Once again in her dorm room, Reagan quickly closes the door behind her and locks it. She does a hasty scan of the room and immediately notices that Uma is gone. She must’ve headed back over to the Med Lab without her.
“Uma! What the hell?” she swears with frustration to the empty room.
Reagan decides that she’s not exactly dressed appropriately for what may be coming with road travel, fast walking and getting shoved around in hallways. She strips out of her version of dress-up clothing, dons a pair of black cargo pants and throws on her trusty Converse. When she’s finished, she looks out their dorm room window and takes a quick glance down into the courtyard hoping to spy Uma. But what she sees is not what she would have ever believed she’d see there.
A car is parked on the lawn in that same courtyard where Reagan had sat on the grass and studied so many times, and it is on fire. A few motorcyclists are driving circles around it and yelling, hooting and cheering. The men on the bikes are clearly not students of the university, unless they are taking adult continuing education classes majoring in tattoos and body piercings. Reagan watches in horror as another car speeds onto the grass, turfing it as it goes. Four men jump out, grab a young woman and physically drag her into their car as she screams for help. Nobody helps her. Nobody even notices because there is absolute calamity taking place. There are at least three different all out brawls going on, two men are throwing bottles that are on fire through windows, and deeper into the student parking area another car is set ablaze. The campus is no longer safe. It’s a war zone. And that war zone will soon infiltrate her dorm building. Unless, of course, it is successfully burned to the ground first.
As if pinched, Reagan flinches at a sudden memory. It is one of her and her grandfather as he was dropping Reagan off at college her first day. They had argued. She had called him old-fashioned. He had called her naïve. He had been absolutely right. And thank God he’d been insistent, as well.
Reagan had grown up in her grandfather’s medical practice, nosing around, shadowing him, asking millions of questions, likely driving him crazy. But there was always something to learn, something new with medicine. Grandpa had graduated med school at the age of eighteen. Her own father had also become a doctor, but he’d gone through at the normal pace. Her father is a doctor in the Marines, so he was never around, always deployed somewhere in the world. When her mother died twelve years ago, Colonel McClane had basically dumped his three daughters on his parents to be raised. Mark, Reagan’s older brother, was already deployed and serving in Thailand at the time when their mother passed, so he had been spared having to meet new friends in a new school and adapt to having no mother and their father leave them. Unfortunately, Mark had been killed a few years ago in the Middle East.
Having been bumped four years ahead of her age group in school didn’t exactly help Reagan with fitting in with other kids. Being small for her age only added to this. But Reagan’s one calm throughout the storm of her adolescence was her grandparents. They were steadfast and strict and believed in schedules and education. But they are also the most loving, respectful people in the world and as dear to her as her own parents. Reagan had spent all of her free time at her grandfather’s practice after school and on weekends, hanging on his every word. She became so enthralled with medicine that she plowed through school, took her SAT’s at fifteen, and earned a full scholarship to Ohio State University of Medicine just short of her sixteenth birthday. Leaving her grandparents, sisters and the farm which had become home to her had been the most difficult thing she’d ever done.
She reaches far into the back corner of her small closet, crammed full of used textbooks, stacks of notebooks full of research, and dirty laundry she had meant to wash but hadn’t seemed to ever find the time to do so. There she feels around for a small shoebox. It is the same box her grandfather had literally shoved into her arms as he hugged her one last time at her dorm room door before he left for the farm.
“Thank God for Grandpa,” Reagan whispers to herself as she pulls the box clear. Inside she finds the small canister of mace, a few clear packages of bandages, “a good, sharp pocket knife” as her grandpa had put it and some antibiotic cream in a tube along with a few other medical items. She shoves the small, folded knife and the mace into the cargo pockets of her pants and takes the rest of the items and stuffs them unceremoniously into her pack.
Reagan stands again and grabs a dark navy hoodie and ball-cap out of her closet and puts them on. It might not be a good idea to stand out right now, not that she ever does. Fitting all of her thick, curly blonde hair into the ball-cap proves easier said than done.
She takes her room key out of her pocket and scans the area one last time, wistfully remembering all the good times she and Uma have had here. She locks her dorm room, which is probably a silly thing to do at this point, but it gives her a small semblance of control.
Someone slams into her from behind, nearly knocking the breath out of her. Reagan turns to see who had rammed her, but it is impossibly crowded in the hallways now, nearly impassable. She pushes and shoves and fights her way through the masses and comes to a stairwell near the back of their building that will lead to her and Uma’s secret shortcut to the Med Center where Dr. Krue should be waiting for them.
As she blasts through the ground floor service-door to the narrow alleyway behind her dorm building, Reagan is assaulted by smoke, acrid and thick. For a moment she can’t see much but feels her way to safety as she coughs, staying low to the ground. There is thicker smoke coming from somewhere off to the left at the source of the fire, and Reagan is thankful that she needs to go straight and then right, hopefully away from any potential danger.
She pulls her cell from her backpack and dials Uma, getting no signal. She tugs the bulky hoodie near her neck up over her mouth, trying to keep out some of the smoke. Still low and staying close to the brick wall of the building, Reagan comes to the end of the alley and scans the disorder in front of her. There are more cars on fire, mostly in the faculty lot. If vandalism had been a subject, then these students clearly would have excelled. She almost steps out into the open when a small group of men run past her, many are carrying guns and one even carries an ax that is painted red and has obviously been stolen from a glass emergency case probably on this very campus. They are adult men, some bearded, definitely not students nor are they teachers or campus security. They are shouting about their violent, devious plans of taking over the university, making it their own, making a fortress. This is so bizarre that Reagan almost laughs. Why would anyone want to live here? The food’s awful! She wants to shout this to them, but she remembers they have guns and they seem serious about their idiotic plans. She’s thankful for the cover provided by the smoke and the haze from the cold rain that had come earlier in the day. Without it, she may have been seen, may have been taken like that poor girl in the courtyard or the one who was screaming in the stairwell. This has to be the first time in her life that she feels lucky to be five foot two and a hundred and fifteen pounds. She’d always been so envious of tall, lithe, feminine women. She sends a quick prayer up for Uma that she will also be so lucky in making it over to Dr. Krue’s car.
