Passenger Read Online Free PDF Page A

pulled my pant legs up and looked for more of the things.
    Maybe I got lucky. Maybe not.
    I’d have to watch that rainwater, I thought.
    I went inside the bedroom, sat down, and started to put my shoes on. Before I did, I pulled the legs of my jeans up past my knees again, just to make sure that was the only one of those leech things I had to deal with.
    The safest place to wait, I reasoned, would be in the hallway. I didn’t think the Hunters could get inside the house behind me, and in the other rooms I might be visible from the outside through any one of the broken-out windows.
    I squeezed the handle of the knife so tightly my hand began bleeding again. I waited in the middle of the hallway, leaning against one wall to make myself less visible. I felt like I was going to faint from the adrenaline rush, my heart pounding as loud as the rain.
    Maybe this would be it, I thought.
    Maybe Jack’s universe would just end here in this broken-down house.
    Maybe dying would be just like another trip through a lens, anyway.
    Fuck this place.
    *   *   *
    Of course they knew where I was.
    I saw the widening gray swath of light as the front door pushed carefully open. The rain got louder. Then there was nothing, but I could visualize what they were doing: sniffing, smelling me, listening, waiting.
    When a shadow darkened the entryway, I leapt out from my hiding spot in the hall, hoping to surprise whichever one came through the door first. It was the big one. And when he caught his first glimpse of me coming from the darkness of the hall, he cocked the pickax back in both hands like he was getting ready to swing a baseball bat. But before he could hit me, I buried the knife up to my fist, straight into his armpit.
    He wailed, swung.
    I saw a flash of movement behind him, the other one, hesitating, pushing his way into the house.
    The weapon arced over my head. It buried its point up to the jack handle in the damp wallboard of the hallway. The knife slipped in my grip as I tried to pull it free, twisting and turning, the gristle and bone tearing at its edge. There was so much blood, but I managed to keep hold on the knife as the big Hunter fell back, clawing at his side, releasing his weapon. I pushed him on top of his partner, and felt him twitch and gurgle when he fell onto the gig in the other one’s clawed hand. The big Hunter collapsed between us, dying, wheezing, splashing in the rainwater and gore.
    The smaller one ran out of the doorway.
    I went after him.
    As soon as I stepped past the open door, I was ankle deep in water. My mind flashed on the image of those black leeches, but I forced myself to keep my eyes up.
    The Hunter was nowhere in sight.
    I slogged around to the corner of the house, waited, breathed, before cautiously stepping around the side.
    This had to be a trick or something, I thought. There was no way he could move that fast.
    And just when I turned back toward the door, he was on me, leaping down from the edge of the upper floor. Before I could manage to move, I was completely underwater.
    I thought I would drown. I was sure of it, and it struck me how I didn’t care. But I watched in a sick kind of fascination, interested in how I could see the wavy image of the Hunter pinning me down above the surface.
    Next thing I knew, everything was red, and his grip slackened.
    For a second I almost believed I had gone through the lens—ended up somewhere else again. I half expected to hear the ghost, Seth, making his calling taps to me. But then I realized I was still underwater and clutching my knife. I pushed myself up, gagging and spitting, and got to my feet.
    The thing that had pinned me down was choking, coughing blood from his nostrils, madly pulling at a slender steel spike that speared cleanly through his neck. But there was a barbed point on the spear’s tip, and the more the Hunter tried pulling the projectile out of his throat, the worse his injury became. And I could see the frantic spray of