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It happens in a whirlwind.
One moment, all Jessica can think is Aiden, Aiden, Aiden, her grip on the handles of her son’s wheelchair tightening as they traverse through the dim hallway.
We need to move, Ashlyn had said. Time is almost up.
The group had agreed, despite Jessica’s fear of going back out into the darkness — this particular filing room’s door was scratched up and nearly broken down, now flimsy in comparison to the other rooms they’d encountered.
They hadn’t even needed to use a card to open it.
In the next moment, Aiden’s flashlight flickers. “Guys,” he starts, his smile dropping as he shakes the device. “We might have a problem.”
Dread creeps into Jessica’s heart. For whatever reason, the light is important.
“What is it now—” Tyler starts, voice laced with an annoyance that irks Jessica before her thoughts are cut off by Ashlyn’s sharp gasp, her head snapping to the side before she lunges forward.
Her leg moves up expertly, nailing the phantom in the head with a sickening crack. A gunshot goes off behind her. Taylor is shoving her own flashlight into Jessica’s hands and Ashlyn is yelling, “Keep the other side as lit as possible!”
The monster is grotesque, the white of its sclera and smile blinding against the dark hallway and its own shadowy figure. There are more that follow, and her heart pounds harder with every new addition.
Jessica complies reluctantly — both out of paralyzing fear and a desire to stay with Aiden — only letting go of her son’s chair when Emma, armed with a rifle and a flashlight, takes her place.
She nods Jessica into their left side, where light is scarce. Emma does not smile, but the look in her eyes is trustworthy, I will protect him.
Right. Jessica has a responsibility, too. And . . . Aiden would be better off with Emma, anyways.
This is another way she’s failed him.
She raises the flashlight into the next dark hallway and swallows down the thoughts. She watches each phantom back away at the sign of her light, feels satisfaction bubble up in her gut, and pretends that she knows how to handle any of this.
Out of the corner of her eye, she sees Aiden try to get up. Both Ben and Emma shove him back down, while Tyler snaps his head back to glare at him.
Aiden just huffs, an easy smile plastered back onto his face. “You guys are no fun,” he bemoans, even at the sight of the phantoms in all their terrifying glory.
It makes her sick. Daniel, now behind her, seems to feel similarly.
Three gunshots follow: one by her son (she doesn’t know when he was given a gun), one by the Logan boy, and one by Mike.
For a moment, Jessica finds hope. She won’t die here. Aiden won’t die here. Daniel will not die here. The kids — as nauseating as it is to think — are heavily experienced in this.
They’ve been fighting these things for months on end.
They’re still alive. They are strong in a way that Jessica can barely begin to fathom.
Mike and Emma were in the military, and Logan’s grandparents . . . seem to have had an interesting past.
The odds are in their favor.
But then —
Each of the teenagers flinch, bodies moving so quickly to their right that she thinks she’s missed something. Each of their flashlights flicker.
The silence is broken when Taylor screams Ashlyn’s name, when Ashlyn cries out right after. Aiden is on his feet almost immediately, throwing off Emma’s grasp as he sprints for the monsters. She nearly stumbles with the force of it.
“Aiden,” Tyler hisses, though he grabs the wheels of his own chair and shoves himself forward, raises his rifle, and shoots the monster following her son in the head.
“There’s too many,” Mike quips, concern for his daughter radiating off him in waves. He looks like he’s about to follow Aiden's lead, and Emma doesn’t seem far enough behind. “We need to find another place to hide, now. ”
Logan agrees, glancing back towards an injured Ashlyn, leaning against the wall under the cover of both Taylor and Aiden. She’s covering her stomach, knees shaking.
Aiden hits one of the monsters in the face with one bare fist, shoving his weapon into its abdomen with the other. Ben is at his back, covering his blind spots with a flashlight.
It looks natural, as though they’ve done this a million times before
“I’ll go ahead and find one,” Logan presses, looking back at his friends again, and his grandfather only studies him for a moment before agreeing.
Tyler says, “I think the room with the coma patients is to our right.”
“Okay. You’re sure?”
“No, but . . . we’re going to need whatever medical supplies we can find.” Tyler looks back again, and Logan nods.
“Alone, though?” Daniel asks, hesitant. He is holding a bag of files close to his chest.
“It’ll be safest this way,” Logan says.
Tyler adds, “We’ve been through worse. At least no one’s dead this time.”
Jessica can only focus on breathing and her flashlight after he says that, at least until Ben drags a panting Aiden and a stumbling Ashlyn back to the group.
Aiden and Taylor shine flashlights behind his back, effectively keeping any last monsters at bay. Taylor has a nasty scratch planted against her cheek, too close to her neck for comfort.
“It’s . . . quieter now — Logan, where — ?” Ashlyn chokes out, blood seeping out of her mouth as Ben lowers her into Aiden’s chair, a hand over her stomach.
Aiden is holding her hand, and Jessica can’t look at the mess — not at Ashlyn’s current state, or the mess of monsters the children have left behind.
Emma and Mike are both fussing over their daughter, all soft words and hushed profanities at her current state. “He’s finding a safe place,” Emma says. “Just worry about yourself for now.”
Aiden does not let go. Ben’s hand continues to place pressure over her wounds, despite Lily’s terrified calls for him from her mother’s arms. He only smiles at her, strained and tired and unsure.
He is covered in half-dried blood.
Jessica isn’t sure whose it is.
The wrinkles between Ashlyn’s eyebrows do not smooth out.
“What . . . are you . . . doing up?”
Aiden laughs, though his smile is exhausted, more out of relief than anything else. “You need the chair more right now. Just rest, Ash.”
She narrows her eyes at him. “What if you pass out again?”
