At last, LeGrand shouts. Ava lights the end of the T-shirt, now thoroughly soaked in gasoline where it’s been twisted and worked through the open gas cap down to whatever is left in the tank.
“Go!” Ava shouts, waving at LeGrand. He jumps down and ducks behind the stone wall. Christian’s shirt is well and truly on fire now, and if all goes to plan, there will be shrapnel.
So much shrapnel.
LeGrand pops back up to help drag Ava over the wall and they crouch together next to a spot where a little girl once sat, kicking her heels against it, patent leather shoes still new and shiny.
“Come on, come on, come on,” Ava prays again.
The explosion is deafening, a tremendous boom punctuated with the terrible scream of metal. Ava and LeGrand are thrown back, stunned, as shards of iron and clods of dirt and a few pieces of stalwart concrete rain around them.
They stand hesitantly, checking for injuries as they brush themselves off. A gasping laugh greets them. Linda, still lying flat on her back, gurgles and laughs again. “You did it too soon. The beast wasn’t even there yet.”
Ava walks to the blasted remains of the generator, then looks through the gate at Linda. “Silly Linda. We weren’t trying to blow up the monster.”
Linda’s laugh turns into a choke as she pushes up onto her elbows to see what they’ve done.
* * *
—
Mack bursts through the trees, covered in green slime and soaked through and the most beautiful thing Ava has ever seen.
Mack stops, chest heaving, and takes in the destruction. The gate, wrought with ancient symbols, kept closed against a monster for nearly a century, hangs by one hinge. It’s destroyed beyond repair. Only the word MAZE—carefully soldered to the top of the gate when they made the theme park—remains.
But the maze, too, has been defeated, the beast led out of the labyrinth designed to keep it far from the gate, far from the people beyond it.
LeGrand, Mack, and Ava almost don’t remember there’s an unknowable horror pursuing them, they’re so happy to be reunited, so in awe of the destruction. But a pounding of hooves felt more than heard spurs them on. They climb through the twisted remains of the gate, helping each other. Linda’s car waits for them, keys still in the ignition.
“Stop,” Linda gasps, waving red-soaked hands futilely in the air as though she could grab them, make them stay. “You can’t let it out! You have to go back in! If you feed it before it makes it to the gate, it’ll go back to the center! Please. You don’t know what will happen.”
Ava, Mack, and LeGrand share a look.
“Maybe it’ll eat its normal amount from the town, and then go back to sleep for seven years,” LeGrand says. “Or maybe it’ll disappear.”
“Or maybe, now that it’s not bound, it’ll eat them all,” Ava says. “Which means eventually it could come for you again.”
Mack looks back at the maze that housed a monster that fed on youth and hope and stalled dreams. That ground up vulnerable people so the ones in power could keep their power, could keep their safety, could keep everything.
The monster emerges from the trees, ravenous, unstoppable, unbound at last. It stretches its head, rising to its full, wondrous, height, the sun framed atop its crown of horns like a burning golden disc. It takes a step toward the gate, no longer snuffling, no longer searching. Its next meal is not hard to smell.
Mack tosses Linda’s abandoned rifle to Ava, then gestures for LeGrand and Ava to get in the car. She crouches next to Linda, the fresh blood painting Linda’s abdomen a siren song leading the monster the last few steps to the ruined gate.
To freedom.
To who knows what end of destruction.
“Please,” Linda whispers, blood painting her pale lips. “You’re a Nicely. You understand. Help me, or it will destroy us.”
Mack pulls out the shoe and the delicately embroidered handkerchief from her pocket. She sets the shoe on Linda’s chest, then drapes the handkerchief on Linda’s stomach wound. The cotton soaks up the blood first, a crimson background with the word Nicely in stark white before that, too, is claimed.
With a shrug, Mack stands and turns to the car. “Who fucking cares.”
To the youngest generations we’ve tasked with saving us all:
You shouldn’t have to. I’m so sorry.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
When my oldest child was in eighth grade, the yearbook did a feature on her special faux–stained glass classroom window art. The purpose? To prevent active shooters from being able to see inside. From age five, American children have to practice hiding from bullets, and to protect themselves we let them have art. In a game of Gun, Paper, Scissors, which wins?