Stop it!
Taking deep breaths, she shook off the paralyzing thought. She had to keep calm, to stay alert to the slightest opportunity for escape. In the back of her mind, a thought bubbled forward.
What would Grandmother do?
Laurie Strode had survived Michael Myers. Allyson had to remember that, to cling to the hope that she could survive too. Of course, she had no idea how… but she had to stay open to the possibility. If she gave up hope, she created a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Sartain glanced back through the steel-wire mesh at her. “People want to kill Michael, but these observations are an opportunity,” he said. “My question now is… who must be protected from whom? His pursuit of your grandmother seems to be what keeps him alive. The notion of being a predator or the fear of becoming prey keeps both of them alive.”
Allyson considered his words, wiped tears from the corners of her eyes and said, “You’re right.”
“What?” Sartain asked, showing mild surprise. Of course, he believed his own words, but he seemed to have doubted she would agree with them so readily.
“I think you’re right.” Though she was woefully unprepared for her current predicament, she knew someone who had spent years—decades—preparing for just such an encounter and looked forward to its resolution. “I’ll show you where to go. Before he wakes up and kills us both… I think I know someone who would like to say goodbye.”
Allyson gave Sartain the address.
With an anticipatory smile, Sartain turned right at the next intersection.
Seconds seemed to pass with agonizing slowness…
…struggling to amount to minutes.
As she had every other second of the nightmarish drive, she glanced toward the dark shape of Michael Myers on the opposite side of the police cruiser’s hard bench seat. Like a crushed face, now seemingly impotent, the flattened mask lay in his lap. When Sartain cleared his throat, Allyson turned toward him expectantly.
“Michael?” Sartain said. “Are you awake, Michael? Our friend Allyson has been so kind as to invite us to the family homestead. We’re almost there.” After a pause, he added ominously, “You have what you need, you know?”
“What does that mean?” Allyson asked nervously.
“You have what you need,” Sartain repeated, his eyes, visible in the rearview mirror, focused on Michael in the shadows of the backseat.
Heart racing, Allyson examined Michael’s still form, leaning forward without moving more than an inch or two closer to him. Was he talking about the mask? What—?
Then she saw it—and gasped.
The dark handle of a kitchen knife protruded from the left pocket of his grease-stained coveralls. Immediately, she tried to calm herself, to not reveal that she’d seen the knife. Let Sartain think she was clueless to his meaning. With her gaze flickering between Sartain and the dark shape next to her, Allyson began to subtly reach across the backseat.
While Sartain’s attention was on the road ahead, her hand extended inch by inch, past Michael’s right leg, then over the pale mask in his lap, ever careful not to nudge or even touch the unconscious psychopath, but her arm wasn’t long enough. Gradually, she leaned sideways, no sudden movements, as her fingers reached for the handle—
Sartain’s gaze flicked to the rearview mirror and he shouted, startling her, “That’s for him!”
Before she could reach across the remaining distance, Sartain jerked the steering wheel hard to the left. Unbalanced, she fell back against her door, banging her head against the window. To avoid ditching the car down the left embankment, Sartain swerved again to the right, pitching Allyson in the opposite direction. Frantically, her right hand snagged the wire-mesh barrier to stop herself from crashing into Michael.
With the car back in its proper lane, Allyson regained her balance and her composure. Sartain chuckled as if the reckless driving had been nothing more than an innocent prank to startle her. But when she looked to her left, she noticed something—missing.
The pale mask was no longer in Michael’s lap.
As she looked up, she gasped, a sudden chill racing down her spine. Even in the shadowy corner of the backseat, she could see that The Shape now wore the mask—
—and was staring at her.
From impossibly far away, Allyson heard Dr Sartain.
“Wake up, Michael!”
Before Allyson could scream, The Shape grabbed her by her hair and hurled her against the rear passenger door. For the moment, it wasn’t an attack. She was simply in his way. He scooted toward her, leaning back, and raised his leg, boot poised more than a foot from the window of his door. Suddenly, he slammed his boot against the glass. With the first impact, the glass seemed to give slightly in the frame.
Distracted by Michael’s action, Sartain lost control of the car and swerved back and forth across both lanes of the rural road. Allyson hung on, fingers gripping the steel mesh, pushing herself against the door, trying to stay in place and far away from Michael.
He kicked the window a second time, fracturing the glass.
Sartain slammed on the brakes. The cruiser screeched to a halt in the middle of the dark road with the smell of scorched rubber. Shifting into park, Sartain left the car turned at a slight angle, headlights piercing the night.
After spending so much time unconscious and waking to find himself trapped in the back of a police car, Michael raged against his confinement, throwing his shoulder against the door, his back against the seat, his forearms and fists against the wire mesh.
For the moment at least, killing Allyson wasn’t his top priority, so she rode out his violent storm, pressing herself against her door, as much out of his way as possible. If he saw her as part of his confinement or an obstruction to his freedom, she didn’t like her chances—at all.
Instead of watching Michael, Sartain stared calmly through the windshield. Allyson followed his gaze and saw what had his attention. They were within sight of her grandmother’s property—and a flicker of hope.
A police cruiser guarded Laurie’s gate.
While they waited for Hawkins to arrive with Allyson, Officers Phillips and Francis sat in their police cruiser listening to rock music and eating Vietnamese food. Since they dropped off the other three members of the family, including the supremely paranoid Laurie Strode, they’d had a quiet night. They’d heard the dispatch call, acknowledged by Hawkins, that the suspect had been sighted and that his unit was in pursuit, but nothing since then. They assumed it had been a false alarm, though nothing had come through on the radio. Once you told the public the Boogeyman was on the loose, every Nervous Nellie peeking through her curtains saw something in the shadows. Halloween only made it worse with the morbid decorations, more elaborate each year. Skeletons and zombies and scarecrows propped up on porches, sitting in front yards, dangling from trees. A bunch of props designed to scare the neighbors, so of course the neighbors started seeing prowlers near every bush and window. Typical bullshit.
“You know what goes good with a banh mi sandwich?” Phillips asked, while chewing a wad of said sandwich in the side of his mouth.
Though the cruiser sat off a dark, deserted road, Francis thought he’d heard something in the distance. He leaned forward and saw a car in the distance, headlights and flashing lights. An emergency vehicle—or another squad car.
“An IPA,” Phillips answered his own question.
“What the hell?” Francis said, pointing.
Phillips turned in his seat, straining his eyes to see. “Looks like it’s in the middle of the road…”
“Just sitting there,” Francis said, nodding. “Alone…”