Harry G. Bleeker Memorial Field had always been missing a mascot, and what better icon to represent the Battle Beasts than this one?

We made our way back to the midfield, the football players dispersing into the crowd of people who were only now beginning to rub their eyes and pat their pockets for car keys, objects they barely remembered how to use. Tub wandered over to check on Grandma, though she seemed quite pleased. Everything, after all, had been at a suitable volume for the hearing impaired. Only Sergeant Gulager stood in place, hands on his hips, surveying the normal-looking people of his town who’d performed so far beyond expectations.

“We shouldn’t let those people go.”

It was Jack, cleaning Victor Power against the bike chains surrounding his shins.

“Why not?” I asked.

He gestured at the motionless mountain of Gunmar the Black.

“We’ll need all the help we can get to haul that body underground before morning.”

“They’ll help,” I said.

“Who?”

“The Gumm-Gumms.” I pointed them out. “I think they’ll do whatever we ask.”

“Yeah, maybe.”

“Something tells me they’ll be open to the non-human-eating message, too.”

“I suppose you’re right.” Jack sighed. “You know the closest bridge?”

“I do.”

“Well, all right. Let’s get this thing started.”

“Okay, but—give me just one minute?”

Jack followed my gaze and smirked. He sheathed his sword.

“Take two.”

Claire was crossing the field, splashing her hiking boots through the gunk blown out by Dad’s mower but not looking disgusted in the least. Her fatigues were crusted with unspeakable fluids and her face was a smudgy mix of mud and blood. And yet she was radiant, her tangled hair bouncing behind her, beaming with the same abandon that I’d been enamored with long before we’d shared a single word a week ago in math class.

She stopped a few inches away and scraped dried blood from Doctor X as another girl might toy with a ring.

“Look,” I said, “I’m sorry.”

“Sorry? About what?”

“About everything. About letting you get caught. About not realizing you were like us.”

“It all ended well enough,” she said. “A bit sticky, perhaps.”

“And the play. I’m sorry about the play.”

She laughed, that loud bray that made me feel like butter.

“The play? Are you serious, ya silly gowk?”

“That accent, I’m telling you.” I shrugged. “You would’ve been great.”

“It was a lot of lines to memorize for nothing.”

“Tell me about it.”

Claire gave me a sly sidelong glance.

“Good pilgrim, you do wrong your hand too much, / Which mannerly devotion shows in this, / For saints have hands that pilgrim’s hands do touch, / And palm to palm is holy palmers’ kiss.”

She held out a small white hand stained with blood.

My stomach fluttering with nerves, I took it.

“Have not saints lips, and holy palmers too?” I asked.