There wasn’t anything left except the sound—wet, rattling breathing from throats full of fluid, teeth snapping together so close to my ear I could hear the enamel grinding, fingers digging into my jacket, my arms, my skin, pressing harder, pulling in opposite directions, trying to take me apart piece by piece.
Teeth caught my collar—fabric, then foam, then nothing. The next one would find skin. I had maybe thirty seconds left to bea person instead of a problem for whoever came through here next.
No.
Not like this.
Not yet.
My brain snapped back hard.
Survival. Survive. The one instinct that outlasted everything else, that kept firing even when the rest of me had already written the obituary.
I dropped.
I let my full weight drop, a dead weight, letting gravity do what my muscles couldn’t. Their fingers lost their grip for half a second as I collapsed, hitting the ground hard enough to jar my teeth. Pain flared through my shoulder again, but I shoved past it.
“Stay quiet now,” I muttered through gritted teeth, the words barely audible even to me. I didn’t know or care whether I was talking to myself or the cat.
I dragged the carrier with me, rolling onto my stomach and pulling it against my chest as I shoved myself under the car. Metal scraped along my back, tearing through my jacket and biting into the skin beneath. Gravel dug into my forearms and palms, grinding into existing cuts, mixing dirt and rust into open wounds. The undercarriage hung low—too low—and I had to flatten myself completely, pressing my face into oil-stained dirt that smelled of gasoline.
Hands followed. They always followed.
Reaching under, arms shoved through the gap between the car’s frame and the ground, gray fingers scraping along the pavement, clawing blindly, swiping back and forth in wide arcs, hunting for anything they could catch. One of them found my boot—just brushed it, fingertips dragging across the leather—and I kicked hard, driving my heel straight back. The impact connected with something solid, and a wet crack sounded.
Move.
I shoved forward on my elbows, ignoring the way my shoulder screamed with every inch, ignoring the glass that bit into my forearms, ignoring the warm trickle of blood running down my wrist and dripping onto the ground beneath me. I pushed through dirt and the dried remains of something I told myself had been an animal—told myself that hard, told myself that twice—until I saw it.
An opening. Trailer skirting. A section that had buckled and bent away from its frame, leaving a gap just wide enough for a body to squeeze through. Maybe. If that body didn’t mind losing some skin in the process.
“Come on…”
I dragged myself toward it, elbows screaming, the carrier scraping along beside me, its soft plastic catching on every rock. I grabbed the bent skirting and pulled, the sharp metal edge slicing across my palm, and forced myself through the gap, shoulders twisting at an angle that sent my vision swimming. The carrier jammed against the edge—stuck—and for one horrible, endless second I lay there half in and half out, exposed, the sounds of dragging feet and snapping teeth growing louder behind me.
I yanked the carrier sideways, plastic scraping against metal with a shriek that cut across the lot and kept going, bouncing off every wall and car and surface until the whole place was ringing with it, until there was nowhere in that lot it hadn’t reached.
Too loud.
Too slow.
I forced myself through, twisting, shoving, and ripping the carrier free with a final pull that tore a chunk of plastic off its corner. I tumbled into the dark space beneath the trailer.
I didn’t stop. Didn’t breathe. Didn’t allow myself a fraction of a second to process what had just happened.
I just crawled. Back. Further back. Dragging myself over damp earth, rusted pipes, and the crumbling remains of old insulation, deeper into the crawlspace. The light from outside dimmed to almost nothing—just thin gray slivers cutting through gaps in the skirting. The sounds shifted, becoming muffled and distant, but still there.
Always there.
My fingers dug into the cold earth on either side of me, nails sinking deep, and I held still.
Listening.
Outside, they moved. Feet shuffled slowly through gravel. Bodies brushed against the trailer’s metal siding, producing long, low scraping sounds like nails on a chalkboard drawn out to infinity. Hands hit the walls with dull thuds—not trying to break through, not yet, just… searching. Testing.
Something dropped to the ground just outside the skirting. A body hitting the gravel, lowering itself. And then—
A face.
