They couldn’t run straight because of the broken fountain, and so they curved around it. Jackie, even with her body weakening, had found a reckless energy inside and was running faster. Diane was gasping and slowing, cursing years of intended workouts that had never happened. The younger woman took her by the shoulders and pushed her ahead. They became a four-legged animal of escape. Fangs and stingers and those boneless white limbs slapped the tile of the fountain just behind them. There was buzzing all around.

To the left was the reference section. Jackie didn’t look, but she could hear whatever had been in the shadows rushing out at them. Then the checkout area. The return slot’s lid was lifting up, a tentacle-like tongue, or tongue-like tentacle, glopping out of it like sludge.

There was a roaring, incoherent voice. It sounded like the entire building, the walls and floors and metal skeleton of its structure, telling them they would die.

Diane watched the front doors of the library approach, and the boneless limbs of the librarians worked their way in and through the handles, shutting the doors with their bodies.

They weren’t going to make it.

“We’re not going to make it,” Diane said.

“We’ll make it.”

Jackie turned her shoulder forward, putting her entire flung weight into the glass doors and the poisonous limbs. Broken glass and toxic librarian blood spat out onto the tiles of the entrance corridor. Jackie landed in a pile of the glass and a puddle of the gray ooze. Diane ran through the resulting hole and scooped Jackie up. She was so light, really.

They were out of the foyer, out into the empty parking lot. The building behind them expanded and then came back together with a humf. They turned, but nothing was pursuing them. The front doors were unbroken, and there was no sign of any creatures. It was quiet and waiting once again.

Jackie gasped as much air as she could into her throbbing lungs. Her legs were shaking, but she was standing.

“I said we would make it. Who was right?” Jackie said at the ground, bent in two. “Who was right?”

“Are you okay? Do you have any glass in you?”

“A little bit, man, but I’m okay.”

Diane smiled at Jackie. After a moment, Jackie smiled back. Then they started laughing. They couldn’t stop. They stood and leaned into each other and laughed. Jackie was still covered in purple blotches and pouring sweat, but they laughed about that too.

“You were right,” said Diane. “You were right. Oh my god, we’re actually alive, aren’t we?”

Jackie waved it off.

“More important, we have answers.” Jackie nodded to the box in her hand and the folder in Diane’s. “I mean, god, I hope we have answers.”

Diane nodded and sighed. The sigh held neither despair nor relief, only air. “Guess back to dealing with this mess now.”