“Throw the bow away.”

Once she did this, he also instructed her to remove her quiver and arrows and throw these away too. “Good. Now, hands up.”

Slowly, Chase raised her hands. His smirk was so forceful she could practically see it even with her back turned. “I have to admit, you put up an admirable fight. I knew you were good...” He gestured at the grotesque scene and laughed, “...but I didn't know you were THIS good!”

“If kill, then kill,” she replied fearlessly. “Just do.”

He laughed at this. “In due time, cannibal. In due time. First, though, I have some plans for you.” He put a hand on her shoulder and turned her toward the girls' locker room. “Walk.”

So Chase walked, prodded along by the cold, hard feeling of the gun bumping against the back of her skull. Her condition was rapidly worsening. Her vision began to blur, and her head had shifted from floaty lightness to extreme heaviness. McBride soon realized he needed to keep his hand on her shoulder. Every time he removed it she listlessly veered off course.

When they reached the locker room door, her legs abruptly turned to jelly, and she collapsed. McBride kept his gun trained on her, in case this was some kind of trick. “Get up.” he ordered. He kicked her in the ribs, right where one of the bullets had pierced her. The sudden burst of pain may have been the only thing that kept her conscious. “Come on! Walk!”

She tried to stand, a bit too slowly for his taste. He grabbed her by the back of her top, dragged her up to her feet, and shoved her into the locker room.

What she saw in there shocked her. Sitting on one of the benches, ankles tied together and hands tied behind their backs, were Alicia, Caitlin, and Lindsey. The three girls fearfully looked up at them as they entered, and a short flash of relief breezed past their faces.

“Chase!” they gasped.

McBride noted that Chase's look of surprise was a much sadder one. “What's the matter, cannibal? I hope you weren't expecting your little pals to stage some kind of last minute rescue for you. There's no way I'd allow that.”

“We're... we're sorry, Chase,” said Lindsey.

“We know you told us to get away,” added Caitlin hoarsely. She looked and sounded like she'd been crying. “...but we wanted to help.”

Chase's sorrow at seeing her friends didn't make it out safely quickly turned to anger. She glared at McBride. “Let them go. They not do wrong.”

The chief of police looked scandalized. “Goodness! My dear... what was it they called you? Chase? My dear Chase, of course I'll let them go. I'm not a monster. Not like you.”

He whacked her on the back of the head with the butt of his pistol—not hard enough to knock her out, but hard enough to generate a sharp pain and drive her to her knees.

“But your statement that they've done nothing wrong is incorrect. They aided you. They sheltered you. They impeded our investigation. To me, that is very wrong.” He leveled the gun at the back of her head once again. “I'll let them go. Once they've seen what we do to your kind in my town. Once they understand that your kind are not to be tolerated.”

Alicia spoke up. “Chase is OUR kind,” she said bravely. “She's no different from me, Caitlin, Lindsey, or anyone else. If you can't tolerate her, you can't tolerate us.”

McBride hadn't taken his eyes off Chase once. “How sweet,” he said. “Do you really mean that? You really consider this animal one of you? Part of your little team? Do you all feel the same way?”

“Of course!” answered Caitlin.

“She's hot and popular and she's wearing the uniform, so you tell me,” answered Lindsey coolly. “If you really want to show her what this town does to her kind, you should send her flowers.”

McBride thought about their answers. “Well, that's unexpected. How very good of you to take her in and treat her fairly, to give her a chance, despite her shady past. I truly mean that. It shows strength of character and shows you to be inherently good people.”

He gave an emotionless smile, his weapon not even twitching. “However, it also proves I'm right. It proves you and this girl are nothing alike. She came to our world needing help, and you gave it to her. What do you think would have happened if you gone to HER world? What if your bus crashed somewhere on her hunting grounds on the way to a competition? Do you think she would have given you a helping hand? Hardly. She would have been eating grilled cheerburgers that night. Isn't that right, Chase?”

Chase's exhaustion worsened, as doubt and guilt were added to the burden of just trying to stay alive. To her ailing mind, his words sounded far away, and yet somehow their meaning was still too close for comfort. She hung her head.

“I don't believe she would!” retorted Alicia. “It wouldn't matter how we met! You don't just learn to cheerlead! You're born into it! As soon as she saw us, she would have been like 'I need to get in on that'! So, I mean, she would have eaten the bus driver, and possibly the chaperone, but she wouldn't have touched us! No way!”

