“I said, he don’t understand you. Everyone says he don’t understand you,” Rector told him from his position of relative safety, back behind the door. He was already working out the mental ballet—the emergency measures that would surely force him to shut the door with Zeke inside, buying himself the minute and a half necessary for a head start before the creature yanked it clean out of the wall and came after him.

Zeke ignored him. “Mister Sasquatch, I’m going to take this cuff off you now, all right? Please don’t … please don’t pull my head off, or anything. I’m only trying to help.”

“You’re insane.”

“Here, like this. I’m taking your arm now. Don’t hurt me or nothing, ’cause I’m not trying to hurt you.”

The chain rattled dully in Zeke’s gloved grip as he wrestled with the key and did his best to keep from hurting the manacled thing on the floor. The sasquatch studied his every move, either waiting for an opportunity or only trying to figure out what the hell was going on, Rector didn’t know. When the cuff came off, it dropped with a heavy clank and kicked up a tiny cloud of angry dust.

Immediately, but slowly, the creature reached his hand up and touched the filtered helmet.

As if it hadn’t occurred to him that it was a bad idea, Zeke shot his hand out and took the thing’s wrist. “No!” he said quickly, then withdrew just as fast as he’d objected. Rector knew that look—it was a gesture he’d seen a hundred times on the outside, when other kids had picked on Zeke and he’d ducked back, waiting to get hit.

He didn’t get hit.

“You … you got to leave it on, see?” Zeke did his best to explain, but confusion and discomfort was written all over the thing’s puffy, dark-colored face. “You got to leave it on. But not for too much longer—because we’re taking you outside.”

“I think it’s too soon.”

Over his shoulder, Zeke said, “He’ll die of thirst if we leave him here too much longer, and he can’t have anything to drink while he’s in the helmet. You can tell he’s better. All we have to do is get him outside.”

“If you say so.”

“Just help me, would you?”

“How?” Rector asked.

Zeke made a frustrated little noise in response. “Stay out of the way, I guess. And if this thing kills me, run home and tell my mother so she don’t wonder what happened.”

“Great. I’ll do that.” And she’ll blame me, he added in his head. “Did you even bring a gun?”

“No. You heard what the princess said about guns.”