Seeing her opportunity, she slinks around the corner and makes a quick sprint to the Med Center, her lungs starting to burn. Even though she starts her day out with a three mile jog every morning at five a.m., Reagan quickly surmises her medical status of burning lungs to be equated to the heightened anxiety and stress levels her body is also trying to deal with. She makes it to the Med Center and quickly crosses the parking lot where she finds Dr. Krue’s car easily enough. It’s certainly not worth looting. He’s a man of conservative values, and he drives a black Volkswagen station-wagon. Not exactly a Ferrari, it is less presumptuous but still nicely appointed.
However, she doesn’t see Uma or Dr. Krue anywhere around it and when she peers inside, they aren’t hiding there, either. Perhaps he left something in the lab or went there to get something else. Gunfire can be heard from somewhere on the campus, some of it sounds like automatic fire. Some of it doesn’t sound too far off.
Reagan decides to take her chances and runs for the Med Lab building instead of standing by the doctor’s car waiting for them. No sense in being an immobile target.
The building is basically abandoned. There is literally not another soul around. No sounds of students click, click, clicking away on their computer pads. No greeting from the building secretary. No people talking, discussing their opinions on how horrible lab homework can be or what term paper they are working on, what cool band is playing in the city tonight. Just no people, period. Reagan guesses that, like Dr. Krue’s car, this isn’t exactly a hot ticket to rob, unless thugs are looking for corpses, medical equipment and microscopes.
She quickly uses the public access stairs, seeing no reason to cower in the service stairwell because there doesn’t seem to be any immediate threat of danger. This building is a ghost town. She reaches the second floor easily enough and rushes cautiously, looking behind her frequently, to Dr. Krue’s lab, hoping to find her missing travel mates together. His classroom door with the opaque window panel is standing open, though she knows that Dr. Krue always locks his lab before he leaves. He’d locked it earlier today when they’d all left together. Thank goodness she’s found him, and she hopes that Uma will be with him and also ready to leave. Reagan pushes the door farther open and enters the room.
“Dr. Krue?” she calls quietly. The door slams behind her, startling Reagan enough to make her jump and squeal.
“Well, well,” a shaggy-haired man in his thirties says, ending on a whistle. “I knew I shoulda’ went to college.”
Reagan takes one quick, cursory glance at him in his disheveled, drug-addled state and backs up three steps to put some distance between them. His posture and overall behavior is menacing. His pale face is covered in tattoos on one half, and there is a piercing in his nose as well as three hoop earrings in both ears. His look is dangerous, predatory, and Reagan knows this situation could turn bad quickly.
“You shouldn’t be in here, sir,” Reagan asserts while trying to appear more confident than she really is. The man with the dark eyes laughs obnoxiously at her.
“Oh yeah? And who’s gonna care, little lady?” he asks on a sniff.
“The… the faculty,” she falters pathetically and he laughs again. The faculty? That was the best she could come up with? Reagan mentally kicks herself.
Where is Dr. Krue? Her flight or fight instincts are trying to take over, trying to make her find a way to run, escape, get the hell out. She’d like to run, to outrun this scum of a human. She knows without a doubt that she can outrun him, especially if he is a smoker. But she can’t leave her beloved family friend and her roommate here to be ambushed by this man, as well. She glances left and then right while taking another step back, bumping into a lab table.
“I don’t think the faculty is around this place anymore,” he informs her.
He wouldn’t have needed to. Everyone seems to be fleeing or in the process of doing so.
“Aint nobody gonna come up here, little lady. We’ve got all night.”
The lanky man advances a step, causing Reagan to retreat two.
“The police have already been called to restore order at the university,” she lies badly. “They’ll… they’ll be here soon. I’m sure of it.” It sounds made up. It is. And they both know it.
He shakes his head and grins. “I don’t think so.”
Reagan backs up again, feeling sick to her stomach and fearful of him. Fear is beginning to consume her.
“Hey, you don’t need to leave. Stick around and party,” he sneers.
He wipes his mouth with the back of his hand. He sniffs hard and grimaces. Reagan guesses it’s either from drug use or the smell of corpse preservatives that are used in this particular lab. It took her awhile to get used to the lab’s smells, too. She doesn’t think this man has any olfactory issues other than post-nasal cocaine use drippage.
“No thanks,” Reagan states firmly. Her voice sounds weak, shaky even to her. She blurts in a rush, “I’m meeting some people. They’ll be here soon.” She’s trying to remember all of the things that she’s heard in those mandatory safety seminars that the college puts on at the beginning of every school year. “Get your attacker to let you go,” “plead with their sympathetic side,” “carry your rape whistle,” “tell them that your friends will be right along,” blah, blah, blah. None of that shit is gonna work now, and she knows it by the gleam of victory already in his dark eyes.
He has a feral intensity in his brown eyes. There is something wild and dazed there and something else, something medicated, probably a drug-induced, super human strength. She panics. His eyes are unnaturally dilated, more black than brown showing. He fidgets near constantly. His brown hair is lank and pulled back into a ponytail. The jeans he wears are torn, dirty, and he has on a black leather vest with no shirt even though it is only early spring in Ohio. The dampness in the air is still present and cool and pneumonia-inducing in that sort of dress. Hell, it had just snowed a few inches two weeks ago and showed no signs of turning to instant summer. Ohio springs can and usually do last for three long months. But she knows this man doesn’t feel a thing. Drugs tend to dull the sensory perceptions. There is a fresh cut above his left eye, and the blood drips onto his cheek. He doesn’t even wipe it away. He smiles at her. His teeth are dirty and nicotine-stained. She wishes she had one of her grandpa’s guns, on which she and every kid in the family were trained while growing up at the farm. She also childishly wishes that her grandfather was just here. A stifled scream comes from the other room.
Reagan whips her head to look as her attacker seizes the opportunity and is on her in a flash. He grabs her from behind and holds her around the waist and neck, cutting off her airflow.
“Oh no, it looks like we already found your friend!” pupil guy mocks.
He laughs in Reagan’s ear. A different man emerges from Dr. Krue’s office at the front of the classroom. Reagan can only assume that Uma is back there and maybe Dr. Krue has not yet come to this building of nightmares. She hopes he never does.
“Hey!” the second assailant yells. “Who’s this?”
“Another addition to the party, dude,” the man holding her declares excitedly.
Reagan can smell his breath and it’s not good. She is afraid she’ll get drunk just off of the fumes.
“Hey, little lady,” second guy says as he approaches for a closer look. “Small for my taste, but I think I can make an exception.”
He runs a dirty finger down the side of Reagan’s face, and she flinches away from his touch. He only chuckles as he walks away, circling a desk, and picking up a discarded textbook as he goes.