Chase was astonished. Unlike what McBride said, these words were both close AND comforting. They warmed her, where McBride's chilled her, and that was how she knew they were true. Once the warmth of this truth started spreading through her body, her strength and vitality steadily began to return.

These girls truly were her family. They didn't see her as just a cannibal, they saw her as their sister-in-arms. She thought of Caitlin rushing to comfort her, Alicia taking into her home, and Lindsey offering to loan her her uniform, and realized a reversal could be applied to them. It would be easy to look at these girls and dismiss them as one thing: a worrywart, a ditz, a... woman of loose morals. But, in fact, they were many things. They were these things, to be sure, and more. They were people, just like her.

And then Caitlin shouted: “Woohoo, I'm free!”

McBride did not become chief of police by being foolish or inept. His ascent to his position was one that was hard-earned, through years of service. He graduated first in his class at the academy and had a reputation as not just the strongest, but also the sharpest cop on the force.

That being said, when Caitlin shouted 'woohoo, I'm free,' he actually looked.

Which was all it took. As soon as he took his eyes off her, the rejuvenated Chase whirled her leg around to kick the gun from his hand. Before it had even stopped skittering across the tile floor, she gave him a massive uppercut.

The man snarled like a wounded beast and stepped back. Chase dashed over to her squadmates and quickly untied them. “Thank Cait for fake free! Thank Leash for pep! Thank Lin for say me hot!” They could tell she meant it from the bottom of her heart.

“You're welcome!” they replied, as they were pulled in for a group hug.

Chase broke it up as abruptly as she initiated it. “Now please go! Get out so no tie up more!” she insisted.

“Fat chance!” said Lindsey with a roguish grin, clenching a fist. “We're in this all the way now!”

“Translation: We didn't learn anything from our ordeal!” said Caitlin, slightly annoyed. But it was clear she shared Lindsey's sentiment.

Alicia gasped and pointed. “Look out, Chase!”

McBride had recovered. He swung his nightstick down at her and she jumped out of the way, countering with a quick body blow.

They sparred for a while, Chase carefully leading the brawl away from her defenseless friends. It seemed like a losing battle, though. McBride wasn't feeling her hits, and she was so weak and vulnerable that she was feeling his near misses.

“We need to get her a weapon!” realized Alicia, as McBride swung high and Chase dropped to her back, planted her feet in his belly, and vaulted him head-over-heels into a row of lockers. “What have we got?!”

They took their purses out of lockers, and did a quick assessment.

“Hey, check this out! I have a nail file!” said Lindsey.

“Huh. That's... I don't see how that's really usable.”

“I have one too,” suggested Caitlin. “She could dual wield!”

“Whoa, sweet!” remarked Lindsey. “One, not so usable. But two...?” She let it dangle, looking to Alicia for affirmation.

“Still not really usable.”

“Well, what do you have, then?”

Alicia looked in her purse. “Er... Well...” She rooted around and pulled something out. “I have this, uh, compact.”

“Ooh!” commented Lindsey. “You know what those are good for? Reflecting lasers. Happens in every spy movie.”

Caitlin rolled her eyes. “Well, we'd better keep it handy in case the chief of police pulls any beam weaponry on her.”

“Good thinking, Caitlin. Always best to be prepared,” said Alicia, setting it aside. Sometimes, she and Lindsey were a bit too blindly trusting with Caitlin's position as the brains of the group.

“I found this in Erin's purse,” said Lindsey, holding up a pen. “Good stabbing implement.”

“What the heck, Lindsey?” asked Caitlin, annoyed.

“You shouldn't just go through somebody else's purse like that!” agreed Alicia.

“Gimme a break. It was an emergency,” said Lindsey.

“Don't you mean it IS an emergency?” asked Caitlin.

“No. I needed it for a test this morning.”

They reluctantly decided Lindsey had the right idea, however, and began looking through the contents of their squadmates' purses. They vowed absolute confidentiality, although this was unnecessary; they knew none of them would ever admit to the shame of such a heinous deed.

Nicole had some keys, which they put in the maybe pile. Heather had some hand sanitizer which had a poison control warning on it, although they couldn't figure out how to convince McBride to eat hand sanitizer. Danielle's purse had a mini curling iron in it. They agreed this was potentially hazardous, although Chase would need to plug it in, which made it kind of useless. Tiffers had a switchblade. They were scared of hurting themselves trying to open it, so they put it back.

