Gloria’s heart pounded as she backpedalled from the cafe’s front windows. She collapsed a little, leaned against the counter, oblivious to the baristas busy making lattes on the other side.

  The horrible woman was definitely here for her. She could be inside any minute.

  Where was Pema? She spared another glance outside, hoping to see him hustling down the street, waited briefly for him to tumble in and protect her, to reassure her that the giant corpse smiling at her from across the street would be no threat.

  He wasn’t there. Just more pedestrians. Distantly, the tree the woman had been hiding behind swayed. No sign of her anymore.

  “You okay, lady?”

  Gloria looked up to see a large man, neck wrapped in a tattoo, just visible above his apron, frowning down at her. The barista cocked his head. “You look like you’re about to pass out. You need some water?”

  “No- no thank you, young man.” Gloria gulped. Her mouth was so dry. She twisted around, studied the room for another exit. “Actually- So sorry to be a bother, but you wouldn’t happen to have- Is there, maybe, a rear exit?”

  “Why?” The man turned his frown toward the front windows, scanned the crowd. “Someone outside bothering you?”

  “I think you could say that.”

  “There’s a door we use to take out trash and shit- sorry. And stuff. I’ll show you the way.” The man waved a meaty palm, and she followed him gratefully, sidling behind the counter. They passed through the kitchen, drawing a bemused look from a teen scooping ice in the back. The barista shouldered a door open, revealing a narrow alley.

  “You head out this way. Anyone comes in asking if I saw a nice old lady, I’ll keep my trap shut.” He winked.

  “Thank you so much. Really. I-“ Gloria stammered to a stop as she stepped out into the alley and bumped into the man standing out there. She bounced off him, hard, his body as solid and cold as a brick wall.

  Another walking corpse, grinning down at her. This one was in a disgusting orange jumpsuit, its top half tied in tatters around his waist, its slick orange dulled with dried stains of red and black. The man’s long hair hung in greasy locks, framing a face covered in odd pustules and scars. His toothy grin widened as his eyed locked on the glowing patch of Qi on Gloria’s neck.

  “There you are,” the man hissed, his English reedy and over-enunciated. A scab on his chin pulsed, popped off, revealing fresh pink flesh beneath. “Sorry lady. I am- hurt bad. Need more fuel.”

  He reached out for Gloria, and the barista’s huge hand caught his wrist, dwarfed it.

  “Hey, buddy. You giving this lady a hard time?” The barista glowered down at the man, whose chest kicked and heaved, a strangled little giggle.

  Dread spiked in Gloria’s gut. “Dear, please, let him go-“

  “You.” The man leveled a trembling finger at the barista. “Big tough guy?”

  “That a question?” The barista rolled his neck, popping his traps, the kind of instinctive masculine display a bouncer might angle at a rowdy drunk. “I dunno, little guy. What do you think?”

  The “little guy” smiled so wide that the dry corners of his lips split. He cocked a fist back and, an instant later, the world exploded.

  Gloria, somehow, had had the wherewithal to throw herself to the ground. She’d seen something, the instant before the man had thrown his punch, a fluctuation in the air around him, a flash of energy that screamed “move” to her subconscious. She dove to the ground, winced as gravel embedded itself in her palms. A horrible hot wind whipped over her head as she did.

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  The barista, and the building behind him, hadn’t been so lucky. A smoking hole gaped in the brickwork. Behind the hole, from a fresh cloud of debris and dust, Gloria heard a chorus of shocked screams. She could barely make out the teenager she’d seen in the back crumpled against a wall, an industrial freezer pinning him across his torso. Patrons were fleeing now, jostling away out the doors, screaming about a bomb.

  The barista’s entire top half was missing. His milk-stained work pants lay stiff on the ground, shattered legs still supporting them from within, but everything above the belt was gone, save for a flap of ruined skin, a growing pool of blood, and a jagged chunk of spine.

  The horrible man kissed his own knuckles. “Tough guy? I think not so much.”

  He leveled his gaze down at Gloria. His smile wilted a little bit, at the sight of her. “You, not as fun. Not scary at all.”

