The cat’s rib cage burst like a cheap party balloon under the weight of the car, stretching into a red carpet that trailed behind them for at least half a mile down the highway. 

‘Holy fuck Digby!’ Chip howled from the passenger seat as the Chevy shuddered violently. The bottom half of him was nearly entirely covered in blood, courtesy of a slug buried deep inside his right leg, and his constant painful squirming was splashing it all around the front of the car. 

‘Think I hit summin,’ Digby grunted, stealing a quick glance out the wing mirror to see the trail of animal blood in their wake, and ignoring the police car chasing after them. ‘Shit, I think it was a kitty. Fuck.’ 

When the last bits of it had fallen out behind the tyre, Digby gave it some more gas. The speed of the Chevy pinned Chip back in his seat and he winced in agony, nearly splintering his teeth as he bore them. 

‘Fuck man!’ he groaned, and closed his eyes, his hand tight around his leg as it erupted with fresh blood. ‘Is it the bastard that got me Digby? He the one chasin’ us? Is it the bastard who shot me?’

Digby glanced in the mirror again, momentarily, making sure he still knew what was in front of him. They were going near ninety now, and he couldn’t afford to get distracted. But yeah, he saw him, and yeah, it was that bastard that Chip was talking about. The cop wasn’t much older than them, but Digby reckoned he’d still call them “boy” and “whippersnapper” if he got the chance. The pompous prick was wearing aviators, at seven o’clock, and had his hair slicked back all neat like he was a cop in an 80’s action movie. 

‘IS IT HIM?!’ Chip screamed at him, but really he was screaming at his leg. It was on fire from the inside out, and he needed some fury to take his mind off it. 

‘Yeah, it’s him,’ Digby grunted, checking the speedometer. Well over a hundred now. The Chevy wasn’t going to last another hour at this rate. He could already smell something cooking under the hood, when he couldn’t smell the blood Chip was spilling all over the interior. 

‘Motherfucker!’ Chip hollered, sitting himself up, which was excruciating, but he needed to look in the mirror and see him. ‘YOU COCKSUCKER MOTHERFUCKER!’ He could see the cop behind those aviator shades, and somehow hated him even more. ‘I’LL SKULL-FUCK YOUR MOTHER, YOU BASTARD! THEN I’LL DO THE SAME FOR YOU! SHOVE THEM FUCKING GLASSES UP YOUR COCK-LOVING ASS!’ 

‘CHIP!’ Digby shouted at him. ‘Sit your fucking ass down and relax, dammit. I can hardly fucking concentrate. Besides, you don’t wanna bleed out before we can get off the road.’

Chip slumped down in his chair and ground his teeth together, taking his eyes off the mirror. ‘I’ll kill him, Digs,’ he whispered angrily. ‘I swear I’ll kill him.’ 

‘Not if we can’t get off this road, you won’t. Save your breath.’ Digby’s eyes wandered the vast stretches of American highway around them, but he couldn’t get his bearings. Last sign they’d passed had been five miles back, and Chip had been hooting so loud he’d missed it. They were lost, with the hot rod cop closing in on them. He saw Chip clawing at the rim of his sweat-soaked balaclava, rolling it up his chin, and slapped a hand across his chest to stop him. ‘Keep that fuckin’ thing on!’ he roared, before making sure his own was still on properly.

‘I’m fuckin’ burning up, Digs!’ 

‘Quit ya fuckin’ whinin’ and keep it on,’ he told him. ‘That pig ain’t see our faces yet and I don’t mean for him to. Just stay quiet while I…’ 

Something caught his eye, screamed at him even. A little signpost, amateurish but with no reason to lie, was tucked in behind the trees that lined the highway. The words on it were barely visible, (written in white paint at least a couple decades back), but it promised a little town up ahead, just off the upcoming exit. 

‘Hold tight Chip, we gotta give him the slip.’

Digby made eye contact with the cop in the car behind him, who was coming up to kissing distance on the rear bumper, and gave the Chevy as much gas as she could take. When the next exit came up, he made to look like he was going to slide right on by and ignore it, go for another thirty or forty miles on the highway in a Chevy that was starting to cough, but at the last second, he raised his foot and turned the wheel so violently to the right the car screeched and skidded. Chip clutched his right thigh and screamed louder than a baby over a hot stove, near bursting Digby’s eardrum. Not that he cared; right now he was giving every bit of strength he had making sure the car didn’t flip and roll. He just about kept the four tyres on the road, but could hear the suspension grinding as he got the speed up again on the country road they now found themselves on. Looking in the mirror, Digby could see the cop had overshot the exit, and could hear his station wagon slam on its breaks and agonisingly turn around to follow them. He’d bought them maybe a thirty second head start, nothing more. The cop car veered into the country road behind them, kicking up enough dirt for a sandstorm. The Chevy was suffering now, coughing and spluttering as they followed the path at about eighty, but their speed was declining by the minute. The station wagon showed no such signs of struggle, if anything it seemed to relish the coarse and bumpy road.

