“Seth!” Alex stepped forward to embrace him, but she hesitated. “Are you okay? I thought…”

Seth had no answer to that. Instead, he looked Alex over. She was covered in gray dust, and her eyes welled with tears. Pale fluid leaked from her ears and dripped down her neck. He stepped to the side and indicated to the dead butcher. “I got him.”

“I see.” Alex looked away from the carnage and frowned. “I tried to help you. I… shit! Help me with Will!”

Right. Will lay against the table, not moving. His arm was severed at the elbow, and blood leaked from the bloody stump, slivered across the table, and pattered against the concrete below.

He’d lost so much blood already. Seth wasn’t sure they could do anything to help him.

Alex dropped her sledgehammer and ran to his side. “We need to stop the bleeding. Help me with a tourniquet.”

With nothing better to use, Seth grabbed his knife and cut off the sleeve of his hoodie. The thing was soaked through with blood anyway. He twisted the cloth around, wrung it out the best he could, then helped Alex wrap it tight around Will’s arm. He didn’t know how to tie it, and neither did Alex, so they just pulled it as tight as they could and hoped it would be good enough.

“We need to go,” Alex said. “Help me carry him to the car.”

So the car was here. That was a relief. Seth pulled Will off the table and slung him over his shoulder. He wasn’t a small man, but Seth carried him as if he weighed twenty pounds. His new strength stat was no joke.

They walked into the darkness of the slaughterhouse and to a garage on the other side. There, the car was waiting for them. Alex opened the passenger door, and Seth shoved Will inside. He wasn’t looking good. Will sat there, limp, and his breath occasionally hitched and gurgled.

Alex ran around the side and hopped into the driver seat. She reached into her pockets, then hesitated. “Shit! I don’t have my keys!”

Of course, she didn’t. Seth tried to think back to when they’d first been kidnapped. It felt so long ago, but Riles had been the one to take the car, right? The keys must be with her. God damn it!

“I’ll go look,” Seth said.

He ran back into the slaughterhouse, back to the room with the oil lamp. It seemed this place was the butcher’s workshop. Various tools and junk cluttered the tables along the back. Seth found his backpack, the shotgun still inside. He snagged it and put his arms through the straps. Besides that, there was the radio, a few knives, a lighter, the oil lamp, and some empty chip bags. He didn’t find any keys.

“Anything?” Alex asked. She stood by the entrance, eyes wide. Her jeans were soaked by something with a harsh chemical smell. Gasoline?

Seth shook his head. He wasn’t surprised. But he also wasn’t as upset as he knew he should be. The car was one avenue of escape, but at this point, it would be safer to go on foot. That meant leaving Will behind, but he was probably dead regardless.

The light shifted as Alex drew closer and leaned against a table. She buried her eyes in her hands and wiped the grime from her face. “We need to find the keys.”

“Yeah. Well, I don’t see you looking. Are you going to make me do all the work? Again?”

Alex glared at him, her bloodshot eyes reflecting the orange light. “Fuck you. I thought you were dead, Seth. You were hanging from the fucking ceiling like a piece of meat. I should have given up and run away, but instead, I lured that monster into a trap and blew him up. I exploded a fucking propane tank on him.”

“It didn’t work.”

“Oh, really? I didn’t realize. The point is, I tried my best. We both did and look where it's gotten us. I feel like I’ve been run over by a truck, and my ears are still ringing. I can barely even hear you. And you look like you’ve been through a woodchipper. And after all our pain and suffering, we finally have our car, and we can’t even use it.”

“Calm down,” Seth said.

“Calm down! Are you kidding me? I am calm, Seth, but it doesn’t change the fact that we are completely fucked.”

He wasn’t in the mood to argue with her. There was no time to waste on such frivolity. Seth bent down and checked under the table to see if there was anything he’d missed. It would be so easy for the key to slip out somewhere and be lost among the expanse of pavement.

Perhaps the butcher had the key on him. Seth stalked over to the body and flipped it over. Entrails spilled across the floor, and Alex gagged at the sight. Large chunks of the butcher’s clothing were burnt away, and other sections were fused to his skin. Seth patted the man down, but his pockets were gone. If the key had been inside, there would be no finding it now.

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The radio crackled to life. “Hey, Pete. You there?” David said. “I heard an explosion earlier.”

Seth shoved the corpse to the side and ran to the radio. Before he could think straight, he pulled the microphone to his lips and pressed the button. He hesitated for a moment, trying to think what to say. Alex glared at him and shook her head. She mouthed the word, “No.”

He didn’t care if it was a dumb idea. Seth was done hiding from these freaks. “Pete is dead.”

The radio was silent for a few long seconds, nothing but the crackle of static. “Who is this?”

“Seth Mayhew. I believe we met. I tried to pop a bullet in your head, and you ran like a little bitch. But don’t worry. I’m coming to finish the job.”

