Quinn glanced at the doorway and saw the man’s bare feet there, splayed out, pinkie toes touching the tile. Alice stepped forward and kicked the bottom of one sole. It jumped lifelessly and laid still. She then knelt beside them both, half elbowing Quinn out of the way, and hugged Ty to her chest.
“You’re okay, you’re okay, you’re okay,” she chanted into the side of Ty’s neck. Quinn rose and retrieved his rifle before shining his light on the fallen patient.
The man’s head was mostly gone from the eyebrow’s up. One eye had exploded and hung to the side by a strand of nerve. His mouth hung open, still grinning, a lake of blood within even with his teeth.
Quinn doubled at the waist and was quietly sick in the hall, gagging on the rotted smell of disintegrated bodies, on the blood, for what had almost happened. He wiped at his mouth and spit once before straightening. Alice moved into the hall carrying Ty. She stepped over the corpse and set her son down, rubbing his arm and hugging him to her side.
“Great shot,” Quinn said.
“Thanks. Are you okay? The barrel was pretty close to your head when I fired, but I couldn’t…”
“I’m fine. It’s just some buzzing on that side. It’s already a little better.”
“Crazy fuck,” Alice said, baring her teeth at the dead man. “Should’ve known.”
“He must’ve killed the cop. If it were stilts, there’d be nothing left.”
Alice kept running her fingers through Ty’s blood-matted hair. “We can go,” she said after a moment of silence. Her eyes passed over his, and Quinn glanced past the dead man to the bed. The person who had lain there and died had been small. He gave the body on the floor another look, and a chill slid from the nape of his neck to his buttocks, an icy finger tracing a path.
“Was it just me or did it sound like he was yelling to someone right before you shot him?” Quinn asked.
Alice paused in stroking Ty’s hair, her eyes widening in the dim light.
The sound of the front entrance opening filled the hallway, the hinges echoing to them in a short moan.
“Turn out your light,” Quinn hissed, dousing his own. The hallway fell into dappled darkness. They waited, listening, not breathing. Quinn took a step forward. The wind, it was the wind, had to have been. He motioned for them to follow, and they moved as one down the hall. The lobby was brighter than where they stood, but the sun still hid behind a blanket of clouds and didn’t lighten every corner. He strained his eyes, trying to make out any movement, but there was nothing. The front doors were closed, and the steps beyond their glass were empty. They came even with the glowing exit light and stopped.
“Wind?” Alice asked, a note of hope in her voice.
A stilt stepped into the mouth of the hall, its bulbous joints bending so that it stooped down, peering in at them like a hunter cornering a warren of rabbits in a log. Its lips split revealing broken teeth.
“Go,” Quinn said, pushing Ty and Alice toward the emergency exit.
The stilt rushed them, its slender body bent almost double to clear the ceiling tiles, feet hissing against the floor. The exit corridor was short, and they hit the emergency door with a bang and burst outside into daylight.
Three more stilts were moving toward them across the facility’s grounds, their pale flesh the same color as the clouds. They paused as they caught sight of them then began to lope in their direction.
“Run!” Quinn yelled, swinging his rifle up. Alice scooped Ty into her arms and sprinted in the direction of the Tahoe. He fired off three quick shots, and tufts of grass whipped at the creatures’ feet. He tried to find one of the monsters in the rifle’s sights and was about to squeeze the trigger again when the emergency exit blasted open and the first stilt stepped out, its mouth open, teeth glinting.
Quinn put two rounds into its head.
It fell on top of him, its momentum carrying it forward. He tipped to the side, the stitches in his thigh straining, then bursting, and managed to slide away from its full weight before it pinned him to the ground. Regaining his feet, he saw the other three were closer now, lumbering toward him as fast as they could, their marionette movements clear and horrible in the light of day.