We ain’t gonna make it, Digby started thinking, more sure of it now as the bends became sharp and the path narrowed. Either we’re gonna flip this Chevy, or we’re gonna have to stop and have us a shoot-out. He eyed the handle of the sawn-off resting in the back seat, and then curiously over at Chip, who’d turned a sickly grey colour, sweating profusely out the holes of his balaclava. He was getting quieter now too, and Digby wondered whether he would make it far on foot if they had to ditch the car, if at all. Would he even be able to hold iron if it came to all that? Digby didn’t reckon so; he dropped a gear and skidded around a particularly sharp bend in the road. It made Chip wheeze and groan, and Digby wasn’t sure if he could keep up the pace if the way got any narrower. 

Instead, it widened a little and the car came to a clearing at the county line. The road became gravel instead of dirt, and the Chevy started bumping up and down, enough to make Chip throw up over his shoes. Digby reckoned he could probably spin the car here if necessary, turn towards the approaching cop car and hope the prick didn’t ram them off the road before he took up arms. He changed his mind however when he spotted a signpost up ahead, (another old and flakey sign with faded letters like the one on the exit), but this one said the name of a town, although Digby barely had time to read it. Had he done so, he would’ve read the words Shuck Springs on it like the cop did ten seconds later. Digby saw a paved stretch of road just ahead of the gravel, where he could get the Chevy to back up to top speed again, however long that would last. 

They both heard a screech of tyres behind them, and for a moment Digby thought they’d hit a blow-out, which would likely be their demise. However it wasn’t the Chevy, despite it being in a race to the death with Chip. It was the car in hot pursuit of them that was stopping. Digby spied the rear view mirror and saw the station wagon come to a sudden halt, dragging up a spray of gravel behind it. But there appeared to be nothing wrong with it; the cop for one reason or another, had simply slammed on the brakes. Digby watched as the car became smaller and smaller in the mirror, and when they rounded the next bend and continued straight for another mile, he saw it had not followed. 

‘What happened?’ Chip uttered, wiping specks of vomit off the corners of his mouth.

‘No idea,’ Digby answered, still cautiously looking back in the mirror. ‘Fucker stopped for some reason.’ 

‘Maybe he had a blowout, Digs.’ 

‘Didn’t look like a blowout.’ He scratched his head. ‘Maybe we’re outta his jurisdiction.’

‘Cops don’t give a shit about no jurisdiction.’ 

‘Maybe not in the cities. Out here they might get touchy ‘bout such things.’ 

‘Where the fuck are we anyhow?’ 

‘Not sure. There’s a town up ahead, little one by the look of it. Might be able to hol’ up there for a little while. But that pig no doubt radioed ahead. We gotta get this car off the road in case they’re waitin’ on us.’ 

‘How we gonna do that, Digs?’ 

‘We’ll follow the back roads.’ He cranked the window down and spat out of it. ‘Stay away from the main streets. Then we gotta ditch this ride, get the cargo out the trunk and find another car. Folks out here don’t drive no Chevy’s. Just gotta hope it holds on until then.’ 

Chip felt his thigh and fresh jelly-looking blood oozed out of it. It made Digby grimace. ‘How you doing over there, Chip?’ 

‘It hurts man. I’m starting to feel pretty dizzy.’ 

‘Well don’t you go dying on me yet goddammit. Maybe we’ll find a doc in town.’

‘Can I take my mask off yet?’ 

‘No, not yet. Don’t know who’s up ahead. Here.’ He reached inside his shirt pocket and fished out half a carton of Camels, flinging it to Chip on the passenger’s seat. ‘Light one for me too, and try not to get your blood or puke all over them.’

Digby eased up on the gas and they went down to a respectable forty. Chip lit two cigarettes without putting them in his mouth and handed one to Digby. It was dusk, and the light was fading from the road, but Digby could see the little backwater town not far away. 

Shuck Springs looked like something from an old postcard; it was probably once a gorgeous little getaway but now it looked bedraggled and near-abandoned, save for the presence of unbroken windows and working street lights. Most of the store fronts were boarded up, and there were no people walking around. Not even a bar in sight. The most lively thing seemed to be the plants, which were growing over the sidewalks and spilling into the road like they hadn’t been trimmed in years.

