Animals, I think. We’re animals.
People are shoving, pulling, using one another as shields as the raiders keep gaining, surging forward, swinging at us, dogs at our heels, batons whirling so close to my head I can feel the air whooshing on my neck as the wood twirls, twirls near the back of my skull. I think of searing pain, I think of red. The crowd is thinning around me as the raiders advance. One by one people are screaming next to me—crack!—and dropping, getting wrestled to the ground by three, four, five dogs. Screaming, screaming. Everyone screaming.
Somehow I’ve managed to avoid being caught, and I’m still rocketing through the narrow, creaking hallways, passing a blur of rooms, a blur of people and raiders, more lights, more shattered windows, the sound of engines. They’ve got the place surrounded. And then the open back door rises up in front of me—and beyond it dark trees, the cool and whispering woods behind the house. If I can make it outside . . . if I can hide from the lights for long enough . . .
I hear a dog barking behind me, and behind that, a raider’s pounding footsteps, gaining, gaining, a sharp voice yelling, “Stop!” and I suddenly realize I’m alone in the hallway. Fifteen more steps . . . then ten. If I can make it into the darkness . . .
Five feet from the door and sudden, shooting pain rips through my leg. The dog has got its jaws around my calf, and I turn and that’s when I see him, the regulator with the massive red face, eyes glittering, smiling—oh, God, he’s smiling, he actually enjoys this—club raised, ready to swing. I close my eyes, think of pain as big as the ocean, think of a blood-red sea. Think of my mother.
Then I’m being jerked to the side, and I hear a crack and a yelp, the regulator saying, “Shit.” The fire in my leg stops and the weight of the dog falls off, and there’s an arm around my waist and a voice in my ear—a voice so familiar in that moment it’s like I’ve been waiting for it all along, like I’ve been hearing it forever in my dreams—breathing out: “This way.”
Alex keeps one arm around my waist, half carrying me. We’re in a different hallway now, this one smaller and totally empty. Every time I put weight on my right leg the pain flares up again, searing all the way into my head. The raider is still behind us and pissed—Alex must have pulled me to safety at just the right second, so the raider cracked down on his dog instead of my skull—and I know I must be slowing Alex down, but he doesn’t let me go, not for a second.
“In here,” he says, and then we’re ducking into another room. We must be in a part of the house that wasn’t being used for the party. This room is pitch-black, although Alex doesn’t slow down at all, just keeps going through the dark. I let the pressure of his fingertips guide me—left, right, left, right. It smells like mold in here, and something else—fresh paint, almost, and something smoky, like someone’s been cooking here. But that’s impossible. These houses have been empty for years.
Behind us the raider is struggling in the dark. He bumps up against something and curses. A second later something crashes to the ground; glass shatters; more cursing. From the sound of his voice I can tell that he’s falling behind.
“Up,” Alex whispers, so quiet and so close it’s like I’ve only imagined it, and just like that he is lifting me and I realize I’m going out a window, feel the rough wood of the windowsill grate against my back, land on my good foot on the soft, damp grass outside.
A second later Alex follows soundlessly, materializing beside me in the dark. Though the air is hot, a breeze has picked up, and as it sweeps across my skin I could cry from gratitude and relief.
But we’re not safe yet—far from it. The darkness is mobile, twisting, alive with paths of light: Flashlights cut through the woods to our right and left, and in their glare I see fleeing figures, lit up like ghosts, frozen for a moment in the beams. The screams continue, some only a few feet away, some so distant and forlorn you could mistake them for something else—for owls, maybe, hooting peacefully in their trees. Then Alex has taken my hand and we’re running again. Every step on my right foot is a fire, a blade. I bite the inside of my cheeks to keep from crying out, and taste blood.
Chaos. Scenes from hell: floodlights from the road, shadows falling, bone cracking, voices shattering apart, dissolving into silence.