Thirty-Seven

Stay put.

That's all Sally had to do now to survive. Help mere minutes away.

A piercing scream electrified her.

"Clare," she breathed.

The sound had come from an abandoned house on the beach, not far from the docks where Max had slated Sally to die.

She knew if she'd been the one screaming, Clare wouldn't think twice. The punk would charge in swinging her fists. But Sally wasn't her.

She also wasn't Nicholas. Her life may have been of paramount importance, but so was all life, and Clare's stood near the top of the list.

It's pointless, she thought, hearing again the voice of her inner critic, which she hadn't heard from in weeks. You already let her down.

If Clare screamed, she was already dying.

It didn't matter.

Without another thought, Sally raced toward the sound. She stuck to the dark, her sneakers pounding the sand. The house glowed with portable lights.

No sign of Max.

Sally heard a groan. She stopped in her tracks, her eyes flooding with tears.

"Oh no…"

The woman sat wincing on the floor, transfixed by steel rods.

Against all odds, she lived.

Sally sank to her knees and took her hand.

"Clare? Clare, it's me, Sally. I'm here."

Her friend grimaced as she lifted her head, as if even this much effort imposed an agonizing cost.

"Almost got him," Clare gasped.

Already pale, her face had turned a ghostly white, breath cycling in shallow gulps. The glistening rods appeared like unnatural growths, a part of her. The bloodstains on the shirt under her leather jacket expanded.

"You're going to be okay," Sally said. "Dan is on his way."

Clare winced again. "Just run."

"I'm staying here with you until help comes."

No one should die alone.

"He's…"

"You got him," Sally said. "You messed him up good."

Calling on all her acting skills. Wasn't this what one did, according to the movies? Tell comforting lies to ease the pain of departure?

She added, "Max won't be able to hurt anyone ever again. You'll get help, and everything is going to work out."

"No, listen—"

"We're going to stay friends. Isn't that what we agreed? Maybe we'll find a place together. I'll help you run lines, we'll share everything, and we'll climb the ladder together until we can see it all. We'll go to the top of the world. We'll be stars."

None of it a lie. She meant every word. Easing her own pain as well as Clare's.

The woman gaped at her. "He's… he's…"

"Shhh," said Sally. "Don't talk."

"Behind you."

"Action," said Max.

She wheeled to see the director lurch into the light, a creature no longer quite human but a chimera of camera, tripod, boom mic, and recording devices.

She looked back at Clare. The woman's head rested slumped to the side. A trickle of blood spilled from her lips.

Springing to her feet, Sally ran for her life.

The movie camera whirred.

Then a whooshing roar filled the house, the angel of death.

Oh my God, holy shit—

Nowhere to go. She'd trapped herself.

She darted toward the back of the house, where a partition wall stood despite all that nature and time had thrown at it. A door set in the wall promised sanctuary. Gripping the knob, she pulled, only it didn't budge.

Sally hurled her body against it. The door toppled over in a crash, and she tumbled down with it.

Scrambling behind the wall, she huddled quaking on the floor.

If the camera can't see me, it can't kill me—

More nonsensical movie logic, but it was all she had.

Only, the wall dissolved, sections of it punched wide open in sprays of plaster, revealing Max leering maniacally over the viewfinder.

The door. Standing, she raised it to shield herself as something heavy cracked against it. Digging in her heels, she held fast.

A hail of objects pelted it in jarring thuds. Inches from her face, the points of nails peeked through the wood. She whimpered as they began to wiggle like worms, fighting to free themselves and penetrate her flesh.

Sally staggered back under the constant assault.

Even the floor appeared to be moving. Something rustled at her feet. She looked down in blind terror and revulsion to discover the earth seething.

Oh, she thought. Oh no, oh God—

Dozens of scorpions and snakes carpeted the ground, scampering and slithering in a heap that heaved across the dirt and scrap, spilling toward her—

The camera. It could see her feet.

Sally slammed the door down, producing a wet crunch.

The machine still wanted her dead. Sheets of dust cascaded from the crackling ceiling as its hungry gaze searched for her. A wood lath struck her arm and left a stinging echo of splinters. Another fell against her shoulder, only this one carried a nail that dug in and opened her flesh like a zipper. Something heavy raked down her back in a fiery trail of pain.

