8. Audrey
AUDREY
I froze, could almost feel Madison doing the same in the chute next to mine.
“What do we do?” she hissed.
A burst of maniacal laughter echoed from the men waiting at the end of the chute.
“They know they’re trapped,” one of them said.
And then, an even deeper voice. “My favorite part.”
I was about to tell Madison to go back the way we’d come. The men would have to travel through the chute to get to us, which would give us time to run once we escaped its metal confines.
Then a loud banging erupted from the walls and ceiling. It seemed to come from everywhere all at once, the sound blocking out everything else.
But that wasn’t the worst of it.
The worst of it was the metal chute, which started to move, squeezing inward toward my body, moving on some kind of hydraulic system to narrow the already-tight chute through which I’d been traveling.
“They turned on the chute!” Panic was loud and clear in Madison’s voice.
“What the fuck is that?” one of the men at the other end of the chute asked.
“Another kind of web,” a second voice said.
I froze. Panic trickled through my veins like ice water as the metal gates narrowed.
“What do we do?” Madison had to shout to be heard over the hydraulic clang of the metal screeching around us.
The question shook me out of my panic-induced stupor.
“Run toward the exit!”
“But… the men are there! They’re waiting for us.”
She was right, but I was used to doing triage, to solving the most immediate problem first.
And right now our biggest problem was the chute that threatened to crush us to death.
“It’s our only chance to get out,” I shouted, already moving forward. “Move!”
I raced through the chute, the metal cage brushing against the sides of my body, then squeezing as it got even tighter, forcing me to pull myself through the narrow opening as the chute tried to stop my forward progress.
The light at the end of the tunnel got brighter as I came closer to the exit, but it was hard to feel relieved when three hulking figures shadowed my escape.
Madison was right: the men were there.
Waiting for us.
But my logic was still sound.
First, get out of the death trap of a cattle chute.
Then worry about the men waiting to capture us.
By the time I reached the end of the chute the opening was so narrow I had to force my way through the opening. The metal cage clawed onto me like an animal refusing to let go of its prey.
I used my legs to push my way out of the chute and spilled onto the dirt floor of the tunnel.
Madison followed a split second later, sprawling next to me, both of us like newborn babies newly arrived in a strange dark world.
I only had seconds to assess the new situation: three shirtless men, their chests covered in dark ink, looming over us.
Their faces were obscured behind ebony masks polished to a glass-like finish under a series of raised lines that radiated from their foreheads and intersected like a spider’s web over their nose and cheeks.
A shiver ran up my spine as they studied us through the masks’ narrow, elongated eyeholes.
My brain screamed danger, but my body was paralyzed by the sight of them.
And not just the men. There was something else.
A spider.
It was huge and hairy, perched on one of the men’s shoulder like a pet.
I thought it was fake at first, a plastic device designed to scare children in a haunted house.
Then it moved, crawling down the man’s chest as if trying to reach Madison and me, still sprawled on the floor of the tunnel.
The spider stilled as the man took a step toward me.
“Edith and I will get the blonde.”