David laughed. “Oh, I very much doubt that. You only went after Pete to get your car back, right? You wouldn’t risk your life for anything else. So no, I don’t think you’ll be coming for me. You’re just trying to distract me so you can escape. Well, let me tell you something. You’ll never make it out of here alive. The only way out is blocked by a gate with fifteen armed guards.”

Fifteen? That didn’t seem likely. For one thing, it was super overkill. But more importantly, what were so many people doing on a farm in the middle of nowhere? Although, Seth remembered how many beds had been in the campsite. Maybe David was telling the truth.

“It doesn’t matter,” Seth said. “Send as many after us as you’d like. I’ll kill them all.”

“We’ll see about that. I’ll be waiting at the gate.”

“See you soon.” Seth found the button to turn the radio off, and the low crackle fizzled out.

Alex stepped around the puddles of blood as she approached Seth. She smacked him in the arm. “What are you doing? You’re going to get us all killed.”

“What was I supposed to say? Now we know they’ll be waiting at the gate. Hell, before this I didn’t even know there was a gate.”

Alex threw her hands up. “This is stupid. We can’t use the car anyway. We should just go on foot, like you said.”

No. Seth refused to compromise. After all the pain he’d suffered to save Will, he wouldn’t just give up. More importantly, he meant what he’d said. Seth wanted to kill David and all the rest of them.

He shoved past Alex and jogged back to the car. The passenger door was still open, and Will hung from the side of the seat, his breathing heavy. His eyes fluttered, trying to focus.

Seth slapped him across the face. “Hey! Will, wake up. We need you.” His slap left a red handprint across Will’s pale face. “Come on.” He grabbed Will by the shoulders and shook him back and forth.

“What are you doing?” Alex grabbed Seth’s shoulder and tried to pull him away. “You’re going to hurt him.”

“Your boyfriend’s a mechanic, right? Does he know how to hotwire a car?”

“I don’t know.”

“We better hope he does.” Seth smacked Will again, the force jostling him across the middle console.

Alex pulled against Seth’s arm, but it was like a fly trying to hold back a mountain. Even so, she was starting to annoy him. Seth turned around and shoved her, harder than he’d meant to. She flew backward and her shoulder cracked against the cinder block wall. She slumped to the floor.

Seth released the tension in his muscles. He pushed Will back into a seated position and walked over to Alex. She winced, her eyes sharp as daggers, but she seemed okay.

“Sorry,” Seth said. “But we need to get the car working. Will’s our best chance.”

“Then we’re fucked.”

Yeah, she was probably right. And he supposed he wasn’t being entirely fair to Alex. It was true that he’d done most of the work, but he was also the one with the gun and the power of the parasite. So if he wanted to get the car working, Seth would have to do it himself.

“Okay, here is the plan,” Seth said as he helped Alex to her feet. “You stay here and try to wake up Will. I’m going to go back to Riles and try to find the key, but the odds of finding it aren’t great.”

“No way,” Alex said. “You can’t leave me here. You just told David exactly where we are.”

“I know. Which is why I won’t spend long looking for the key. If I don’t find it, I won’t come back here. I’ll go directly to the gate and try to distract them. That should give you some time to get the car working.”

“Seth, I don’t like this. You’ll be out there, all alone against fifteen people. David will just kill you, and then he’ll come back here and finish the rest of us.”

Maybe? But what other options did they have? Like Alex said, David knew exactly where they were. If they just waited and did nothing, they’d be dead and buried by morning. Seth growled and slammed his hand against the wall.

“Okay, new plan,” Seth said. “Give me your phone.”

“What?” Alex frowned as she reached into her pocket. The phone’s screen flickered to life, blinding after so much time in the darkness. She unlocked the phone and handed it to Seth.

He swept across multiple pages of apps. God, why did she have so many? But he eventually found what he was looking for, a basic timer. He set the timer to 45 minutes and started it.

“There. By the time that reaches zero, you better have the car going and start toward the gate.”

“How does that help? What are you going to do?”

Seth took out his own phone and set the timer to 40 minutes. That would give him five minutes to lead the guards away from the gate, then circle back to the car. “I’m still going to distract David, but I’ll be careful about it. I won’t make my move until the timer runs out. If we time this properly, we can be out of here before they have a chance to retaliate.”

“Seth, I don’t see how that’s any different than before.”

“The difference is, I’m not going to go in guns blazing. I’ll watch David and make sure he doesn’t make a move on the slaughterhouse. If there’s any sign that you’re in danger, I’ll come back and intervene.”

His mind made up, Seth shoved the phone back in his pocket. He moved to leave, but Alex grabbed his arm. She held on for a moment, looked into his eyes, but then she let go and took a deep breath.

“Fine,” Alex said. “I’ll get the car working and meet you at the gate. It’s the least I can do.”