* * *
—
LeGrand next to Mack is such a different presence than Ava. Ava’s body was somehow both familiar and thrilling, a comfort and excitement at the same time. LeGrand just…takes up space.
It’s late afternoon, and Mack feels the slow trudge of the sun in her soul. The waiting is terrible, and the fact that the waiting is boring feels somehow crueler. Terror shouldn’t be boring, shouldn’t be a slog through infinite empty hours. It should be sharp and quick and final.
Maybe Maddie really was the lucky one. Her terror was over quickly. Mack has been living in it for so many years, but she’s almost at the end. She’s nearly done now.
LeGrand grabs her arm, his tight fingers a warning. He needn’t have. She hears it, too.
They both press their faces against the trellis, finding an empty space to look through, but they’re not close enough to the edge. They can really only see straight down at the cracked and pitted cement beneath them. Whatever is coming is getting closer. Not satisfied with four in one day, then. Maybe the monster, too, wants to get it over with. Mack doesn’t blame it.
“We jump down,” Mack whispers. “I’ll distract it, and you run.”
LeGrand’s watery blue eyes, not piercing or beautiful, dull eyes in a dull face that she hopes see his sister again, narrow as though he is considering disagreeing.
“Almera,” Mack reminds him. He relents, nodding once.
A crunch of leaves signals the monster’s proximity. “On three,” Mack whispers, surprised at how calm she feels, how steady her heartbeat. A smile creeps across her face, and she knows it’s absurd, but she can’t help it. Olly olly oxen free, and it’s not the winning she’d expected or the freedom she hoped for, but isn’t it a sort of freedom nonetheless?
“One…two…three.” She rolls and tips herself off the edge of the trellis, grabbing hold of it to stop her fall and then dropping to the ground. Her ankles absorb the shock with protest, but she doesn’t need them for much longer. LeGrand lands heavily next to her and runs without pausing. Mack turns to greet her fate.
Her step freezes before she can take it. Her eyes snag on the rifle. She can’t quite make herself look at the face, can’t quite accept it.
“You’re dead,” Mack whispers.
* * *
—
Staring at Mack, Ava wants to tell her about the past few hours. Wants to explain. But she can only remember, because even remembering has so many questions she doesn’t know how to put it into words.
Death had come for Ava, unknowable, unseeable, a mystery and a stench.
As the other Ava was consumed into nothingness, Ava screamed defiance and rage that it had to happen now, just when she had reason to hope again, to have something in this damn world she cares about.
She swung her pipe and connected with nothing.
Spinning in a wild circle, balance thrown by her desperation, she swung and swung and hit only air.
Fight or flight had long since been trained into fight or fight, but even Ava had enough training to know that this time, fleeing was the only option. She turned in the opposite direction of whatever the thing that ate Ava Two was, and she ran. Her leg screamed, not fit for running, but she knew the limits of her body better than anything, and she could push them.
Though her own uneven gait was painfully loud, she trained her ears, listening for pursuit, for that terrible wet breathing noise, waited to be assaulted by the death-rot smell of it. But she broke free of her path near the fence and heard nothing. Smelled nothing. She crouched, hidden in the undergrowth, and caught her breath.
“Motherfuckers,” she gasped. She had noticed the weird material of the fence the first night, but she didn’t put together why it was made of metal wiring. She could hear the electric hum, the slight crackling in the air. That also explained the periodic towers she saw. Not a remnant of the old park. A new addition. Guard towers.
She needed to get back to Mack, Brandon, and LeGrand. To warn them. She stretched her leg in front of herself, wishing she could take the damn thing off. Wishing she could run like she used to. Wishing a lot of things. Three minutes. She’d give herself three minutes to catch her breath, and then—
A shot rang out nearby. Not shooting at her, but shooting at someone not too far away. A voice of strangled confusion drifted on the air. Brandon. Safe to say he wouldn’t leave the hiding place without the others. Which meant they were on the move. Ava could join them.
But.
There was a gun somewhere along the fence.
She took stock of her supplies, what she could access, what she could use. She gently silenced the panic blaring in her mind and packed it away, because it wasn’t going to accomplish anything. She had work to do.