They checked a few other lockers. When Lindsey came to Rebecca's, she gasped. “Alright. Now we're talking!”

“What? What is it?” asked Alicia.

Lindsey reached down and picked something up off the floor of the locker, with two hands and a small grunt. “Remember how Rebecca's dad's a logger?”

“Yeah?”

Lindsey turned around and proudly presented a chainsaw. “Well, check this baby out!”

“H-holy crap!” said Caitlin. “Are those things even allowed at school?”

“Are switchblades?” asked Alicia.

“Or pump shotguns?” asked Lindsey. This was in one of the 'few other lockers'.

“We have a strange squad,” decided Caitlin.

Lindsey called out to Chase, whom McBride had struggling in a submission hold. “Hey Chase! Catch!”

When she looked up at the girl, Chase's eyes widened excitedly. Lindsey threw the heavy piece of equipment, and Chase broke free of McBride's grip to catch it. She stood up and admired the way it lay in her arms, like it was a priceless treasure.

“Do you know how to use a chainsaw?” asked Caitlin.

This proved to be a rather silly thing to ask a cannibal. Chase pumped the primer, and it roared to life with one excited yank of the pull start. McBride stumbled to his feet and backed away.

Chase wasted no time in pushing an attack, swinging the weapon and advancing quickly. The chain raced around its track and bellowed furiously, like a trapped beast pacing in its cage.

McBride was deceptively quick for his size, and the device's unwieldy weight slowed Chase down a bit, so he was able to successfully dodge her swings. However, with her long reach, dodging and retreating was all he could do, ducking, leaping, and doing a lot of backpedaling.

He bumped into the water heater, looked over his shoulder at it, then back at Chase. She hoisted the chainsaw high over her head.

He jumped out of the way at the last possible second. She brought the machine down on the water heater, cutting a gash in the side of its tank. Propane bled arterially from the wound.

McBride landed with a roll and quickly rose to his feet. When he took in his surroundings, he realized he was in the showers. There was no exit here, except the one blocked by the chainsaw and the girl holding it.

Chase had him now. She was just about to step inside, when a voice rang out.

“CHIEF!” Everyone looked. There was Johnson, by the door. He picked up McBride's discarded gun and tossed it to him.

McBride reached up to catch it. Simultaneously, Chase rushed at him.

The gun fell into his hand. There would be no opportunity to screw around this time. Just aim, shoot, and kill.

He got to the aim part. Just as his arm pointed at her head, Chase swiped the chainsaw to the left. The tone of the chainsaw's motor dropped as the blade found something to bite through. A scream rang out, and then a severed hand fell to the tile floor, still clutching its weapon.

Johnson was drawing his own pistol. While McBride was occupied with clutching his bloodied stump, Chase temporarily turned her attention on the rookie. She ran out of the showers, sprung over a bench...

...and dove the chainsaw into his chest.

Blood sprayed out around the rotating chain, and also from his mouth, in sporadic bursts. It didn't take him long to die, but by the time he did, there was more of his blood on Chase than inside his body.

She powered the chainsaw down and extracted it from the man. It caught on something, but a couple firm tugs freed it. She gave the blade a thirsty look, dragged her tongue across it to lap up some of the blood, then turned to her friends. “All dead. Can go now,” she said brightly.

“Uh, wh-what about him?” asked Alicia, pointing at the chief, who was huddled over his arm.

“Oh, him bleed out,” Chase explained. “No big.”

“Er, that sounds like a 'big' to me,” responded Caitlin. “Maybe you should finish him off.”

Chase looked confused for a moment, then laughed. “No no, this death much more pain,” she assured her.

“That's why you should finish him off,” said Alicia. “It's the humane thing to do.”

The cannibal looked at the cop thoughtfully. She didn't understand it, but if they didn't want the cop to suffer, then so be it.

She pulled the chainsaw back to life. The sudden noise made McBride look up.

He expected her to come to him. Instead, she hustled the other three cheerleaders towards the door. It was at this time that the chief was struck odd by the fact that the floor of the shower was wet, even though the heads were never turned on. And then, he noticed the smell. He looked over at the water heater. It was empty, no longer leaking.

The smell of propane.

“No! Wait!” he gasped.

Chase smiled broadly, lifted the howling chainsaw, and brought it down on the cool cement.

It kicked up some sparks.