Tyler stumbled bleeding out into the driveway, his head pounding. There were no other houses visible from up here, just the shaggy black outlines of trees and the driveway disappearing around the bend, down to that solitary streamer of road, wrapping out of view in both directions. Ahead of him, Rhea eased the Lexus backward down the hill, away from the chaos of the garage. She moved slowly through the kids still on their way up the driveway, who wondered what was happening, what had broken the night; through those who stood watching, or who were already on their way down, unactivated and quiet, bumping their way home. She turned the wheel slowly, consistently, looking over her shoulder, as she wound down the road, parting them. Tyler felt the spectators watching him as he staggered past, too, holding his arm, streaked in blood; he felt us in the back of his head, pulsing against his vision, blinded by the descending headlights. He felt the car’s residual heat, the lingering exhaust where it had passed, the smell of gas clinging to the air, his skin. When his eyes finally cleared, Typhus’s sister’s car had reversed into the street, itself pulled back and then sent away from him, back the way they’d come, drawing its sound into the distance.

The street was filled with cars lined on either side of the road. He followed alongside them. He was leaving it behind, all of it: he was leaving this fractured group of strangers, broken where they’d begun, the crowd of onlookers, he was leaving the house they had meant to storm, the house he knew was supposed to be the center of it all, to which he felt attached by that invisible vector, pulling tighter the farther he walked. He was leaving Rhea, and Typhus, in their car moving away; he was leaving her sister, sprawled in David’s basement. He heard shouts behind him, up by the house, and he knew they were leaving, too. He lost his footing; he put his hand out to steady himself against the window of a Camry. When he pulled it back, a red palm print left behind, he saw a face looking mutely out at him through the glass. And then he saw others.