Page 65 of When the Night Comes Knocking

“Are you sure about this, Tommy?” she asks, imagining what potential havoc this could wreak on his newly freed arm. Ashley had told them that for serious breaks in a traditional hospital setting, X-rays would be done to assess Thomas’s damage before the cast could even come off.

Here tonight, there could only be blind faith.

Only a few seconds pass before her brother’s voice comes through again, low and resigned. “If it’s going to be useless to me, it might as well count for something,” he answers before the radio goes silent again.

Jane closes her eyes for a moment, picturing him fitting one of the liquid-filled gloves in the palm of his hand, then winding up a pitch the same way she’d watch him do hundreds of times before—the same way that had always seemed like a sort of magic.

She opens her eyes as a filled glove hits the pavement. It lands at the back right tire of Jim’s truck and immediately explodes, sending a spray of liquid across the concrete.

Another glove lands, this one several feet from the first, then the next one drops, creating a near-perfect circle on the ground some ten yards from the store’s entrance.

Jane smiles slightly, holding down the Talk button on her radio. “You’ve still got it,” she tells her brother, keeping her eyes trained on the parking lot for any sightings of limbs or claws.

Almost instantly, Jane sees a movement inside the store. She stiffens, scrambling for the hair spray and lighter. A shape emerges from the darkness to the right, moving slowly and hovering low to the ground.

It’s inside already?

She yanks off the cap to the hair spray, sending it clattering across the floor. But as the shape draws nearer, she makes out the lines of something hovering in the air, waving side to side.

A tail wagging.

Winnie’s eyes are shiny in the darkness as she whines past something in her mouth, pressing close into Jane’s side.

“Winnie,” she gasps, setting down the hair spray and lighter and crouching down to look the German shepherd over for any injuries. “Where have you been?” Jane whispers as Winnie lets out another pitiful whine. Her fingers catch on the crust of dried blood in the shepherd’s fur, and it makes her queasy to think of who all it could possibly belong to. Jane tries to take the fabric Winnie carries in her mouth, only to realize it is Jackson’s flannel.

His kind face surfaces instantly, but Jane forces him from her mind along with the other two bodies haunting the front entrance. She imagines the new darkness being poisoned by all the traces of evil the Mimic has left across the store, imagines Billy’s and Jim’s corpses reanimating, rising up from beneath their respective table covers before starting toward her.

Her shoulders jerk with an involuntary shiver, and she shrinks further into her sweater. “It’s gonna be okay,” she says, squeezing Winnie closer, though even the dog seems to be on high alert, staring into the darkness behind them.

Thomas’s voice through the walkie-talkie causes her to jerk again. “No sign of it yet,” he says.

Jane imagines him perched at the roof’s edge next to Kimi, a row of empty beer bottles stuffed with cloth doused in lighter fluid between them.

Her brother’s plan is ambitious, to say the least. She can’t help but think the Mimic is far too clever to be lured out by the scent of a little spilled blood; after all, it has been one step ahead of them all evening. Even during the creature’s moments of weakness, their little group managed to cause enough irreparable damage amongst themselves.

But she had promised to try it Thomas’s way, promised to stay put in the darkness and out of immediate danger. A guard for Ashley and the baby, as Thomas had assured her, though the feeling of uselessness as he and Kimi take the lead overhead threatens to erode her gut.

“Do you have a good shot, Kimi?” Jane asks into the radio, wondering what the sight range is like from the rooftop to Jim’s truck.

“I guess we’ll find out,” Kimi replies, in a voice thick and shaky like she’s been crying.

Jane glances sideways at Winnie. “That wasn’t very encouraging,” she mutters, scanning the tree line beyond the parking lot again. The wind rustles through the oaks and pines roughly, showering a wave of leaves to the ground. Jane’s eyes snag on every pocket of shadow, waiting for a sharp and crooked outline to appear—waiting to feel the hungry chill of its gaze upon her skin.

Five minutes turn into fifteen. The circle of liquid by Jim’s truck appears to be nearly dried now, and as Winnie lowers herself down to lie on the floor, Jane huffs a sigh of impatience. All evening the Mimic has been lurking out there, watching and waiting for any chance to attack or get inside. Now the lights are off, their group is divided, and they’re giving it a clear chance.

So where the hell is it?

Jane holds down the Talk button. “Guys, I don’t think this is working,” she says. “It’s like it knows we want it to come out—knows that we’re up to something.”

“Just give it another minute,” Thomas replies sharply. When the receiver beeps, she hears her brother’s voice echo outside. “Hey!” he shouts from the roof. “Come on out, you ugly bastard!”

Jane’s heart picks up with each of his shouts as she listens to the anger of his voice give way to a strangled desperation. Before them, the parking lot remains completely still, taunting in its rotting emptiness.

Jane inhales deeply as she rises to her feet. It does not feel like a failure really, but rather an inevitability. She has felt it throughout the entire night, ever since the Mimic first laid eyes upon her next to the dead deer. Really, hasn’t she felt it since the moment she and Thomas went off the road two months ago?

Death, waiting—cheated.

She gently grabs Winnie by the collar and leads the dog behind the cashier counter. “Hold down the fort, okay?” she whispers before shutting the wooden half door so that the dog can’t try running after her.