56

 

THE BLAST CATCHES Ashley June with enough force to send her flying into the window. The glass craters under the impact of her body, bulges out like a cracked eyeball, but does not break.

“Don’t,” I say.

But she does. Ashley June picks herself up, her legs buckling. Her body riddled with holes, her eyes clenched in excruciating pain, she’s blinded by the flash. She had not known to shut her eyes against the blast as I had. She sniffs the air, her nostrils flaring. Trying to locate Sissy.

“Don’t.”

Ashley June keeps moving. Right toward Sissy.

I fire another round. A warning shot, into the window. It blasts a huge hole, one body length in diameter, right next to Ashley June. Wind gusts through. Whistling, it blows through Ashley June’s hair, and the strands seem to reach out to me like bloodstained, pleading arms.

“Don’t.”

She crouches down to leap at Sissy.

I shoot again.

The blast pummels Ashley June almost right out of the hole in the window. She is only able to stop from falling outside by spreading her arms and catching herself on the ragged rim. Her eyeballs have disintegrated; viscous white liquid leaks out from the corners of her shut eyelids. Like tears.

“Please,” I say.

She leaps, once more, and I pull the trigger for the last time.

The blast swallows up my hellish scream.

She’s flung outside into the open sky. For a long moment, she hangs suspended in the great wide emptiness of the night. She looks so alone. And then she falls. Shards of glass sparkle around her, twinkling, blinking, then are no more.