“Ben’ll carry me,” he says, fingers squeezing tighter. “Focus on staying awake, okay, Ash? I’ll be fine. I’m durable, remember?”
“ . . . Okay,” Ashlyn agrees, sounding like she doesn’t.
Jessica feels like she’s about to throw up. She holds the flashlight in place.
“Guys!” Logan calls, frantic, somewhere at their right. “Come on!”
They follow, ending up in a surprisingly big room — sterile and padded, almost completely unfurnished, with only a dresser, a table, and a hospital bed. It’s an upgrade from any of the rooms they’ve seen so far.
“This is Tyler’s room,” Taylor says, as soon as the door has been secured shut behind them. It’s phrased like a question, but the sort of question you don’t really need the answer to — she trusts Logan’s judgment.
The blood still drips down her face, staining her neck and undershirt with red. Her mother stares at her, but can’t seem to find the words.
Logan nods, sweat trailing down his temple. He ran far, both ways. “Alex gave him extra medical supplies, remember? I couldn’t find the coma room in time. This was the next best thing.”
“You did good,” Taylor emphasizes. “We made it. We all did good.”
Tyler agrees from his spot on the floor, a hand over his stomach. Presumably, where he’d been impaled by that tree. “We always do.”
Aiden has passed out again, on the side of the bed closest to the wall. He’s next to Ashlyn, who’s gingerly peeling off her damaged vest and revealing a cut into her stomach. Ben presses antiseptic into it while Ashlyn grits her teeth and presses her face into his shoulder.
The room is quiet again. None of her fellow parents seem to know what to do — how to approach this. The kids fall into a routine that Jessica can only assume is familiar.
“Is anyone else injured?” Tyler asks after some time, eyes still transfixed on Ashlyn’s stomach, newly wrapped, blood still seeping through the bandages. At the lack of answer, he exhales and leans back into his chair. “I’ll ask Alex for more supplies tomorrow.”
“Yeah,” Taylor nods. To Logan, she asks, “How much time do we have left?”
“Twenty minutes, give or take,” he replies.
The tension is still heavy in the air.
Ashlyn clears her throat and removes herself from her parents’ frantic embrace.
Jessica finds herself looking up at Lily, in Ben’s half-washed arms. She looks terrified. Jessica herself can barely wrap her head around anything — she doesn’t know why her son keeps fainting, what those things are, how these children have managed to survive so long.
She can’t imagine how it must feel through the eyes of her niece.
Daniel presses his hand to her shoulder, and all Jessica can manage is to lean into her husband’s touch, to check again that Aiden’s chest still rises and falls.
“Taylor, Ben, wash up. We should get some rest for now,” Ashlyn orders, like she’s done it a million times before.
In turn, everyone follows, as though her word is all that matters. There are so many questions swirling through her mind, but Jessica can’t find the words to ask any of them.
“Dad, Mom,” Ashlyn murmurs, so low that Jessica can barely hear it. She’s so close to Aiden that his hair is brushing against her shoulder.
“Yeah, trooper?” Mike grabs onto her hand, squeezing tight. The relief that washes over both him and Emma is palpable.
“I’m okay,” she says as she begins to sit up, like it’s a simple fact. Like they hadn’t all watched her nearly die less than an hour ago. “I think . . . Tyler and Aiden should take the bed. Can you move me?”
“No way,” Tyler interrupts immediately. “Moving you right now would be way too dangerous. I’m fine. Think about yourself for once, Carrot-Top.”
Ashlyn scowls at him, and Aiden’s snort reveals him as awake. He pulls Ashlyn a little closer as he raises his head to immediately press it back into her shoulder. She barely reacts. “Do you think Alex could get us a bigger bed?”
Alex?
“Maybe,” Taylor ponders as she walks back in, immediately reaching for Tyler to pull him to his feet. Logan stands close behind her, and Ben seems content to recollect Lily from his father’s arms. “But that would look kind of suspicious, wouldn’t it?”
The change in topic to something so mundane is giving Jessica whiplash.
“Aiden is pretty loaded, though,” Tyler says. “Maybe Alex could pass it off as a rich kid quirk to the higher-ups.”
Logan shrugs. “Worth a shot. Sleeping on the floor sucks, sometimes.”
Tyler leans into Taylor, exhaling slowly as they redistribute their weight. Logan presses a hand to Taylor’s back to keep the twins upright. “Yeah, especially when someone ends up taking up half my space every time we try to get some shut-eye in here.”
“Hey!” Aiden quips back, frowning up at him. “I can’t control what sleep-me does!”
“Stop arguing,” Ashlyn mutters, putting a hand over her ears. The room goes quiet immediately. She sighs and rolls her eyes. “C’mere already. We’re losing time.”
Mike and Emma move out of the way to where James and Mary and Daniel all ponder over the variously spread paperwork. Jessica feels like she should join them.
Taylor and Logan guide Tyler to the space in between the bed and the wall. Ben hands Lily to Naomi, hugging both his parents before he follows. Taylor’s head rests against the mattress, Aiden reaching over Ashlyn’s shoulder to card his fingers through her brown hair.
Her legs intertwine with Tyler’s, who’s leaning against the opposite wall. Ben and Logan are similarly close, Logan resting against his chest and taking Tyler’s hand in his own.
It’s domestic, loving — and it would even be sweet, if their circumstances were any different.
Alongside the tension in the air, there is love; there is an intimacy that’s so intense that she is torn between an inability to tear her eyes away and the feeling that she is prying into something that isn’t hers.
Even though Jessica cannot ensure her son’s safety, she knows that he has this.
Her fear of prying into their safety takes over. She takes her place in between her husband and her sister.
“Are you okay?” Daniel asks, hand coming down to rest against her leg.
Jessica inhales, exhales, closes her eyes, and nods. He squeezes her skin in acknowledgment.
Shift.