This was that same night. Actually, I think it was the same hour, that’s just how quickly they were moving in. I was on the ground, writhing around, losing my fine motor skills and blood from my mouth. We were in such a small cropping of nature, no further than two miles from the road in any direction. It was ten minutes from my house. I thought about it, really. Going home for one last time. I thought about how good it would feel to curl up in my own bed. To see the stars out from my window and be unafraid. But I was curled up on the ground, freezing even in the warm night air. And I could see the stars from there too. The sky loomed over me like a great weight suspended. Space hung like a cliff I had fallen from.
I try to think of when I knew, when the lightbulb came on above my head. Ursula had known all along, of course, and the wound she’d left inside of me was still gaping. I was in too much pain to think clearly. If I’d known then, I didn’t know well. I was afraid.
June put her arms around my shoulders from where I was hunched over, clutching at roots. I coughed, getting my blood in her hair for the very first time. She was shushing me, rocking; I didn’t know I’d been screaming. I wanted to know what she’d seen, whether it was real. But I saw Micah frozen up against the tree, his nails against his teeth. There came a dull burning in my chest. June’s fingers ran through my hair as she got me upright. Micah got my other side. The two of them walked me out of the forest, towards my house.
Before the forest, there was a field. Even late into the season, there were wildflowers blooming there. Yarrow and Oregon iris. Lupine. Fireweed. They withered and died where the ichor brushed them. As I watched them go, bright lights suddenly flooded my vision.
At the edge of the field was a small dirt road and it was hosting a light show. It took several tries for me to make out the ambulance beneath them. Micah made a small choked sound in his throat, while I felt June’s shoulders tensing where she’d held me. They knew it was for us. I remember being confused at how quickly they had gotten there, even embarrassed at how loudly I’d screamed. It was a short walk from the woods to my house, but not while half-dragged, inconsolable. How long had we been walking?
There were paramedics there, moving out over the field. A tall man in a crisp-looking T-shirt, a mask pulled up over the lower part of his face. He was holding a duffel bag at his side. He had me leaning against him before any of us knew what was happening, a strange sleight of hand. June looked confused as to how she had lost contact. I could not make out the words they were saying, if they said any at all. There was a stretcher by the open doors of the ambulance, a woman in uniform beside it. She had a stethoscope around her neck. She was - as I later learned - holding an axe behind her back.
The man’s hand was tight against my neck. I fell in one smooth motion, effortlessly. They might’ve killed me with a butter knife at that point. They might’ve killed me just by waiting. The new and animal part of me was indignant and spasmodic. It was so new and didn’t know how to protect us yet. I didn’t have its killer instinct or its sense of self preservation. I didn’t even know what was happening.
June closed the gap in the same time it had taken me to hit the floor. As the women tried to pull the axe into a useful position, June’s forearm slammed hard into her neck. They both fell against the truck, both of their hands on the handle of the axe. June pivoted away as the man stepped towards her - but he wasn’t looking for her. He stood over me, his hand finding my nape again with three times the pressure.
I tried to spin around, to claw at him, and was distracted by the grit that suddenly poured onto my skin. I twisted further and found the axe sticking out of his arm - and a trickle of sand pouring out from the cut. His grip had hardly loosened and his eyes were crazed - mostly empty. June stuck his arm again. It came off. She screamed.
Micah was suddenly there, pulling me off the ground, away from the truck. For a horrible moment, the arm hung from my neck like a tie. Its grip relaxed and fell to the ground unceremoniously. I was in a daze, sandy, bloodied. I laid down in the thick grass, only able to watch. The bodies - they were saying horrible things. In real voices, I had heard them say:
“We only want to help you.”
“Put down the axe, please.”
“I’m calling the cops.”
“We’re paramedics. We’ll help you.”
“I have a family.”
And so on it went, their panic - the man now yelling as though he had really lost an arm, like blood had left him instead of sand. June was shaking badly.
Micah crept up behind the one-armed man and ripped him open like a sack. He had taken my knife from my bag - it glittered in the moonlight. The remains of the man spilled out onto the dirt road. His skin folded around him into a loose pile. Slashing, as it turned out, worked much better than striking. June turned on the woman quickly before she had time to run. I watched as her hollow eyes emptied and she turned to dirt before me. June and Micah looked at each other, then moved silently towards the front of the ambulance. The driver died without screaming. They told me he did not have a face.
I didn’t want to go home after that and neither did they. Micah ran off - I tied a pink ribbon to his wrist so I would know it was him when he came back - while June guarded me among the wildflowers. Micah pulled the car up and we loaded inside. We only stopped briefly at his house and June’s to pick up clothes and cash, plus whatever groceries we could spare. I already knew where I wanted to go. Micah seemed to know without me telling him - he’d been there once before. My family had bought a cabin the first year we moved out here. It was close to the coast, deep in the woods. Hours and hours from here. I was a shark.