PANIC Read Online Free PDF Page B

tough girl voice, wincing in pain.
    She spat in his face and he swung her into the doorframe by the hair, smashing her nose on the entrance to the basement. He saw the shadows on the outside of the house running across the porch to get into the side entrance she’d opened up.
    She raked his face and threw her knee into his crotch, hard, and he went down, holding himself steady on the handle of the open door as she gloated over him.
    “Get up, bitch!” she shrieked.
    “OK,” he said, wincing, his nerves alive with adrenaline. He steeled himself to muster as much energy as he could.
    He brought his foot up swiftly and kicked her square in the chest and watched her tumble down the stairs, flopping in the narrow stairwell, battered by the force of the strike.
    The knife she’d dropped whipped past his face and buried into the wall like a nail and he met the kid who followed him down the stairs with a short, clumsy punch to the throat, dropping him and snapping his index finger.
    He grabbed the handle and screamed in pain as he slammed the basement door shut and barred the entrance before the kid recovered.

23:52
    HE COULD HEAR the guy upstairs, his hoarse voice was sputtering back to laugh after the vicious throat punch and he was banging away at the door. He gave up surprisingly quickly and the feet stomped off. After a few seconds, Luis heard nothing but the scooting of a chair and the feet hitting the floor in the dark, stumbling around for the light.
    He took his time walking down the stairs, trying to reset his broken finger. The girl lay at the bottom of the steps, sitting uncomfortably with her shoulders wedged between the wall and the floor.
    He crouched down by the girl and knelt gently on her neck, putting his knee in the groove between her clavicle and trachea.
    “What are you doing here?”
    “F-fuuuck you,” she spat through bloody, cracked teeth.
    He was woozy from having his head rung like a bell. He let his weight rest on her, exhausted.
    In the dark, the blood bubbling up from her broken face glistened when it caught the moonlight.
    “Mischief Night-,” she said, trying to smile.
    “Yeah,” he said, annoyed. “I know. It’s not that funny.”
    “‘s your night, man,” she mumbled.
    “I don’t think so. You’re coming with me and we’re gonna end this madness.”
    “F—fu—-fuuuc,” she said, sucking up the words as she faded from consciousness. He hauled her to the smashed in basement window and yelled loud enough for them to hear.
    “Hey! Hey! Down here, you little shits.”
    Upstairs, he heard the world ending: the furniture being smashed, the wallpaper slashed away, dishes broken, windows shattered, newspapers and books ripped apart and flung around the room, the whole house turned inside out as if by prison guards searching for contraband.
    “Hey!” he hollered again, and the sound of the door being bashed didn’t deter him. He saw two feet clad in scuffed sneakers standing in front of the thin strip of window, nearly level with the earth-line where the basement was sunk.
    “What you want, man?” he said, calmly. “Quit wasting my time.”
    “Your friend out there on the ground got my dog, so let’s call that fair.”
    He heard the sucking of teeth.
    “My boy wasn’t no dog. You’re just making it worse for yourself.”
    “I hear you, man, I hear you,” said Luis, tightening his grip on the girl’s neck to make sure all they’d need to do is let them see the girl. “That’s why you should have a look at this.”
    “Oh, shit, man, he got Glori-” said the boy with the punched-in throat. He was outside now, too. The leader of these six interrupted. Not six anymore, four.
    “What’s this? To stall me?”
    “Don’t lose another. I’ll turn her loose and you all can just go.”
    Something liquid ran down the stairs behind them as he negotiated for his life, cascading, a waterfall of sludge trickling over the stepboards.
    “I think I’ma just let you die like a