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For a moment, they all seem to be holding one collective breath as Kimi eyes them, tense and cautious, before Whitmore gives her a small shove. Her fingers reach for the door handle with the delicacy of someone about to diffuse a bomb, though before she can grab it, Whitmore pushes it open with a grunt of impatience. He nudges her outside before him.

At the door, he pauses to look back at them. He is a scrawny man, clearly taller than anyone else in the room, though Jane suspects if he were shorter, it wouldn’t change the way he is looking down at them now. “No one moves from here, understood?” he says, then pops a piece of gum in his mouth. “This is officially a crime scene.”

When the door closes behind him, Jim lets loose a string of curses under his breath, moving toward the glass to eye the darkness. He raises the gun as the others push in closer, following Kimi’s slow path away from the store.

“This is ridiculous,” says Ashley, fogging up the glass with her breath. “Why is he making it sound like we’re suspects?”

Thomas scoffs loudly. “Because we sound crazy,” he replies, shoving a hand back through his hair. “At this rate you’ll be raising your baby in a padded cell.”

“Well, what were we supposed to say?” Ashley asks, in a voice hitching up higher on each word.

Outside, Whitmore leads Kimi toward his car, and though it is parked only a few yards away from the building, the distance feels more akin to the length of the Appalachian Trail.

“Thomas might have a point,” Jackson says, monitoring the tree line on either side. “This scenario doesn’t look great for any of us. All they see is a dead body.”

Blue and red lights flicker from the new patrol car as it slides into place next to Whitmore’s. Whitmore leans down, whispering the rest of the conversation into Kimi’s ear with a hard, furious face. Then he turns to greet the female deputy with a loose wave as she opens her car door.

“Isn’t there some sort of small-town loyalty between you Southern types? Like hospitality and doing favors for your neighbors and whatnot?” says Ashley, sliding her palms down over her stomach as she glances at Jim.

“Honey, that don’t mean we all go round skipping and holding hands,” he replies, eyes locked outside. “And sure as hell not with the likes of Nate Whitmore.”

Jackson raises an eyebrow. “What’s your beef with him?” he asks.

A sour look crosses Jim’s face as he gives a careless shrug. “I ain’t got any beef. That boy’s just too big for his britches ’cause his daddy used to be town sheriff,” he says, then under his breath adds, “A right bastard, his daddy.”

“Sounds like beef to me,” Thomas mutters.

Jane ignores their chirping, focusing on Kimi instead. The cashier’s dark eyes flit around nervously as Whitmore and Sheila converse with each other. A shared spill of laughter soon flows out from them, alien and wrong against the lot where Evan’s blood is stained at the far reaches.

Still, the creature is nowhere in sight.

“I’m just gonna check on her,” says Jane before anyone else can protest. The air is cold as it rushes in through the cracked-open door, and she leans out only a few inches. “You alright, Kimi?” she calls out as the others hiss at her from behind to come back inside.

Officer Whitmore whips around, sighing. “I thought I told you to stay put,” he says, just as a gust of wind picks up past them, scattering red leaves up from the ground.

The smell hits her first, like a tomb of dust-drenched bodies being opened up after decades. It’s as though a thread is attached to Jane’s spine, tugging it up in a stiff line at the sound of something scuttering across the ground. She searches the wash of skeletal trees, but the darkness between them is smudged and endless, like a spilled pot of ink.

When the female officer, Sheila, asks to speak with her, Jane holds up a hand in silent warning.

“Excuse me, miss, but I’m talking to you.”

Jane presses a finger to her lips as something scrapes along the ground. She glances side to side, trying to locate its source.

“Miss, what are you—”

Sheila pauses. There, beneath the sound of Winnie’s whining and the incessant chatter spilling out from the police radio in Whitmore’s patrol car, is the sound of ragged breathing, heavy and raspy and low enough it likely wouldn’t be heard if they were anywhere else but the middle of nowhere.

It coats the air surrounding them, cracking any facade of safety that the two cop cars provided. “What is that?” Whitmore asks, staring at the storefront like Jane and the rest of them are somehow responsible.

The hairs along her arms stand straight as she looks toward the police cars, locking eyes with Kimi. The cashier pauses for only a second before darting toward the store’s entrance.

Jane shoves the door open. “Get inside!” she shouts at the officers as Kimi storms through. “You have to move!”

“Now listen here, kid—”

It drops down from the roof, landing just beyond the ring of light from the front doors.

Jackson yanks Jane back inside and slams the door shut. Behind them, someone screams just as the Mimic releases one of its earsplitting screeches. It is a blur at first, the creature shifting through the darkness to where Whitmore stands. Another scream goes off inside the store, though Jane can’t tear her eyes away from the glass as a spray of bright red blood flecks across it like an overzealous splatter painting.