Suckers - J.A. Konrath

Down another dark hall, left, and right into a Pire with an aluminum baseball bat.
"I’m the One!" I intoned. "Bow before the Mark of Balls!"
He didn’t bow. He swung the bat. I tried to duck behind Mayberry, but at the same time he
tried to duck behind me, and when our heads hit they actually did make a coconut sound.
The bat buried itself in the drywall, and while the Pire tugged at it, Andrew and I crawled
around him and bumped into a door I hadn’t seen before. I reached for it, turned the knob,
pushed it open, and then Andrew screamed in a most feminine way and pushed me forward.
We fell.
It’s disconcerting falling into darkness, and all I had time to do was let out a small yelp and
clench my bladder closed before we hit the first stair. After taking three steps to the chin, instinct
took over and I reached out for a soft pillow to hug to my chest and break my fall. It worked, and
landing was a relatively painless process.
The pillow wasn’t amused.
"I think you broke some ribs," he moaned.
I checked. "Nope. I’m fine."
I climbed off Andrew and squinted at the darkness around me. It smelled like a root cellar,
earthy and moldy, with and underlying hint of something.
"Now this," my airbag said, "this is a pit."
"Nice observation, bright boy. Now see if you can find a door to the outside."
"Andrew?"
The voice came from the darkness, somewhere ahead of us. A creepy, crackly, moany kind
of voice.
"Andrew who?" I said.
"Andrew Mayhem," it moaned back.
I turned to Andrew. “Know anyone named Mayhem?”
"You’re a waste of carbon," Mayhem said. Then to the voice, "Horace? Horace Folterkeller?
Is that you?"
"It’s me, Andrew!"
"Horace is my neighbor up the street," Andrew said to me.
"Whoop-de-freakin'-doo," I answered.
"I thought you left your wife," he said to Horace.
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