A phone rang and Angela took it into her hand. Connie asked herself who the doctor was called by.

"Yes? ... Could you repeat that I hear you badly?... Yes okay... The hospital? Sure."

After that Angela put the phone back to her pocket and turned the car around. Connie quickly looked away when the doctor looked into her direction to hide her curiosity from the other woman's knowledge. The houses and streets rushed by in uneventful blurs. Nothing special happened during their ride and even if it had Connie wouldn't have noticed. She was too consumed by heavy thougts.

Then the rythmic humming of the engine was missing and Connie looked around in surprise. She saw Angela standing outside the car and got out herself.

"Yeah I love you too honey, see you later." Angela said into her phone and then put it into her pocket again. "Bad connection..."

"Who was that?" Connie asked.

"I told my husband to drive to the mall and wait there."

"Oh."

Both of them walked towards an entrance. It was neither on the shadowy nor on the "lit" side of the building. They entered the first room which was the garage. It was a huge room with several ambulances and cars that stood ready for special cases. It was entirely dark and an aura of looming threat hung within the room. The shadows themselves seemed way too dark and like as if they were something more than shadows.

Or something less.

Angela got a small flashlight out of her jeanspocket and lit the way. The ghostly shape of an ambulance was at the right side while a grey wall stood at the left. They couldn't walk past the ambulance's front since the car stood too close to its openable gate. The colors, normally bright and easily seeable, seemed matt and no longer reflected the dim light as they should.

The inside of the car's cockpit was threatingly dark and shallow, shadows danced within it and the dim light shone on several items on the small wall that lay behind the driver. The shadows wandered with the angle of light and moved horribly organic with it. Angela furred her brows and moved the flashlight in quick strides. The shadows moved among the rythm just as they should.

Angela walked a few steps until she was behind the car. A few old wheelchairs, flatable beds and other things stood around and near the wall. More vehicles stood at the other side and only a small gap lay between them and the wall. The rooftops of the cars couldn't be seen since Angela was no giant and it added to the claustrophobic atmosphere. She heard soft steps and saw Connie stand behind her.

She had her arms crossed and shivered heavily what surprised Angela very much. Her breath condensated in the air unlike the doctor's one.

"Cold here..." Connie whispered through gritted teeth while looking at an ambulance right beisde her. Angela was even more surprised since she felt normally warm and her breath didn't condensate either. Something had to be wrong and her eyes followed Connie's over the ambulance's surface. A small but bloody handprint was at its lower side, like as if someone had tried to hold firm on it. Long smears led down from the print like as if someone's fingers had moved over it. It looked like as if someone had been pulled underneath the car.

In a strange form of female instinct she took Connie's hand and rushed for the door. A feeling of cold wrapped around her own body as she moved forward. It was not a normal form of cold, it seemed to come from her inner body and crawled to everywhere within her. She finally reached the door, pushed the flashlight between her teeth and opened the wooden door.

"What the-" Connie was cut short when Angela looked behind the brunette woman.

What lay behind her was a huge cloud of fog that spread towards them with high speed while faces appeared on its fronter surface. These faces were not really hard matter, they seemed in pain, forgotten, lonely and hungry. Arms stretched from the greyish fog while it came towards them like a wave of water in a dam. Hungry, clawed fingers with sharp nails at their tops. The tips seemed capable of rendering flesh from bones.

Deep and gaping mouths opened and revealed horrible rows of teeth. Angela grabbed Connie and flung her forwards through the door. She turned away from the horrible sight and shut the door just in time. She had looked at whatever it was but not for long enough to watch its eyes opened. No one had ever watched that and lived to tell the tale.

"Mrs. P what is-" Connie asked in surprise and fear when the bangs erupted on the door.

"No time just follow me!" Angela said and grabbed the young woman's hand. They walked away from the door and Angela watched its frame, as well as the walls that stretched away from it slowly became pitchblack. Something moved over the walls, moved and steadily spread over them in an undefinable speed.

Whenever she thought to see a definable stadium of "blackening" it was either completely gone or still there. It was a fluent decay in which the wall simply vanished into something black. Her eyes couldn't judge the amount of blackness since the darkness of the nigh lightless floor mixed into the absolute blackness of the blackening walls.

They ran around a corner and Angela cast another look behind her. The door had completely vanished and instead of something there was only complete blackness. There seemed to be no space, no physical boundary of the walls and the doorframe left anymore. There was only bodieless emptieness. There was no wall anymore, there was nothing at all. Her eyes no longer found anything to look upon and thus stared into nothingness.

They desperately tried to grasp that strange and defiying thing, tried to see where there was nothing to see and they tried to look into something were nothing was to look at. It was utter blackness, a void of something and nothing seemed to exist there. Not even the blackness seemed to exist since it felt like nothing but a placekeeper for whatever was there.

Or for what was no longer there like the door or the walls.

