No Exit by Taylor Adams 2

single window, the parked cars, the flagpole and the halfburied
Nightmare Children—
In the woods behind her, Ashley howled: “Daaaarby.”
No enunciation, no readable emotion — just her name,
coming in shrieking singsong from the black. It chilled her
blood.
She’d bought herself some time. Not quite a ten-minute
increment, but enough time to steal the brothers’ Astro (where
the keys were still in the door) and attempt a getaway. Fiftyfifty
odds she’d even make it out of the submerged parking lot,
but hell, those were better chances than her own Honda, and
probably the best odds she’d had all night. She thought about
poor little Jay as she ran, and it hit her again like a crushing
wave, a swarm of terrible thoughts racing behind her, biting at
her with wicked teeth—
Why did I get involved?
She couldn’t think about it.
This is my fault—
Not now.
Oh, Jesus, I got a kid killed tonight—
She was approaching the parking lot, passing a green
signboard, when Ashley shouted at her again from the trees,
closer behind her now, his voice cracking into an ugly
adolescent pitch: “We’re going to catch you.”
The Astro was now fifty feet away. The snow was
shallower in the parking lot, and it renewed her energy; she
launched into a faster, lighter sprint. She passed an indistinct
form buried under swept snow — what she’d initially believed
to be Ashley’s car. From this new angle, she glimpsed green
metal. Pits of vertical rust. A white stencil. Under the
snowpack, it wasn’t a parked car at all — it was a dumpster.
I should’ve known. I should’ve looked closer—