Prey by Stefan Petrucha Page A

thing attaching it to its body had been butter.
    Chelsea slammed her fists into the door, crying, “No! No! No!” The voice inside her whispered, Told you so.
    Her slamming grew weaker, then stopped. Where was Derek? She no longer felt him behind her. She couldn’t turn her head or even open her mouth to scream. She pictured Koko slithering away from poor Restrooms’s body, scuttling, winding closer and closer.
    Count your tears and you’ll be safe , the OCD said.But she knew, really knew, that it was lying. Nothing was going to save her now.
    It wasn’t until she heard another hiss and placed it, not right behind her, but much farther back in the room, that she realized the lizard was not right behind her. Koko was either still busy with his dinner, or he had taken Derek.
    Chelsea’s choice was obvious: She could either stay here, staring at the door, at the little glass window in the top and the snow that seemed to be falling harder and harder—or she could turn around and see what was really going on.
    She put a bit of her cheek inside her teeth—tender and rough—and bit down hard, hard enough for it to bleed. A salty taste rushed onto her tongue. It hurt, just badly enough to jolt her nervous system out of its terror-inspired catatonia, and she turned.
    In their rush for the door one of them had knocked over a lamp, so the grisly sight of Koko and Gambinetti was cloaked in blessed shadow. There was light though, down the hall and in the kitchen. Derek was standing there, waving frantically at her, mouthing, “Come on! Come on!”
    Had he found a way out? The door in the kitchen was locked, too, all the windows barred. Maybe shehad a key, or maybe the key she’d just broken off in the lock was the one that worked the back door.
    Derek was getting frantic. She wanted to run to him—really, she did, but it meant crossing Koko’s path, and that she could not do.
    Down the hall, she saw Derek heft a heavy kitchen chair, thick with white paint, as if he were hoping to beat the giant lizard to death with it. Realizing it was useless, he put it down and rifled through a kitchen drawer, pulling out one long knife after another, instantly realizing that each was hopeless for the task.
    Finally, he just stood there, his hands grabbing at his hair, and could not remain silent anymore. “Chelsea! Will you run already?”
    The moment he shouted, the chewing stopped. Koko’s massive head reared and looked, first in the direction of Derek, just out of his sight in the kitchen doorway, then at Chelsea, perfectly visible from the living room. It looked like the lizard was deciding what direction to head in. So Chelsea ran, not toward Derek, but up the stairs to the second floor, all fourteen of them. She took them two, three at a time. There was a door near the top of the stairs, but instead of trying to open it, she whirled onto the landing and squatted behind the banister that ran along thesecond-floor hall, the whole of the stairs and just a bit of the landing below visible.
    She felt briefly free, like an astronaut traveling between earth and the moon experiencing a few true moments of zero gravity, like maybe she had left all the horror down there, behind her, like maybe it was all a dream and she was just a little girl, fleeing her mother or father in a wonderful game of hide-and-seek.
    It didn’t last. She pressed her head against the wooden support posts holding up the railing and panted, marveling at how she had no control over her fast breathing. She looked down. The wobbling light from the fallen living room lamp spilled through the posts, making long, black bars of shadow against the staircase wall.
    Being ever so gentle with herself, she twisted and tried to peer over the banister, straight down the stairs. She could see the frayed welcome mat and even a small bit of the living-room floor. Koko was nowhere in sight. She didn’t hear any struggling,