Then she was back on the first floor, and once again faced with the exit. Except there were the exact same six cars parked between her and freedom. The same metal slab that would crumple her car like cheap eggrolls if she tried to ram it. For a brief moment, as she was coming down the ramp, Kate had convinced herself that the cars would be gone by the time she arrived, that someone or something would have removed them from her path as if by magic, or maybe divine intervention.
What was that saying soldiers have? “There are no atheists in foxholes.”
She felt like laughing, only it wouldn’t have really been laughter that came out of her mouth. It would have been a mixture of crying and laughing and self-pity, mixed in with a little (or maybe a lot) of utter depression, because the cars were still there, as she knew they would be.
Order out of chaos. Find the order out of chaos…
She didn’t see any of the creatures around, and it wasn’t difficult to spot them in the bright lights of the parking garage. The Mercedes with the vanity plates (“S8UpFun”) was where she had last seen it, at the end of the six-car line parked in front of the exit gate. The longer she sat in the Mazda, the harder it was to avoid the stench of blood and death, even with the windows up.
Kate put the Mazda in park and closed her eyes. She kept them closed for a while, then opened them back up again and went through her options.
Yes, she had options. Some were better than others, that’s all.
And some were unavoidable…
Kate took a breath, reached down between her seat and the door, found the trunk lever, and pulled it. She felt rather than heard the trunk pop over the idling engine. She groped along the door and found the lock switch and pressed it. She heard, like a bolt of lightning, the sound of the lock snapping free, much louder than she had anticipated.
This is crazy; you’re going to die out there. You know that, right?
Kate opened the door and stepped outside, moving almost on pure adrenaline and instinct now. She instantly felt the rush of cold night air against her skin and for a second, just a second, she considered going back inside the car.
But she pushed on instead.
She hurried toward the trunk, sticking very close to the side of the Mazda, counting the steps that she would need to retrace when she invariably fled back to the safety of the vehicle. Though that opportunity was slipping away with every step she took, taking her farther and farther away from the door, from safety…
Prying her eyes away from the dead corners, she turned to face the open trunk, scanning for the familiar pocket along the left side, grabbed it and pulled it open and saw the long, metallic, L-shaped tire iron where she knew it would be. Kate yanked it loose and turned around, scanning the garage, keeping her eyes on the dark corners around her, listening for a noise, but realizing she could hardly hear anything over the loud thrumming in her chest.
She hurried back down the length of the Mazda, her left hand gripping the cold, steel tire iron, the fingers of her right hand keeping contact with the heated exterior of the Mazda. She needed to know it was there, waiting for her if she needed it, right up to the very last second.
Then she was walking past the door and kept moving. And now she was walking faster, her bare feet scratching against the rough concrete that dug into her soles as if she was moving across broken glass.
She passed the Mazda and kept going.
The Mercedes with the vanity plate came next, and as she passed its opened driver’s side window, she couldn’t help herself and glanced in and saw a thick patch of blood drying on the driver’s seat. It was dark and glistened under the garage lights, and she knew that it was still very wet. There were no signs of the woman, though there were dozens of blonde hairs scattered along the seats and arm rest.
They lose their hair when they turn…
She reached the hood of a small Honda, the grill of the much bigger Mercedes buried in the Honda’s driver side door. Something shiny caught her eye. She turned and saw a small two-by-four inch color photo in a cheap frame dangling from the rearview mirror. A young boy and a woman smiled back at her. They looked happy, prompting Kate to wonder how they died, and if they were together when the end came.
The third car was a maroon Chevy, its front bumper pressed up against the much bigger back bumper of a Ford F-150 truck. The Ford looked undamaged, but the Chevy’s hood wasn’t so lucky — its grill had fallen free after the crash. Kate didn’t see blood inside the Chevy or the Ford. Had their owners managed to flee in time? How far could they have gotten on foot?
Next, she came upon the damaged front bumper of an aqua blue Prius, parked behind the last car in the jagged, undisciplined line — a big black Buick with its driver side window rolled down. There was blood on the front windshield of the Prius, in the center of a spider-webbed crack where the passenger would have been sitting about the same time the F-150 crashed into it from behind. The force of the impact would have been startling and deadly.
Kate was looking at the crack in the windshield when she felt the air around her bristle, and the hairs along the back of her neck stood up. She looked back and saw something land with a soft thap! against the hood of her Mazda.
It wasn’t Jack or Donald, or at least she didn’t think it was them. It was hard to tell now. She couldn’t even say if this one was a man or a woman, or maybe it was a child. It was small enough to be a child.
They lose their hair and they shrink…
But the longer she looked at the creature, perched on the hood of her Mazda, the more the picture filled in by itself. The dozen or so strands of blonde hair still clinging to the scalp, the circular, blood-red choker around its neck. Only the neck had shrunk so much that the choker now hung loosely by its strap, as if it was two sizes too big.
“S8UpFun.”
Kate turned and ran. She risked a glance over her shoulder and saw it coming. It moved with balletic grace, leaping from the hood of her Mazda and landing on the trunk of the Mercedes, scrambling up to the roof, before leaping again onto the Honda. It looked so small and weak, but it moved so fast and with such ease that Kate found herself entranced by the sight, taken with the fluidity of this creature that was chasing her, that wanted to rip out her throat and drink down every last drop of blood inside her body.
She ran faster.
The guard booth, with its big, open window, came up in a rush. She reached inside, screaming at herself to ignore the blood splashed over the swivel chair and the desk nearby (with the half-eaten sandwich and toppled can of Monster energy drink, thick green liquid spread out all over the table), and smashed her palm down on the green button.
The metal gate began to move up — so slow, so damn slow — but Kate was already circling around the hood of the Buick, back toward the driver’s side door.
Then she felt the air moving again and looked up and saw the creature was almost on top of her, torpedoing right at her. Kate didn’t have time to think, didn’t play the scenario over in her head, she just acted. She swung the tire iron in a wide arc, heard the whistling of steel slicing cold night air, then suddenly smashing into the creature’s neck. The blow dislodged it from the air and sent it crashing into the side of the guard booth.
Kate staggered toward the Buick’s driver side, praying and hoping for the key to be there, be in the ignition, maybe on the driver’s seat, somewhere close by, so long as she didn’t have to waste precious seconds looking for it. Because she could already hear the creature getting up on the other side of the car—