It finally started with a whisper:

"...Foxy..." It was a voice like spoiled fruit, gummy and soft but with the innocent undertones of a teenage girl. It was so gentle that Eddie doubted whether he'd really heard it at all.

In the blackness, two pinpricks of red light blinked to life at floor-level like embers spat from a fireplace.

Foxy sucked in a sharp breath and threw herself against the wall with a thud. Reflexively, she squeezed the trigger of the Glock and for one fleeting moment the prison was lit with the white light of the muzzle flash.

The face of Mary Ledgworth poked out of the dirt. Her cracked lips were drawn up in a smile. Her milky irises stared straight at Foxy and her pupils reflected like a feral animal caught in headlights. Mary's once-pretty face and blonde curls were caked with earth and her forehead was covered with bruises. Eddie thought he saw stones and bits of roots behind her teeth, but as quickly as it came, the light vanished and the darkness returned. Only those vile red dots remained, twitching this way and that on the floor.

"Foxy...help us..." Mary pleaded, louder this time. Foxy felt a moist tongue run up the length of her left calf. It was loving, delicate and almost...sexual. She looked down to see another pair of burning red pupils at her side. For the first time that night, Foxy Bannister screamed in absolute horror.

The noise sent Eddie into a panicked attack at those eyes on the floor. Without even thinking, he planted one heel squarely between Mary's eyes as hard as he could. Mary's skull crunched and when Eddie drew back only one of the red eyes turned towards him, the other goggled this way and that like a dying insect. She began to laugh a low, chortling sound from a throat clogged with debris.