Mookie lifts the sledgehammer, not a moment too soon. The Naga’s gun barks one round, then two. One bullet pings off the metal head, the other pops into the handle, sending a cough of splinters into Mookie’s cheek. He backpedals; Sorago leaps.

The Snakeface crashes into Mookie. His legs still hurt; his one arm doesn’t work. He teeters and falls.

Teeth sink into the meat of his shoulder.

The cold saline rush of venom travels down his arm. Already the muscles start to deaden. Already he can feel the sudden gallop of his heart followed by an immediate slowdown. His head cranes back.

He sees Nora.

She cries out for him.

The gobbos have her.

The rock wasn’t enough.

She knows that now. Somehow she thought – what? She thought her pride mattered. That this moment of standing with her father, of him choosing her, was all she needed. In a way, that’s still true. She holds onto that choice he made like a piece of broken boat in the open ocean; it’s the only thing that keeps her from sinking into a watery grave of abject hopelessness. Her back presses tight against the wall, jagged rock in her flesh.

The gobbos have her surrounded. They’ve swarmed.

She holds up her arms as one slashes a knife made of jagged glass. It opens a wound across her forearm. Fresh blood splashes. Another lunges at her feet; she kicks it away, but all it does is bowl over and cackle madly. Another snaps its teeth at her. She tries to bash it with the rock, but the rock slips away, cracks into another monster and is lost in the smoke. Her only weapon is gone.

They move in.

She can’t go any farther.

Her father hits the ground, the Naga atop him. His teeth in her old man’s shoulder.

The drills growl through stone.

She hears something else, too – a higher whine, a chugging engine.

Through the smoke, a black shape charges. Like an ancient beast born from fire. Except this beast doesn’t have four legs: it has four wheels. A jacked-up quad with chained tires blasts into the chamber and comes right for her–

It mows through the gobbos. Greasy gray creatures are flung forward, screeching.

A dead man with boiled skin sits up front, leaning forward on the four-wheeler. A goblin runs up the front of his vehicle, and he bashes it with a tire iron.

On the back is a familiar form.

“Kelly,” Nora gasps, the time for nicknames gone. The leader of the Get-Em-Girls hops off the back with a Louisville slugger and bashes a gobbo’s leg crooked, then caps the head. The two girls crash together in a hard hug. “How–”

“Long story. Here, you need this.”

She hands Nora a switchblade. The blade springs free with a click of the button.

Nora smiles.