Setzer/Seismic Girls/

CHAPTER TWO

Esther woke to find herself tied up inside an abandoned bookstore. It had been one of the big ones with a coffee bar in the middle and aisles touting every genre from Architecture to Zoology. The labels still clung to the shelves, insisting that one might find a copy of the latest vegan cookbook or unauthorized biography among the detritus. Through the dusty front windows she saw the Jeep smoking where it had crashed against the post. The headlights were still on, casting pools of broken light into the store.

The lingering scent of coffee wafted through the place like a ghost. Esther had never tried coffee. Now she wished she had, along with about a thousand other things. Her wrists burned where the rope bit into the skin. She couldn’t feel her hands. They were bound around a column that had once sported posters of book covers. One of the posters, Stranger in a Strange Land, lay near Esther’s feet. The glossy print struck her as the sort of thing she’d like to hang in her dorm room—not that she had any hope of seeing her dorm again.

A rising sense of horror made Esther feel sicker than whatever Chris had put in her drink. She fought not to throw up.

At least let me die with a little dignity, she thought.

“That was very stupid of you, baby,” Chris said. His grin was a disembodied crescent in the gloom of the store.

“Stop calling me that,” Esther said. She realized how futile it was to protest, but she’d never been baby to anyone and she wasn’t going to start now.

Chris chortled. It couldn’t be called a laugh. It was much too feral for that. “What shall I call you, then? Bitch? Slut?” He leaned out of the shadows into the skewed beams of the Jeep’s headlights. “Dinner?”

The veneer of humanity had evaporated from him, leaving instead a grinning, dog-like creature. His eyes were red and puffy around the rims. The pepper spray had at least been that effective. If there was any other weakness, Esther couldn’t see it. The muscular frame she’d admired was still there, now exposed with mottled flesh and ridges of coarse hair standing on end. The mouth was by far the worst part. The quantity and sharpness of the teeth left no doubt that they belonged to an alpha carnivore.

Esther screamed.

“Good,” Chris growled. “I like how fear tastes. Makes you—” he ran his massive tongue around his lips “—sweeter.”

Esther considered screaming again, but since it hadn’t helped her the first time she decided not to waste her energy.

Something flickered in the headlight beams. A long shape—a shadow? No. Detached and solid, moving with eerie fluidity.

Chris spun. “What the—”

The shape kicked Chris in the head. Blood sprayed from his nose and he railed backwards, howling.

Then the dark shape was upon him. Esther saw a leg wrapped around Chris’s neck and then he was on the ground, lost in a tangle of limbs and a blur of fists. The hits struck his flesh with a sound like bags of sand dropping into broken glass.

Chris’s howling became garbled and then stopped altogether. He wasn’t moving. The dark figure rose and leaned over him. There came a cracking sound: Chris’s neck, breaking.

It was the crack that did it. Esther threw up. Bits of gravy fries splatted down her front. She heaved two more times and then raised her head to find herself face-to-face with the thing that had killed the thing that wanted to kill her.

The Reaper.

Gloved hands lowered the hood. Silhouetted against the headlights, the figure appeared otherworldly and menacing. Only by squinting could Esther discern its true features.

She gasped. “You’re a…girl?”

“Hold still,” the girl said. She pulled a knife out of her coat and took a step closer to Esther.

Esther winced and squeezed her eyes shut. Then the rope fell away from her hands.

“Th-thank you,” Esther said as her mysterious savior sliced through the rope binding her feet. Unprepared to support her own weight, Esther slumped forward. The girl caught her.

The navy coat, so ominous until now, was an anchor. Esther gripped the dark wool and stared up at her savior. The thing that struck her the most (after the shock of seeing a female face when she’d been expecting a skull) was the eyes. They were green and lamp bright, but hard. Haunted eyes, Esther couldn’t help but think, like pictures of veterans and refugees she’d seen in missionary pamphlets back home.

The girl’s eyebrows had never seen a pair of tweezers. Her nose was a smidge too big and her lips weren’t symmetrical, but the aberrations lent character to an unexpressive, but otherwise normal, face. Black, wavy hair fell to a blunt line at her chin.

“Can you stand?” the girl asked.

Esther tried. Her stomach gave a threatening lurch and her knees buckled.

“Here,” the girl said, offering Esther her arm. “We’ve got to move fast. Don’t barf on me. I mean it.”

“S-sure,” Esther said, trying to coordinate her legs. She could make them move well enough. It was just that the ground wouldn’t stop spinning.

“You’re not gonna barf, are you?” the girl asked.

Esther kept her lips shut. “Hmm-mm.”

The girl led Esther stumbling out of the book store, then went to the wrecked Jeep. “That was a bold move with the pepper spray,” she said. “It forced him to stop here. Better than taking you out of town. Stupid on his part. Police will be here any second.

Esther’s head felt like it had cracked open. A sticky substance dripping down her cheek wasn’t reassuring.

“Wait here,” the girl said. She lowered Esther next to a cart return.

Esther watched as the girl wrestled the Jeep’s gearshift into reverse and then rolled it back from the bent light post. With more crunching of gears and what sounded like swearing, the girl put the Jeep into drive and got it rolling toward the book store. She hopped out of the Jeep and ran alongside it long enough to coax a rag to flame and toss it into the driver’s seat.

Esther gasped as the Jeep, now a rolling fireball, careened toward the bookstore. It crashed through the front wall with a tremendous explosion. Glass blasted outward and torrents of black smoke poured out of the building.

The girl returned to Esther and held out her hand. “Let’s go,” she said. “Unless you’d rather stay here until the cops come.” She glanced over her shoulder at the burning building. “They’ll have questions.”

Esther stared at the hand that had been offered to her. The heat from the explosion made everything shiny, like a mirage. Esther wasn’t sure if the girl was real or if she was some figment born of desperation. “Who are you?”

“I am Lydia Crow,” the girl said. “I came here tonight to save your life. Let me finish the job.”

Next Chapter: Chapter Three