Then Nathan was outside with the moon, full and white, hung overhead. The cold Ohio air bit her half-naked skin. She stumbled across the sparse parking lot to her car and reached for the handle, only to remember her keys were in her pants, which were still folded, along with her underwear, shirt, jacket, cell, and purse in a clear holding container on Joanne’s desk.

She swore, trekked back to the side door, and pushed, only to find it had locked from the inside behind her. It was a solid and plain door, thick with no windows. All the exterior facility doors were, negating Nate’s opportunity to even shatter an entrance. It dawned on her there was now no possible way to drive home. For a hysterical moment, she imagined breaking in her own car, hotwiring it, and escaping that way. 

If only she knew how to hotwire a car.

The apartment then. It was the only option.

A cold breeze cut through the gown. The crude, plastic-y fabric fluttered against her bare asscheeks and drafted up between her legs, freezing.

There was no other choice.

She’d have to walk.

Dana and Jon were at Dana’s parents’ still. There was that to be thankful for.

Jogging across the street, she stubbed her unprotected toe on a crack in the sidewalk and cursed much more loudly than intended. The swear summoned a bum from the stoop where he'd been dozing. For a moment, the old codger regarded her as though he were some manner of magnificent, bare-assed apparition. Standing in his cobbled together attire, blinking owlishly, he made a soft “huh” and scratched his chin bristle.

Nate held perfectly still and hoped he’d lose interest. 

After a few uncertain beats, the man cinched his over-large jacket tighter about the waist and tottered closer. “Heya fella-” 

Underneath his cap's battered bill, his rheumy eyes glazed, mouth falling open.

Then he lunged.

Nathan was more prepared for the reaction this go-around. With a swift rabbit-punch and knee-groin, she gave a hard shove. As with Joanne, this slowed but did not stop the bastard. Nothing could. He crawled, gloved hands clasping her ankles.

Nate responded with  a firm kick in the nose. A sharp crack and splatter of blood later, and the bum tumbled backwards. 

Nathan, foot aching, turned and fled.

Thankfully, the man was too inebriated to recover. His distraught cry grew distant. 

The main road wasn’t safe. Too much risk of pedestrians. She ducked into a door frame to catch her breath and consider her next move. Being a Nabaclin Labs test subject entailed high risks. She’d been given a number to call in an emergency event. A cure might be possible, but she would need to get her hands on a phone first. 

She couldn’t go back to the lab. Anyone catching a whiff of her tantalizing aroma would become as Joanne or the vagrant, their one consuming task to catch, kill and eat. Hell, they might go ahead and skip the “kill” part and chomp her up alive. That old fuck had certainly given it his best go.

Once again, that left the apartment. Meekly holding her arm, she crept off the stoop and checked the adjacent alley for a clear coast.

The immediate vicinity lay empty.

You can do this. It isn't far.

More. She had to. 

Gathering her nerve, keeping a weather eye out for broken glass, she crept. 

Thirty cold, nerve-wracking minutes later, Nathan collapsed in the stairwell of her decrepit six-level walk-up. She'd spent the entire trek home throwing glances over her shoulder. Every time, she imagined the ravenous vagrant’s shadow, but she hadn’t seen him again. Anytime she’d spotted anyone, she altered her route or hid. As far as she could tell, she hadn’t been followed.  

Still shivering, she tiredly listened for the door rattle that would prove her wrong. Thankfully, there was only the drip-drop of a cracked pipe somewhere in the ceiling.

She was safe.

Darkness encroached as shock finally had time to sink in. Already dim lights had grown dimmer and the gloomy stairwell seemed to extend up into forever. Deciding she needed a little rest before braving so daunting a task as climbing the stairs, she toweled at her running nose and gathered her strength.

Upstairs, another door popped open and a narrow light beam fell down the steps, landing across her legs. With her chin on the step, the scent of polished wood in her half-clogged nostrils, she turned his head and looked up.

A fuzzy pair of black Batman slippers shuffled into sight. Overhead, someone sniffed back a nose-full of mucus and made a hacking sound akin to a cat coughing up a hairball. Oh shit. She couldn't fight off another one of these lunatics. Couldn't...

A baseball bat tip pressed against Nate’s crown.

Nate took another look and groaned disbelief. 

Looming over her, dressed in a fluffy pink robe with a nasal strip spread across her nose bridge, was her landlady, Sandra. Judging by the mismatched curlers twisting her dyed hair (not to mention her displeased glare), Nate’s arrival had woken her. She sniffled again and briskly tapped Nate’s shoulder with the bat. “Holy shit. What the hell'd you do, Brains?” Only with her congestion, it sounded more like “Whub thu hell'd 'ou do.”

“You’re not trying to eat me,” said Nathan. 

Sandra laughed. “No thanks, I’m a hot dog gal myself, not that I didn’t try a taco or two in my youth.” She coughed into her fist. Sandra lived in a perpetual state of sickness, always catching some new ailment right as she recovered from another. Nate remembered she had lost her sense of smell to some old viral outbreak decades earlier, and spotted a faint ray of hope. 

“I'm hurt,” Nate blurted. “I think I broke my clavicle. I need help!”

Frowning, Sandra stooped down to inspect the damage. Her knobby hands gently pressed about Nate’s back and shoulder, feeling for any unnatural shifts. “Oh you big baby. It's not near that serious. You just dislocated your shoulder... Aren't you s'posed to be goin' to school to be a doctor or somethin'?”

“Different kind. Biologist.”

“Yeah?” Her eyes were steely gray, calm as always. But Nate saw the way they lingered on her bloodstained gown. “You look more like'a patient today.”

“I need help.”

“9-1-1? I'm on it.”

“NO!” A call for an ambulance or the police would mean almost-certain death. One clear whiff and they'd be bloodthirsty hounds. Even if they weren't, she had killed the great Joanne Rowls. That wouldn’t go unpunished. “Please. I-I can't tell you why. I just need you not to call the police. And to help me.”

“Hmph.” Slinging the bat over her shoulder, she looked critically down at her. “What'd you do? Kill someone?”

Continue to Part III