Metal squealed when her knobby fingers caught in the top of the chain-link and her bare, filthy toes scrambled for purchase lower on the fence. For a moment, she balanced there like a monstrous cat on a wall.

My heart racing, I backed away quickly, afraid to let her out of my sight. She leapt again. I heard a visceral snap when she landed on the concrete just yards from me, her deformed right foot bent at a horrible angle. She lurched for me, in spite of the broken bone, and I screeched, scrambling backward.

The demon lunged again, clawlike fingers grasping at my sleeve. I kicked her hand away, but she was there again, and again I retreated until I hit the trash bin and realized I’d gotten turned around in the dark, and in my own fear. I was trapped between the demon and the fence.

She lurched forward and grabbed my ankle. The earth slipped out from under me, and my head cracked against the industrial bin. My ears rang with the clang of metal, and I hit the ground hard enough to bruise my tailbone. My head swam. Fear burned like fire in my veins.

The degenerate loomed over me in her creepy half crouch, rank breath rolling over my face as she leaned closer, her mouth open, gaping, ready for a bite.

“Over here!” someone shouted, and the degenerate twisted toward the fence, snarling, drool dripping from her rotting teeth and down her chin. Over her bony shoulder, I saw a shadowy form beyond the chain-link. A boy—or a man?—in dark clothes, his pale face half hidden by a hood.

She snarled at him again, one clawed hand still tight around my ankle, and I saw my chance. I kicked her in the chest with my free foot, and she fell backward, claws shredding the hem of my jeans.

“You don’t want her. Come get me!” Metal clinked and rattled, and I realized the boy was climbing the fence. And he was fast.

I crawled away, trying to get to my feet, but she grabbed my ankle and gave it a brutal tug. I fell flat on my stomach, then rolled over as she pulled and I kicked. My foot slammed into her belly, and her shoulder, and her neck, but she kept pulling until she was all I could see and hear and smell.

Concrete scraped my bare back when my coat and shirt rode up beneath me. I threw my hands up and my palms slammed into the degenerate’s collarbones. I pushed, holding her off me with terror-fueled strength. The chain-link fence rattled and squealed on my right. The beast snarled over me, deformed jaws snapping inches from my nose as my arms began to give, my elbows bending beneath the strain of her inhuman strength.

“Hey!” the boy shouted, and a thud told me he’d landed on my side of the fence, just feet away. His arm blurred through the shadows, and the degenerate snarled as it was hauled off me.