“Yes! To save your damn life!”
“So we die in a box instead of out there,” he gestured wildly at the door, “where we had options of escape.”
“Escape?” Jadine struggled to her feet. “What are you talking about? How were we going to escape? These things aren’t human! We were lucky to outrun them this short distance. Any further and they would have caught us.” She shuddered at the thought.
“Well, at least -”
“Stop it!” Stacy yelled, leaping to her feet. Her voice echoed in the sparsely furnished room. “Just stop it! Like it or not, we are in this together and we need to figure it out together.” She softened her tone. “Look, I’m scared, too, but fighting amongst ourselves is getting us nowhere.”
For a moment no one spoke. Only the sound of their breathing broke up the rhythm of the music: Gene Autry singing “Rudolph, the Red Nosed Reindeer”, punctuated by the clown’s pounding.
“You’re right. I’m sorry,” Jadine said, clasping her hands tightly together. The knuckles of her fingers turned white.
“Me, too,” Trevin mumbled. “But, seriously, why this room? It’s dusty, dirty, hot, and we can’t see anything that’s going on.”
“Hello, that’s the point.” Jadine pointed at the door and said, “Heavy metal door. They aren’t getting past that. Solid walls with no windows. Okay, so we can’t get out, but they can’t get in. Also, with the automatic door broken, the temperature out there will be dropping fast. In here, we are warm and dry. We can’t see them, but they can’t see us either.”
Stacy settled back onto the floor. “So, you really think we’re safe?”
“We’ll be fine,” Jadine asserted, hoping to convince herself as well as the others. Churning in her gut was the fear that no one would come. No one could come. Maybe the clowns had already taken the city and the three of them were all that was left. She kept these thoughts to herself. To her staff she said, “The police will arrive soon and drag these clowns off to jail, or back to Hell, or whatever suits them. You’ll see, we’ll be just fine.” From the other side of the room, as if to mock Jadine’s words, came the sound of the clown scratching at the door.