No Exit by Taylor Adams 2

“You know … reattach fingers?”
“Yep. They sure can,” Darby said, trying to sound calm.
She wondered how much blood she’d lost already, and how
much more she could afford to.
She gave up on the medical gauze, but beside the bleach
she found something better — Lars’s roll of electrical tape.
She ripped off a stretch with her teeth and looped it around her
right hand. She wrapped all three fingers into a clenched
block, keeping her thumb free.
That took care of the bleeding. But she’d have to shoot the
Beretta left-handed. She had never fired a gun before, and she
was right-handed. She hoped she could still hit her target. She
only had one bullet.
Jay kept staring at the injury with morbid awe, and Darby
noticed she’d turned shockingly pale. Gray, like a body
dredged up from underwater. “What if … what if they can’t
find your finger in the door? Because it’s too smashed up—”
“It’ll grow back,” Darby said, biting off the last stretch of
black tape.
“Really?”
“Yep.”
“I didn’t know fingers could grow back.”
“They do.” She touched Jay’s forehead, the way her
mother used to feel for a fever, and the girl’s skin was cold.
Clammy, like candle wax. She tried to remember — what were
the symptoms Ed had described to her? Low blood sugar.
Nausea. Weakness. Seizure, coma, death. His words echoed in
fragments: We have to get her to a hospital. It’s all we can—
“Daaaaarby.” The front door thrashed in its frame and the
deadbolt chattered. “We finish what we start—”
“He’s …” Jay cringed. “He’s so mad at us—”
“Good.” Darby scooted against the wall and raised the
pistol in her left hand, aiming at the door.