What Once We Feared Read Free Page A

the next challenge, hoping not to waver and fall again.
    The thing is—I didn’t decide to save Gregor because that’s the kind of guy I am. I tried to save him because I couldn’t stand him knowing the worst of me.
    The chair Gregor used as a weapon was heavy and unwieldy. His arms were tiring and his reactions slowing. I leapt into the fight with a pool cue in each hand. My first swipe went wild, snapping against the woman’s shoulder and doing nothing.
    “That won’t work!” Gregor screamed.
    “I know!” I shouted back.
    Images from old kung fu movies flashed in my head, but none of them were long or bright enough for me to capture them and figure out what to do. Behind us, Nicky screamed, “Kill it!” as though somehow that would be helpful.
    The woman lurched, her teeth snapping at Gregor’s fingers. He yanked his hand out of reach, dropping one side of the chair in the process. In that second he was unprotected, and the creature lunged.
    I tried to use the cue to push her back, but the angles were off. I was only successful at tilting her off balance, and I quickly shoved the other cue between her legs, tripping her.
    She fell to the floor with a thump, something somewhere inside her snapping. Already she was pushing herself to her knees. I didn’t know what to do to stop her, so I kicked her in the abdomen, sending her tumbling to the side. Gregor toppled the chair over her, trying to position it so that the crossbars on the legs would pin her down. But it wasn’t working.
    She grabbed Gregor’s pants, yanking hard. He lost his footing and fell, his head smashing the wall as his body went limp. The woman flailed, teeth going straight for Gregor’s ankle. Nicky screamed.
    If I’d had time maybe I’d have thought to wedge the pool cue in her mouth so she couldn’t bite him. I could have rolled the woman onto her stomach and pinned her arms back while the others figured out a way to tie her up.
    But I knew nothing except panic; I tasted its bitterness at the back of my throat, the heat of it searing my neurons so that I couldn’t think. Instead, I just acted out of pure, blind instinct and kicked the woman, hard, in the face.
    The year before I’d been the place kicker on the football team. I knew how to kick a ball, how to gather the power in your legs and transfer it out through the top of your foot.
    As I felt her teeth rip free and heard her jaw popping, I thought,
This is a woman’s face you’re destroying. A human being you’re attacking
.
    Her head snapped back, her moans choked on shards of teeth now lodged in her throat. But that didn’t stop her reaching for Gregor again.
    It was like this would never end.
    That’s the truth I grasped in that moment and never lost again: this was the beginning. I could kill this woman and there would be another behind her. And another behind that. They would come and come and come and eventually I’d have nothing left in me to fight.
    It would never be a question of how long
they
could last; it was all about how long
I
could. And I knew, right then, that I would give up. Not now and perhaps not soon, but at somepoint I would have fight left in me, and I would let it go.
    Because I wasn’t strong enough for this new world.
    In the end, I’m not a survivor.
    There was something about embracing my inevitable death, knowing that it would come and it would be my choice, that made it easier to flip the chair over and press the top rail of it against the woman’s throat. She was pinned on her back, facing me, her jaw crooked, her mouth a gaping mess.
    Her mascara was smeared, dried grayish tears streaking her cheeks. I assumed she’d died in the elevator, alone. Just trying to go home. Later, when we started breaking into apartments looking for supplies, I’d find hers—a tidy corner unit with views of the mountains. Her furniture was modern, her bathroom a mess, and her kitchen had been that of a woman who loved to cook. Cupboards stuffed full, a