8 hours and 59 minutes left...

Did it matter if they found out now I wondered. I was there. I mean I didn’t plan this crisis. I planned the other one, but that wasn’t my intention. I mean, how was I supposed to know E.O.W. Prep would run my proposal like some sort of script?

“Why were you there?” the man repeated.

Wait...what if...what if someone else wrote that script?

“Sandy, tell us?”

I look at Ileum and blink as the cameras flash. The room squeezes together, as if someone took the edges and pinched them a bit.

“Sandy?”

“Sandy!”

“Were you on the bridge or not!” yelled the man in the polo shirt.

Something pinched my elbow. I jumped out of my seat.

The cameras swiveled, the reporters clamored, and the lights flashed and flashed and flashed. Someone called my name, but it was happening far away, in a different room perhaps.

Curls of smoke clouded my vision...coiled around my ankles…

I waved at the smoke.

The cameras flashed.

“Sandy?”

“Sandy!”

“Sandy...”

A snarl.

A guttural noise behind me.

“Sandy,” a whisper.

You know how in movies, the monster is behind the character and as long as they don’t turn around they seem to live longer? Maybe, just maybe, if I didn’t turn around, it couldn’t get me.

But I did turn around.

Jack, his mop-like hair matted with grime and blood, leered at me.

What had he said, just before we lost him? What was it?

“I’ll be right back,” he had said. “Anyone need anything?”

“Can you check the wifi,” Pat had called. “Something’s wrong with the feed. It’s like it’s on a loop.”

He had smiled.

He always smiled.

Jack’s smile blurred so that he became the Jack in the panic room. He became it, covered in glass and blood. He became something that chased me when I closed my eyes.

But didn’t we kill him?

Didn’t he die in that room?

Didn’t we leave him to die?

The cameras flashed. As long as the cameras kept flashing, Jack wouldn’t budge. He couldn’t budge, which meant I was safe.

Unless...unless something went wrong like in that one movie…you know, when the zombies adapted.

“Thank you so much, ladies and gentlemen,” Cynthia said into the microphone. “I’m afraid that’s all the time we have for today. E.O.W. Prep believes in transparency and we are in full cooperation. Details about our Crisis Plan and our Response Units will be explored in depth at the E.O.W. Prep’s upcoming expo. Thank you.”

Jack took a step towards me. He smirked, showing off a row of perfect teeth wet with dark blood.

“He can’t do that, right?” I asked.

No answer.

“He can’t...not with lights…because...that would mean...”

That would mean he had evolved. That it had mutated, which would mean we were screwed.

“Get her out of here,” Cynthia hissed.

Someone grabbed me by the elbow. Someone threw something over my head and the lights and Jack were gone.

There was movement, like being lifted.

There was sound, people clamoring, and calling, and yelling, and questioning.

“I’ve got you,” said Ileum.

Then the sound faded, faded, grew faint, then it was gone.