“I’m the one ‘dat found her,” her captor hisses angrily.
Something unspoken passes between the two men, and Reagan is roughly shoved forward. She falls to her hands and knees as they both laugh unforgivingly at her.
“You know I get first dibs. That’s the rules,” second guy states with cool deadliness.
He is blonde and resembles a surfer, a real California hippy type. The sides of his head are shaved, but he sports a mohawk of long dreadlocks down the center. His hair is filthy, his blue eyes so icy cold that Reagan is instantly more afraid of this man. He is also bigger in size than pupil guy. His biceps are the size of Reagan’s thighs, his shirt sleeves long since cut off. His shirt fits tightly across his chest, showing off his pectoral muscles. Whatever drugs he’s on, they aren’t the same as pupil guy. Reagan suspects old style steroids play a key role in his diet. His eyes are clear, and if it wasn’t for the terrible acne-pitted skin and the insane coolness in his eyes, he might be considered handsome. The growth of a day or two is covering his chin and parts of his cheeks. Of the two men, he is clearly the more powerful and the more dangerous. He is frightening, and Reagan feels a sense of horror like she’s never felt before. Her adrenaline is literally making her sweat profusely. She can feel it running down her sides.
Cold Eyes yanks Reagan up by the arm, freeing her from the humiliation of being on all fours. But now she can see him up close, and it’s even worse. Unfortunately he is taking her into his custody. She whimpers lightly.
“Please, please don’t do this. I won’t tell anyone you were here,” she pleads as she tries to struggle from his grasp and pry at his fingers. She receives a slap across her cheek and mouth, hard. She staggers and would have fallen had he not still had ahold her arm. Nobody has ever struck her in her entire life, and she is instantly angered yet also afraid.
“Shut up, bitch! Where’s the drugs?” he shouts.
His spittle hits Reagan in the face. He yanks her back to a more upright standing position because she is still reeling from the slap and unable to focus on her own.
“What? Drugs? What do you mean…?” Reagan asks, afraid to look him in the eye.
This only seems to anger her captor even more, and he slaps her again. This time she tastes blood.
“The drugs, you stupid bitch. Where’s all the drugs? It says Med Lab on the damn building. So where’s the drugs?”
For added measure he gives Reagan a hard shake, rattling her teeth and blurring her vision.
“We don’t do that here. We don’t have any drugs here. It’s not a hospital. It’s a… a learning facility,” she tries to explain and it seems to anger him still. She figures that as long as she’s talking she’s alive, so her new goal is to keep him talking. “We dissect cadaver bodies, study them. We don’t do operations or anything like that. There are no drugs or anything…”
Apparently her tactic isn’t going to work for long. He might not be as stupid as he looks. Cold Eyes glances to his comrade, and they seem to finally realize that what she is saying is the truth after all. He interrupts her.
“So what are we gonna do then? We came all the way up here to get high, and now it looks like we’re just gonna get… you, sweet thing.”
Those crazy eyes smile into hers. His endearment makes Reagan want to vomit, but she holds it down so as not to be hit again. He laughs as his friend nervously follows suit. It’s clear who the alpha male of this relationship is, and Reagan stores this information for later.
“You know, that’s what that Muslim bitch told me, too,” the blue-eyed beast taunts into her face and then licks her cheek.
“She’s Indian. She’s from India. She’s not a Muslim. Where is she?” Reagan practically screams as she begins to struggle in earnest, not caring of the consequence this time. Was it Uma she heard scream? Is she ok? Is she even alive? If he has her in the back room, then she isn’t coming out. Had he tied her up?
“She’s cool, sweetness. Don’t worry about her. We need to go and have some fun now,” he answers.
He quickly, painfully grabs her breast once before he flings her over one shoulder roughly as if she weighs fifteen pounds and not her true one hundred and fifteen.
“Hey man, what about me? I found her,” Giant Pupils whines while refastening his stringy ponytail.
“You’ll get your chance. Won’t take long at all,” Cold Eyes answers and chuckles.
“Aw man,” his friend answers petulantly. “I’m going to find some food then. I’ll be back.”
Cold Eyes snatches Reagan’s backpack and tosses it to his buddy. Giant Pupils then throws Reagan’s backpack to the ground and for some reason kicks it as if it has offended him.
“Bring me something to drink. I think I’m gonna need it when we’re done here,” her captor replies with another sickening laugh.
Reagan is suspended upside down, and at this vantage point she can tell that the man has a knife on his hip and a handgun in the back waistband of his tattered and holey khakis. From this angle she can almost reach his knife but isn’t sure if she can sneak it without him feeling her do it. It would also leave him in possession of the more threatening weapon. The door slams, and she assumes that Giant Pupils has gone looking for food. This leaves her alone with her attacker. He continues into Dr. Krue’s office and kicks the door shut with his booted foot, shaking it in its frame.
Dropping her like a sack of potatoes, Reagan lands on her butt half on the burgundy, floral rug and half on the scarred, dark-wood floor with hundreds of scratches and divots from many years of use. She huffs as the breath leaves her again. She tries to scan the room, but her attacker is on her too quickly. He kneels beside her, his finger pointing in her face.
“Now, you be a good girl, and we’ll have some fun. You go and be a bitch, and I’ll cut you up real nice, ya’ hear?” he questions.
He’s not wanting or needing a response. Reagan simply nods. He takes the knife from its sheath on his hip and stabs it purposefully into Dr. Krue’s mahogany desk top. It’s an intimidation tactic, and it is very effective.
The room is too dark to see clearly since there are no windows. Plus the overhead lighting is not turned on. The darkly stained, cherry paneling isn’t helping, and she realizes that she hasn’t seen any lights on anywhere for a while. The electricity must have gone completely out everywhere at the university, and perhaps back-up generators aren’t firing. This realization frightens her.
Her assailant yanks her to a standing position by her wrist, nearly dislocating her arm. He’s too strong to fight, Reagan realizes. Keep him talking.
“Where is my friend?” she asks quietly as she tries to keep her tone calm and soothing.
“She’s just fine. Don’t you go worrying ‘bout the Muslim, ya’ hear?” he says with a grin.
His silvery eyes making contact with hers directly. Reagan knows he’s lying. She knows Uma isn’t ok. She knows this man will rape and then kill her in this room. She knows if she ever wants to see her family again, then it’s gonna be him or her. But only one of them can ever leave this room alive again.
