Chapter 18

chapter eighteen We tumble down a long, curving tube—slimy and slick—until finally, we're dumped out. The ground is squishy and— Oh. Hold up. This is no ground— I'm face-to-face, nose-to-nose, with a bloated husk of evil. evil, half-dissected monster. My hands push against the soft, fleshy coldness, and I start to tumble off the table, again crying out, "EVIL HALF—" Dirk catches me before I hit the ground, throwing a hand over my mouth, silencing me. "Everyone alive?" Dirk asks. My friends have landed all around me. I'm the only one unlucky enough to have been dumped out on a cut-up monster.

"Not everyone..." I say as the full extent of where we are slowly begins to dawn on me... No wonder Skaelka didn't want to come back here, I think. Monster bodies lie on tables; arms and tails and foot-long tongues dangle over the sides. Other monster corpses float inside glowing tube chambers, their limbs bobbing beside their bodies. Vials, syringes, and saws are scattered about. Monster parts are piled in a corner—a meat heap. The air is humid; everything feels moist. And the stench doesn't just make my eyes water—it makes my pupils burn.

"It's like a morgue combined with the mad Scientist's laboratory. A morgade. "It's OK! Everyone can relax!" June calls happily. She's on one knee, backpack open. "The Fortress Breaker is A-OK." "June—" I start. She shakes her head. "Nope. This is one room I will not read." "Dirk, come look at this..." Quint says, eyeing a wall. "I think it's him! From Skaelka's memories."

It's a wall of pictures. All of rack saww under the heading Employee of the month. "Enough gawkin'," Dirk says. "That guy's bad news. And now that we know where we gotta get to— let's get to it. Pronto." Uh-oh. Dirk's saying stuff like "pronto"—that means there's no arguing with him. Not that I'd argue anyway. I'll be happy to leave this place behind—and hopefully bury all memory of it in that corner of my brain saved for nightmares and really embarrassing memories, like that time I tried to slide down the railing at school and ended up just splitting my pants and my underwear.

We start toward the door—but Dirk holds up two fingers, halting us. He peeks his head out, gazing down the hallway beyond. I stick my head out, too—then quickly yank it back. Two long, spindly monsters—wearing long robes, almost like nurses' gowns—are hurrying toward the morgueatory. "OK, we need another way out of here," I say quickly. "Isn't one," Dirk says. "First thing I checked. Just that door." Which means we need the next best thing: a place to hide. Tool cabinet? Too small. Floaty tube? Can't breathe underwater. Underground? I'm not a gopher. There's nowhere to hide, except, maybe— The meat heap, I think. A rotting, fetid lump of monster parts is piled into a mound at the rear of the room. Most of them unrecognizable as more than—shudder—leftovers... At the front of the heap is a bulging, round monster husk—which I quickly dub Fly Guy. It's got a head like a fly that was dunked in candle wax, complete with dozens of softball-sized eyes. A long gash splits its rippled belly down the middle. "Fly Guy," I mutter. "Has to be the Fly Guy." "Absolutely not—" Quint starts, but then we hear the nurses chittering back and forth. They're close.

June's quick to get her hands dirty—dashing toward the meat mound, grabbing hold of Fly Guy, and heaving. And then... yep—no stopping this now, we're doing this, we're climbing into the husk of a dead and bloated fly monster. could be worse. How it could still be alive. The nurses enter just as we yank the Fly-Guy's eyeball-covered skin flap shut...