Lynn shouted, "Calm down, everyone! Don't panic! Try to get to the stairs."

"Oh, my God.

"Get away!"

"It's the BEAST!"

"This isn't too cool."

"Dude. "

"Help me! Help!"

Lynn yelled, "Shit! Get out of here, everyone! Run!"

"Leave me ALONE!"

"Owie?" Monica's voice, a terrified whimper, came from directly behind him.

"Monica?"

"Owie, where are you?"

"Phill!"

"Get off me!"

"The DOOR'S locked!"

"Dude, let's haul ass. "

"Who locked the fuckin' door!"

"Right in front of you," Owen said.

"NO! PLEASE!"

"Dear God!"

"Andy? Andy, where are you?"

Owen felt a hand pat his right shoulder blade. Darke's arms were hugging him much lower, just above his waist.

"Is that you, Owie?"

"It's me. Are you all right?"

"Fine and dandy, honey. "

Something punched into his back. He grunted from the impact. As a molten pain flashed through him, he felt the thing slide out. Then it pounded into him again. He squealed.

Darke made a strange grunting sound.

She suddenly jerked in his embrace, twisting him sideways and driving him backward. He bumped into people but kept stumbling backward as if Darke were playing a rough game of football in a strange, pitch black stadium-fierce little contender plowing against him, determined to drive him out of bounds.

At last, they fell.

On their way down, Darke turned him. They landed hard on their sides.

Darke pulled away from him. She turned him facedown against the cellar's dirt floor.

Through the roar in his ears and the cries and shouts, he heard Darke say, "She stabbed you."

"Where...?"

"In the back. The knife's still in you."

"Where is she?" Owen gasped.

"Don't know. Maybe we lost her. She'll never find us in the dark."

"Unless I HEAR you!" Monica blurted, glee in her voice.

Owen squealed with pain as the knife was suddenly jerked out of his back. .

Chapter Sixty.

SANDY'S STORY-June, 1997 Pistol in hand, steel bracelets shaking and rattling around her wrists, Sandy scurried on all fours through the tunnel. Dana seemed to be following her closely; the flashlight cast shadows and patches of light ahead of her.

She hurt everywhere.

But that was nothing new.

Nothing new, but worse. Though she'd been scratched up by Eric when he attacked her in Terry's beach house, that had been child's play compared to what she'd gone through last night.

Child's play Litterally At the time, barely conscious in the tunnel chamber, she'd expected not to live through it. She'd expected to end up like the two devoured bodies already hanging from the beam. And she'd figured that she most likely deserved it.

Payment in full for her many crimes.

Never should've raised Eric in the first place. Should've killed him when he was still a baby, before he could grow up and destroy so many lives.

Never should've killed Slade or Lib or Harry.

Never should've gotten Terry killed.

Never should've murdered Eric's baby.

Did Eric know about that, somehow?

After running off, had he come sneaking back from time to time, spied on her during those endless nine months in the woods, maybe even watched through a window of the cabin as she gave birth...as she discovered that it was his son, not Terry's, and with her pocket knife cut the umbilical cord first, and then the monster's throat?

And this is payback time ?

But as the beast tore at her and thrust into her last night, she'd found herself wondering from a faraway place at the edge of consciousness whether this really was Eric.

Has to be.

There IS no beast but Eric. He's the last of them.

Should've named him Chingachgook.

And when the bell did he take up smoking?

But now it all made sense. It had been an imposter. A manic in a beast suit, ripping her with fake claws and teeth, raping her with a rubber cock-or plastic or...

But it came!

Impossible, she thought. Must've been my imagination.

Unless maybe he took off the suit.

She had no memory of anything like that, but she supposed that it might've happened. Plenty must've gone on; she only remembered bits and pieces...

Bastard could've brought in five buddies for a gang-bang for all I know.

Crawling as fast as she could through the tunnel, Sandy wondered if she would end up pregnant again.

That'd be just what I need.

Don't do it to me, God, please, Are you there, God? It's me, Sandy. Don't do it to me again. Please, please. I swear, if you do, I'll let it live. You can't ask me to kill my own baby more than once per lifetime, okay? It wouldn't be fair. Are you listening?

The earth beneath Sandy's hands and knees began slanting upward.

We're coming out!

And me without a stitch of clothes on, she thought.

So what else is new?

Too bad good old Blaze isn't here to capture it on canvas. He'd love it. Call it 'Last Charge of the Cave Girl,' sell it for thousands. Only I don't look so terrific at the moment. He'd have to clean me up and put me in a nice see-through gown...

She realized the flashlight's beam was no longer reaching past her. Maybe because the slope was too steep.

She churned her way upward.

The top of her head punched into something heavy but yielding.

A body?

Had somebody fallen across the opening?

Sandy reached up with one hand and touched wet fabric. She shoved hard. The barrier rolled away.

She climbed out of the hole and into complete darkness.

Though her ears still rang from the gunshot, she heard wild outcries, shouts and shrieks.

Somebody bumped into her and yelped, almost knocking her off her feet. From the quick feel of fabric against her bare skin, she knew it wasn't Clyde. She shoved the person away. Crouching slightly, she moved through the chaos with her left arm out to feel the way ahead and block assaults. Her right hand kept the pistol close to her side.

All around her, people were weeping, groaning, shouting.

"What was it?"

"You okay?"

"Where'd it go?"

"Oh, my God! Oh, my God!"

From high in front of Sandy came harsh thuds of someone pounding on wood-the cellar door?

"Who ARE you?"

"SOMEBODY GET US our OF HERE!"

A brilliant red light suddenly came on, spinning and flinging out crimson as if a fire truck had somehow made its way into the cellar. Sandy glimpsed blood-red bodies rushing about, some sprawled on the floor, others huddled in corners, a few on the stairway.

And a beast inside the Kutch tunnel, running away.

The barred door stood wide open.

Just inside the entrance, mounted on the shoring of the tunnel wall, was the whirling red light.

Sandy raced for the tunnel, dodging and leaping over bodies that. blocked her way.

"Look at her!"

"Fuckin'A!"

"She's got a gun!"