“D… don’t hurt me, ok?” she asks in her best childish voice. She wants him to think her weak. She’s small. She’s always been small. But she’s never been weak. Her grandpa would’ve never permitted that from her.
“No problem, baby. We’re just gonna have us some fun,” he lies smoothly before he runs a hand down her arm.
Her eyes dart to the door a few feet away, and it’s all the motivation she needs. But he grabs her as she lunges toward it, picking her up with one arm from behind. Then Cold Eyes swings her around and slams her face first upon Dr. Krue’s desk. Her head takes the brunt of the hit, and she’s momentarily stunned. He’s behind her in a position of power, and Reagan struggles to turn as he grinds his crotch against her backside. She tries to pull away, to get away from him, but he holds her fast as he works at his belt buckle. The hood from her sweatshirt falls back, and he aggressively yanks the ball-cap off, freeing her springy, messy curls.
“Nice, sugar. Why were ya’ hiding all this under there?” he inquires.
He strokes her hair, making her want to vomit again. All she can hear is her own quiet whimpers and moans and his mindless grunting as he struggles with his belt some more in the silence of the richly appointed room. Nobody ever explained to her that an act of rape is more about sounds and smells and what you can see more than what you actually feel. The room is eerily silent, and their sounds are so loud, as if coming from a megaphone. He grabs a handful of her hair to better hold her head down, and Reagan can see Dr. Krue’s medical degrees hanging on the wall beside them. She’s looked at those degrees and awards many times but never with blind fear in her heart and never from this angle. A bead of sweat runs down her forehead and lands on the table. He has successfully manipulated his pants buckle and zipper and lets them fall to his knees. Reagan feels him push against her from behind through her own thin pants.
“Yeah, you like that, don’t you?” he asks.
As if that makes any sense because what he is perpetrating is nothing more than rape and not consensual in any way. Reagan doesn’t answer, however, because she knows her reply to the negative will earn her a slap or punch or something far worse.
She is struggling with him, trying to keep him from getting her pants unbuckled, too, but it’s not doing much good. Luckily for her, he is preoccupied with his single-minded determination to do what he intends that she is able to slide her grandpa’s pocket knife from her cargo pocket and conceal it in her palm.
“Hold still, you stupid little whore,” he grinds out through his gritted teeth.
He is bent over her, his spittle hitting the side of her exposed cheek again. Disgusting beast. She opens the blade with only one hand.
“You’re gonna love this, bitch.”
At this exact moment, Reagan rears up slightly, just long and high enough to plunge the knife into his thigh. She’s praying she hit his femoral artery and that he’ll bleed out quickly, but with the bad lighting and the awkward angle of doing so from a face down position she isn’t too confident. It doesn’t stop her assailant from howling in pain, though, so she must have gotten it in pretty deep. She pulls it back out and lurches backward, successfully throwing him off of her.
Whipping around to face him, Reagan sees that she has hit him square in his thigh muscle, and blood is gushing fairly quickly out of it. His face is a perfect blend of anguish and fury as he lunges for her, and his cold eyes have turned downright arctic. Reagan is knocked backward again onto the desktop as he has now resorted to strangling her. He is obviously an equal opportunity murderer and sees no problem with changing up his modus operandi.
She gags and gags and feels the air rushing from her lungs, her vision starting to blur. Her chest burns as the air is expelled, and Reagan can hear wheezing deep in her throat. Realizing there is no way she can get his hands off of her neck, she relinquishes that fight and stabs him again, this time in the shoulder. Seemingly undaunted, he punches her to the side of her head, knocking her into senselessness. Reagan isn’t sure if she blacks out or just momentarily loses her vision. But she sure isn’t functioning on too high of a level at this point. This is when she feels her own blade being used on her.
When her vision clears again, she can see his shoulder is bleeding, and he is wielding her knife which he apparently dislodged from his own shoulder muscle. What strikes her as odd is that she doesn’t feel anything, but she knows that he’s stabbing or slicing her because she watches the blade arc high again and again. Blood is spraying her in the face from it.
“I told you I’d carve you up, bitch …use a knife on me, you bitch. You think this is my first time with a little whore like you?” he hoarsely expels his words at her.
He slices across her cheek with her beloved grandpa’s three inch knife. She feels that one for sure as if someone has just lit a match using her face. It’s enough to spur her back into motion and to fight through her pain, blurred vision and dizziness.
For just a brief moment he releases her throat and Reagan is able to turn her head to the left. She spies her escape from this horrific event. It’s not the exit door or a campus security agent here to rescue her. It’s the long, sharp blade that he’d stabbed so hard into Dr. Krue’s desk. His breathing is labored as he struggles with the button of her jeans again. He’s almost unhooked it. Reagan swiftly frees the long, serrated dagger from its lodging in the wooden desk and stabs him straight in the jugular. A spray of his blood hits her in the face and hair and all over her hoodie. He is clearly startled, unnerved by her action. His lack of anticipating her has cost him his life, and he knows it. But Reagan isn’t done. She yanks it out and hits him in the center of his chest with it, as well, which doesn’t spray blood at all, telling her that his heart has stopped pumping it. His dagger is long, at least six inches, and she knows for certain that she’s killed him. His heart would have most likely stopped within a few seconds from the hit to the chest. She shoves him, and he falls sideways to the ground with a heavy thud.
Not wasting a precious second, lest his friend become alarmed and come running, Reagan rolls the dead man over and takes his pistol from the waistband of his briefs. When she stands, her vision blurs for a moment again. Quickly brushing aside any weakness that she can’t deal with at the moment, Reagan works the slide and sees that it’s a .45 caliber and that there is already a round in the chamber with the safety off. Her throat is raw and burning, making it difficult to even swallow. But her work here is hardly finished. Locked and loaded, she listens for sounds of movement, and when she hears none, Reagan inches toward the door.
As quietly as she can manage, she reaches up from a squatted position and works the doorknob. It barely makes the slightest whisper of a sound, but it could be one of the rusty, noisy hinges on the door to the horse barn at the farm for all the anxiety she feels over it. She takes note that her hands are shaking crazily, so she breathes deeply three times before peering quickly into the adjoining lab classroom.
The door is still closed, and the room appears to be empty. Perhaps the struggle for her life, which had seemed to go on for an hour, had only taken a few minutes. She gets to her feet in a more upright posture and speedily crosses the room to stand behind the door. She’s hoping to catch Giant Pupils in a surprise assault of her own. And before she can even take another breath, the door swings open and in lopes the greasy-haired accomplice. He’s unaware of her and is carrying looted vending machine goodies.
