Marylou's hand was moist with saliva, and the shitty part was that it wasn't even her own.

"Keep quiet," she hushed in Amy's ear.

Just outside past the door and the thin classroom walls they could hear the men walking by and mumbling to each other, and when Marylou pushed the door ever so slightly to look outside, she saw the halos of the men's flashlights scanning wildly, growing bigger, closer by the second, sweeping the extension of the corridor in search for life.

Roaming gangs. Drifters. Men in packs scouting the wilderness of the Storm. They were almost exclusively bad news, in Marylou's experience. She'd take a deep breath and face the rain and the fear of Ghosts, given the lack of options, no problem, but she'd hide and run and cower from real people walking in groups like those guys with their bats and guns and their sense of morality long washed out with the rain, if ever it was there.

The Ghosts Marylou had never seen kill anyone. Other people, well... Marylou had the scars to justify avoiding them.

Now the door was closed again, and the voices put the men right outside the door, and Amy's breath was wet and irregular against the palm of Marylou's hand and Marylou wished someone would press a hand against her mouth too, because she felt like screaming some bad words.

Amy whined and Marylou pulled her close and locked eyes. She breathed in, slow and strong, and puffed out like a cigarette drag, and poked Amy in the chest for her to do the same. Then again, then again. Keep calm. Breathe with me.

Amy breathed in and out, in and out, following Marylou's command, and her chest seemed to slow down a bit and her eyes went softer. Marylou nodded and forced a faint smile between her lips.

"There's a fire here," she heard one of the men calling, outside. "Still smoking."

"Windows are boarded all over the place too," another one called. "Someone definitely uses this place as a hideout. Or used it, until very recently."

"Maybe they heard us coming and fled."

"Let's be safe. Check the classrooms."

Marylou felt Amy's lips tremble against her hand. She pushed herself against the door and pulled Amy with her. Be cool. Be cool. No sound. No tears.

Come on, Amy. Be scared of Evil Noodle all you want, but right now, with these guys out there, I need you to woman up.

It was an internal room they were in. No windows, just a ventilation opening over the blackboard, sealed with bolts and not wide enough for either of them.

Marylou heard the screech of a door coming open, close, and steps fading out then back in, somewhere to their right, maybe the adjacent classroom. Not far.

A loud crash startled her to a jump, and by a hair's breadth she didn't scream.

"What was that!?" the man's voice called.

"Window just gave in," the other one replied. "Shit, rain's mean tonight."

"It's been like that for the past few days. It' getting worse, I told you."

"Here goes Donny with the crazy talk again."

"I'm telling y'all, it's coming back. There's gonna be another Fall."

"There's gonna be another Fall, yeah, yeah, and the government is responsible for The Storm, and the Ghosts are really FBI agents with invisibility suits and the president is a lizard."

There was laughter and a resented grunt and footsteps growing closer, closer, closer, louder and louder and in a second Marylou's whole body jerked as she felt the movement in her back. The doorknob turning against her skin, twisting the fabric of her shirt. She pressed back and slid down to the floor and pulled her hand from Amy's mouth and stuffed it between her teeth and bit and closed her eyes and prepared for the worst as the door leaned slowly back.

"Hey, hey. Hey!"

Marylou froze, the door no longer making contact with her back, Amy looking behind her with terrified, motionless eyes.

"What!?" the voice came from just over her head, loud and so, so frighteningly close she whimpered under her breath.

"Carl says there's a cafeteria down there past the yard! Fully stocked pantry!"

Slow like the air was viscous and solid around her, Marylou turned her eyes up and behind her to find a sliver of a bearded face between door and doorframe against the light outside. The man's attention somewhere down the corridor, oblivious to her presence inches from his legs.

"Where!?"

"Just past the yard! Come on!"

The face held its place and Marylou held her stare and breath, and she felt Amy's hand grabbing her hand somewhere behind her but she didn't move or dared breathe or swallow. A second later the door slammed shut and the sound of the man's footsteps distancing themselves brought the blood back to Marylou's extremities and she breathed out at last.

"Fuck me with a burning cactus," she muttered to Amy, once the footsteps rang far enough away. "I think I crapped my pants a little bit."

Later, Amy was watching the girl Marylou watching through the door crack for the men to come back. Amy watched in silence, blinking at twice the normal rate to try and make out something more than the girl's silhouette by the door. It was daylight, but even daylight didn't help inside the windowless classroom, and Amy was sitting against the wall opposite the door, where Marylou had told her to sit, and she was waiting, like Marylou had told her to wait, and it was dark but she didn't move, she just watched and waited.

"They're ransacking the cafeteria," Marylou had said before. "Which means they might be back."

"Why don't we leave, then?"

"Because there might be more men outside, or by the door, or by the gates," Marylou had said.

"And besides, where would we go?"

"But we won't have food anymore."

"No, we won't."

"So what are we gonna do?"

"I don't know, Amy. Starve to death, probably. Okay? Beats being eaten alive or whatever those guys might do to us."

"Okay. Sorry."

"Don't apologize. Go sit over by the other side of the room, I'm gonna keep watch to see if they come back."

"Okay. Sorry."

Now Marylou was watching the corridor, and she'd turn back here and then as if to make sure Amy was still there and hadn't vanished in the semi-darkness of the room. And they waited.

The men came back after a few minutes, and Amy heard their voices and Marylou heard them too because she closed the door with a soft click and leaned back against it and met Amy's eyes from across the room and they sat like that, the two of them staring at each other's dark-against-dark hinted figures in the shadow of the room, and they waited in fear for the voices and the steps.

"—set up camp here!"

"We got the girls to care for, Carl. Besides, we have a place already."

"But there's so much food."

"Yeah, and we got enough man and truckpower to take it all."

"Bu why not –"

"We're not staying here, all right? Now go help 'em pack, I wanna take this all in one trip."

Amy saw Marylou's face going down and she guessed it was because the men were talking about the food, and that now Marylou and Amy would have no food, and Amy too was sad about that, but she kept looking at Marylou almost as if waiting for answers, but Marylou had none and kept looking down between her legs. Amy had starved before, and she didn't want to starve again.

More footsteps. Silence. Then more voices.

"Is that everything?"

"Everything we could find."

"Good. Load the truck and – what the fuck is this!?"

A dry thud of boot sole against floor tile and Marylou's face darted up in a quick motion. Amy couldn't see but she knew by heart that the girl's eyes were wide and her breath stood still in the dark.

"Fuck!" another voice called. "Jesus Christ, did it bit ya?"

"Nah, I got it first."

"Good. Clean your boots before you get in the truck, will ya?"

The steps grew fainter and fainter and fainter and then died, but Marylou didn't move even some ten minutes after the silence, and then she moved and she got up and she opened the door and slowly pushed it and stood there by the doorframe, her body cut against the slightly brighter canvas of the corridor outside.

Amy stepped up and looked over Marylou's shoulder. The dead fire was there, smoking still, and the doors all around them were open, and the snake's body was by the fire, flattened in the middle like a worm and in its skin were the sunken markings and pattern of a shoe sole, and from the body to the bend of the hallway leading outside lay the dotted track of bootsteps in red, only the right foot again and again sixty or so inches apart, more faded and dimmer the further it went on until it disappeared just before the dark of the hallway's curve.