‘Where the fuck are we?’ Digby muttered to himself. 

‘Hey buddy,’ Chip murmured, shaking a little, ‘D’you think there’s a hospital ‘round these parts? I’m not feeling so good.’ 

Digby started to get worried about how calmly he was talking now, and reckoned he’d used all his energy screaming at that cop back on the highway. He thought that if he went unconscious he’d be done for. Twenty miles back the biggest risk was losing his leg, now it was his life. Night had come to Shuck Springs, and not at a moment too soon. 

‘You just try and stay awake now, y’hear,’ Digby told him, ‘Ain’t no hospital, but there’s gotta be a pharmacist ‘round these parts. I can disinfect that wound myself. Wouldn’t be the first time.’

‘That don’t exactly fill me with confidence, Digs,’ Chip chuckled softly, his eyelids were heavy.

‘You stay awake now! Have a smoke or jack off if that’s what it takes.’ 

The Chevy rounded another bend and they came to a street of run-down houses with their lights on. A thin ribbon of smoke was rising from beneath the hood and Digby grimaced, hitting his palms against the wheel. He looked over at Chip, who was making a low wheezing noise, struggling to keep his eyes open. Digby had no choice but to pull over in front of one of the houses, and kill the engine. He doubted it would start up again if he tried, but they’d cross that bridge later. Right now, he had to get Chip inside. 

‘Can you walk?’ he asked him, shaking him to make sure he didn’t pass out. 

‘Whatchu think?’ 

‘I think you’re heavy,’ he grumbled, ‘I’ll help you, but I ain’t carrying you.’ 

Chip nodded, and sat up. 

‘What about the loot in the back?’ he gestured to the trunk of the car. 

‘Don’t you worry ‘bout that. He ain’t going nowhere.’ 

‘You think he can breathe in there?’ 

And as if to answer, a banging sound came from the trunk. 

‘Settle down back there!’ Digby shouted to the back of the car, which fell silent. He turned to Chip. ‘You ready boy?’ Chip nodded but didn’t seem enthusiastic. 

Digby leaned over the seat and grabbed the sawn-off shotgun, checking the barrels were loaded before tucking it under his arm. He got out of the car and went over to the passenger’s side to help Chip out. The boy struggled and moaned as he got to his feet, and fresh blood ran down the front of his breeches, but he was able to limp. Digby supported him with his left arm and carried the gun in his right, and the two of them went up to the porch of the first house in the street. If God was kind, this would be the house of a doctor, and if he wasn’t, (as Digby had come to believe), this was the house of that cop on the highway. 

Digby knocked lightly on the screen door at the side of the house, and saw the hallway light switch on. A middle-aged black woman appeared behind the screen and gasped when she saw Digby aiming both barrels of the sawed-off at her, but she didn’t run. Digby was thankful this woman had some wits – no point turning this into a bloodbath. 

‘Evenin’ ma’am,’ he said with a grin. ‘My friend here’s hurt his leg. You mind if we come in for a bit? Won’t be much trouble.’ 

For a moment the woman stood there looking at them, like she was waiting to wake up from whatever strange dream she was having. She looked at Chip, and his bloody mess of a leg, then back at the shotgun, her expression never faltering from that of mild surprise and curiosity.

‘Where did you come from?’ she asked them. 

‘Never mind that, ya dumb n*gger bitch,’ Chip spat at her. ‘Just open the door or you’ll be wondering where that second hole in your face came from.’ 

She recoiled slightly, but then unlatched the screen door and stepped back. Digby and Chip staggered into the hallway, with the gun still pointed at the woman’s chest. Chip sat himself at the bottom of the stairs and whined like a dying horse, feeling his thigh as a fresh trickle of blood ran onto the floor. The woman didn’t seem to mind, she was strangely calm about the whole thing, just standing there in her nightdress, perfectly still, a model hostage. 

‘You wouldn’t happen to be a doctor by any chance would ya?’ Digby asked her, lowering the gun a little.

The woman shook her head, then looked at Chip’s leg again. 

‘Shit, you ain’t gonna faint are ya girl?’ Digby asked her.

Again she shook her head. ‘My husband was an ambulance driver,’ she said calmly. ‘Might be I have some peroxide in the medicine cupboard upstairs.’ 

‘That be hydrogen peroxide miss?’

She nodded. 

‘What the fuck is that?’ Chip asked. 

‘For you,’ Digby said, ‘it’s a fucking god-send. Maybe he’s not such a bastard after all.’

