Violence, too, in its hands, almost human but too large, each finger a blunt, thick instrument, tapering to claws that are jagged, broken, crusted in blood.
It’s the blood Mack can’t look away from. Is that the last of Ava, her Ava, crusted and drying into flakes on the ends of the monster’s hands?
It stops, swings its head to the side. Its nostrils flare bigger, and it takes a deep, lingering breath. Her eyes drift up to massive horns erupting from its head, five of them, almost elegant in comparison with the rest of it. Gray at the base where they sweep out from the head, then curving back toward each other, tapering to white tips that nearly meet in a single point eighteen inches above its skull.
Ivory, she thinks, remembering a nature program she and Maddie watched about poachers. It made them both cry with such desperate snotty gasps that their mother ran in and turned the TV off, scolding them. Mack could never understand why she was in trouble for being sad about the cruelty of the world.
Maybe even then their mother knew what her fate held, what both her daughters’ fates held, and was only trying to spare them for as long as she could. To lie to them about what the world lets happen. But their mother’s protection, even her own body, wasn’t a strong enough dam to hold back the coming violence.
One hoofed leg slides forward, a long strand of spittle falling in slow motion from the monster’s mouth to the matted, filthy hair of its chest.
A hand clamps down on Mack’s shoulder and drags her backward. The monster, suddenly spurred into action, lunges forward with surprising speed. But it stops at the gasping remains of Jaden, left there for it by Brandon.
Its movements are oddly tender, smooth and unfrenzied, as it reaches down and gathers Jaden’s broken body up in its arms, then lifts him toward its mouth.
Mack can almost see—in that mouth, in that gaping maw, there aren’t teeth, there are—
LeGrand tugs her hard and she nearly falls. It’s enough to jolt her out of her reverie, and she catches herself, then tears through the undergrowth and leaps over fallen trees, guided by LeGrand, leaving behind the sounds of death.
She understands, now, why Brandon decided to jump. Knows she owes her life to the fact that Jaden fell between her and the monster.
But—
“Three.” She grabs LeGrand’s arm. She recognizes where they are and points in the direction of the bumper car trellis. Up there, they can see and hear what’s coming for them.
LeGrand nods, expression grim.
Three. That means their security, their idea that it was only two a day, was wrong. It could and probably would come for them next. Maybe it was only getting two a day because that’s all it could find.
“Four,” LeGrand quietly corrects. Because surely the monster wasn’t going to stop at Jaden.
Mack is fiercely glad that Brandon’s already dead. He knew what was coming for them, and he chose how he would leave the world. She’s choosing, too. She’s going to get LeGrand out, and then she’s going to walk to her first hiding spot—where Ava slept against her, where Ava trusted her, where she remembered Maddie and her absurd yarn duck—sit on the ground, and wait.
“There.” Mack points again. The trellis is up ahead. LeGrand goes first, then helps her up. They lie flat, faces pressed against the ivy, hearts racing.
So now she’s seen it. She knows what’s out there. It doesn’t make any more sense than it did before, but at least she can move from horror, the fear of the unknown, and into terror, the fear of the known. Terror is almost a comfort at this point, a familiar friend.
“We wait until dark,” she whispers. “Then we go for the fence.”
“But the electricity, and the guards.”
“Maybe you can find a tree overhanging, climb that. I’ll distract the guards.”
It’s a hazy plan, and she can feel somewhere deep inside that it’s hopeless, but she has to have a goal, has to have a focus, has to have something to think about other than that those sightless features were the last thing Ava saw. Those claws the last thing she felt.
“You’re getting out,” she whispers.
LeGrand nods, the ivy trembling beneath him. “We can both get out.”
But Mack knows she’s not. She was never going to. It settles over her and she feels her heart calm, slowing, something like peace wrapping itself around her.
They will wait until night, LeGrand will escape, and Mack will finally meet the same fate as the only people she has ever loved. Death would come for her, and at last she wouldn’t be left behind, hiding alone in the dark.