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say, realizing a part of me worries my words are true. The sharp smell of gasoline bites at my nose, making my already aching head spin. “We have to get out. We’ll call for help when we’re safe.”
    You’ll never be safe. Never again. Never, never, never. It came for you in the daylight. It won’t be leaving without your blood in its mouth.
    I move faster, tripping over dead weight. Dead weight . People are dead, people I’ve seen every day, who I’ve envied for their easy smiles and simple problems. And now they’re dead, and Dani and I could be next.
    “My backpack … ” Dani reaches a hand toward where we were sitting, but it falls back to her side a second later. Her head lolls against my shoulder. I glance down in time to see her eyes roll back and her lids flutter closed. She’s losing consciousness again, maybe even dying.
    “Dani, wake up, don’t go to sleep. Stay awake!” The panic in my voice draws the attention of the monster.
    Twenty feet away, the Thing hisses and crouches lower, wiggling its haunches, getting ready to pounce. Dani didn’t see it and none of the people at the front of the bus seem to have noticed a nightmare the size of a small horse slinking through the wreckage, but that doesn’t stop my heart from kicking into adrenaline-fueled overdrive. I don’t care if anyone else can see it. I can see it.
    And I know if it gets close enough, I’ll feel it.
    Memories of fighting for my life—small hands clenching around that neck, straining to keep its teeth away from my face, wrestling for hours in hot, sticky sheets and waking up in the morning with bruises on my ribs—convince me it’s time to risk turning my back on danger in the name of getting the hell out of here. Now.
    I spin and lunge for the now-horizontal emergency door. Amazingly, it is still whole and clinging to its rusted hinges. All I have to do is get my hands on the handle and push. Two more steps and we’re there. I lift my foot, aiming for the center of the door. My boot is only seconds away from impact when I see it.
    I jerk my knee to my chest and scream, a raw, terrified sound that stirs up echoes from the front of the bus. But the people up there are only responding to my fear. They have no idea what they’re screaming about. There’s no way they could. They can’t see the Thing from up there. It isn’t in the bus with us anymore. It’s outside, clawing at the glass that separates its fangs from my foot. I’d nearly let it back in and delivered Dani right into its jaws.
    My heart slams in my chest as I back away.
    How did it get outside so fast? And how am I ever going to outrun it, even if I do find another way out?
    Hours of sprints up and down the soccer field haven’t prepared me for this. I was an idiot to think I could ever be big enough or strong enough that I wouldn’t have to be afraid. I will always be afraid. Until the day I die. Until the day this monster kills me.
    The Thing lunges. Its face smashes into the glass, sending a crack shivering up the center. A few more hits like that and it’ll be on top of us.
    “Shit!” Blood rushes to my head. Fear and the smell of gasoline—so much thicker here in the very back of the bus—is making me dizzy. I stumble and Dani cries out, but it takes me a second to realize I’m the reason she’s in pain. I’m holding her too tight.
    I force my hands to relax and my feet to move. I pick my way back over the last seat and across the still forms of Bart Stevens and Na Ngyuen, the only two people socially awkward enough to end up closer to the back than Dani and me. The rest of the bus looms in front of me, an obstacle course filled with bleeding people and crushed seats and a jumble of backpacks and sack lunches and iPods, all useless now that there will be no one alive to use them. Hopelessness catches in my throat, making it hard to swallow. It’s too far. We’ll never make it before the bus goes up in flames.
    I can smell it now, above the