Then something radiated from that absolute emtpieness. An intense shiver went through her entire body but it refused to move away. That absolute lack of something to grasp, understand or see was somehow fascinating. Or maybe her entire mind couldn't deal with it since it was an entirely new thing. And nothing worked out on the first time.

Then something else came out of the blackness and her body got pulled back. Female hands pulled her body into a small doorframe when thin and wiry figures grew from the darkness. Reddened flares in empty faces, hollow greyish and somewhat limpid or transparent bodies. Some of the faces sped towards her when a central part of blackness formed up from the rest.

It grew into a somewhat manlike shape until two red flares lit up in what seemed to be its head. At exactly the moment they "opened" or "appeared" soemthing within was opened up like a crab's shell by a jackhammer. These reddened flares somehow torched into her mind and heart like a sun blinded someone who stood only a few miles away from it when it suddenly went "on".

Her mouth went open and shut again and again in lack of understanding for what happened. The greyish faces, their claws and their wiry bodies that loosened from their black "mother" came towards her. They struggled free from their birthplace until they could fly towards her and their gapingly hungry mouths instilled fear within her.

Then the central figure made a step forward, then another one. Its left arm went to its back while something grew out of its right. Strange and thin whispers, fearfull, horrid, filled with angst flung by her ears when the left arm returned. It held a small cylinder and moved towards the thing that had almost completely grown out from its right arm.

The feeling of cold intensified but it, together with the central shape, was only a small thing of the entire picture. One of the shapes held her eyelock, she stared into the gaping, hollow and empty black holes where its eyes should be. And as soon as she saw into these sockets it came closer, its speed increased in an impossibe way and it was, not yet, but already, both, somehow, at the same time, within her.

The things mouth opened like the one of a viper, it grew bigger than her entire head and it came towards her with horrible claws that were ready to dig into her shoulders to make sure she didn't escape. Its hollow eyes still kept her gaze in a hypnotic lock. Then suddenly a door shut, something blocked the view upon the empty black sockets. The door was almost like a barrier, what "one can't see isn't there" was somehow correct for a short moment.

Horrible claws slowly went through her like as if they only slowed the strange thing down. Her entire body shivered when a hand made a rather harsh contact with her cheek. While suddenly getting back in some state of consciousness Angela looked at Connie. The young woman had slapped her and Angela was gratefull for that. Connie took her hand and ran but suddenly stopped.

There it stood: The blackened man, the wicker man, a strange impersonation of death. Its blackened shape was somehow humanoid and its horrid red eyes stared into them. Angela felt like as if someone was, on a mental level, raping her and just that man/thing was the one to blame. It slowly strode towards them while the door made no sound even though something came through it.

Both girls twitched at the sound of its machinegun being made ready.

---

Bonnie kept freezing heavily even though her new "friend's" jacket was her extended second skirt. Her entire skin stung like as if needles stuck within it and she was hungry. Tiredness came as well when she had to struggle to keep her eyes open. It had been a long day and the adrenaline-rush that came with fights drowned out. After that her body showed her very clearly that its reserves were almost completely depleted.

It was beginning to snow and she shivered again. She wanted to know why and how she had awoken in a dirty crater while Zombie-like people and shooting things had tried to kill her. Max sometimes looked behind them and his head and eyes kept darting around together with his gun again and again.

He hadn't done so for minutes now and Bonnie got pissed. Not only from his paranoid behaviour but also from the fact that he had ignored every of her questions. Although, she admitted to herself, her tone hadn't been too friendly either. On the other hand this was the second-most scrappy day of her entire life so her behaviour wasn't that much of a surprise.

Then he rested himself against a wall and Bonnie couldn't see his front and face anymore. He leant sideways and she could see that he was more exhausted than her which was a slight surprise. His breath was heavy and he put more weight upon the left than on the right leg. His chest rose rythmically and his head went back and forth with its side at the wall. Then his rifle dropped from his right hand, stood upright for a moment and then fell into the snow.

She was about to yell at him when something odd happened. A sudden flash of white rammed through her vision and then, only for the blink of an eye, everything was afire. She couldn't make out any details but in that strange flash she saw that everything was burning except for the street, which was a brown and muddy something almost like farmer's roads that weren't looked at after heavy raining.

Then her hand landed on his shoulder. He flinched, made an exhausted grunt, picked his gun up and almost stumbled before walking forward. She looked at her hand and felt odd since she could never have covered the necessary distance in such a short amount of time. Then she was about to say something but Max simply didn't listen.

"Hey! Listen up!"

He kept breathing hard and Bonnie shook his shoulder. He groaned, fell forward upon his knees and then dropped sideways into the snow. She stood there for a moment just gaping at him and then took a breath in. He didn't get up so she shoved him to his back and looked at him. His face was pale and his breathing had slowed down considerably. She knew he wasn't gonna stand up all by himself wihout help.

"Oh dude..."

Her entire body shivered when a harsch wind blew. It flung snow and cold at her and it sounded very ghostly, almost like as if the dead tried to tell her something. She swore under her breath and put him upright with his back resting against her legs. Then she put his rifle under the armpits and used it to shove him among while walking backwards.

