I SEE HER coming.
Two days ago, on Dagger Hill, I saw a plane just as it was about to burst from the heart of a vicious thunderstorm and squash the lit fuse of our summer. I didn’t do anything. Couldn’t have done anything. Superman stops planes, not some kid in a red puffer vest and bifocals.
Tonight, though, I could tell something was wrong with Alice. Sonya helped her get coffee, and she was fine. But when she turned back around with the hot mug in her hands, her face was all screwed up. Not just confused but warped. A totally bizarre look in her eyes, as if somebody else was staring out of them.
I heard Sonya ask, “You okay, Alice?” And I saw the mug slipping from Alice’s fingers before it started to fall. She was whispering that rhyme, like something from an old fairy tale I’ve never heard before. A song sung four.
Now the mug is shattering on the linoleum, spraying droplets of coffee everywhere. I feel one hit my cheek and burn there for a second. Another smacks into my forehead.
Alice is screaming. Then she stops, and that knotted-up look that Alice has curdles into a hateful sneer, and before the last pieces of her broken coffee cup settle, she’s pulling herself up onto her desk, shoving picture frames and brick-bracks out of the way. The smiling face of someone who must be her husband dives headfirst to the floor, and his grin is cut apart by a spiderweb of cracks.
I still have Sonya’s hand—she’s gripping mine so tight that my fingertips are going numb.
Don is directly in Alice’s path as she comes across the desk. His coffee mug tips backward and spills down the front of his shirt, still steaming hot. He shouts and shoves himself out of the way, almost falling out of his chair. Deputy Conner looks on, her eyes widening, watching without reacting.
“Hey!” one of the soldiers behind her yells. “Hey, what the hell is—” He’s cut off by the sound of more gunshots from outside. He turns to his comrade. “Go check it out. I’ll deal with this. Hey, lady! What’s your problem?”
Alice ignores him, coming at us with knobby claws, long nails coated in robin’s egg polish. A slippery string of drool dangles from the corner of her mouth. Her teeth shine behind her peeled lips, gnashing together as if she’s chewing on a gristly piece of steak—or fantasizing about it, anyway.
Beside me, Gabe’s voice: “Alice? Alice! What’s wrong? Charlie, what are you doing?”
I’m lifting my crutch, grabbing it by the bottom like a baseball bat, and taking a swing. The aluminum piping smashes into Alice’s knee. She falls over, arms flailing, and smacks an open palm against my left thigh. I bite back a scream, can’t hold it, let it out. My eyes fill with tears. I bend forward as Alice hits the floor, screaming in a guttural way that freaks me out. It doesn’t sound like something her vocal cords can produce. Just like her eyes, it was like the noise was coming from somewhere other than Alice’s body.
I stumble back, trying to get my crutch under my arm, and nearly lose my balance. But Gabe is behind me, holding me up. Sonya, too.
On the floor, Alice squirms, her arms jerking like pistons, as if she can’t figure out how to get up. Her eyes are huge and angry, swiveling around in their sockets like the roller balls on an arcade game console.
“Kids!” That’s Deputy Conner’s voice. She’s standing farther inside the office now, near a gun cage that’s standing open, a set of keys dangling from the lock. There’s a shotgun in her hands. She pulls back on the action and buries the stock in the crook of her shoulder, aiming the barrel at Alice. “Get out of here! I’ve got her covered!”
Out in the entryway, the remaining soldier sees Deputy Conner with the gun, takes another glance at Alice thrashing on the floor, then turns and runs out the door into a separate chaos that I can only imagine.
Me, Gabe, and Sonya don’t hesitate—we follow in the soldier’s footsteps, avoiding Alice’s reaching, snatching hands as we dart past her. My leg is in a fury of pain, but I push past it, crutch-stepping alongside my friends.
As we run past Deputy Conner, Gabe reaches out and squeezes her arm. She nods at him, only taking her eyes off Alice for a second.
Sonya hurries ahead to the doors while Gabe stops again at what looks like a storage closet.
“Wait, wait, wait,” he says.
I glance around and see Alice finally gaining purchase, getting her knees under her like a toddler learning to walk. Gabe opens the closet door and ducks inside. Sonya is at the mouth of the lobby, bobbing from foot to foot, like she has to pee.
