Re: Part 2....
Wren, for all that her life had come rife with things that were terrible, was bad in bad situations. She'd grown in the kind of setting that would make grown men and women turn their faces and lose their lunches, and she'd experienced really terrible things, and maybe she should be okay with this. But the things she'd faced were different. They were hands and fingers and things that hurt. Dying wasn't ever something she was up against, and the scary things beneath her bed smelled like salt and skin and man. This wasn't the same, and she wasn't good with it.
Evie was strong. Evie was so much stronger, and Wren still remembered the girl with the scarf in Seattle, fearless in the face of bigger things. Wren went stock still when things went bad. She knelt, she bowed her head, she gave whatever the person wanted. Evie fought, and there was nothing to bow her head to here. Before Wren saw anything at all, anything more than puddles of blood on the hospital floor, she knew that.
She didn't have a flashlight or a weapon, and she could already tell she had nothing in her head. No Loki, and no voice that would scare anyone or make them bleed, and that was all she'd wanted when she'd turned that doorknob.
Now, she knew Loki was probably a much, much better option.
Because, and even with Evie's fingers twined tight with hers, the scraping continued. Wren squeezed tighter, and she knew she was probably hurting Evie's hand. Something moved by her foot, and she didn't ask Evie to move her flashlight. She nudged at the thing instead, and she used her phone to light it.
Not a zombie, but something that had been human once, twisted innards in gore red and a familiar face attached to skinless sinew. Twitch, twitch, twitch, and it reminded her of a man on the floor of a warehouse. A man that died a long time ago, and Wren jumped back quickly enough to back into a metal fence. Ahead, there was a bathroom door, and behind them the scraping neared, neared, like someone dragging something metal against the ground. Drag, drag, drag, and a look over her shoulder showed nurses that looked like her maman beneath blood and contorted features that were barely human above the neck. Weird gait, and Wren whimpered and turned away.
She just squeezed Evie's fingers again, and she wordlessly pointed to the bathroom ahead. She wanted to say they should hide, but she couldn't, and the metal on stone came closer and closer, and more of those maman-nurses turned the corner; she could hear them. She wanted to say they should go back, find the sign on that foggy-snow bridge and read the name, but she didn't know the fog and snow weren't there now. In the end, Wren just trusted Evie and her light and her gun to get them somewhere hidden. Shhhh, and she didn't say even one little thing. Not one little thing.