The woman shivered a little at the word bastard, and frowned. 

‘Mind my mouth,’ Digby said, ‘and mind him calling you a so-and-so on the porch. We’ve had anawful long day missus.’ He lowered the shotgun. ‘Your husband home?’ 

‘He’s dead,’ she said softly. ‘But I know what to do.’ 

‘Very good. Anyone else in the house beside you?’ 

Now the woman looked a little nervous, looking away from Digby and up the stairs.

‘That’s a yes,’ Chip uttered. 

‘A boy,’ she said. ‘Retarded. Please don’t hurt him.’ 

‘I’m not interested in hurting retarded children ma’am.’ Digby told her, and meant it. ‘Matter fact, the quicker we get that slug out my friend’s leg, the quicker we’ll be outta here. No need for him to know we was ever here. How’s that sound?’ 

She nodded, slowly, but didn’t seem to believe him. It irritated Digby a little, but they didn’t have time to waste. 

‘You got a bathtub?’ he asked. ‘Maybe some tweezers and some bandages too?’ 

She nodded. 

‘And whiskey?’ Chip asked her. 

‘Brandy,’ she said. Chip found this acceptable. 

‘Okay then,’ Digby said. ‘Let’s get to work.’ 

They helped Chip into the bathtub, Digby with the shotgun tucked under his arm, waiting for the woman to try something, but she never did. He made the woman hold Chip behind the arms to keep him still so he could pour the peroxide over the wound. Chip screamed and thrashed in the tub, covering it with black marks, before Digby reached over and slapped him in the face. 

‘Son,’ he told Chip in his sternest voice, (he’d lost all patience with the boy now), ‘I need you to hold still for this next part, y’hear? Or else I’m gonna have to knock ya out. And if this lady don’t have any chloroform, I’m gonna have to do that with the butt of this ‘ere gun. So shut the fuck up, will ya?’ 

Chip relented, gripping onto the sides of the bath as the woman handed him a pair of tweezers she’d disinfected in the sink. Digby took the tweezers and held them close to the pulsing wound on Chip’s leg, and realised he couldn’t hold it still with the weight of the shotgun in his other hand. He eyed the woman, who looked back at him blankly, expressionless. He thought about handing the tweezers back to her, but didn’t trust her not to botch it. 

‘If I put this gun down,’ he sighed, ‘you gonna try anything stupid?’ 

‘No sir.’ she said, and for some reason he believed her. Something in her eyes said she wanted this to be over just as much as he did, even if he ended up killing her afterwards. The thought must’ve crossed her mind; she hadn’t seen their faces, but she’d heard their voices, and they’d probably let their names slip at some point if they hadn’t already. Digby had known a lot of criminals in his time, both small-time and big, and ninety-nine times out of a hundred they’d plug a civilian in a situation like this, just to be sure they’d never squeal. Hell, Chip had plugged a blind guy once just for hearing his voice. That was just a case of covering your own ass. But this woman, for some reason or another, Digby hadn’t decided if he would yet. Something about her made him uneasy; she appeared to show almost no emotion at all, no nervous energy, no sweats, no asking stupid questions like “Are you gonna kill me?”, and almost no hesitation in helping them. She obviously cared about the boy sleeping in the other room, and by God she’d better be telling the truth about that or he’d shoot her just for lying to him. Digby wasn’t worried about some young, athletic teenager coming at them with a baseball bat in the middle of the night; he’d killed plenty of those in his days as a small-time burglar. But for some reason he had no reason to believe this woman was lying; she seemed more exasperated than scared.

‘Good,’ Digby told her. ‘Cos my friend here is packing a Ruger in his jeans and don’t think I won’t hurt the boy if you try anything.’

She flinched a little.

‘What’s your name miss?’

‘Mia,’ she answered, with all the emotion of an abacus. 

‘Okay Mia, I’m gonna put my gun down and pull this slug outta my friend’s leg, then you’re gonna splash him with more of that peroxide and wrap him out, y’hear?’

Mia nodded, slowly. Digby dropped the gun by his side and held the tweezers up, but the woman never moved. Before he bent down to extract the bullet, he remembered something.

‘Here,’ he said, removing his belt from his trousers and tossing it to Chip in the bathtub. ‘Bite down on this son, it’s gonna hurt and I won’t have you waking up the neighbours.’

Chip grimaced but obliged, putting the leather between his teeth and braced himself.

‘Hold him still now,’ he told Mia, who nodded. 

