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“What? Oh, it’s nothing. It’s—”
The baseball bat swung with unerring accuracy. Duck felt the blow on his hip where the relish hung in his jacket pocket. The soggy sound of wet glass shattering.
“Hey!” Duck yelled.
He started to push his way through them, but his feet wouldn’t move. He looked down, uncomprehending, and saw that he had sunk up to his ankles in the sidewalk.
“Okay, stop making me mad,” he cried desperately.
“Stop making me mad,” Zil repeated in a taunting, singsong voice.
“Hey, man, he’s sinking!” one of them yelled.
Duck was up to mid-calf. Trapped. He met Zil’s contemptuous gaze and pleaded, “Come on, man, why are you picking on me?”
“Because you’re a subhuman moof,” Zil said, adding, “duh.”
“You want Hunter, right?” Duck asked. “He’s in there, man, behind all this stuff.”
“Is that so?” Zil said. He nodded to his gang, and all together they climbed into the rubble in search of their true prey. Someone, Duck didn’t see who, smashed the stained glass fragment with his bat.
Duck took a deep breath. “Happy thoughts, happy thoughts,” he whispered. He had stopped sinking, but he was still trapped. He squirmed his foot this way and that. Finally he pulled one foot free—minus the shoe. The other foot came out easier, and he managed to keep the shoe.
Duck took off at a run.
“Hey, get back here!”
“He lied, man, Hunter’s not here!”
“Get him!”
Duck ran all-out, yelling, “Happy thoughts, happy thoughts, ah hah hah hah!” desperate to keep anger at bay, forcing his mouth into a grin.
He made it across the street. He was well out in front of the mob, but not far enough ahead that he would be able to get inside his house and lock the door before they caught him.
“Help! Someone help me!” he cried.
His next step landed hard.
The step after that broke the curb.
The third step plowed down through the sidewalk and he fell hard.
His chin hit concrete and crunched through it like a rock through glass.
He was falling into the earth again. Only this time he was facedown.
Zil and the others immediately surrounded him. A blow landed on his back. Another on his behind. Neither blow hurt. It was like they were hitting him with straws rather than bats. Then they could no longer reach him because he had fallen all the way through the cement and was sinking through the dirt.
“Scratch one chud,” Duck heard Zil crow.
Then, “What happened, man?”
“All the lights went out,” someone said, sounding scared.
There was a frightened curse, and the sound of running footsteps.
Duck Zhang, facedown in dirt, kept sinking.
