I vault out the window.

I land running. I dash around the building, looking for the back entrance or a broken window to jump through. My mind is crowded with what might be happening to my mother, to the angel, to Paige. I have an almost irresistible urge to hide under a bush and curl up in a ball. To shut off my eyes, ears, and brain, and just lie there until nothing exists anymore.

I shove the horrible, screaming images in my head into the dark, silent place in my mind that is getting deeper and more crowded each day. One day soon, the things I stuff in there will burst out and infect the rest of me. Maybe that will be the day the daughter becomes like the mother. Until then, I am still in control.

I don’t have to go far to find a broken window. Considering how many times I banged at my window and still failed to break it, I hate to think about how amped up the guy who broke this one must be. That doesn’t make me feel any better about sneaking back into the building.

I run from office to office, cubicle to cubicle, whisper-shouting for my mother.

I find a man lying in the hallway leading to the kitchen. His chest is bare, his shirt torn away. Six butter knives stick out of his flesh in a circular pattern. Someone has drawn a powder-pink lipstick pentagram with the knives at the end of the points. Blood bubbles up from each of the knives. The man is all eyes and shock as he stares at the ruin of his chest as though unable to believe it has anything to do with him.

My mother is safe.

Seeing what she did to this man, I can’t help but wonder if that’s a good thing. She has purposely missed his heart, and he will slowly bleed to death.

If we had been back in the old world, in the World Before, I would have called an ambulance despite the fact that he had attacked my mother. The doctors would have fixed him up, and he would have had all the time he needed to recover in jail. But unfortunately for all of us, this is the World After.

I step around him and leave him to his slow death.

Out of the corner of my eye, I catch a glimpse of a woman-shaped shadow slipping out through a side door. She stops before the door closes and looks back at me. My mother frantically waves her hand at me to come with her. I should join her. I take two steps in her direction, but I can’t ignore the grunting and crashing of the colossal fight at the far end of the building.

The angel is surrounded by a gang of scruffy but deadly-looking men.

There must be at least ten of them. Three are strewn about at odd angles beyond the circle of the fight, unconscious or dead. Two more are taking a beating from the angel as he swings the cart like a giant mace. But even from here, even in the thin moonlight streaming in through the glass doors, I can see the crimson stains seeping through his bandages. That cart must weigh a hundred pounds. He is visibly exhausted and the others are moving in for the kill.