It takes a step forward. Then a step back. It turns to run.

Alana is not in the mood to let it retreat.

She covers the distance between them in one impossible leap, as if drawn through the air on invisible wires. She comes down with the rod, impaling the creature between its shoulder blades, driving the tip through its body and an inch into the asphalt.

It cries out with a moan like something much older and more human than anything with four legs should.

Then Alana is the only thing left alive in the street.

Except for Rocky, who chooses that moment to piss all over her, inside her sweatshirt.

The streetlights click back on, and the darkness lifts as if it was never there. Alana looks at the coyotes and knows that her neighbors will wonder what killed them. They are smaller. They look harmless. Whatever was inside them is gone.

She yanks the rebar out of the ground and tosses it down a storm drain. Her arm begins to throb as she walks home.

Inside the house, warm and familiar, Alana takes Rocky out of her soggy sweatshirt, peels it off, and dumps it in the laundry. She tells him he’s a good boy, washes him in the sink and gives him a special treat. She finds a bottle of vodka one of her firm’s clients gave her for Christmas and pours some over the bite. She doesn’t have anything but Hello Kitty Band-Aids, but they’ll have to do. It looks like an industrial accident but it’s already scabbing over.

No one ever notices, because she’s a mom, but Alana doesn’t really ever get hurt or sick. She hasn’t had so much as a sniffle in twenty years.

She takes the vodka, fills a large plastic cup, and sits down at her kitchen table to drink it.

This should not have happened. She did her job. That part of her life is supposed to be over.

Rocky is snoring in his little doggie bed and her cup is empty before she notices the envelope in the stack of mail. It might have been there for a while. Grace brings in the mail, and it tends to pile up before Alana gets around to it.

There’s an invitation to her high school reunion. On the thick envelope is the cartoon mascot of the Middleton High Vikings. And inside, on a card, inked in heavy black marker:

YOU HAVE TO SAVE US

Oh God, she thinks. She closes her eyes, and allows herself to consider throwing the invite in the recycling bin and going to sleep.

She finishes the vodka and goes upstairs.

A light glows inside her closet. She opens the door. It’s coming from a box on top of the shelf, as she knew it would be.