She shoots him twice from behind, causing him to fall hard, his bounty flying everywhere. His can of soda skids across the floor, spraying the room with its sugary, liquid contents. The report from the .45 is deafening in the classroom, making her ears ring. Reagan moves slowly to stand over him. He is moaning weakly so she puts him out of his misery. She’s too afraid not to. She’s too petrified to reason out that with two shots from a .45 into his back that he’s no threat anymore. But her adrenaline and absolute terror alone are pushing her now.
Reagan wastes no time and returns to Dr. Krue’s office. She knows she has been stabbed, and she can also feel blood running down her cheek and onto her neck. Dr. Krue has a small room attached to his office with medical supplies should one of his students accidentally cut themselves in class using dissection tools. Once she’s in his office, she takes in how much darker it is than in the classroom. Squinting into the dark recesses of his office, she rushes over to his supply room and trips over something, falling and hitting her head on the hardwood floor.
“Shit!” she curses to the empty room. What she wouldn’t do for a flashlight. Along with everything else she’s gonna have a huge bruise on her forehead. Not the most unbelievable part of this day as she is not known for her grace. That would be her sister Hannah’s department. The pistol is still secure in her tightly fisted grip, which she will not relinquish again until she gets home. She comes up onto her hands and knees and turns to see what had tripped her, only to gasp in horror.
“D… dd…doctor? Dr. Krue?” she whispers, her lower lip trembling. She crawls on all fours to where her mentor, her teacher, her friend lay in a puddle of his own blood. His eyeglasses are on the ground near him, and he is dead of an apparent blunt trauma wound to the back of his head where the blood has pooled. Her tears will not be held back. They fall and fall and she doesn’t care in this moment as she heaves through her ravaged throat. When she presses her hand to the side of his face, Reagan notices that she leaves smudges of her own blood there and it saddens her to tarnish his beloved face so. He deserves her tears. He deserves to be mourned. He was a great man, and he was willing to do whatever he had to get her home safely to her family. Her grandpa is going to be devastated. They had been so close, and Dr. Krue had been to the farm many times.
Reagan hastily wipes the tears off of her face, and with grim determination she decides that she won’t let his sacrifice for her go without merit. She drags herself to her feet again and feels her way into the anteroom, pushing open the wooden door. Her foot kicks something that skids around, something metal. To her relief, it’s a flashlight. Dr. Krue must’ve been in here with this flashlight looking for something or gathering medical supplies when he was come upon by the scum in the other rooms. She clicks it on and relief immediately floods her while the light immediately floods the area. And, more importantly, she no longer has to feel around in the dark or be afraid of it. There are no windows whatsoever in this small room, either, but she knows it fairly well as she’s been in it quite a few times retrieving items for Dr. Krue. There is a dividing, metal shelving unit running down the center of the room and floor to ceiling built-in shelves along the walls. Stumbling along, Reagan rushes to the shelves that she knows have on them the things she’ll need. She grabs a few packages of gauze, a needle and stitching thread, stitching glue, antiseptic, antibiotic cream and three packages of self-adhesive bandaging and shoves them in the wide, kangaroo pocket of her hoodie. She isn’t sure to what extent that she is injured, but she also salvages a handful of clotting powder in small packets.
Reagan moves farther into the room and around the corner to where the single serving pouches of antibiotics and pain relievers are kept under lock and key. There are also vials of shots available for medical care when a student would be more seriously injured. It had only happened twice to a student while she had been under the tutelage of Dr. Krue. She had been excited at the time to assist him in administering stitches and a pain shot injection into the wound site. She plans to use the butt of the pistol to smash the glass, but what she sees horrifies her. She has been blocking this mentally as if that alone would make it not be true.
She has found Uma, her only friend close to her own age at this college. Clearly, she has been sexually assaulted as her long, flowing skirt of many beautiful colors is torn and askew, her tights shredded. Reagan cannot bring herself to look further at this area of her friend’s body. Her lovely, black eyes are staring lifelessly at nothing in particular. There is coagulated blood trickling from her mouth and down the side of her face, disappearing into her dark hairline. There are purple bruises against the creamy, mocha skin of her neck, suggesting she was also strangled as Reagan had been. She was just a young girl. She didn’t deserve to die like this. She was good and kind and would never harm another human being. She had been studying to be a doctor so that she could help people, for God’s sake. Reagan staggers into a nearby corner, gags and vomits, which causes her stomach wounds to pull painfully.
Not wanting to, but knowing she has no choice, she goes back by Uma’s lifeless body and steps over her friend. Reagan’s stomach wounds are bleeding profusely, dripping all over the white marble floor in some kind of psychotic rip-off art of the late Jackson Pollock. She is literally creating a forensic scientist’s wet dream of a blood splatter study project in her current state. Reaching the glass cabinets again, she sees that they have already been broken, likely looted by the attackers. Pills are scattered on the floor and inside the cabinet. They obviously had been looking for something more than just everyday pain meds and antibiotics. She reaches through the broken glass, ironically careful not to cut herself, and pulls out a bottle of pain killer. Pushing aside pills for which she has no use, Reagan digs around until she finds a strong enough dose of antibiotics, a vial of morphine, and two shot vials of numbing solution for the stitches she knows she is going to have to give herself. She can’t even think right now about what possible blood borne diseases and pathogens her first would-be rapist had sprayed all over her. Luckily she’d been vaccinated for many of those known pathogens when she entered med school as an added precaution for dissections and blood draws. She also takes three bottles of pain and inflammation reducers. Her face feels like it is on fire, and her abdomen is finally starting to register that there is pain there.
There is no way she can tend to herself in this darkness, so she moves past Uma again, but not before she closes her friend’s eyes and pulls down her skirt. As she passes Dr. Krue, she absentmindedly comprehends that she will need his car keys. It feels wrong to steal his car, but she knows that she can’t think of it this way. In her condition and the obvious state of the university, she’ll never make it back to her own Jeep on the other side of her dorm building. His car is closest, packed and ready to go. It may just be her only hope of getting home. And so, as much as it sickens her, Reagan pulls Dr. Krue’s car keys from his front pants pocket and puts them in her own which are soaking, becoming saturated with her own blood down the front almost to the knees.
