I went up instead, taking the steps two and three at a time. Outpacing it.

I made it back to the second floor and then kept going, because the door I’d braced was shuddering and there was liquid flowing around the edges. The draug were very angry.

Top floor.

I hit the exit door hard and stumbled out onto the decking. This area was mostly offices, locked doors, and I needed to get to the main stairs in the center. I needed to find Claire and Michael and Eve and get the hell out of here, now, before the draug caught up to me again … but the thought did cross my mind that if they were after me, maybe that would give everybody else a chance to get clear of them.

That would be okay, if so. Not that I wouldn’t rather live, if it came down to it.

There didn’t seem to be any draug sliming their way toward me, which was a temporary blessing. My clothes were soaked, and the stinging just got worse, as if I was rolling in a million tiny shards of glass. I could see the pink wash of blood spreading through the damp fabric of my shirt. I needed to get clean and dry, fast; whatever bits of draug were still on me were trying to feed, and I had no idea what that would mean. What if they got inside me? I had a vision of chest-bursting alien parasites that made me want to puke up the taste of rotting slime.

For a fraction of a second, that felt so real it was terrifying. They’re eating me. Eating me alive. And then a kind of strange calm settled in, because I was okay, I was alive, I was going to make it. I just knew it.

Because I was Shane Collins, and the fact that I was still alive was an ongoing miracle anyway.

But the clothes had to come off.

I kicked open an office door and found a locker that held extra coveralls. I stripped down to the skin, toweled off with a sports flag pinned to the wall (finally, a good use for a TPU souvenir), and put on the coveralls. They were a thick orange paper with reflective white strips on the sleeves, back and legs, and they just barely fit me. If I did a lot of bending, it was going to get interesting, but ripped pants were the least of my worries. The stinging died down to a dull, constant ache, and I found a pair of heavy work boots that were only a little small. I left them untied.

Then I tried for the main stairs.

No good. The draug were in the way. They had resumed their human disguises, and all of them were moving purposefully toward the front exit—where the truck was parked, probably still waiting for me because I knew Claire wasn’t going to leave without me. Michael and Eve wouldn’t want to, either, but Myrnin? That plasma-sucking asshat would dump me in a hot second, and I knew it.