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Davey dropped down onto his shoulders from a ledge in an opening where
the ceiling stretched far over their heads. He was so light, at first
Alan thought someone had thrown a blanket over his shoulders.
Then the fingers dug into his eyes. Then the fingers fishhooked the
corner of his mouth.
Then the screech, thick as a desiccated tongue, dry as the dust of a
golem, like no sound and like all the sounds at once.
The smell of corruption was everywhere, filling his nostrils like his
face has been ground into a pile of rotten meat. He tugged at the dry,
thin hands tangled in his face, and found them strong as iron bands, and
then he screamed.
Then they were both screeching and rolling on the ground, and he had
Danny's thumb in his hand, bending it back painfully, until *snap*, it
came off clean with a sound like dry wood cracking.
Doug was off him then, crawling off toward the shadows. Alan got to his
knees, still holding the thumb, and made ready to charge him, holding
his sore face with one hand, when he heard the slap of running footfalls
behind him and then Bill was streaking past him, baseball bat at ready,
and he swung it like a polo-mallet and connected with a hollow crunch of
aluminum on chitinous leathery skin.
The sound shocked Alan to his feet, wet sick rising in his gorge. Benny
was winding up for a second blow, aiming for Darren's head this time, an
out-of-the park *smack* that would have knocked that shrunken head off
the skinny, blackened neck, and Alan shouted, "NO!" and roared at Benny
and leapt for him.
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