A ticking noise filters through the flimsy, dry wood separating them from daylight. It drags her back into reality, back into the passage of time. Tick, tock, time’s almost up.
No. Not a ticking noise. A clicking noise. LeGrand. Ava hears it, too. She tenses, then shifts to crawl to the exterior wall. Mack and Brandon do the same. The nice thing about being in a building that could fall apart at a strong breeze is that there are plenty of cracks and holes they can press their eyes to, seeing outside without being seen themselves.
“What—” Brandon whispers, but Mack jabs him hard in the side, and he cuts off his question.
Mack holds her breath and keeps her eye on the path beneath them. She doesn’t know what she’s waiting for, but it’s going to be bad. She knows it will, because she was happy, and what right did she have to feel that way?
She half-expects screams like with Rebecca, so it puzzles her when it’s only beautiful Ava, stumbling silently past. Then beautiful Ava glances behind her shoulder, revealing a face contorted into a mask of silent horror. Of absolute, devastating fear so complete no sound can hold it, no breath can expand to fill the void of terror ripped into the soul of a person.
Her face is bleeding, dark trails already soaking down to her shirt, and there’s a streak of blood down the inside of one leg, too. She continues past their hiding spot, oblivious to their observation.
“Shit,” Ava breathes.
“Could be a trap,” Brandon whispers, but he doesn’t sound certain. He shouldn’t sound certain.
Ava grabs Mack’s arm, so hard it hurts. Mack puts her own fingers over Ava’s. Not to peel them away, but to increase the pressure. To keep Ava here, to be the one to make her stay this time.
“If it’s a game, win,” Ava says, her voice fierce. “And if it’s not, survive.” Ava turns in their tiny space, her shoulder slamming Mack into Brandon.
“No,” Mack hisses.
“Keep her safe,” Ava commands Brandon, and then she slides out of their spot. Mack is frozen. She wants to follow. Not to help beautiful Ava, but to stay with her own Ava. Whatever happens, to be with Ava, to not be left behind again, hidden and safe and alone.
She’s already survived alone once, and it’s not all it’s cracked up to be.
Mack turns around so she can scoot toward the exit to their wooden womb. It’s harder to maneuver in here with Brandon sprawled out, inadvertently blocking her. He still has his eye pressed against the crack in the wall.
Ava, already outside, shouts, “Stay where you are!” either to LeGrand or to Mack and Brandon, or maybe to all three. Mack reaches for the edge of the platform, but Brandon’s hand grabs her ankle, his grip a vise.
“Let go,” Mack whispers, but his grip is so tight it’s shaking. No. Brandon is shaking, trembling all over, his face still pressed to the wall, his whole body seized up with whatever it is he’s witnessing.
“Don’t move,” he whispers. “Oh god, please, please don’t move, oh god, oh god, oh god.”
The tone of his voice is exactly how she felt when she heard what was happening in the family room, tucked away safely in Maddie’s hiding spot. It sounds like someone who knows death is right there, praying that somehow, some way, it will miss them.
Mack doesn’t move.
* * *
—
Ava has a thick pipe in hand. The contours of it fit her palm exactly right, the heft and weight of it comforting. She’d prefer a gun, but this works, too.
“Stay where you are!” she shouts, waving the pipe in the general direction of where she thinks LeGrand is hiding, an overgrown stand of trees. If she’s getting out now, fine, but one of her friends is going to win.
Mack.
She wants Mack to win. Or survive. And she knows Mack will do it, too.
“Ava!” she shouts, running after the other woman. Ava Two is ahead of her on the path, a stumbling shamble of a run, like someone who’s been bitten by a zombie and still thinks they can outrun the infection. Blood trails down her leg, though it’s a smaller path than the blood from her head, soaking into her shirt so thoroughly Ava can see it from behind, now, too.
Ava Two twitches when she hears her name, a puppet with the wrong string pulled, but she doesn’t stop moving. “No,” she moans. “Run! Hide!”
Ava looks over her own shoulder. There’s nothing back there. Nothing. But there—the crunch of a dead leaf. And there, a shuffle of dirt over the cracked and pitted pavement.
The tiny hairs left on the back of her neck rise, and, for the first time in years, she wishes she had hair there, irrationally longs for the false sense of protection a curtain of hair would provide for the base of her skull, the skin at the back of the neck, a cover for the sudden overwhelming sense of her own absolute softness and vulnerability.
Her hand tightens on the pipe. Fuck that. Ava is not vulnerable. Ava is a fucking warrior, and anyone who tries to hurt her or Ava Two or anyone on her watch is going to find that out the hard way. A pipe-to-the-face hard way.
Ava puts on as much speed as she can, her leg screaming in protest. Her knee doesn’t bend much anymore, and her ankle is basically soldered in place, so running isn’t really an option. Fortunately, Ava Two isn’t moving very fast, and Ava catches her, puts a hand on her shoulder.
Ava Two stops so suddenly Ava loses her balance and falls flat on her ass. She holds her hand up to the other woman for help standing, but Ava Two doesn’t even seem to see her.
Ava Two is staring back at where they came from. A low groan, an animal sound of terror escapes from her mouth, and Ava wants to vomit. She knows that sound. She made it when she looked down and saw her leg crushed, and looked to the side and saw Maria gone, body still there but vacant eyes where Ava would never again see herself reflected back in love.
Ava doesn’t want to look at what the other Ava sees, but she does anyway.
There’s nothing.
Nothing is there.
The winding walkway behind them, curved so they can’t see the Lovers’ Hideaway anymore, is empty.
But.
Ava scoots backward on her ass, fingers around the pipe scraping and bruising on the ground, eyes locked on the path. The ivy trailing down from an overhanging tree drapes across something, hanging as though suspended by the wind, or pulled aside like a curtain.
But there’s nothing there.
“Oh god, oh god, oh god,” Ava Two breathes.
“What is it?” Ava demands, her voice high and tight with panic. “I don’t see anything. I don’t see it. Can you see it?”
The other woman’s gore-painted face turns, and she looks down at Ava as though only now realizing she’s not alone. “I’m sorry,” she whispers. “I didn’t want you to get found.”
And then Ava’s world breaks neatly in half, tipping her sideways out of reality and into something new, something worse.
Nothing picks the other Ava up.
Nothing pierces her torso so it blooms with blood as the other Ava screams, a sound like being torn apart.