Breathe. My lungs burned as I sprinted down the sidewalk, my shoes slapping against the pavement. Breathe. Though the temperature dropped significantly, I could feel sweat beginning to pool at the back of my neck, dripping back down between my shoulder blades. Breathe. Each step made my side ache, pinch like a stitch pulling too tight, about to rip the fabric.

And the screaming—it seemed to echo through the air. They came intermittently now, the screams, but they were loud enough to make my skin crawl. If the cold hadn’t beaten it to it, the shrieks would’ve raised goosebumps on my arms.

The yellow house with the purple mailbox came up much faster than I’d anticipated, and I slowed my pace as it loomed in front of me. The front door was shut, and relief poured through me at the sight. If the door was shut, that meant nothing had gotten in. Right? Nothing worth screaming about closed doors behind them.

But as I came closer, I noticed that the back door, the one that I’d left through just last night, had been pushed open wide.

Ice water replaced the blood in my veins, and I took a hesitant step closer.

“Help!” a voice called, though not from the house; further down the street. “No, no!”

I’m in hell, I thought, and it was the first clear thought that rang through my head. I’ve stepped into hell.

I climbed up the back porch, fingers shaking as they gripped the banister, and stepped into Cassie’s house.

Nothing looked out of place, at least not upon first inspection. The back door had just been pushed in, not broken in, and looked to be in find condition. The kitchen cupboards were still intact, shut. But then again, I didn’t know what I was looking for. Was I looking for a person? An animal? A monster?

Trapped in a cage with a monster. It sounded… I couldn’t even finish the thought.

“Cassie?” I whispered, and immediately wanted to smack myself for it. I knew saying anything basically alerted whoever was in the house of my position, Cassian or otherwise. Whatever opened the door.

Stop, Jonas, I told myself fiercely, moving to the hallway that led to the living room. Mrs. Rivers could’ve just forgotten to shut the door. Cassian could’ve opened the door to get air in. Stop imagining the worst.

But when I walked into the living room, the worst came to life, a loud pounding in my ears.

Mrs. Rivers, a lovely old woman of somewhere between 70 and 105 laid on the couch with her legs over the side, one shoe on, the other missing. Her eyes were opened and unfocused, gazing at the ceiling. The cream colored cardigan hung loose over her shoulders, bunched from how she laid. Or, at least I assumed it was cream colored before all of the blood stained it.

So. Much. Blood.

It coated her throat, the front of her cardigan, dripping down the side of the fabric of the couch. Staining the carpet. The very carpet I’d laid on last night, playing Cassian at cards. Losing to Cassian at cards.

And now there was a dead woman staining the very spot we’d sat.

My stomach seized, violently, as the scent of blood filled my nose. I gagged on it, pressing my fingers to my face in such a way that summoned pain, and I latched onto the feeling, swallowing hard. Dead. She’s dead. She’s dead. She’s dead.

If I had called off my shift today to watch Cassian, that could’ve been me. If his mother had waited until I arrived, that could’ve been her.

Instead, it was Mrs. Rivers.

I realized the pounding that I heard was my heartbeat, echoing loudly in my ears. I bit the inside of my cheek hard, hard enough to taste blood. Like the blood all over Mrs. Rivers’ mouth.

There was no holding it in. I barely managed to dive for the trash bin before the few bites I’d snuck earlier came coughing up, a wave of heat swamping my skin. I thanked the stars for my hair being pinned back, out of my face.

I swiped the back of my hand along my mouth, the acrid taste lingering in my throat. This time, I made sure not to look in the direction of the couch, not to let my thoughts wander further than they needed to. I was on a mission. Get Cassie. Get to the apartment. Wait for Beck.

Beck was coming for me. I just had to get to the apartment.

“Cassie?” I called louder this time, starting down the hallway towards his bedroom. “Cassie, it’s Jonas. Are you here?”

“Jonas?” a voice called, well muffled, from behind me, and I wouldn’t have heard it if the house hadn’t been completely silent. The screaming outside had stopped. I tried not to think about what that could’ve meant.