The house itself had begun collapsing on her. The boards and slats pounded down like repeated blows from a baseball bat. Gritting her teeth, she fought the pain with everything she had as her body crumpled into a quaking ball.

This is the end, no way out—

"NO," she cried. "STOP, MAX. PLEASE STOP."

Like a miracle, he did.

The destruction came to a sudden, palpable, gorgeous end. Sally lay trembling in the wreckage. Her body battered, her mind worse off, flooded with terror and suffering so acute that she could barely think straight. She struggled even to breathe.

"The story needs a Final Girl," Max said.

Sally didn't answer, too scared to call attention to herself, willing her very body to disappear. Her mind turned inward, a landscape of pretty swirling colors.

He added, "But a Final Boy would do."

Boy? What is he talking about?

"A nice subversion of audience expectations," the director said. "In the end, we see Michael, the leader the group rejected. He couldn't save his old friends. But he discovers the amulet, ends the curse, and wins redemption."

"Nicholas," Sally managed.

"That's right."

"I don't understand."

Max sighed.

"I'm offering a choice of him or you."

"But he's in the trailer," Sally heard herself say.

"Which one?"

She shook her head in confusion and said nothing, certain she'd made some crucial mistake.

Max chuckled. "Honestly? A part of me prefers a Final Boy. I couldn't find a single thing I actually liked about Nicholas Moody, and believe me, I dug deep. The kid is a born survivor because it's uncertain a real Nicholas even exists."

None of this made sense to Sally.

Don't do it, her scrambling brain blurted. Don't tell him anything.

"That's okay," said the director. "I'll track him down. Stay here, and then I'll come back and we can shoot the coda. With a different camera, of course. Don't worry about that." Another chuckle. "Wanda, the Bad Girl, the survivor. The girl who lived. The fighter who became a Final Girl."

"You can't hurt him," she said. "He loves you. He was living in a van when you cast him. You gave him a life."

"I had no idea. That's very useful. Thank you for me telling me, Sally."

Then quiet returned. He'd left.

Light-headed with terror or blood loss, Sally still refused to move. Every bit of her hurt from the beating she'd taken. Stars popped in her vision.

He'll be back, she thought. To anoint me the Final Girl.

All that mattered to her was she'd go on surviving.

Then she remembered why.

"Oh God," she groaned, adding shame to her damage list.

Nicholas.

Max and his murderous camera were headed his way. She couldn't just let him die. It was this kind of every-man-for-himself thinking that allowed the director to win. They needed to fight for each other.

She needed to correct her mistake.

Meanwhile, Dan was coming. She only had to fight a little while longer.

Sally took inventory of her body. She cataloged a patchwork of cuts, scratches, and splinters all throbbing with hurt. Her fingers came away sticky with blood. She suffered, but she could still move.

Could still fight.

Sally wasn't strong like Clare or crafty like Nicholas, but she had one simple thing going for her: She was willing to try.

In fact, her survival wouldn't mean much if she didn't.

She'd lost her stick during the nightmare, but it didn't matter. The house was literally made of sticks. They protruded everywhere from the rubble in which Clare now lay entombed. She selected a thin slab of wood and hefted it. This one wasn't flimsy at all. A formidable club. She felt strong again.

I'm ready, she thought.

Setting her aching jaw, Sally took a step toward her destiny—

And froze, unable to budge another inch.

She'd always thought the Final Girl had been aptly named, as the audience ended up thinking, One of the characters is Finally not acting like an idiot and is Finally doing something. She now understood how hard that is for the Girl, especially after she has seen the monster's power.

A movie wasn't anything like real life. All the experience in the world didn't prepare you for the brute shock of real horror. Horror the way Max understood it. Yes, Sally had toughened up over the past few months. She'd suffered real things for the first time in her life, and they'd made her stronger. She'd sworn that next time she faced horror she wouldn't freeze up, and she'd act.

But this…

This electric, paralyzing fear. She might not want to live with herself if she did nothing, but she felt absolutely certain that she didn't want to die.

Sally wasn't actually the Final Girl, though. That wasn't her character. She wasn't the Bad Girl either, not really.

She was Sally Priest, and she was doing this.

The most challenging role of her life. Gripping her club, she stomped across the wreckage and returned to the night.