Its movements are oddly tender, smooth and unfrenzied, as it reaches down and gathers Jaden’s broken body up in its arms, then lifts him toward its mouth.
Mack can almost see—in that mouth, in that gaping maw, there aren’t teeth, there are—
LeGrand tugs her hard and she nearly falls. It’s enough to jolt her out of her reverie, and she catches herself, then tears through the undergrowth and leaps over fallen trees, guided by LeGrand, leaving behind the sounds of death.
She understands, now, why Brandon decided to jump. Knows she owes her life to the fact that Jaden fell between her and the monster.
But—
“Three.” She grabs LeGrand’s arm. She recognizes where they are and points in the direction of the bumper car trellis. Up there, they can see and hear what’s coming for them.
LeGrand nods, expression grim.
Three. That means their security, their idea that it was only two a day, was wrong. It could and probably would come for them next. Maybe it was only getting two a day because that’s all it could find.
“Four,” LeGrand quietly corrects. Because surely the monster wasn’t going to stop at Jaden.
Mack is fiercely glad that Brandon’s already dead. He knew what was coming for them, and he chose how he would leave the world. She’s choosing, too. She’s going to get LeGrand out, and then she’s going to walk to her first hiding spot—where Ava slept against her, where Ava trusted her, where she remembered Maddie and her absurd yarn duck—sit on the ground, and wait.
“There.” Mack points again. The trellis is up ahead. LeGrand goes first, then helps her up. They lie flat, faces pressed against the ivy, hearts racing.
So now she’s seen it. She knows what’s out there. It doesn’t make any more sense than it did before, but at least she can move from horror, the fear of the unknown, and into terror, the fear of the known. Terror is almost a comfort at this point, a familiar friend.
“We wait until dark,” she whispers. “Then we go for the fence.”
“But the electricity, and the guards.”
“Maybe you can find a tree overhanging, climb that. I’ll distract the guards.”
It’s a hazy plan, and she can feel somewhere deep inside that it’s hopeless, but she has to have a goal, has to have a focus, has to have something to think about other than that those sightless features were the last thing Ava saw. Those claws the last thing she felt.
“You’re getting out,” she whispers.
LeGrand nods, the ivy trembling beneath him. “We can both get out.”
But Mack knows she’s not. She was never going to. It settles over her and she feels her heart calm, slowing, something like peace wrapping itself around her.
They will wait until night, LeGrand will escape, and Mack will finally meet the same fate as the only people she has ever loved. Death would come for her, and at last she wouldn’t be left behind, hiding alone in the dark.
* * *
—
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.