When something fell right outside the bedroom door, she screamed again.
The light went out of the window. Some of the things were leaving, heading to the building across the street, following the light.
Both girls yelped again as something hit and clawed at the bedroom door, which moved an inch inward against the toppled dresser that Kaitlyn had shoved against it. A gurgling moan followed.
Kaitlyn ran to the dresser and shoved back against it. The door slammed shut again, but the moan intensified. She continued to push and she felt the intruder doing the same, but she didn’t budge. She was stronger or heavier than it was.
But if there’s more ...
She held her breath; she could only clearly hear one.
Hannah had stopped screaming.
“Hannah?” she yelled into the semi-darkness. “Are you—”
“They want us to stop screaming.”
“What?”
“Shhh!” Hannah said, aggressively. Then she whispered, hoping Kaitlyn would do the same. “They want us to be quiet.”
“They who?” Kaitlyn whispered back.
“The people across the street.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know.” Hannah paused, thinking. “I think we were making the people outside crazy.”
Of course! Kaitlyn almost shouted, but caught herself before she did. She only broke her silence when she thought of a question that had to be asked. “How do you know what they are saying?”
Hannah shrugged. “They wrote it down.”
NICOLE
Seeing that her idea had worked, Nicole scribbled another note on the bristol board.
ARE YOU ALONE?
“We know they’re not alone,” David said as she wrote. “Mudmen have been breaking in this whole time!”
“I mean other people, stupid,” Nicole said, shining the flashlight on the new note. “You know, like their parents?”
“Right.”
The little girl across the street held up two fingers.
“It looks like it’s just the two of them,” Nicole said, “but I want to make sure. This kid looks like she’s only Ryan’s age.”
ANY ADULTS?
The girl shook her head, then quickly jumped back.
Nicole shifted the light, futilely trying to see farther through the girls’ window.
The girl came back quickly, clearly panicking. Tears streamed down her face.
Nicole quickly wrote another note.
HOW MANY ARE IN THERE?
The girl stared at the note for a long while, then shook her head.
“She doesn’t know what that means,” said Alex. “Here, gimme the light!” He grabbed the light from Nicole who let him take it. He shone the light into the street, hitting as many of the mudmen as possible, then pointed it back to the sign.
When he put the light back on the window, the girl was gone.
KAITLYN
“They ... want to know ... how many people ... are in the house,” Hannah said to Kaitlyn, out of breath from screaming and crying.
“There’s two of us!” Kaitlyn whispered.
“No, I know!” Hannah’s whisper grew louder with frustration. “How many ... bad people?”
The question made Kaitlyn afraid. She had no idea. When she had looked outside, there were dozens of them. But maybe more. Maybe hundreds. Or thousands! Everyone in town! She had no idea.
“Lots,” she said, gulping.
Another wave of confusion passed over Hannah’s face. “How do I say ‘lots’? They can’t hear me.”
“I don’t know!” Kaitlyn blurted out, her own frustration coming through. She covered her mouth when the thing outside the door responded with more scratching. “Give them a big number with your hands. Fifty.”
“Fifty?!” Hannah gasped.
More footsteps on the stairs. In the hall. Right outside the door.
“Not fifty,” Kaitlyn whispered, remembering that she had to keep Hannah calm. “Just a big number. More like ... ten.”
Hannah sighed with relief and went back to the window to respond. Kaitlyn felt ashamed. She didn’t know for sure, but she’d probably lied.
NICOLE
“Ten!” David shouted.
“I can see that,” Nicole said. “Thank you.”
She couldn’t think of their next step. The girls were only across the street, but they might as well have been on the other side of town. Nicole pointed the flashlight to the street. Still too many mudmen to go outside.
“What time is it?” she asked.
Alex looked at his watch. “It’s ... 6:47 a.m. Holy crap, I didn’t think it was that late.”
“Late?” David asked.
“Yeah,” Alex shrugged, “I thought it was, like, two or something. So, I dunno ... later than that?”
“Or earlier? I dunno.”
“Me neither. What if it was—”
“Shut up!” Nicole yelled. “Jesus, you two! Just shut up for a minute and let me think!”
The boys looked at each other, but neither said anything back to Nicole.
After a few seconds Nicole broke the silence. “The sun should come up in about half an hour or so,” she said, pointing the flashlight toward the sky. “Assuming it’s not still cloudy. Which it is, or we’d have at least some light right now.”
“But,” David said, trying to be helpful, “it’ll be a little brighter. At least, there’s not a lot of buildings east of here, so ... so we’ll get some sun when it comes up, even if it’s not super bright above us.”
“Yeah,” Nicole said, not looking at him, “that might be enough.”
After more silence, Alex decided to chance speaking. “But, we know how to kill them, right?”
Nicole looked at him. “Well, we do. But, except for your SMASHER, so far we’ve only killed three stuck on spikes, and someone couldn’t even do that.”
“I got scared!” David said, pouting. “I’m sorry I don’t like killing people! I guess that makes me a bad guy!”
“Stop being a baby,” Nicole said quickly. “So yeah. We killed three, and that was pretty hard. There’s ... I dunno ... probably like fifty of ‘em down there.”
“Where’d they all come from, anyway?” Alex asked, looking out the window.
“Those girls probably started screaming when the window got smashed,” David answered, “and they all heard it, and came after them.”
Nicole and Alex both turned to David.
“What window smashed?” Nicole asked, taking a step toward her brother.
David looked uncomfortable. “The ... window of their house. It’s broken. Maybe ... maybe one of those mudmen broke it and they got scared and started
