Home by Harlan Coben

Myron grabbed the man’s knife hand. Pants Two, running on pure survival instinct, held on tight. That was okay. Myron counted on that. He had no intention of trying to wrestle the knife away. Instead, holding the man by the wrist, Myron jerked his hand upward.
    The blade, still being gripped by the guy’s hand, lodged into Pants Two’s throat.
    Blood spurted. And the hand dropped away.
    The knife made a noise like a wet, sucking pop as Myron pulledit free. The rest was pandemonium. The dust from the collapsed wall made it difficult to see. Myron could hear coughing and shouts. The commotion must have gotten the attention of the guy standing guard in the corridor.
    When he opened the door, Myron was on him. He landed a punch straight to the nose, driving the man back into the corridor. Myron stayed on him. He didn’t want to kill anyone else if he didn’t have to. He threw another punch. The guy staggered back against the wall. Myron grabbed him by the throat and placed the tip of the bloody knife right up against the guy’s eye.
    “Please!”
    “How do I get to the basement?”
    “The door on the left. Code 8787.”
    Myron punched the guy in the stomach, let him slide to the floor, and ran. He found the door, hit the code, pushed it open.
    The first thing that hit him, almost knocking him back, was the stench.
    There are few things that cause déjà vu like powerful odors. Something like that was happening here. Myron was traveling back to his basketball days, to the stink of a locker room after a game, the wheeled laundry carts loaded up with the sweat-filled socks, shirts, and athletic supporters of adolescents. The smell had been awful, but after a game or practice, when it was something as pure as previously clean boys playing basketball, there had been an underlying sweetness that made the smell, if not pleasant, tolerable.
    That wasn’t the case here.
    It was dirt filled and rancid and bad.
    When Myron looked down from the top of the stairs, he couldn’t believe what he saw.
    Twenty, maybe thirty teenagers were scampering like rats when you hit them with a flashlight beam.
    What the . . . ?
    The basement looked like a bad refugee camp. There were cots and blankets and sleeping bags. No time to worry about that. As Myron started down the stairs, he saw the cell.
    Empty.
    He reached the bottom and turned to his right. The kids clambered toward that corner like something out of a zombie film—like they were climbing over one another and feeding on something stuck there. Myron started toward it. Kids got in his way. Myron pushed them aside. They were boys mostly, but there were a few girls sprinkled in too. They all looked at him with hollow, lost eyes, still pushing forward.
    “Where is Fat Gandhi? Where are the boys he had in that cell?”
    No one answered. They kept pushing and shoving toward that corner. Was there a door there or . . .
    A hole?
    The kids were disappearing into some kind of hole in the concrete.
    Myron picked up his pace now, even if it meant being rougher than he wanted with these kids. One of them started screaming and clawing at Myron’s face. Myron knocked him away. He moved like a linebacker now, lowering his shoulder, throwing body blows, until he got to the hole.
    Another kid started to climb into it.
    It was a tunnel.
    Myron grabbed the kid from behind. Other kids pushed in, trying to get to the opening. Myron held firm. He pulled the kid so that his face was right up against his.
    “Is that where Fat Gandhi went? Did he take two boys with him?”
    “We’re all supposed to go,” the boy said with a nod. “Otherwise the coppers will find us.”
    They were pushing in again. Myron had two choices. Move to the side or . . .
    He dived into the hole and landed on the cold, damp floor. When he stood up, his head whacked concrete. He saw stars for a moment. The tunnel’s ceiling was low. Shorter guys could probably run. Myron was not so lucky.
    Other kids started flowing in