A man’s, from the blue house across the street: “I don’t know you, darlin’, but you best get outta this house, pronto! You—HEY! You come at me again, I swear I’ll shoot! Get back! Get baaAAACC—” A burst of sound and light from the neighbor’s living room window: a woman’s body crashes out through the glass, landing on the jack-o’-lantern in the concrete driveway with a sound that makes Michael’s throat crawl.
Michael freezes. His brain shouts, fleetingly, that this is a Halloween prank—but then all thought comes to an end when a light turns on in his house, and he realizes Ron is coming, Mom is coming, and she is going to ask him what he is doing out here. . . .
Michael looks back, to maybe reassure Patrick. But though Patrick’s frightened hands are unclasping and clasping on Michael’s chest, his mouth is also fidgeting to not smile. He thinks this is The Game, Michael realizes. He thinks that lady was a bad guy. And he’s trying to look brave.
Because becoming brave means something—maybe everything—to him.
And just before the front door of Michael’s house opens and the night falls apart, Patrick’s eyes hold a hope: a hope that maybe this time, he, Patrick, can finally be strong, even when things are scary. That hope that if he is just brave enough, he can outrun the pit inside him.
That hope that is so beautiful, and dangerous.
As the Hummer roared across the bridge to the Capitol, Bobbie’s eyes widened . . . but not just to whites. Her eyes were a rapidly pooling black. It was as if the old woman’s pupils had been pierced by a pin, and the darkness was leaking out.
Holly turned away from the fire behind them and noticed Bobbie again, this time recoiled instinctively and without sound.
“What the?” Patrick whispered.
“WHAAAAAATTTT!” Bobbie screamed.
Her hands curled into claws, her jaws a nest of fangs. She meant to kill; there was no doubt.
She lunged.
And with no more than a half inch between her claws and Patrick’s face, her seat harness caught her, with a click!
Michael dove for her. His ribs struck the hard top of his seat and sang. For a terror-syrupy moment, he was caught atop the seat, wriggling.
“PATRICK, GET AWAY!” he cried, and finally thudded into the rear of the Humvee. Hank and Holly watched in shaken awe.
The monster wearing Bobbie’s skin lunged again, this time throwing the harness off with impossible strength, and Patrick was just staring in confusion.
“What the hell’s goin’ on back there?” Jopek shouted, heaving the steering wheel back and forth as he dodged the few remaining Bellows ahead.
Michael snagged Bobbie by the arm of her coat, redirecting her momentum, slamming her to the floor. Something inside her snapped, hard and loud. Tears leapt to Michael’s eyes, his stomach going hot and loose.
The wind was shrieking with each swerve of the car; the rear doors flapped and zoomed, back and forth.
“What—what—what—” Hank kept repeating.
Without warning, Patrick burst into tears, collapsed onto the floor.
“She got bit, oh Christ, she got bit somewhere!” Holly cried.
Everything was screaming. Everyone knew.
Bobbie squirmed beneath him like a weasel in a sack. But her eyes: they hadn’t turned all-black like Bellows’ eyes yet. Thin white strands still remained in her eye sockets, and the dark and light in her eyeballs were churning, as if warring for domination of Bobbie’s body.
Bobbie, in her own voice for one millisecond, said, “Michael?”
She’s not all-dead yet—oh God, maybe we can still figure something out. We’re almost to the Capitol, just hold her down, just for a few more seconds—
Michael called out, “Hank, help me, hold her—Hank!”
But in that moment, roaring again, Bobbie’s hands flew up and shoved Michael toward the sucking door. He grabbed out blindly, and somehow snagged underparts of a seat, stopping on his back; he could feel the vibration of the tires beneath him.
Bobbie stood again, seeming to flood the compartment, huge in her hunger. An image rose, unbidden, in Michael’s mind: let her come, grab her again, throw her out the door.
Because you can’t save her, Michael’s mind hissed, and the hopeless thought flooded him with a new variety of terror. Bobbie had been kind, utterly good, but she was going to die, this was her ending. And there was no controlling that.
And as despair struck him in the endless milli-moment, Michael pivoted out of Bobbie’s path, caught Bobbie by the left shoulder of her coat, and spun her, flung her perfectly into the jump seat mounted