Fuzzy Navel

12:15 A.M.
JACK

A SHOT BURIES ITSELF into the lawn a yard ahead of me.

“She found my gun,” Phin says. “Go, I’ll cover you.”

I don’t argue with him. All around us is open land. The only cover is near the house. Phin aims the shotgun and fires, and I move as fast as I can, beelining for my front door. I feel like I’m running in slow motion, my feet in quicksand, each step harder than the last. But the thought of Alex in the house with the people I love makes me discover reserves I didn’t know I had left.

I make it to my porch without being shot, wheezing and dripping sweat. I drop the gear, pull the Desert Eagle, and go in low, keeping a two-handed grip on the weapon.

The living room is clear. I hear screaming, can’t pinpoint it.

“Harry!”

“We’re fine!” he yells from the bathroom. “Alex took off through the garage!”

I rush over to the garage door, get a quick peek at Munchel on the floor, his stomach wound leaking bloody foam. He’s the one screaming.

I look past him, see Alex heading for the side window. I fire twice, missing as she dives through.

I can’t let her get away.

I hobble between the boxes, crouching low if she decides to fire at me, sticking the barrel of my gun out the window and jerking left and right to see if she’s hiding on either side.

Alex comes up from below.

She grabs my wrist and squeezes like a vise. I keep my grip on the pistol but can’t aim it toward her. I sense, rather than see, her gun hand coming up, and I reach blindly and latch on to it, stiff-arming the barrel away from my head.

Alex tugs, dragging me out of the window, broken glass scraping against my stomach, hips, and legs. I fall on top of her, each of us trying to gain control of our weapons without letting the other do the same, my face inches from hers as we both grunt and strain.

She rolls, swarming on top of me, straddling my chest. Slowly, inexorably, her gun begins to swing toward my face. There’s nothing I can do to stop it. I’m injured, close to passing out again, and Alex is so big and so strong and so damn evil. She’s not a human being. She’s a force of nature.

Her gun bears down on my forehead.

“After I kill you,” she says, “I’m coming back for your friends and family.”

I’m not scared.

I’m enraged.

I hear a yell – a bone-chilling, animalistic yell. It’s coming from me. And then I open up my palm, letting the Desert Eagle drop, flexing my biceps and grabbing hold of Alex’s hair and yanking her head so hard I give the bitch whiplash.

Alex falls to the side, off of me, and I shove her gun hand away and get my knees under me. Then I make a fist with my left hand and hit her square in the nose.

I can feel the cartilage crack under my knuckles. Her gun goes off, shooting into the night sky well over my head. She rolls with the punch, and I scramble to my feet, ready to lunge in under the gun and rip out her heart with my bare hands.

But she doesn’t attack. She runs.

The monster runs away.

I scan the ground, find the Desert Eagle, and snatch it up, but she’s already sprinting around the corner.

“Jack!”

Phin, at the garage window, shotgun in his hand. He looks sort of fuzzy around the edges, and I feel my legs start to wobble.

“Make sure she doesn’t get back in the house,” I tell him.

Then I go after her.