It was quick. In another life Digby reckoned he would make a fine surgeon, but it didn’t pay the bills and deliver the thrills quite like this. Chip made a horrible groaning, gurgling sound as the tweezers went in and fished around, biting the belt nearly in half, but he didn’t struggle quite as much. Mia held him firmly, and Digby was astonished with how quickly and professionally she disinfected and dressed the wound afterwards.

The bullet made a chinking sound as Digby dropped it into the sink beside him, and let it go down the drain as he washed his hands clean. The bath was full of blood underneath Chip, who was looking faint and trembling slightly, but he was better without that bullet inside him. Digby reckoned he might live, unless the shock was too much for him.

‘How about that brandy?’ Digby asked Mia. 

Mia went out of the bathroom, walking straight past the shotgun Digby had forgotten about without even a glance, but didn’t go downstairs. Instead, she went into the master bedroom momentarily and came back with half a bottle of Napoleon brandy. 

‘You keep it in your room?’ Digby questioned her, taking a swig out of it before handing it to Chip, who chugged it. 

‘Don’t sleep well sometimes,’ she said, lowering her eyes. 

‘Not my place to judge.’

He turned and looked at Chip, who had polished off the bottle and now relaxed his head over the rim of the bath, closing his eyes.

‘Thanks for helping us out. Go ahead and clean up. We’ll be out of your hair soon.’ 

Mia nodded and went to the sink. Digby grabbed the shotgun and checked the chambers out of habit, but it didn’t seem to bother her. The gun may as well have been a handbag for all she regarded it, and for that Digby decided that she should probably live. A woman like this, keeping brandy in her room and helping two criminals in the middle of the night without the slightest bit of unease, probably had something unsavoury going on herself. 

‘Why don’t you go and check on the boy when you’re done,’ Digby told her. ‘I’m surprised we haven’t woken him yet.’ 

‘He sleeps much better than I do,’ she said, drying her hands. 

‘What’s wrong with him anyway? He a cripple or something?’ 

She chuckled softly. ‘No. He has Down’s Syndrome.’ 

‘Sorry to hear.’ 

‘Don’t be. He’s a very happy boy, and very kind.’ 

‘Well even so, can’t be easy having a retarded son.’ 

‘He’s not my son. He was my friend Helen’s son. I took him in when she passed away.’

‘Mighty good of ya, all the same.’ 

‘Not like I had a choice.’ She chuckled again, but she wasn’t amused. It was a passive sort of is-what-it-is kind of laugh. ‘There was no one else to take care of him. Hardly anyone left now.’

‘What d’you mean?’ he gripped the shotgun slightly tighter under his arm. 

‘You know where you are, sir?’ She looked right into his eyes and he felt naked despite the balaclava. ‘Do you know the name of this town?’ 

Digby was nervous now; his grip tightened more on the sawn-off, and sweat soaked into the wool that covered his face.

‘What the fuck are you talkin’ about?’ 

‘This is Shuck Springs, sir.’ 

‘So what?’ Digby asked her. ‘What the fuck’s so special about Shuck Springs?’ 

‘A lot of people stay away from here.’ 

‘Like that cop on the road,’ Chip croaked from the tub.

‘You shut your fuckin’ mouth about that boy,’ Digby snapped at him, then turned back to Mia. ‘Why? What’s going on around here?’ 

Mia looked at him, calmly but with a hint of melancholy, like a doctor giving a terminal prognosis. 

‘I’m sorry,’ she said in a low voice, ‘but you can’t leave this town.’ 

‘Why the fuck not?’ He wrapped his fingers around the trigger of the gun and poked her in the chest with the barrels. She was unmoved. She simply looked into his eyes and frowned. He considered blowing that look off her face with the gun, but then he’d get no answers. 

‘The cops won’t let anyone leave,’ Mia told him, in a tone reserved for explaining hard truths to children. ‘They figure if we’re kept here, then they won’t leave either.’

‘Who?’ 

‘The angels.’ 

Chip and Digby looked at each other in quiet disbelief. 

‘What the fuck are you talkin’ about?’ Digby asked her. 

Mia let out a soft chuckle, and looked down at her feet. 

‘It doesn’t matter,’ she said, passively. ‘None of it matters anymore. Only the boy. If you mange to get out somehow, then all I ask is you take the boy. He’s not like us. He doesn’t deserve…’

Before she could finish, a noise from outside, loud enough to wake a man in a coma, startled them. It was the Chevy’s alarm that was sounding, and the two crooks looked at each other with horrified expressions. Digby took the gun away from Mia’s chest and bolted from the room.

‘Stay here!’ he shouted as he hurried down the stairs.