Once back in the lab room, she is able to catch a bit more of the last of the day’s light, as well as light from the multiple fires outside. For what she intends to do, Reagan needs more light than what is coming through the windows alone. She sets the flashlight on one of the lower lab tables near the windows and pulls all of her medical loot from her hoodie pocket, tossing it on the table. Reagan realizes that she’s still unsafe and unprotected in the room and quickly crosses it to lock the door, not that it will probably do much should someone decide to force themselves inside. She rushes back to the makeshift surgical area and pulls off her hoodie. It is very wet with her blood, and she knows enough about infection to know to get it away from her skin. Her undershirt is also soaked, so she removes it, as well. Standing in her bra and pants, she can better see the damage that Cold Eyes has done.
There are two actual stab wounds, one near center mass, and one over to the right lower quadrant of her abdomen. They are very slowly leaking blood, which is good. He must’ve sliced or missed a full on stabbing of her at least three other times from what she can tell, but those wounds are also still bleeding. Somehow there is a deep cut near her right shoulder blade, as well. She definitely doesn’t remember that even happening. But it is gushing blood and needs dealt with quickly, too.
She unscrews the lid of an antiseptic liquid and pours it onto cotton pads, making quick work of cleansing her wounds through gritted teeth. This done, she shakily threads a needle and sets it aside. Then she unscrews the numbing vial and attaches a hypodermic needle with which to administer her own pain blocking shots. Without hesitation and with clear, concise ability she plunges the needle deeply enough to hit tissue that will take the solution. Instantly the medicine takes hold, enabling her to begin stitching. She makes a half-assed attempt at stitching her two stab wounds and gives up on winning any future beauty queen competitions. Her hands are shaking so badly that she has a difficult time of it. She’s a mess. It’s impossible for her to administer any stitches to her shoulder/collar bone area because of the difficult slant. It is near her right shoulder area and as she is right-handed, there is just no way that she can stitch it with her left hand. Reagan globs the clotting powder onto all of her lacerations, including over the fresh stitching. She finishes with applying bandaging as best as she can.
Her hand is still covered in blood even after using the cleansing antiseptic, so she wipes it again. But then she notices that there are small incisions on her palm. Knowing that she’s right-handed, Reagan deduces that her hand is cut from her own knife which she’d used to stab her victim. It is likely self-inflicted from slipping in her grasp or sliding forward with the force of the stab. Working fast, she sprinkles on more clotting powder, presses on a gauze pad and wraps tape all around her entire hand so the bandaging doesn’t fall off.
Satisfied with her work, Reagan takes the flashlight to search out her backpack. Giant Pupils had kicked it earlier and now she has actual need of the items inside. She spies it near a front row desk on the floor and retrieves it. She unzips it and pulls out a clean, long-sleeved, black t-shirt which she’d packed and had no intention at the time of ever needing. She’ll be cold, but she can turn on the heat in Dr. Krue’s car once she gets to it. She pulls it on overhead, careful not to disturb her newly applied bandages. She can see where some of the white pads are already spotting with red. Reaching into her backpack again, she pulls out three of the feminine napkins she had packed. She presses them to her abdomen under her shirt and tapes them down to further absorb the bleeding. Next she grabs clean underwear and gray sweatpants and pulls those on. Using the round ring, she hooks Dr. Krue’s car keys on her thumb and then re-zips the pack. Gun back in hand, Reagan opens a bottle of antibiotics and the pain medicine. She opens her one solitary bottle of water, wincing at the pain in her sliced hand as she does so and swigs enough to take the pills. The numbing shots have not yet worn off in her abdomen, but she knows they aren’t meant to last for more than an hour or so. Next, she puts all of the remaining medical supplies, pills and water back into the bag. She glances at her watch and sees that it’s 10:30 already. They should have left three and a half hours ago. Time is rapidly ticking along while the world is going to hell.
Looking out the window for the first time since coming into this nightmarish scene, Reagan can see multiple buildings are on fire while violent bedlam is occurring everywhere. The sun has set completely, and she’ll need the flashlight just to find her way back out to Dr. Krue’s car. But first she is going to get her grandfather’s knife back.
Slinging her backpack over her uninjured shoulder, she goes back into Dr. Krue’s office, careful not to look at him again. She scans the floor with the dim light and finds her blade near her victim’s body. As she bends to retrieve it, she also wipes it off with an antiseptic, pre-soaked pad. She turns to leave and something catches her eye on the floor by Dr. Krue’s desk. It’s his medical bag. She grabs it up and decides to take it with her, as well. She isn’t sure what is even in it, but it could prove helpful.
Reagan descends the outside cement stairs of the Medical Lab Building and takes cover behind a low wall, normally covered in lovely pink thyme in the summer. She can hear people talking, but she can’t tell where they are. No back-up generators are working anywhere on the campus, and there are no lights on farther away in the parking lots, either. She has to get to that parking lot and to her awaiting getaway vehicle.
Upon her exit from the building, she’d turned off her flashlight so as to not give herself away to anyone who might be up to no good like her would-be murderers. Now she is in the dark like everyone else. Occasionally she catches a flash of light here and there, but she can’t be sure if it is from a flashlight light or from a fire. But she isn’t taking any chances. The voices fade and, seeing her opportunity, she low sprints to a hedgerow where she stays a few moments listening again. When she hears nothing, she continues on until she makes it to the faculty parking lot.
It is considerably easier to see in this area because there is a minimum of at least four cars on fire. Reagan uses the manual key to open the car door, not wanting to draw attention to the flash of the headlights the keyless remote would activate. Once inside the car, she sets the locks and scans the parking lot around her. It doesn’t seem as if there are any large crowds of people or even stragglers loitering around anywhere. She speedily stashes her bags beside her on the passenger seat and takes out the pills, water and the few snacks she’d grabbed. Reagan knows that soon the trauma of what she’s just gone through is going to set in, and she’s going to need food, sugar, carbohydrates and fuel to keep her system from going into full-blown shock.
Once done, she pulls on her seatbelt and starts the car, manually turning off the headlights. She knows the chance of her making it off this campus and out of Ohio alive is going to rely solely on being as stealthy as possible. She also turns off the airbags. The last thing her wounds need is to be broken open anew with a damn airbag.
