When the boy stops crying, Jujy grabs him by his wounded arm and pulls him through the yard towards the cavern exit.
On the way out of the cave, Franklin scans the area and stores everything he sees inside of his brain. Troy whimpers at Jujy as she tugs on his wounded arm, splashing blood onto the white chocolate ground as they flee. It doesn’t take them long to get to the exit.
As they go around the bend, they run into a group of candy people. The boy screams. Jujy stops so quickly that Franklin runs into her. He stumbles, but catches himself on his false leg. Though he doesn’t drop the egg, the blanket falls off.
There are five candy people there. One is rainbow-colored, one is fat and red, one has a big green cotton candy beard, one is gumball blue, and one looks like he’s wearing a giant wedding cake for a hat. They all stare at Jujy. They see her pulling the boy towards the exit. They see Franklin carrying the egg. It doesn’t take them long to figure out what is going on.
“Run!” Jujy cries, then she takes off, going back the way they came.
Green Beard looks at his fellow candy people and they nod their heads.
Franklin runs after her as fast as he can with the egg in his arms. The candy people climb like spiders up the side of the hill towards them, trying to cut them off. The boy shrieks as Jujy rips him through the chocolate mud. Even pulling the boy, she moves three times as fast as Franklin.
“Jujy,” Franklin calls, so that she knows he’s falling behind.
She turns and comes back for him. Instead of running, she grabs Franklin and pulls him off of the path into the lollipop trees. They zigzag through the forest. When they get to a ditch, Jujy pulls them down to the ground.
“We have to hide,” she whispers.
The candy men scurry through the forest, looking for them. Troy’s cries become louder as he sees them across the pond of watermelon soda.
“Quiet,” Franklin tells Troy as he holds the egg securely between his legs.
Troy continues to cry.
“You have to be quiet or they will hear us,” Franklin says.
Troy continues to cry.
Jujy grabs Troy by the hair and pulls him towards her. She bites into his neck and rips muscle tissue from his throat. The boy shrieks louder.
“Jujy!” Franklin screams.
“He won’t stop crying,” she says. Then she bites into his throat again.
Troy stops crying. He holds his neck as he tries to push her away from him.
“Let him go,” Franklin whispers. “He’s stopped.”
Jujy releases him. She looks at Franklin, chewing on a large piece of the boy’s flesh like bubblegum.
“I’m not willing to risk our baby for it,” she says.
Franklin gives Jujy the egg and goes to the boy. Blood is gushing out of him, but his jugular has not been cut. He tears another strip of cloth from his apple suit and wraps it around the boy’s throat.
“Keep pressure on it,” he tells the boy. “If the bleeding is stopped you will survive.”
The boy puts pressure on the wound but he does not respond.
“Let’s go,” Jujy says.
With only one candy person in sight, they make a run for it. The fat red jawbreaker candy man is on the other side of the pond. He sees them as they run towards the exit, but he is too slow to get around the pond to cut them off. He yells for the others in a deep guttural voice.
They run into a pack of gum-goblins in the sugar grass field near the exit. The ferocious fruity-colored blobs bounce up and down at the wounded child. Carrying the egg under her arm like a big football, Jujy pulls out her red vine whip and cracks it at the creatures as they run through the field. The gum-goblins chase after them, snapping at their heels like gummy sharks.
The rainbow candy man cuts them off before they get to the exit. Jujy strikes at him with her whip, but Rainbow catches it in his purple jaws and rips it out of her hands. A gum-goblin lunges at Troy and Franklin. They duck and the blob flies over their heads at Rainbow. The candy man yells as the blob bites into his face.
“Come on,” Jujy cries to the others.
As Rainbow falls to the ground, the gum-goblins swarm him like piranha. They take bites out of his candy flesh as they bounce up and down at him. Franklin looks back to see Rainbow’s head disappearing into a yellow blob’s stomach. The severed head still screams within the gelatinous goo.
They make it through the maze of sewers to the streets above. Hiding in a park, underneath the slide, they watch as the other candy people crawl out of the manhole after them. They gurgle at the moon and then separate, hunting the streets for the traitorous candy woman.
“Now what are we going to do?” Jujy says, almost ready to cry.
“We need to get out of the streets,” Franklin says. “We can go back to my place until they give up their hunt.”
“Is that far?”
“No,” Franklin says.
When it looks safe, they crawl out of the playground into the shadows. Then they creep out of the neighborhood towards Franklin’s apartment.
On the way, Jujy says, “I can never go back. If I return home they will kill me.”
“Then you won’t go back,” Franklin says.
“Where will we live?”
“We can live here, in the human world,” Franklin says.
“I can’t live here,” she says. “I would never be accepted into human society.”
“Then I will hide you,” Franklin says. “I will disguise you as a human as you disguised me as a candy person.”
“Will it work?” Jujy asks.
“I believe so,” Franklin says. “But we will have to deal with my wife. She will probably be at the apartment when we get there.
“What is a wife?”
“She is my mate.”
She gets angry. “You have a human mate?”
Franklin said the wrong thing. “Not really. We are married but I do not love her. Actually, I hate her more than anyone I have ever known.”
Jujy feels somewhat relieved by his words, but she’s still a little angry and jealous.
“You can’t have a human mate anymore,” she says to him.
Franklin just nods his head.
When they get to Franklin’s apartment, Crabcake greets them at the door. The little kitty meows at Franklin and crawls up his leg into his arms.
“Crabby!” Franklin says, nuzzling his nose into his red, green, and white fur. “You’re okay!”
The apartment is a bigger disaster then it has ever been. It reeks of meth smoke and urine. All of Franklin’s burned belongings are still on the floor. Crabcake’s kitty litter box has not been cleaned at all and the cat poop is piled so high that it has spilled out onto the carpet. Jujy puts the egg on the floor and examines it for cracks. Troy falls on the floor and crawls to the other side of the room.
Sarah, Susan, and their boyfriend, David, are passed out on the couch. When she wakes up, Susan yells, “What the fuck?”
The three of them get up. David grabs a baseball bat from the floor.
“Who the hell are you freaks?” Susan says, hiding behind David. “Get the hell out of here!”
Sarah moves in closer. “Franklin?” She examines his face. “Is that you?”
