The bastard rolls over, face mask half pulled up from when he fell against the grass.

And Atlanta catches a glimpse of dark red lipstick. The whimpering dognapper can no longer see, paws at his face and pulls the mask up to his forehead and—

It’s a she, not a he.

Atlanta recognizes the girl from school. Same year. Tattooed chick. Kinda gothy, but kinda rednecky, too. Husky, like a linebacker. Vanessa. Tessa. Something-essa.

“You,” the girl squeaks.

“Me,” Atlanta says, standing over her.

The girl kicks Atlanta in the crotch with a boot.

Anatomy lesson: girls don’t have the low-hanging fruit of testicles, but getting kicked in the crotch is still no picnic. Pain shoots up into Atlanta’s gut and she staggers left, doubling over.

Something-essa gets on her hands and knees, scrabbling on the wet lawn, and manages to move her dump-truck body up and forward—she runs the way a drunken moose runs, one leg almost caught by the other, boots stomping, braying as she goes.

Floodlights suddenly bathe the lawn in lights.

Inside the house, lights flick on.

Go go go go.

Atlanta pushes past the pain, raises her baton high like an angry monkey, and chases after.

She catches sight of Something-essa darting between a pair of boxy McMansions, heading east out of Clover Knoll, running like the out-of-control boulder as it chases Indiana Jones—way the girl moves isn’t about grace or skill so much as it is about gathering momentum and then wildly tumbling forward until something gets in her way.

Atlanta intends to be that something.

Clover Knoll’s streets are a bunch of horseshoes smashed together with a main avenue connecting them all together—and that’s where Something-essa’s going to have to come out. Atlanta bolts right, heads that direction. Knuckles white around the baton’s nylon grip. Glimpses of white and red. The imagined sound of that baying beagle amplified times ten as someone cuts off its ears, pops out its teeth.

I’m going to mess you up, girl.

Atlanta, ribs stitched with pain, lungs burning, heads past countless prefab minimansions all smashed together on half-acre lots, then finally comes out on the main road—California Street. She hits the sidewalk, is barely able to stop herself. Almost skids on some stone scree and slips, but catches her balance.

Just in time to see Something-essa stumble from someone’s lawn about fifty feet away.

Between them, at a T-bone intersection, is the way out—the development entrance that leads to Gallows Hill Road. Atlanta grins. Something-essa will have to come this way to get out, because the only other option is to run to the hill and dart through the trees, and that’s one steep-ass hill that really will turn her into the boulder.