His partner paused to look out at the carnage. His gaze landed on Root. Malcolm knew the moment it happened because the cop’s head rocked back at the sight of the thing.
Malcolm glanced at Violet. “Let’s go! Move!”
They’d both been numb. Paralyzed. Now she grabbed her side of the crate. Malcolm could no longer see Maggie’s dead eye staring at him through the hole, but her corpse shifted against the wood as they lifted. It thumped, and scratched inside the crate as they ran toward the police car.
“Come back here, Violet!” Elias screamed as he broke into a run. “I’m not done with you! I’m your husband!”
“You’re dead!” Violet cried, not glancing back toward him. “But even alive, you were a shitty excuse for a husband!”
It might’ve been funny, if it weren’t all so real.
The cop who’d spotted Root started into the tall grass toward them, one hand on his holster.
“What are you waiting for?” Malcolm screamed at him. “Shoot them, goddamn it!”
The wrong thing to say. The cop had enough worry in him now that he drew his service revolver, even raised it, aim wavering back and forth between Root coming on the left and Elias on the right. But he glanced at Malcolm in confusion, trying to make sense of the words.
They passed him, carrying the crate.
Violet shouted at him as they passed, “They’re killing people! It’s a slaughter! Shoot!”
Even then, he didn’t pull the trigger.
Behind him, his partner reached the monster on the road. The cop reached out his hand, still somehow thinking the blood all over it might be its own, from crash injuries. Never mind how tall it was, how twisted, or the bloodstained smile it gave him, full of teeth. At the last second, that cop must have realized how badly he’d screwed up, because he uttered a quiet prayer before he started to scream. The thing ripped him open like a birthday gift. His insides slopped to the rain-slicked pavement.
The cop with his gun drawn turned at the sound of his partner’s scream. Root and Elias rushed at him then, and he spun back around moments before they reached him. The officer knew how to use his weapon. He shot Root through the heart just before Elias grabbed him by the wrist. Root stumbled backward and fell into the grass and mud.
Elias snapped the officer’s wrist just as the man pulled the trigger again. The bullet went through Elias’s left eye, punched out the back of his skull, and Elias fell to his knees, dragging the cop with him as he dropped. There was screaming, down in the grass, not far from the edge of the road.
Malcolm reached the police car. This had been his hope, his prayer. The car was still running, the keys were in it, and the passenger door was open. He yanked open the rear door. For a heartbeat, he was sure the crate would not fit, but it did, wood scraping against the inside of the doorframe.
The passenger seat blocked the way. It was too far back. He screamed at Violet to move the seat up, and rested the corner of the crate on the back seat so she could let go. She dropped into the passenger seat, reached for the lever, slid forward. The crate tore up the upholstery of the back seat as Malcolm shoved it inside.
He slammed the door, the blood from his head wound bubbling on his lips and turning his vision red. The fire engine sirenwound down as it roared up behind the police car, and firefighters started leaping down from the massive machine.
Malcolm opened the police car driver’s door.
A fireman spotted him, started lumbering toward him. Malcolm turned to climb into the police car and found himself facing the twisted creature who’d crashed the train, only the open driver’s door between them.
“Leave her,” the creature said in a voice so guttural and an accent so thick the words were nearly indecipherable.
Malcolm threw himself behind the steering wheel. Tried to yank the door closed.
The monster grabbed him by his blood-matted hair and dragged him out again. Onto the road. The thing towered over him.
“Violet, go!” Malcolm screamed. “Drive!”
Thinking it might not be too late for her. She might still get away. Thinking he loved her and what a terrible fate she’d found on the night she met Elias Wise and joined this damned family.
Malcolm kicked the thing’s knee. Bone cracked. He took its wrist and pulled it down beside him in the road. It had sounded like the war earlier, but now it felt like that, too. Malcolm had been a good soldier, a good fighter. He hadn’t survived by giving up the fight when it looked as if death had come for him.
He flipped on top of it, straddled the thing, grabbed its skull, and started to smash it against the road over and over. The fireman shouted at him to stop, thinking he must be the monster here. Malcolm kept screaming at Violet to go, to drive away. He pushed off the thing, and as it started to rise, he grabbed the door and slammed it on the creature’s head. Once, twice, a third time, until black blood as thick as tar oozed from its ruined face.
The fireman dragged Malcolm backward.
Other firemen had started across the grass to help the crash victims, and then spotted Elias and Root, both of whom were on their feet again. Both of whom were furious but also injured, hungry, full of cruelty and hatred.
Malcolm pushed the fireman away, stepped over the crawling, bleeding monster, and poured himself into the driver’s seat. His ears still rang and he felt off balance, but adrenaline had flushed the pain from his back and skull.