Slowly, taking care not to bump into vehicles, bicycles, debris and what looks to be the occasional dead body, Reagan is able to make it off of the campus and out onto the main drag of town. There she sees more of the same. Murder, fires, destroyed property, wrecked cars and mass crime has spread everywhere. She can see the congested mess of chaos that the freeway has become from where she is. Gunfire in single and short, rapid bursts can be heard sporadically through the closed windows of her vehicle. Police and other emergency vehicle lights seem to be coming from all different areas of the big metropolis. Buildings have been graffiti painted with crude messages about anarchy and oppression. Traversing down side streets, Reagan finally makes it to a county road and turns south onto it. The houses in this area are sparse, mostly farms and rolling country hills lined for miles with fencing. Some of the homes even have a light or two on inside, likely being powered by generators. A part of Reagan is torn between going to one of them for help and keeping to the road for fear of her safety. She’s not so sure who can be trusted anymore. Just because these people live on farms like her family, doesn’t mean they are anything like her family. Those men back at the university could’ve come from one of these farms. Dr. Krue had been so right. There are people in this new world who will take, who will rob and who will pillage and murder. She’s already run into a few of those and has no wish to do so again. Reagan doesn’t think she can survive another one of those encounters. And so she pushes on through her fatigue.
Reagan only passes one other car in the hour that she has been on the back road and finally feels safe enough to turn on her headlights. Her hands begin to shake and then the shaking spreads up her arms and into her torso, and she knows the shock is setting in. Her stomach turns into a mass of raw nerves which jiggle and tremble from apprehension and tension. Her legs begin to tremor. She needs to stop. She knows from experience that there should be plenty of oil well access roads around this area. There aren’t many rural areas anywhere in America that don’t have natural gas wells situated on them. Whichever farmers declined the fracking and large payouts offered by the oil companies back in the early 2000’s, the government had simply claimed their land anyway under Imminent Domain laws. It was for the “greater good.”
A few miles farther down the county road Reagan sees exactly what she’s been looking for and pulls off the main road onto one of those sparsely-graveled, muddy access roads. She puts the car in park and turns off the engine to conserve gas. When she had first found Dr. Krue’s car in the faculty parking lot, she’d seen grocery bags through the large rear window to the hatchback. She goes around back to rummage in the trunk for food and water. There, beside what appears to be camping gear, are two full bags of groceries including energy bars, sports drinks, soda cans, candy bars and pre-made sandwiches in plastic bags. Dr. Krue had thought of everything. Reagan has to push down the tears that are threatening to dissolve the last vestiges of her sanity which are barely hanging on by a tight, thin thread. There will be time for mourning later. She’ll crumble if she dwells on the charitable goodness of Dr. Krue or the fact that he bought her and her friend soda and sports drinks- which she doubts the doctor would have drunk- and had thought to make them sandwiches for the trip.
Reagan tears open a candy bar and bites off a large chunk, letting the sugar calm her nerves. It is difficult to swallow because her throat is sore and her windpipe feels deflated from being choked, although she knows it’s not. When she is finished inhaling the candy, not tasting a single bite, she drinks half a can of soda. The sugar is keeping up with her adrenaline and the shaking is starting to subside. While she sits on the tailgate of the station wagon, she notices Dr. Krue’s overnight bag has a map sticking out the top. It’s been a while since she’s even seen a physical map, but she knows how to read one. Grabbing a sandwich and another soda, Reagan closes the hatch and goes back to the driver’s seat. Once inside, she turns on the dome lighting in the car and studies the map. Dr. Krue has drawn their route in red, and it leads directly back to the valley where McClane Farm is located which he has marked with a red dot. The roads are not ones that are familiar to Reagan other than the one she is on. Thankfully, she has taken the first state route he has marked, and so far she seems to be going the route he has outlined on the map purely by accident. But in another five miles or so she would’ve missed an important turn-off. Reagan does her best to memorize the road names and numbers.
Setting the map on the passenger seat, trying not to notice how badly she is staining the supple, beige leather interior of the luxurious automobile with blood splatters and drips, Reagan sees another flashlight in the center console, something she missed in her dark escape from the university. Instinctively, she stretches across her seat and opens the glove box, finding a .38 caliber revolver and a compact 9 millimeter semi-automatic pistol. Both are fully loaded and there is an extra clip for the 9 mill. Apparently Dr. Krue in his foresight and maturity was much more prepared than she ever dreamed they would need to be.
Her shoulder wound is open enough that she can feel blood running down her chest, pooling into her bra as her face wound, which she’d barely had time to even address, drips onto the console and passenger seat as she leans. Her stomach lacerations and deep wounds must be seeping, as well because her waistband is feeling damper by the minute. She gives the back seat a cursory glance, sees a wool blanket, grabs it up and wraps it around her shoulders. Reagan decides she’ll stop again in a few hours to address her bleeding and clicks off the dome light. She starts the car again, not using the headlights until she’s a few more miles down the road and sure that there’s no other traffic. Reaching over, she snatches up the sandwich and eats it. And again there is no flavor. She can appreciate the simple nourishment that her body will take from it and the fact that it will help to keep her awake for the long trip.
Once moving again, she feels safer just in the simple act of making slow progression. Some of the roads Dr. Krue has routed are difficult to find in the dark unknown. But she sticks strictly to his route, knowing he only had her best interest and safety at heart. She tries her cell phone a couple of times but gets nothing, no signal, no ringing on the other end, just nothing. Deciding that listening to bad radio is better than falling asleep at the wheel, Reagan clicks on the satellite system radio. There isn’t much at all coming through, but she does find a sketchy, static-ridden news channel where dreary, updated reports are being given. It doesn’t exactly lend hope to an already grim situation.
“…flooding is occurring everywhere along the East Coast… tens of millions… Canada… state of emergency… California latest state hit…”
The reporter is trying his best to be composed, but his voice along with radio coverage is cracking.
“California hit? What the hell does that mean?” Reagan wonders aloud to the empty car.
“parts of Arizo… Mexico and Texas nearly gone… massive waves… cliffs falling into the sea, just as has been predicted for years… many more millions dead on the west coast… President to speak at midnight…”
The radio coverage seems to be getting worse instead of better, and the static is so loud that Reagan lowers the volume. She needs a respite from the darkness into which she is being drowned anyways.
