The jabber of a police siren interrupted my death. My eyes opened and I saw the slithering shadows of the fleeing rust trolls. Beyond the hill of dirt we had crossed earlier, I could make out the lazy oscillation of cop lights. A door slammed and I heard a familiar stutter.

“This is the p-p-p-p-p-police! Please disperse!”

Perhaps San Bernardino’s top cop had been staking out the meth hub of Sunny Smiles when he’d heard the avalanche. After all, Sergeant Ben Gulager knew better than anyone the after-hours teen parties held at the junkyard. He looked pretty dang heroic atop that hill of dirt, his gun pointed at the ground in the standard double-hand grip, his mustache in full bloom, his cap covering the worst of his lopsided hairpiece. Even from a distance I could see the junkyard lights gleaming off the scar tissue at his temple.

His eyebrows knotted when he saw the fallen debris.

“K-k-kids? Hello? Everybody o-kuh-kuh-kuh-kay?”

I wanted to cry out but the flash of Jack’s goggles beneath the ruin warned me to keep quiet. I grimaced beneath the weight of the trash and wondered how long I could hold out.

Gulager began moving down the side of the hill, sweeping the wreckage in search of trapped teenagers. He did not notice the rust trolls slithering away through the weeds a few feet to his right.

“Make a n-n-n-noise if you can hear me! Bang on something!” He pressed the radio button at his shoulder. “B-b-base, this is three hundred. I’m ten ninety-seven at K-K-K-Keavy’s Junk Emporium on Grimes. I’ve got a code three st-st-st-structure collapse here, possible eleven forty-sevens. Request eleven eighty-nine and eleven forty-one as soon as p-p-p-p-p-p-p—”

The word went forever unfinished. His thumb slipped off the radio button, leaving the pygmy voice on the other end to repeat its follow-up questions. With a clatter like the biggest pieces of silverware in history sliding from the biggest plate, ARRRGH!!! rose from the rubble. Engine blocks, transmission systems, windshields, even entire vehicles tumbled off her back and shoulders. Slowly she rose to a full standing position and shook her head as if to clear it. A tire had been speared by one of her horns and held tight.

Emotion drained from Gulager’s face and his jaw dropped. The gun, forgotten, hung at his side as he took in the full height of the monster with an expression of naked fear. But then his chin locked into the defiant position to which San Bernardino had become accustomed. His eyes narrowed and his hands curled around the gun. It flew upward, pointed in the neighborhood of the softies.