He was heavy and together with the backpack and the rifle he was hard to move around. She moved towards a building and got heavily exhausted after just a few strides. It was difficult and only due to her iron will she managed to pull through. "They" made it towards the entrance of the hotel were her friends were supposed to be when the snowing increased to an outright storm.

The wind blew fast, harsh and permanent and sight was reduced to a few yards at best. She barely made it towards the entrance before her sight got blinded by the stinging cold that made her eyes tear. Her entire body protested, her legs and arms muscles nearly cramped and she almost dropped him only out of wish.

But then, on the other hand, that was no option since she was the only one to bring him to safety. And no matter how much she got pissed at having to stick around with a loser she was no murderer. She pushed the door open and pulled him into the safe warmth of a greeting hall. The hotel was old and cheap at best. It had a wide floor. To the left was a small row of seats but she was to exhausted to heap him on one of them.

To her right was a set of stairs and straight ahead was a doublewinged door. To the left and a little further, near the doubledoors, a small room stood. It's window stood at an 90 degrees angle from the doubledoor so that the owner could always watch when someone came in. She sat her companion down at the wall and shut the door which was hard since the wind pushed snow into the corridor.

After that she looked at him: His head hung down and its chin rested on his chest. The rifle lay on his lap and both hands lay upon it like as if to be ready for shooting with it. She heard very faint noises of breathing and relaxed slightly.

"You'd better be thankfull this or I'll throw you out!" She hissed at him what made him groan slightly while his head rose, only to sink down again. Then she regretted having said that as well as her tone and walked towards the small room and its door. The room was a little dusty and a book lay on the table. There were only keys for the second floor which was the highest floor of the building.

After taking one of the keys she raced up the stairs and then stopped suddenly. A man stood on top of the stairs and stared at her. He wore a SWAT-uniform and a machinepistol hung on loosely below his right arm. Then there was another flash and he was gone. Bonnie shook her head quickly and walked on. After a few more exhausting steps she made it to the rooms. She stood before the door of her key.

"Shoot! Shoot!"

Bonnie turned towards where the noise came from and saw several people point guns at her. She gasped in surprise and blinked. They were gone.

"What the hell is going in this place?" She asked herself. There were memories in her head that floated around and sometimes one of them was gripped at. For a few moments she believed that something had attacked her while she drove a car earlier in the day. And then she put the thought to rest since it seemed to absurd to be true.

"Strange things whose guts make me green all over?... No way..." She mused to herself and then another voice spoke from inside the room.

"You're alive... still." It said while the pause showed that it was displeased at least. She looked up and saw, while her head ached slightly, a man resting against the kitchen's table. He wore a white sleeveless shirt and two brownish stripes of leather went over his chest and into his trousers. They would, on the back, mend into one and hold the trousers. A holster held a small pistol and a police officers badge stuck on the belt.

"What? Hwo are you?" She said, both surprised and startled. The man went on like as if she hadn't said anything:

"I didn't expect you to come back." He said while narrowing his eyes. And before she could reply he vanished when she blinked her eyes.

"What on earth is going on in this place?" She took two blankets from the sleeping room and went downstairs. She contemplated what had happened and came to the clue that her head kept aching heavily what made her rub it with a free hand. When she came down he sat where she had dropped him but his hands had wrapped around the rifle. It's bloodtipped knife still protruded from its top and Bonnie shook her head.

She dropped the blanket and tried to take the rifle from him. He groaned in an almost frightened way and pulled it closer like a kid its teddy.

"You're a stupid little freak you know that?" She yelled at him in frustration. Both her exhaustion and his stupidity made her angry.

Then again she felt a little sting after having said the words and smirked slightly. After that she simply ripped the gun away what made him fall aside. She wrapped the blanket around and looked into his face. It was pale and somewhat lifeless but she saw that his lips quietly moved around. Her face changed from anger to worry.

"Hey... you okay?" She asked in a way that would have surprised everyone who knew the foodchain. She was to drop him off, ignore him or make some jokes on his expence. But then, on the other hand, there was no one around and he was close to dying from the cold. She decid to strap the rifle on her back and then picked him up.

"I wonder what Mr. Barkin would think if he saw me like this..." She laughed lightly and started pulling him among the room and over the stairs. The entire place had an aura of lonelieness, like as if no one had ever lived here. The strange thing about max was that he always made some kind of reaction when she groaned or did something else than rythmically pulling him up the stairs. It was an almost impossible task.

But even though her hardships she was able to move him through the door of their new appartment. This time the man didn't appear which was a peark as well. Bonnie collapsed into a soft chair and different emotions came up within her: There was exhaustion, happieness for having achieved her goal, anger at Max for having caused such problems for her and something else.

She was worried about him and his health. And even though she wouldn't like to admit it: She was frightened that he might not awake again because she could have been too slow.