Hundreds of millions of people in Asia and Europe are dead. Reagan doesn’t want to dwell on the same thing happening in America, the country she so loves. She wonders where her father could be on this night of misery. He’d last been stationed in Japan, though he travelled quite frequently throughout Europe on military business. She’s pretty sure that he was stateside just a few weeks ago. The government had suspended air travel after the European stock market crashed following the third tsunami strike which took out nearly the entire coastlines of Great Britain, France and even parts of Spain. The high levels of active radiation from the damn nukes were also too much of a risk to allow travel. Even peacekeepers and volunteers from the Red Cross were not permitted to fly overseas to help the victims of WWIII or the tsunamis. Satellites had tracked what scientists were calling rogue waves that had hit the Russian coastline, but naturally the Russians had denied it ever happening. The military has been running non-stop flights bringing our soldiers back to America. The last time Reagan had spoken to her grandfather he’d relayed that her father was flying out the next morning. He’d been in Germany of all places. She just hopes he made it out and made it back to the United States safely. Even if he did, he’ll not be able to come to the farm with the rest of them. His duties in the military will keep him away now more than ever. The military will have to be deployed or the country will fall to chaos just like so much of the rest of the world as Dr. Krue had confidently predicted.
She looks at the dashboard clock; it is already 1:30 a.m., so she is left to assume that the reporting is on some sort of repetitive loop.
“So much for the President’s speech,” Reagan remarks sardonically. He isn’t really such a bad guy. He’s done some good since taking office, bringing America back into super-power status. It had been years since anyone had thought of the United States as a super-power, but he’d changed all of that with strengthening the military might of the U.S. and drastically reducing trade with China and Mexico. They hadn’t taken well to it, but manufacturing had increased ten-fold and the country slowly started coming out of its debt-ridden status. People felt optimistic for the first time in a long time, they looked up to their president and the government in general. With having so many members of the government killed during the Syrian terrorist attack on the capitol years ago, there was a huge turnover of senators and congressmen. It wasn’t such a bad thing, and it was something that had needed done for many generations. Perhaps not in the exact manner that it had happened, though. Term limits had immediately been enacted while positive progress had sent the country in the right direction. And now, in the year of our Lord 2031, when we were finally getting our shit together the world as everyone knows it is ending.
All she wants is to be in the safety of her family’s arms. Reagan’s thoughts drift down memory lane and the clench in her stomach is from the heartache of missing her family and not from the stab wounds. She can almost hear the musical laughter of her sister Hannah. She is simply angelic. Everything about her is soft, light, feminine. Her flaxen blonde hair always hangs poker straight almost to her waist and her skin is always pale. She is very nearly the exact opposite of Reagan in every way. The girl is insufferably graceful where Reagan can and does trip over her own two feet all the time. And Hannah is two years younger to boot. Hannah is the right hand of their Grams. That girl follows Grams all around the large kitchen at the farm and had from the minute their father had dropped them there. She loves cooking, and her one chore on the farm outdoors is taking care of the chickens. Those stupid chickens love her, too. Wherever she goes, they follow her around as if she were the mother hen. Unfortunately, she also got her fashion sense from Grams. On most days she wears long house-dresses of just plain white with her hair in a simple braid. Very rarely does she ever wear shoes or socks, unless there is a foot of snow on the ground. The kitchen is where she could always be found anyway, so it was a shoes optional area. She and Hannah do share one passion other than their family and that is music. Hannah plays the piano as well as any concert pianist, and Reagan would play along on her battered, old guitar or on the piano with her. Their love of music and each other is so powerful that Reagan pines for her sister and her comforting presence.
Voices on the radio come in clear again, prompting Reagan to turn it back up.
“…there aren’t going to be UN troops to even be deployed. This just confirms what a haphazard decision that was to have them stationed in upstate New York. Those were supposed to be our peacekeepers in times like this. Wow, this could be bad. This could get really bad. We’ve all been witnesses to what a mess Europe has become with the rioting, mass looting, military rule and everything else that’s been going on over there. Thankfully, the last of our deployed military in Syria have been brought home, just last week. That war is no longer even relevant. I just don’t know. I don’t know. But we are still the United States. We will persevere and act civilized, the rule of law…”
“Rule of law is out the window, woman. What an idiot,” Reagan chides and clicks off the radio. Dr. Krue, dear Dr. Krue, had also told her and Uma that the police and eventually the military will abandon their posts to be able to better protect their own families. He’d said that men would not report for duty, leaving their own families unprotected and vulnerable. Reagan had also not thought this would happen. She may be gifted when it comes to medicine, but not when it comes to real life. He’d been so right about so much.
It’s been almost four days since she’s spoken with anyone back home, and her mind is going frantic with worry that something could have happened to them, too. The thought of her precious family being in danger gives her the push she needs to keep going. An RV zooms past her going the other way at about ninety miles per hour if she was to guess. Knowing how the deer move in these desolate, wooded areas off of the main interstates, Reagan keeps her speed to about sixty. If she hits one, she’d rather not have it ruin the car, rendering it useless. Her sister, Sue, had hit a deer in Kentucky a few years ago and totaled her Honda.
Susan is the oldest and naturally the most serious sister. The burden of feeling responsible for the two younger sisters must have been heavy for such a young girl who’d also lost a mother while trying to find her own way in the world. For all of their disagreements over the years, Sue is the first person who Reagan goes to for advice. She is six years Reagan’s senior and acts like she is thirty years her senior. Sue is simply an old soul. She is earthy, motherly, a natural beauty with light brown, lustrous hair that lays in smooth waves. She and her husband, Derek, have two children, Arianna and Justin. They are the best kids, and Reagan loves being their aunt. Sue and the children are already staying at the farm. Thank God Derek had insisted on them going there while Sue waited for the birth of their third child. He is stationed out of Fort Campbell, Kentucky, with his younger brother whom Reagan has never met. She knows they are both Army Rangers and do a lot of secretive type missions that Sue isn’t permitted to know about. Reagan had received many a late night call from her older, independent sister when she just needed to unload her burden of stress and cry out her worries about her husband on Reagan’s ear. But she has no way of knowing where the two brothers are and whether or not her brother-in-law is safe tonight.
To feel Grams’s soft, chubby body encircle her in a safe, warm hug now means more to Reagan than anything. To stand next to Grandpa and defend their farm, their family heritage, to their last dying breath if it comes to that keeps her pushing on. And to see her sisters’ smiles again; these are the only things keeping Reagan alive and awake- functioning on some primitive, cellular level. This road trip will be like no other. There will be no monuments to stare at, no natural wonders to behold, no souvenirs to be brought home to loved ones. This road trip is life or death, the only one that will ever matter, the trip that will see her home to her family, to safety.