My stomach dropped straight through the deck.
Lily stood on the dock.
At the very edge of the boards, her body turned back to the car, one foot forward as though she’d taken a step toward something and arrested herself at the absolute last moment before the water, her arms empty at her sides and her hands opening and closing against nothing.
“Lily!” Libby’s voice was a raw shout from across the water.
I cleared the rail before I’d finished the thought, boots back on the boards, covering the distance between us in five hard strides and locking both arms around her from behind to haul her bodily away from the edge.
She fought me.
Actually fought—twisting hard, trying to wrench herself back toward the car, her elbow finding my ribs with enough force to pull the stitches and nearly break my grip. I locked my arms tighter; she threw her weight forward anyway, both feet scrabbling at the dock boards for purchase, fingernails finding the back of my forearm and digging in without, I think, any awareness that she was doing it.
“The carrier!” The words tore out of her—not crying, not even close to crying, just raw and completely beyond composure. Her voice barely sounded like her. “The carrier—I put him down. For the bag—I put him down, and I didn’t—I left him.”
I looked past her.
The carrier sat on the ground beside the rear of the car, mesh window facing the dock, and Doc Fluffbutt’s broad orange face pressed against it in the absolute stillness cats adopt when they understand that something in their environment has gone wrong, his green eyes fixed and unblinking.
The leading edge of the horde had closed to thirty feet from the car.
Twenty-five.
I looked at Libby across the gap of water. Her face had gone completely white, both hands locked around the railing, tears running without sound. Her eyes found mine and held. I could see exactly how much she hated it.
“Fiona.” My voice came out low and even. If it shook, she’d fall apart. “Don’t overthink it.”
Her head came around sharply. “Finn—”
“Get them out.” I slid Lily across the gap into Libby’s arms. She was still twisting, still reaching for the car, her hands grasping empty air. “Two minutes. That’s it. Then you go. Don’t wait. Don’t argue. Just go.”
“Finn—” Libby’s voice broke completely on my name, and the sound of it almost stopped me, almost reached past the part of my brain that had already committed to the decision, almost found the place where my own fear lived and dragged it out into the open where it could do real damage.
I couldn’t look at her again. The decision had been made, and looking at her face would unmake it, and I didn’t have time for that, didn’t have the luxury of standing in the space between wanting to stay and needing to go while the distance closed behind me at the speed of a slow walk.
I turned and ran.
Boots on boards, then gravel, the sound dropping out from under my feet as I cleared the dock and hit the lot. The horde had spread wider. Fifteen feet from the car now, maybe less—close enough to catch the smell of them on the salt air, so close the nearest one turned its head toward me with the slow, unhurried patience of something that had nowhere else to be and all the time there was to get there.
I ran harder than my shoulder wanted me to. Every impact sent a bright, jagged line of pain through my ribs, but I did not care. I could not afford to care—the carrier sat fifteen yards ahead, and the nearest of them shuffled ten yards beyond it.
The carrier handle came up into my grip, and I didn’t break stride—scooped it mid-run, Doc Fluffbutt’s weight swinging hard inside as the carrier arced up off the ground, and I pivoted on my outside foot with everything I had, redirecting all of my momentum back toward the dock without stopping, the carrier clutched tight against my chest with both arms wrapped aroundit, and inside the mesh a low guttural yowl built and broke as the cat pressed himself flat against the carrier floor.
Behind me, the sounds of the horde shifted and grew louder as the closest ones reoriented toward the movement, toward the noise, toward the only fast-moving thing in a lot full of slow shapes converging on the space I had just occupied.
I didn’t look back.
I ran.
Forty Three
We Left Him There -Libby
Isaw him grab it.
For one heartbeat—just one—I could breathe again.
Finn’s hand closed around the carrier, yanking it up as the cat thrashed inside. A terrified, muffled yowl cut through everything else like a knife through glass. He turned.
