As blood pumped down upon Gertie, Vivian tried to push herself back up to a standing position. A moment later, she dropped to the floor. It would've been a sick, fucked-up romantic ending if she'd landed on top of her husband, but Ken's corpse was on the other side of the cage.

Gertie wiped Vivian's blood out of her eyes. Some had gotten directly on her right eyeball and she frantically tried to blink it out to make the burning sensation disappear.

It wasn't going away. She'd worry about that later.

She called out to Charlene, who didn't answer.

She kept calling out, even though she'd heard multiple gunshots, and the fact that Charlene was not in the room with her right now was a pretty strong indication that her friend was dead.

There was a loud crash outside of the room.

Creaking on the stairs. Too much creaking to be only one person.

"We've got a body!" a man shouted.

Two men walked into the cage room. Police officers. If she'd been able to give them some sort of warning about what they'd see, she would have. She would have warned them about the now-eleven cages dangling from the ceiling, most of them with dead bodies inside. Warned them about the teenage boy lying with an open throat in a pool of blood. Warned them about the dead man who'd been crushed by a heavy steel cage. Warned them about the woman with blood gushing from her heart.

The cops looked like they could have used the warning. One of them immediately turned around and vomited, while the other gaped at the nightmares surrounding him.

The one who'd vomited removed his walkie-talkie from his belt and stepped back out of the room. She heard him say something frantic about needing backup and an ambulance, immediately.

Immediately.

You didn't need an ambulance immediately to collect dead people.

Of course, it could've been meant for her, but Gertie wasn't sure the cop had even noticed that she was still alive before he left the room.

She tried to wave for the other cop's attention, but her arms had moved all they were going to for now. "I'm alive," she managed to say.

The cop hurried over to the cage, eyes wide. He tugged on the door but it didn't open.

"We'll get you out of there," he promised her.

"How's my friend?" she asked.

The cop glanced at the three corpses, as if uncertain about what kind of news he'd have to deliver. "Which one's your friend?"

"She's outside."

"I'm not sure. My partner is checking her out. Worry about yourself for now."

"I don't need to. I'm fine."