Dennis tilted his head to the side and then gave it a gentle shake. “You think you’re clever, don’t you?”
Sarah looked toward the glass window and then gestured toward the door. But before Sarah even had a chance to turn around, Dennis was up and over the table, and then he smashed her up against the wall.
Sarah’s head knocked viciously against the wall, turning her vision black, and when it faded, Dennis was less than an inch from her face. She caught the stench of his breath as he snarled like a rabid animal.
“You haven’t escaped,” Dennis said, the words spilling out of him quickly as if a wound had opened and blood was pouring out of him and he had to speak his truth before he died. “You’re tied to that house just like me, and you’ll go back, and when you do, you’ll burn like the rest of them. You will die.” Excited laughter smacked Sarah in the face, and the door to the room opened and Faye burst inside, gun in hand, shaking as she tried to aim it at Dennis’s body.
“Let her go!” Faye shouted, but kept her distance. “I will shoot you, Dennis, I swear to God.”
Dennis peeled his gaze from Sarah and set his eyes on Faye, though he didn’t move his body, which he used to pin Sarah down. But the distraction gave Sarah enough time and space to fight back.
Sarah thrust her knee up and connected with his crotch, which forced Dennis backward, and he smacked against the table. Sarah spun toward the door, following Faye on their escape outside, and then slammed the door shut before Dennis could make a move toward it.
“You can’t escape it, Sarah!” Dennis positioned himself at the one-way glass, pressing his face and body up against it as he screamed and pounded his forehead against the glass. “It won’t stop following you!”
Sarah struggled to catch her breath as Faye squeezed her shoulder, groping it and repeating the same question over and over.
“Are you okay?”
Sarah nodded, but while she managed to regain control of her breathing, she couldn’t bring her heartrate down. It beat wildly in her chest and continued to pound faster as Dennis’s outburst escalated.
“The fires are coming!” Dennis continued to pound his head against the glass, which buckled with every contact, until the skin broke and blood trickled down his forehead. “Blood, and fire, and death will consume you! It follows you like a shadow, Sarah! It won’t stop! It’ll never stop! You hear me? It’ll come! He will come!”
Faye eventually forced Sarah out of the hall, nearly having to use the gun to get her along. But Dennis didn’t stop screaming, and he repeated the last phrase over and over until Sarah was convinced that she was saying it herself.
“He will come,” Sarah said, whispering softly to herself. “Can I borrow a jacket?”
“Um, yeah.”
Sarah followed Faye toward the reception area, and Faye handed Sarah a lumpy black pullover.
“Listen, Sarah, I don’t know what’s going on, but I think we need to tell the troopers. I mean, this is getting out of hand.”
“No,” Sarah said, her answer quick. “It’s beyond them.” She stared down at the gun in Faye’s hand. “But there is one more thing that you can help me with.”
84
On the trip back to Bell, Sarah again stayed to the woods, and she repeatedly rubbed her thumb over the cross, the motion like an addiction that soothed her nerves. She would have preferred a smoke, but she had to make do.
Sarah pocketed the cross and then removed one of the tubes of holy water, and she was surprised to find it still liquid. It had to have been below freezing, and yet the glass felt the same temperature as when she got it. She pulled the jacket she wore tighter, thankful that Faye let her borrow it, then pocketed the water.
But the pistol that Faye gave her provided the most confidence. It was a more tangible weapon, one that she knew would work. She hoped that she wouldn’t have to use anything, but the tools provided security.
The lights from the police cars gave Sarah a check marker of how close she was getting to Bell, and it also alerted her to the authorities still in the area. She approached cautiously, her senses heightened. It was like sneaking around the houses when she was a little kid in foster care. Except if she got caught now, it would be a hell of a lot worse than being thrown back into the system.
Keeping to the tree line on the west side of Bell, Sarah struggled to keep her attention ahead with all of the commotion in the streets. She counted eight highway trooper vehicles, plus Dell’s cruiser.
With the sun still high in the sky, Sarah knew she had time, but she didn’t want to wait longer than she had to. The quicker that she could get in and destroy the orb, the faster all of this would be over. But she needed to wait until the place was cleared.
So Sarah lingered at the tree line and waited, remembering what Faye had said before she left. “Just stay alive, okay, girl?”
Sarah wanted nothing more than to oblige Faye’s request, but this was uncharted territory. Had she previously foiled an apocalypse before all of this, she would have felt better about her chances. The advice was better than what most therapists had given her growing up.
During Sarah’s journey through the system that was foster care in the United States, she had been questioned by hundreds of adults, all of them asking the same types of questions over and over, expecting some type of life-changing effect on a troubled young girl.
The counseling wasn’t unwarranted. She had stolen a car and crashed it into a United States postal box before quickly fleeing the scene. She did some time in juvie, and part of her rehabilitation
