-dancing chorus line to the nearest bar?" Remo complained.
He had grown more irritated as their search wore on.