When they heard the door slam, Mia looked back at Chip for a moment, then walked out of the room too.

‘HEY!’ Chip bellowed after her. ‘GET BACK HERE YOU BLACK BITCH!’

He tried to haul himself out of the bathtub but the burning sensation in his leg and his general drunkenness held him back. He looked down and saw a fresh patch of blood blossoming from behind the bandages, and immediately felt light-headed. Somewhere in between falling back into the tub and passing out, he heard the door open and close again. A few minutes later, after the house had fallen silent once more, the boy who had been woken by the sound of the car alarm came tottering into the bathroom to see a man dying in the tub. He was confused, but not scared. He sat down on the toilet and did his business like there was no one else there. When he was finished, he went back into his room and got under the covers again. 

It took the last of George Munson’s strength to kick the door of the trunk open, but he didn’t have time to recover before the sound of the alarm started blaring in his ears. He crawled out of the back of the Chevy and landed on the hard ground, letting out a groan of pain before he was back on his feet again, staggering away down the dimly-lit street he didn’t recognise. George was a banker by trade, but had fingers in many pies. One of those pies had some bad apples in it, and they had decided that they no longer liked George all that much, and had paid Chip and Digby to bring him to them, preferably alive, so they could do the killing themselves.

The plan had been simple enough: pose as two bank robbers and stage a heist at George’s place of work, only the loot they were after was the bank manager, not the money. Digby knew that a lot of bank cash was marked, even tracked in some cases, and that it was more trouble than it was worth to steal. Chip wasn’t so bright, and slipped a few wads of cash into his breeches when Digby had been giving Mr Munson a bloody nose. The job went downhill from there. Either someone had tipped off the cops, or maybe Digby was just getting slower, because they barely made it back to the Chevy parked across the street before the sirens could be heard around the block. Chip was bundling the bloody and beaten George into the trunk when that hot rod cop in the aviators got his shot off. The first clipped the door of the trunk, (which weakened the lock without them realising), the second buried itself deep inside of Chip’s right leg before he could make it to the passenger seat. After that, they kept their heads low until they made it out of the plaza, and then the chase began. All that seemed like so long ago now.

Digby forgot about the screen door and nearly fell through it on the way out of the house. He could see George hobbling off down the street and cocked his gun again, sprinting after him. He turned off the car alarm with the fob in his pocket, hoping to Christ that the neighbours hadn’t decided to assemble on their doorsteps to watch. They hadn’t; most of the lights in the houses were on, but clearly no one cared enough to check out the commotion, and for once Digby was more grateful than confused. George looked back and spotted Digby pursuing him, screaming and breaking into more of a trot on his busted ankle. 

‘Come ‘ere George!’ Digby howled after him. ‘I ain’t gonna hurtcha.’ 

George screamed again, and turned the corner into a street lined with overgrown hedges. Digby stopped for a moment and aimed the shotgun at George’s back, but couldn’t be sure if he’d strike true at this range. Best case, he’d clip him, but the sounds of gunshots really would bring the townsfolk out, and all hell would break loose. He’d have to catch him, he realised, and knock him out with the butt of his gun, then get him back in the Chevy and hope he didn’t wake up again. Then he’d go back to the house and fetch Chip, see if Mia had any food worth raiding, and get the fuck out of this backwards-ass, country town while they still could. The place gave him the creeps. He levelled the shotgun and broke into a sprint to catch up with George, who was faster than you’d expect a man with a busted ankle to be, but he was gaining on him. 

The road George was running down turned out to be a cul-de-sac, flanked by houses with high fences that even an uninjured man would have trouble climbing. George panicked and tried to hack his way through the hedgerows to try and double back on himself, but the foliage was too thick to manoeuvre through. Before he was even six inches into it, Digby caught up to him and snatched at the back of his torn and bloody shirt, pulling him back onto the pavement. He landed hard on his ass and Digby aimed both barrels at his panic-stricken face as he started to whimper. The man looked just as pathetic as one could down there on the cold, hard ground, raising his arms meekly in some hapless attempt to shield himself from the coming blows. 

‘P-p-please…’ he babbled like a little child. Digby regarded him with disgust. ‘Please don’t hurt me, please. I have money. Please, I have money. Whatever they’re paying you, I’ll double it. Triple it. Please just let me go. I won’t tell anyone, I swear. I…’ 

‘Will you quit your damn yappin’ man,’ Digby ordered him in a low voice. ‘You’ll wake up the neighbours.’ He looked him up and down, then leaned and spat on the ground without moving the gun. ‘I need you to come with me, Georgey boy.’ 

