Mack follows Atrius’s arrows, guided by his ghost. Her arm bleeds, cut by Rosiee’s silver. Maybe because the monster is so close, padding turned to pounding as it matches her pace in terrible ravenous pursuit, but she can feel them with her. All these lost people, who had worked so hard to carve out a place where they could be successful, where they could be famous, where they could be stable, where they could be loved, where they could be safe.
They came here, desperate, lured by the promise of finally winning something, set up to be devoured so people who already had everything would continue having exactly what they already had, what they could have had anyway, what they felt was their due. What they were willing to let fourteen hopeful souls pay for.
Mack can’t remember all their names, but it doesn’t matter. They are no longer her rivals. They are her team. She will win this not in spite of them, but because of them. For them. For Isabella and Logan and Rosiee and Sydney and Atrius and Rebecca and Ian and Christian and beautiful Ava and even Jaden.
And Brandon.
And LeGrand.
And Ava. But she doesn’t run for Ava. She runs toward Ava, trusting absolutely that Ava will be ready.
Another shot cracks through the air, this one much closer, and if Mack wasn’t so focused on running, navigating this maze with a monster right behind her, she would wonder why there was another gunshot when LeGrand was done with his part and should be hurrying to meet them.
* * *
—
If it had been anyone other than Ava, they would have fallen to Linda’s bullet.
But Linda hadn’t counted on the time Ava spent in active combat. The fact that, even with her back turned and her body screaming and her whole mind focused on a singular, impossible task, Ava’s instincts would remember the sound of a rifle being cocked and she would drop to the ground at the exact moment the trigger was pressed.
The shot passes precisely where Ava had been. Linda, in addition to being a bad mother, forgotten ex-wife, and the hopes and dreams of her grandparents utterly filled and wildly failed, is an excellent shot.
Ava rolls, crouching behind the generator.
“Oh, stand up, you worthless animal,” Linda shouts. “Did you think everyone would be fooled into abandoning their posts? I will never abandon mine! This is my birthright, my legacy, and no one is going to take it away from me.” Linda’s naked lips curl back in an ugly sneer, her false teeth, white and straight, standing out against her gray gums. “Stand up and take it like the man you wish you were.”
Ava examines her options. She has none. The road to the gate has been cleared well, and the nearest cover isn’t close enough to make it against someone as good a shot as Linda is. Doesn’t mean the plan is over, Ava tells herself. Just means her part in it is. She carefully takes the T-shirt and lighter out, setting them on the ground where LeGrand and Mack will be able to find them. One final offering of love.
Ava stands and turns, holding both hands in the air, middle fingers raised to the sky.
Linda jerks the rifle down toward the generator. “What were you going to do with that? Blow the beast up?” Her laugh is harsh and ugly, neglected and as thin and sour as the breath that carries it. For all Linda has done exactly what was expected of her, for all she has benefited from the horrible sacrifices of those who came before, her life has been absolutely devoid of happiness, of warmth, of joy. She has everything, and she has nothing, and some part of her knows. Some part of her knows, and needs to destroy Ava, needs to destroy whatever hope Ava still has before killing her.
She needs Ava to know that she—not Ava—will win. That she’s better than Ava.
“You can’t kill it,” Linda says sweetly. “You could stand there and blow yourself to pieces with the beast right on top of you, and it would walk away. It’s not an animal; it’s not a person. It’s a concept. It’s a covenant. It’s an agreement between my grandparents and the universe that, as long as we feed it, we will thrive. And we will never stop feeding it. It might not want you, but it will take Mack, and LeGrand, and all the other pathetic branches we prune to feed it. It will always be here, and there’s absolutely nothing someone like you can do about it.”
Ava’s jaw clenches. She doesn’t want her part to be over yet. She wishes it had ended differently. But the universe has never cared about her wishes.
“Shut up and do it, bitch,” Ava says.
A shot cracks through the air.
* * *
—
Another shot, and this time it’s close enough that Mack notices, and fears. She puts on a burst of speed she didn’t know she had. For someone who often wondered if she would have been better off dying with her family, Mack is suddenly, desperately aware of how easy it is to die and how very much she doesn’t want to.
* * *
—
Ava feels the crack of the gun, the power of the shot, reverberate through her whole body. And she watches Linda drop her rifle and stumble as her floral robe blooms with fresh scarlet before she falls back on the ground.
LeGrand steps free of the wall he was behind, tossing Linda’s decorative handgun to the side. “Out of bullets,” he says, matter-of-factly. “Come on. Mack should be here soon.”
He grabs one side of the generator’s cage, and Ava, still not quite sure how she’s not shot, grabs the other. Together, they drag the generator to its place.
“Is this a good spot?” LeGrand asks.
Ava isn’t sure, but they aren’t exactly spoiled for time here. Mack will be here any moment. She has to be. Mack will make it.
Ava unscrews the gas cap and twists Christian’s shirt so she can feed it in until it touches the gas. Please, she prays, careful to direct the prayer only to her mother’s god and not to any others that might be listening in this cursed place, please let there be enough gas.
* * *
—
Atrius’s arrows run out.
Mack is at a crossroads. Two paths diverge in a deadly maze, and she can’t afford to take the one less traveled.
Maybe Atrius came from a different starting point. Maybe he didn’t mark this one. This entire park was designed to keep a monster in, to confuse and twist and double back so that the beast never wandered too far out, and so that its prey was sucked in, too. The park does its job incredibly well.
Mack hears the pounding of hooves behind herself, all her gained ground covered in mere heartbeats counting down until her end.
“Ava,” she whispers, closing her eyes.
Something nudges her to the right. Whether it’s the pull of Ava’s gravity, or hope, or folly, Mack doesn’t know, but she’ll find out soon.
* * *
—
Linda groans. Ava sweats. LeGrand stands on the waist-high stone wall lining the path into the park, looking. Waiting.
* * *
—
Mack stumbles to a halt, her heart seizing in terror.
She hasn’t picked a path to the gate. She’s run straight to her first hiding spot. To the sunken-roofed duck stand, the one that hid her, that bonded her with Ava, that gave Ava the tools to scale the fence.