Page 55 of When the Night Comes Knocking

Besides, he’s pretty sure that Ashley was right about one thing earlier: If they couldn’t find a way to work together, then none of them would survive.

“We need to assess what we know about the Mimic so far,” Ashley says, like a doctor looking for a diagnosis to some mystery illness.

Thomas can imagine it crystal clear then, what this woman must be like on a normal day moving through the crowded trauma room of a hospital, her shoulders held back with an envious certainty even when she’s rushing, even when there’s total mayhem all around her.

What would someone who saves lives have to be guilty about? he wonders as his eyes drop down from the wound at her collarbone to her belly.

Jane places another piece of medical tape over the woman’s bandage. “The Mimic started reverting back to its original body after you hit it with the iron skillet,” she replies, stepping back from Ashley once the wound is successfully covered. Her eyes trail over to the pair of broken handcuffs lying on the floor, and for a moment she seems nowhere near this room. “I don’t think it can tolerate being in the light when it’s like that,” she adds quietly. “It kept flinching away from the overheads out in the store.”

“I can hardly tolerate those lights,” Thomas mutters, throwing a look toward Kimi. “I don’t know how they don’t drive you insane.”

Kimi shrugs, chewing on her thumbnail. “Grandma Ama always kept them that way. There are even worse floodlights on the store’s exterior, but they burnt out last week.”

“Great timing,” says Ashley, resting her head in her hand with drooping eyelids. The cut across her collarbone isn’t damning, not in the way the talons had cleaved through Billy’s arm or Sheila’s thigh, but it definitely needs stitches.

Thomas recalls Evan’s words from when they first ventured outside together, how stress is bad for the baby. He thinks of all the shows and movies he’s seen where women not due to deliver for weeks suddenly go into labor at the worst possible time, throwing the characters into further chaos. A new panic briefly flits through him as they all glance around at each other, wondering if anyone else has been struck with a divine answer to their little monster problem.

“What about fire?” Kimi suggests. “I don’t know many things that can survive burning alive.”

Thomas shivers at the words, choking down the smell of engine smoke and car fuel. Again, the office feels far too small, too much like the cream-colored walls are inching closer and the locked door is growing thicker. He forces out a shallow breath, squeezing the fingers on his right hand to check that there is still feeling.

“Fire might work,” he says, imagining the Mimic’s long limbs and leathery skin going up in quick flames like a burning straw sculpture.

“If it weren’t for the obvious issue,” adds Ashley. At their questioning faces, she sighs, slouching into her hand further. “Iron, fire—it doesn’t really matter what we use if we can’t get close enough to it without getting attacked.”

Thomas feels the sting of his own cuts throb around his ankle and calf then, the skin dotted with shallow holes from the tips of its talons. Even if they do make it out of this alive, he’s certain that the sound of the Mimic’s footsteps pounding the ground behind him will play out through his every dream.

“It’s too fast,” Jane agrees, tightening her arms farther around herself.

They’re the same words Thomas gave her earlier when she wanted to go outside to help Sheila; it hits him then that the real cop is likely lying around dead somewhere, bled out in the parking lot or amidst the trees.

Where the Mimic is comfortable, he thinks. Where it can see us all lit up, perfectly clear.

His eyes trail up the painted brick wall and settle on the ceiling. After Evan had been killed, they all saw the Mimic climb the exterior of the store, heard it prattle around overhead before making a quick return to the ground.

“You said there’s roof access, right, Kimi?”

She frowns slightly as she nods.

“That’s it, then,” Thomas says. “With higher ground we’d be able to see exactly where it’s coming from.”

He picks through his memory of first arriving at the store, when he and Jane were walking through the parking lot. There was Billy, looking Jane up and down, while Jim eyed Thomas like he was gum stuck on the bottom of his boot. But then there was what Jim had been loading into the back of the truck.

“I think I’ve got an idea,” Thomas says. “But we’ll have to draw it out first.”

The words land in the spaces they’ve all carefully placed between each other, stoking the nervous energy.

“Jim had a point about using bait,” Ashley admits, and when Thomas stiffens, muscles coiled tight, she throws up her hands. “We don’t send Jane out,” she clarifies, glancing between him and his sister. “But you said it tasted your blood when you were locked in here, right? That it—well, it talked with you? Showed an interest in you?”

Jane brings her fingers up to her face then, frowning as she brushes across the short, thin cut whose blood has all but dried. “Yes,” she says.

Ashley eyes Thomas again, noting all the tension present in his shoulders. “So what if we used some of her blood to lure it back in?”

Jane doesn’t miss a beat. “I’ll do it,” she says, nodding lightly, as though she’s been on the sidelines, just patiently waiting to get hurt again.

“No,” Kimi says, before Thomas has a chance to. She drops her head slightly, studying the tops of her Converse, where little drawings of white ink hearts fill up the black fabric. “If we’re doing this, then we all have to give some. It’s the only fair way.” She glances over at Ashley before adding, “No more assumptions, right?”

Thomas pulls at his collar, wishing for a window to crack open in the small room. Everything in him is screaming to reject the idea, horrified by the thought of their mingled blood splattering across the ground outside—of someone’s guilt truly being enough to draw the Mimic from the trees, salivating and unstoppable.