‘No please. Please don’t kill me. Please…’ 

‘I won’t if you shut your trap and come with me. But if you keep making noise I’m gonna shut you up. Give you a hole in your face that you can’t yammer out of.’ 

‘Okay,’ George whispered, lowering his hands slowly.

There was a pool of urine forming under him as he continued to weep. Digby considered killing him right there and then just to end the embarrassment, but something else quickly swept over his mind, and that was just how dead this street seemed to be. No cars. No wind. Just rows of dark houses, their windows empty and watching. The only sound to be heard was the soft cracking of George’s voice as he quietly cried. Digby had been in situations like this many times before, but something about this night, this town, felt off. It was like all this drama was merely an appetiser for something else, or worse, it was insignificant compared to what was coming. Digby could hear his own breath in the smothering silence, and felt the urge to scream rather than suffer it. He lowered his gun and looked around, his eyes scanning the rooftops, the power lines, the empty sky.

A shadow moved where there shouldn’t be one, and his eyes dropped to a house at the end of the lane. There in the window, a false face pushed up against the glass, staring at him from the living room. The eyes belonged to a child, but there was no face. The child wore a mask, not unlike the one Digby was wearing, and simply watched on, staring at him calmly. Then the child’s eyes went upwards, towards the blackened sky, and lingered there. Digby looked up too, and saw the sky move. No, not the sky, but something in it. A ripple in the dark, unfolding, shifting in the darkness. Wings that weren’t wings. Limbs that weren’t limbs. A shape that refused to make sense, as though Digby’s mind was rejecting the very act of perceiving it. Then, a rush of air, and the thing disappeared as quickly as it had appeared. Digby searched the sky desperately for it, but there was nothing but the glowing black of the night sky. He looked back down at the sobbing mess of a man still kneeling in the street, whose eyes met his, and Digby suddenly remembered what he was doing. 

‘Get up, George,’ he told him. ‘We need to get out of here.’ 

Then came the sound; that awful, alien sound. A distant, cracking snap. Then another. Closer. Sharp, jagged pops like boots walking over broken ice. Then a thin, skittering chitter, layered on itself a hundred times over, like thousands of tiny bones clicking together. Something slithered in the air above George’s head, who finally looked up, showing the creature his face. A scared, bloody face, but a face nonetheless, and that’s all it needed to know it was prey that was staring back at it. The sky moved again, and Digby watched a shape swoop down, bathed in darkness, but dominating the sky. A rush of air. A violent, razor-sharp snap. George began to scream, but it disappeared as the creature enveloped him. There was a sound like a vacuum sealing shut, followed by a deep, hollow whoosh. And then George was gone. Carried off into the night. Digby staggered back and let out a silent scream, his legs losing all feeling, his grip loosening on the shotgun.

The scrape of metal on pavement brought him back, and the wet, crunching sounds now carried on the wind sent him running. The street lights were suddenly blinding to him, and all his senses screamed as he sprinted through the darkness. He didn’t get far up the street before seeing something else that forced him to raise his gun; a eyeless face of white floating head-height in the dark, coming towards him. Digby squeezed tightly on the trigger of the shotgun, and unleashed both barrels without hesitation. 

Any thoughts of carnivorous creatures were irrelevant in the silence that followed; there could’ve been a whole horde of them slowly stalking towards him, and he still wouldn’t be able to take his eyes from the woman laying with a hole in her chest on the ground. Digby dropped the shotgun, and the world slowly came back to him just as the feeling did in his arms. He crept over to the woman laying in the street, and could see it was her, undoubtedly her. Why she was now wearing a mask didn’t matter, but still it made him hesitant to go to her. A splutter of blood came out of the mouth hole, and the cavity in her chest heaved and sagged with her drowning breaths. That sound, that horrible sound, made Digby more human in that moment than he’d felt in years. 

‘Don’t move,’ he whispered, but the only thing moving anymore was her blood as it slowly formed a liquid blanket under her.

Mia muttered something indistinguishable as Digby’s fingers went under his balaclava to take it off, but her hand stopped him. 

‘Don’t take it off,’ she moaned, the words causing her agony. ‘If they see your face they’ll kill you.’

Her grip loosened and the hand fell away again. The light in the eyes behind that featureless face started to go out, and her body shivered. 

‘What will?’ he asked her. ‘The thing in the sky? Is that what it is? What are they?’

