The Omega barely glanced in my direction.
“What the hell is wrong with it?” Chris asked me as soon as I reached them, coming out the other side of the alley behind the diner.
I glanced back at it. The Omega was pawing at its face again. “I don’t know.”
“Why didn’t you kill it?” Jessie asked me, already moving away from the diner.
I didn’t answer.
HALFWAY TOWARD the Lighthouse, we met up with Mark and Elizabeth. She came to me first as Chris, Tanner, and Rico shared with Mark their outrage about the hunters being in the garage.
“All right?” she asked me, and I remembered Thomas telling me there was never anyone else for him.
“Yeah,” I muttered.
“He took out one of the Omegas,” Jessie told her, glancing at me curiously. “The red one. We got a few hits in on the bigger one, but it’s still upright last we saw.”
“And Elijah?”
Jessie shook her head.
Elizabeth touched my arm. “Gordo?”
I blinked. “I’m fine.”
She didn’t look like she believed me, but she let it go. She glanced over her shoulder at the others before lowering her voice. “We got as many as we could. They’re at the Lighthouse.”
“Something’s wrong,” I said, because I knew her.
She sighed. “Mark.”
My stomach flipped. “What about him?”
She shook her head. “It’s… there was a man. Jameson? I think his name is Jameson. Lives in the trailer park.” Her nose wrinkled. “Smells terrible.”
“Big guy? Mustache?” Jameson was an asshole on a good day, and these weren’t good days.
She nodded. “He didn’t want to come with us. Told us to leave him alone. Mark, he—he didn’t take that well. He was angry. I thought he was going to shift right then and there. Mark scared him. I could smell it, though he tried to hide it.”
“He stayed behind?” I asked, not liking where this was going.
“No,” she said. “He agreed to go when Mark put a fist through his trailer wall.”
“Jesus Christ.”
“It’s the moon, I think. It’s pulling on him. It’s getting stronger. Whatever it was, he snapped out of it almost immediately. It’s happening, Gordo. Carter. And now Mark.”
Even with all that had happened, I was surprised I was still capable of feeling gutted at the sound of fear in Elizabeth Bennett’s voice. “We’ll figure it out,” I said, though I felt like a liar.
“I’M FINE,” Mark said as we approached the Lighthouse, snow crunching under our feet. The power was still on, and the Lighthouse was lit up like it was a Friday night.
“You sure about that?”
He rolled his eyes. “He was pissing me off.”
“Jameson.”
“Yeah. Wouldn’t listen.”