  He shrugged, as if what he was about to do were a foregone conclusion, an annoying chore he had to complete, and Gloria felt suddenly transported back to the mall, to the shooting. She saw the same careless, stupid cruelty in this man that she’d witnessed in the loser with his over-decorated rifle, felt the same sudden rage at the indignity of having her life cut short by such a thoughtless monster.

  Her Qi flared as she, before she realized she was doing it, shifted the little residual energy she was still carrying from the lighter test into her hand, and threw a chunk of gravel at the man. The piece of rubble whistled as it zipped through the air, and made a neat plonk noise as it tore through his cheek like a bullet, leaving a circular hole behind.

  The man was unmoved. One of his hands reached up to explore the wound. “Fun trick. Still not scary.”

  He stepped forward, arm outstretched again, and an impossibly tall figure flashed through the hole in the cafe’s back wall, slamming into him. The man was sent streaking away, through another adjoining wall. More screams echoed out from the neighboring building, its occupants obscured by another cloud of smoke.

  The tall woman drew herself up to her full height and leveled her gaze, full of an odd, wistful sort of pity, down toward Gloria. “My apologies for all the rough treatment. Some people have no respect for the soon-to-die. No respect at all.”

  The woman was at her side in one huge stride, her wide, black-eyed face craning down to fill Gloria’s field of view. Her rage evaporated almost instantly, this time to be replaced by a bottomless, animal fear. This woman was not human. “I promise, child, that a passing at my hands will be gentle. I know you’ve been lead to believe that there is much to fear in this. There is not. Soon you will-“

  The woman’s head burst like a pumpkin. Her body, limp and decapitated, caromed off a fire escape ten feet above and crashed to the ground. Behind her stood the man in the jumpsuit, his fist smoking and destroyed, reduced to a clump of bone. A piece of rebar was jutting from his throat.

  “Mine,” he hissed. His gaze traveled to Gloria, then over her, past her, through her. His already distorted features warped further with confusion. “Hello? Where’d you go?”

  Gloria glanced down, expecting to see what she felt: her body, crumpled on the asphalt, legs splayed beneath her. All she saw was the ground, covered with chips of shattered brick. Her legs and torso were gone. Her heart swelled. She had a chance.

  Gloria climbed to her feet. The man was craning to look back over his own shoulder, now. “Didn’t see you run-“

  She was bowled over again, thrown violently against the alley wall, as the corpse woman’s headless body slammed into the man. She grabbed the jumpsuit, hoisted him off the ground, then snagged his neck in her claws and started throttling him. All the while, the hole in her neck gasped and sputtered into the air. A hairy scalp was pushing its way up through her ruined airway, an image that reminded Gloria of some awful perversion of childbirth. Soon the top half of her head, her new head, was peeking out through the top of her own neck.

  The man cackled, his eyes wide with awe. “Now you,” he breathed, in a voice that didn’t sound particularly strangled, “you are scary. Gotta kill you now, or I’m gonna have nightmares.”

  The woman, her mouth still obscured as her head pushed its way up her throat, whispered something inaudible back. The man’s body burst into flame, and he laughed harder.

  Gloria took this as her cue to run. She scrambled down the alley, nearly tumbling off her feet as a shockwave followed her up. She heard the thunder of brickwork exploding, marble and glass shattering and crumbling. A stray bolt of lightning arced over her head, snaking to ground itself to a telephone wire.

  She burst from the end of the alley and slammed into another wall of a man. Her cheek smarted as it contacted smooth metal, and as she fell to the ground, she saw her body flicker back into visible existence.

  Standing above her, his faceless visor angled down toward the carnage at the end of the alley, was a knight in shining armor.

  “You might want to beat a quick retreat,” he said, baritone voice reverberating in his helmet. “I’m feeling especially sporting today.”

  Gloria, in a state of shock that bordered on insanity, absorbed this new image effortlessly. She nodded and sprinted down the street, just as the knight threw himself into the fray with a burst of speed explosive enough to dislodge a chunk of sidewalk from beneath his feet.

  Retreat sounded like a fantastic idea.