The Dead Boys by Royce Buckingham Page A

hanging down the wall to his left.
    Upon closer inspection, the ladder seemed to be made of entwined roots, but they did not appear to be a random tangle—there were distinct rungs leading up to the top of the trench.
    Meanwhile, the banging continued somewhere above him. It sounded like a hammer frantically smacking a nail.
    Teddy hesitated, unsure what to do. He was suspicious of the tree-root ladder, even with the scorpions still trailing him, but the smell was getting worse, and the trickle at his feet had grown now to a steady stream.
    All at once, the hammering grew much louder and even wilder. The scorpions scattered to both sides of the trench, fleeing up the walls.
    â€œUh-oh,” Teddy said.
    There was a low rumble, and he whipped the flashlight around, illuminating a huge wall of sewage barreling down the trench toward him.
    Teddy leaped onto the root ladder and climbed like mad for the top of the trench as the wave roared past beneath him. The murky filth kept rising as he made his way up and each rung began to unravel beneath his foot as soon as he stepped on it.
    Up and up he climbed as the rungs dissolved, and with a great heave, he pulled himself up over the edge just as the sewage crested the top of the trench.
    Teddy crawled along the trench’s edge, half-expecting to find himself in the middle of a sea of scorpions again. But they were gone. He was also surprised to find that he could see without the flashlight. It was dim, and there was no sign of a sun, but enough light was filtering through the blowing dust that he could shut the flashlight off and save the batteries.
    Before him, the skeleton of a half-built home rose from the sand. But it looked all wrong.
    The frame of the house was horribly distorted. Warped two-by-four boards curved up every few feet, arching into the air like a dead dinosaur’s rib cage. A crooked staircase rose in one direction, then turned and came back down without ever reaching the next floor. And because the walls were not yet filled in, it was impossible to tell where rooms began and ended. A tilted porch jutted out from the front of the home like a lolling tongue.
    Atop it all, perched on the cockeyed, unfinished archway over the porch, sat Walter. He grinned down at Teddy.
    â€œScaredy! You made it.”

CHAPTER 23
    Walter twirled a massive hammer as if it were a cheerleader’s baton. Like the house, the hammer looked like something from a twisted cartoon—its narrow handle led to a mallet-shaped head the size of a cantaloupe. But when Walter fumbled and dropped it, it hit the porch floor with a very real crash. It splintered the wood, leaving a gaping hole.
    â€œWhoops,” Walter said with a smirk.
    The hammer gone, he hoisted a circular saw with jagged three-inch teeth and a long cord that trailed away to nowhere. He pulled the trigger and it roared to life, seemingly without any power source. Walter haphazardly sliced through a board next to him, and it fell away, punching another hole through the porch.
    â€œWatch out!” Teddy called.
    â€œOr what?” Walter said. “This?” He revved up the saw again and, without flinching, whacked off one of his own fingers.
    â€œWalter!” Teddy gasped. “Your finger! It’s . . .”
    â€œWhat?” Walter shrugged. “C’mon, Scaredy, spit it out.”
    â€œDon’t you see? You . . . you cut it off!”
    â€œUh-oh,” he said, chuckling and inspecting the empty space above the stump of his newly missing left index finger. “Same thing happened the day I came here, you know.”
    There should have been blood—plenty of blood—but there wasn’t, and Walter didn’t seem any worse off with one less finger. Teddy had to take a deep breath to calm himself.
    â€œWhere is here?”
    â€œDon’t you recognize it?” Walter said. “This is my place . Everybody here has a place, Teddy. You will too.”
    Teddy