“Uh, Gabe, buddy?” I say.
“Just a second,” he says from inside the closet.
Alice has crawled back to her desk, very near where Don was a moment ago. Now, he’s pressed himself against the wall behind Deputy Conner.
“I … uh … I’m gonna stay with her,” he says, and points at the gun instead of the woman. “Good luck, Mr. Bencroft.”
“Gabe!” Sonya yells. “Let’s go!”
“Got ’em,” Gabe mutters. He reappears. “Keys,” he says, and tosses a set with a Magic 8 Ball key chain to Sonya. She catches them deftly. “Dad’s patrol car. Go!”
We’re off again, leaving Alice, Deputy Conner, and Don behind. We cut through the lobby, then through the front doors to a scene I can’t really describe. It’s the Triangle, as we’ve always known it, but it isn’t.
A swarm of Windale residents has come from all directions. Hundreds of them with the same wild, possessed look in their eyes as Alice had. They’re smashing storefront windows, tipping garbage cans over, leaping at soldiers and tackling them to the ground. Some of the soldiers are firing rounds into the air, but no one takes notice. The Dagger Hill anomaly has spread itself like a virus to these people, and they’re here to do what it tells them. The voice on the Hill.
Higgins is standing beside a jeep, flanked by two of her men. In the back seat of the vehicle, Chief Albright and Dr. Gutierrez are sitting, strapped in, with their hands still tied in front of them. They’re looking around as snarling, screeching members of our community descend on the army soldiers and the police station.
“What the hell?” Gabe says.
We slow down at the top of the steps, looking out at the madness unfolding. Soldiers are spilling off Humvees and jeeps, trying to keep order but colliding with town citizens, people I’ve seen here and there my whole life, people who are now tearing rifles from the hands of soldiers and using the butt ends to pulverize kneecaps. Mr. Henries, a mail carrier who used to leave bags of chocolate chip cookies in our mailbox, clocks an MP in the side of the head with double fists, then throws himself on top of the soldier and bites into the man’s cheek like it’s a raw apple. Blood spurts and the MP screams and Mr. Henries, with dripping red teeth, moves on to the next victim.
A group of townspeople led by none other than Maureen Newcomb, owner of Miles of Styles hair salon, plows into Colonel Higgins. They funnel themselves between vehicles like a herd in a cattle chute, tramping over Higgins’s bodyguards and the colonel herself. Everybody disappears in a tangle of limbs.
The Triangle fills up with the sounds of shattering glass and shrieking and gunfire and the hard, meaty sound of bodies smashing into other bodies. People are running, screaming, tearing at their clothes, looking panicked but sure of themselves, confident in the mission they’ve been given.
And, it seems, the mission is us. Because as soon as Gabe and Sonya and I are spotted at the top of the police station steps, almost all the faces darting back and forth across the courtyard and the adjacent streets look in our direction. Their eyes are feral, furious points of light swaying beneath the streetlamps.
“Guys,” I say. “We need to get out of here.”
Sonya is already hurrying down the steps, but Gabe is hesitating at the top.
Behind us, I hear the blast of a shotgun going off, followed by a shrill, animalistic scream. A few seconds later, there’s the squeak-hiss of the station doors swinging open and the scuffling sound of Alice’s flats on concrete.
I don’t wait any longer—I stagger down the steps one at a time, step-clack, step-clack, step-clack. Gabe is a second behind me and catches up quickly, but he doesn’t run past, doesn’t leave me in his wake. He matches my pace and sticks with me. I squeeze the grip on my crutch, knuckles going white, gritting my teeth. I glance over my shoulder to see Alice still standing at the top, looking out at the scene. If the real Alice is in there somewhere, she must be petrified. Or maybe she’s lucky. Fortunate enough to have her fear swallowed by the anomaly, used as fuel instead of fertilizer.
In the corner of my eye, I notice Higgins clambering to her feet between her jeep and another sedan. The colonel’s perfect bun has come loose, and there are stray curls of hair dangling around her head. Her cheek and chin are purple and swelling. The bottom half of her face is canted at a weird angle. Somebody broke her jaw, I realize.