She made no reply; the bloody crater in her chest oozed some more and then fell. She went still. Her eyes rolled back in her head and a faint noise like the rattle in an empty can of spray paint escaped through the mouth hole. Then Mia was dead. Digby pulled her mask away and saw her real face, a familiar expression of sadness painted on it. He moved a few feet away and sat on the kerbside, the bloody mask in his hands, and let his mind wander for a while. 

He heard a whoosh in the air above him and another of those sickly, cracking chitters before the thing descended upon Mia’s lifeless body. Digby staggered into the middle of the street and watched as she was snatched effortlessly from the ground, and taken into the sky to be consumed. Mia didn’t scream like George had done, and maybe that was worse in a way. He could hear exactly what that monstrous thing was doing with her, (and what it would surely do to him if he dared take his balaclava off). He looked to the houses on the street, those with their lights on, which were fewer than half of them. There were people in the windows, at the doors, all of them in masks, watching him as he stood quivering in the darkened street. None of them dared come to help, (none of them could), and they looked calm and uninterested behind those faces they wore. But they were safe behind them too, that much he could gather. So long as no one in this town showed their faces, the creatures wouldn’t see them – but the people would witness everything. These lifeless people living in a lifeless town, witness and accessory to such horrors that most can never dream of. He thought there had been something wrong with Mia, but really she was like the rest of them. She’d simply given up on this town, and was staying behind to watch it be devoured. 

Digby went over to the shotgun lying in the street and picked it up, cocking it loudly so that all the neighbours could hear it. A couple of them flinched a little, but none retreated inside their homes. He imagined that some of the faces behind those masks might even welcome the quick release of bullets compared to being swallowed, slowly and suffocatingly, by those demons up above. They’d get no such satisfaction from him. Digby slung the shotgun under his arm and walked back up the street towards Mia’s house, as the neighbours stood and watched him. When he was gone they simply stared at the bloody street where Mia had died, and finally they went back inside and presumably lived whatever lives they still had. 

Mia’s house was somehow quieter than it had been when he and Chip had arrived, despite everything that had happened. He didn’t like that, every creak in the floorboards and murmur from the pipes set him on edge, so he started humming a tune that his psycho father used to listen to, used to play until he was sick of it. In truth, he hated that song, but he couldn’t think of anything else to hum, and maybe he had chosen it because his father had at least been a monster he could understand, not like the ones he’d encountered here. 

He walked into the bathroom and discovered that something he suspected might happen had in fact happened, given that Chip was still lying there in the bath. Digby didn’t want to admit it, but the young lad had lost an awful amount of blood by thrashing around in the car, and even if the patch job Mia had done on his leg had kept the rest inside him, his chances of seeing tomorrow had still been slim. Digby went over to him and pulled the sweat-soaked balaclava from his head, tossed it away, and gave him a sincere little ruffle of the hair. He’d liked Chip a lot, despite him being the kind of jumped-up hothead he usually detested. He just assumed he’d have more time to turn him around, before the world made him cruel. Chip wasn’t cruel yet, just petulant. A small-timer. Now he lay lifeless in a bloody bathtub, hundreds of miles from anywhere good. His face looked sad, like Mia’s had looked sad, but for different reasons. After all, Chip had still been hanging onto life, Mia was waiting around to die. Digby stroked the lad’s face and sighed. 

That’s when the boy came out of his room again. Digby heard him, but had decided not to raise his gun again, even if those creatures came for him. He was done with it. All of it. But it was only a boy. He came down the hallway and stood at the door of the bathroom and watched them for a moment before speaking. 

‘Are you done with the bathroom?’ he asked in a low voice. ‘I forgot to wash my hands.’

Digby looked at him and saw a different kind of face now. Not different for its small chin and flat nasal bridge, no, it was different, because this boy, despite two strangers in his house, one dead in the bath and the other holding a gun and wearing a black balaclava, didn’t seem scared at all. In fact, this was the first time today that Digby could recall someone smiling at him. 

‘Sorry little one,’ Digby told the boy gently, ‘I won’t be too much longer.’ 

The boy smiled and clutched at the sides of his pyjamas, eagerly waiting for Digby to vacate the bathroom. 

‘Where’s Mia?’ the boy asked him, crossing his nervous little legs together and hopping on the spot. ‘Did she gone out? Did she take her outside face with her?’ 

‘Yes she did,’ Digby said, and smiled at the boy. ‘She’ll be right back. I promise.’ 

The two of them smiled at each other a moment longer, before Digby eventually got up and made way for the child to use the bathroom. He left Chip where he was, and let the boy close the door behind him. Out in the hall, Digby reached up and finally took off his mask. It felt wrong to him, like peeling away the skin on his face and leaving his skull bare.