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the key when she noticed the pounding rhythm had quickened. “Oh, shit!” she screamed in utter disbelief. Now there were three of them beating at the window. In a few seconds, the window would certainly shatter. What would she do then? She kept trying to convince herself that they just wanted help; after all, they were just people. Hurt people, but people nonetheless.
    A crackling sound warned her a second before the tempered glass window shattered into a thousand crystal-like shards and glittered into the SUV, tinkling onto the white leather upholstery and spilling onto the floorboard in all its glittery glory.
    Scarlett tried to open the driver’s side door. “Are you flippin’ kidding me?” The door was jammed from the truck it had previously crashed into. She scrambled into the backseat just as three pairs of bloodstained hands (minus one) clawed at her. She managed to kick open the door as a gnarled hand grabbed a handful of her hair, yanking her head back with incredible strength. At that point, running on pure adrenaline, Scarlett reclaimed her hair by yanking back harder and jumped out of the SUV. She stared in utter horror as one of the injured men actually lunged from the front seat to the backseat with surprising (awkward) agility for someone so injured. With only inches from the maniacal man’s grasp, she slammed the door and winced upon hearing the unmistakable sickening sound of bones crunching. She worried if that had been the man with only one hand, because if so—now he didn’t have any hands.
    Scarlett ran like some crazed quarterback that had gotten stuck with the football and was about to be tackled to death. She didn’t stop running until she found her car, pausing only long enough to see that the three severely injured people remained in the SUV as if trapped.
    “That was absolutely insane,” she screeched. Now Scarlett could no longer doubt the dreadful suspicion that had been haunting her the past few days. What’s happening here in Roseville?
    When she finally turned onto Junction Boulevard, the entire block of the Police Station was completely barricaded with what appeared to be miniature stations. Are those guard posts? “What’s going on?” she muttered while frantically searching for someone, anyone. Not a single person was in sight. Is that a, a machine gun ? Each of the guard posts had mounted machine guns pointing towards the street, pointing towards her. She let out a gasp. The street was stained the color of deep crimson. Are those piles of—of—of bones?
    She slammed the car into reverse and turned down the very next unblocked street she could find and kept driving aimlessly around until she reached an upscale neighborhood. Everything suddenly appeared normal. She resisted the urge to run up to the front door of one of the lovely homes in need to see a friendly—normal person.
    Irrationally, Scarlett imagined if she knocked on the front door of one of the fancy homes, she’d be invited in for tea and crumpets. She turned onto another street. It appeared normal as well. Great, I’m so lost . She decided to drive around until she found a familiar main street. “Damn, Kevin was right. I should’ve bought a GPS.”
    She continued driving around the subdivision while racking her brain of the possibilities. Something horrific had happened. But what? A chemical spill? Is that what this is all about? Maybe these injured people were the hapless victims of a chemical spill? They just needed help. She rationalized a variety of scenarios until her brain hurt.
    The next residential street looked like a scene from a hokey sci-fi flick. An airplane had crashed nose-down into what had once been a pristine, picture-perfect park: Rose Park. She didn’t know what kind of plane it was—had been. All she could tell was that it looked like the remains of a big passenger plane, like a 747—only half of it, with piles of fiery rubble and wreckage scattered everywhere.
    Scarlett stepped out