There’s a woman in the street with her hands covering her face. She looks familiar, but with only her wide, petrified eyes showing through her splayed fingers, I can’t be sure. She’s screaming. No, howling. “WHAT IS HAPPENING? SOMEBODY HELP ME! THIS ISN’T REAL! THIS CAN’T BE REAL! SOMEBODY PLEASE, GOD, HELP!”
The butt of a rifle swings in behind her, cracks against her skull. She goes down and goes quiet. The soldier who knocked her out stands over her, his head angled down to look at her. Then he moves on, stepping over the woman’s limp body.
Sonya is already waiting by the passenger side door. Gabe and I move around either side of the Crown Vic when the chief yells for his son.
“Gabe!” he shouts over the noise. “Gabe! Where the hell are you going?!”
“To try to stop this!” Gabe yells back.
Meanwhile, Alice stumbles down the station steps, moving with a slow caution that makes it seem like she’s never used a flight of stairs before. She’s got a swift enough pace, though, that in a few seconds, she’ll be back on top of us. She screams coming off the last step, her mouth huge, opening so wide that the skin at the corners of her lips is splitting. She lurches forward, closing the distance from a few feet to maybe two.
Another gun blast sounds off, and a raw red hole materializes in Alice’s forehead. Her eyes roll up, and her momentum carries her another few inches. Then she’s tipping, smacking down on the asphalt with a fleshy slap.
Sonya stops in the act of getting into the passenger seat and stares with Gabe and me in the direction of the gunshot.
I look around for the soldier who fired and find Higgins instead. She has her sidearm drawn, the end of it smoldering. She drops her arm, as if the gun were suddenly too heavy for her to hold, and her eyes find me, Gabe, and Sonya.
Then three of the anomaly’s new puppets circle her. In one moment, their faces are filled with hate, but they’re at least recognizable. In the next, one of them turns, tracing Higgins’s stare back to us, and its head is covered in thousand-leggers, creeping and writhing over the skin of his face and neck.
To my right, Sonya flinches back, nearly dropping the car keys.
“Sone!” I call. “Sonya! Look at me!”
She turns, finds me. Eyes wide and red.
“It’s not real,” I say. “That part isn’t real. It can’t hurt us.” The words feel false, but I have to try to protect her, to ease the fear that the monster has gone to such lengths to incubate.
Sonya closes her fingers around the keys, pressing her lips into a firm, determined line. She slides into the passenger seat of the cruiser, leans over, starts the engine. It hiccups to life, then immediately dies.
“What the hell?” Sonya shouts, banging the heel of her hand against the dashboard.
“Gabe!” It’s Chief Albright again, standing in the back of the jeep, kicking at the occasional soldier as they fight past the people who are fending them off. “Gabe, you have to hit the gas a few times when you start her up!” he yells. “Whatever you’re going to do, go do it!”
Behind me, Gabe is frozen, watching the chaos unravel across the Triangle, glancing at his dad just long enough to nod at what he’s saying. Feeling useless, I pull the back door open and toss my crutch inside. I take two deep breaths, grabbing the doorframe with both hands, and slide in. The pain in my leg flares, but it’s dull compared with Alice’s falling into it back inside the station. I slide backward across the bench seat, with my cast stretched out over the tattered leather. Gabe is still outside, stalled where he stands.
“Gabe!” Sonya and I shout at the same time.
That finally snaps him out of it.
Gabe slides into the driver’s seat, twists the keys in the ignition, and revs the engine. The Crown Vic coughs, roars, chokes, purrs. Gabe slams the gearshift down and plants his foot on the gas pedal. The cruiser rockets back into the street. It smashes into the rear end of someone else’s vehicle, sending it spinning. For one heart-stopping instant, I think there’s someone standing near that other car when we hit it. But the road behind us is mostly clear.
Glancing outside, I see Deputy Conner on the opposite side of Higgins’s jeep, helping Dr. Gutierrez get out. Colonel Higgins herself is nowhere in sight as Gabe cranks the shifter down to DRIVE and floors it again. He swerves around a group of our neighbors at the last second.
The chief’s patrol car carries us up Main Street, away from the worst of the bedlam, into a whole separate kind.