Survive the Night

Casey has just come home from rehab when her friends Shana, Julie and Aya talk her into going to Survive the Night, an all-night underground rave held in a New York City subway tunnel. The crowd is full of menacing strangers and dangerous drugs, and she regrets agreeing almost at once.

Then she finds Julie's mutilated body in a dark, filthy tunnel, with red-eyed rats gnawing at the fingers. Casey had assumed Julie had wandered off with a guy. With the music so loud, nobody could have heard her being killed. When Casey and the others hurry back to the party, every other guest has vanished.

Casey, Shana and Aya run through the foul tunnels looking for an exit. Every manhole is sealed shut, and each sound echoes in the dark as a reminder that they are not alone. Someone, or something, is hunting them, and Aya keeps repeating that they are all going to die down there.

This is a young adult horror novel told in close third person. It is set in one night, in one confined and claustrophobic place, and the pace stays fast and tense from the first body onward. The violence is graphic, and the dread builds through darkness, noise and a pursuer who is never clearly seen.