I turned around, squeezing my hands into fists and coming back the way I came. “Where are you?” I asked him, looking around in search of a crouched figure. I didn’t waver long in the living room, unable to stand the stench for too long. “Cassian?”

In the kitchen, the trashcan wavered. It was one of those tall metal ones with the revolving top. Five fingers gripped the edge of the flap and lifted the lid, just high enough that I could see shielded eyes peek through. A quiver caught at his voice. “Jonas?”

The seven-year-old boy looking at me made my stomach somersault with relief, so potent and palpable that tears sprung to my eyes. I reached for the trash can, whipping off the lid and pulling him from the bin and squeezing him tight. His dark hair was tangled, brushing along my cheek, but I held on.

His little arms wrapped around my neck, and though his hold wasn’t as firm, I still felt short of breath. “Mrs. Rivers—”

“Cassie,” I told him sternly, but my shaking words weren’t very commanding. I lowered him to the ground, looking at the trash wiped all along his clothes and skin. “What happened, Cassian? Why were you hiding in the trash can?”

“I heard that if you hide your scent, animals can’t find you,” he said, blinking up at me. The white shirt he wore had stains all over them, but thankfully, none of the stains resembled blood.

“Animals?” I asked, frowning. “They were animals?”

Cassian nodded, blinking fast. “Dogs. Or, they looked like dogs. They had…they had teeth like sharks. All pointy, and a lot of them.” He gripped my forearms, digging in his sharp nails to my skin. “We heard the screaming first, Jonas. I asked Mrs. Rivers what was going on and she told me to hide.”

“So you hid in the trash?”

“At first, I hid in the closet. But then those thingscame into the house. Broke the door. They…they got her.” His bottom lip quivered, and he closed his eyes. “I ran while she screamed. I saw more outside, so I hid in the trashcan. Is she dead?”

My stomach rolled again, bile coursing. This time, though, I managed to keep it down. “We need to go,” I told him, rising to my full height to peer out the kitchen window. The trees trembled in the breeze, but there was nothing on the streets. No dogs, no people, no monsters. “We have to go to my apartment, okay?”

Cassie tugged on his hand, trying to pull it from my grip. His eyes were wide with terror. “No, I want to stay here. I want my mom.”

I didn’t want to tell him that we couldn’t stay here, not with Mrs. Rivers’ dead body in the next room over, not when Beck told me to go to the apartment. I didn’t want to tell him that those things could be back any minute, and that there was nowhere to hide. They could break down doors; surely they’d topple trash cans. I didn’t want to tell him any of this, I didn’t want to scare him, but I had to.

I crouched down in front of him again, smoothing my hands across his forehead to swipe his hair back, and tied it off with the hair tie at my wrist. “I have a boyfriend, did I ever tell you that?”

“Gross.”

“No,” I chuckled, “not gross. His name is Beck, and he’s pretty smart. Really smart. He was in the military, you know.”

Cassie frowned a little. “Did he kill people?”

Had he killed people? I never asked. I shook the thought away. “He knows how to keep people safe. He told me that we need to go to my apartment to hide, so that’s where we need to go.”

“How are we supposed to go outside when those things are out there?” he demanded, voice pitching higher. “They’re going to get us for sure.”

“Do you trust me?” I asked, squeezing his shoulders.

Cassie was a tricky kid to get a read on, especially when he felt nervous. Normally his anxieties were kept to a minimum, or easily soothed with me painting his nails or braiding his hair, but I didn’t have time for either of those things. His mom told me once that he had trouble with so many things happening at once, and looking at him now, I could see his mind begin to grow full of nerves.

I squeezed his arms harder, trying to bring him back to the moment. “I will keep you safe,” I promised. “I will always keep you safe. But you have to trust me when I say that this is our only option.”

“I don’t want to die,” he whispered, fluttering his fingers around my elbows, but not quite touching me. “Don’t let me die.”

My mouth felt dry. “I won’t.”

Cassie shrugged off my touch then, turning around to the trash can and reaching into it. When he straightened, I saw that he had two fistfuls of scraps, and looked at me expectantly. The fear wasn’t gone exactly, but it had been numbed now that he had a task. “We have to hide your scent, then.”