I reached into my bag and pulled out the fireworks, but the cardboard they were made from was completely soggy. Goddamn it, why now of all times? I had the worst luck in the world. As I held them they fell apart in my hands, covering me with black gunpowder. My head dropped. Now I really was in trouble. I thought back to the shack and the men inside, and I felt like punching myself for my stupidity. Why had I not gone inside? If I'd just trusted them, I wouldn't be in this mess.

What the hell was wrong with me?

The stalker looked up. There was a sense of purpose in its movements, and for a second it looked straight at me. My blood froze. I held in my breath and tightened my body, willing myself not to move an inch.

Maybe it wouldn't see me. Maybe it was looking past me. I could still have a chance to get out of this.

But then it started to move in my direction, and I knew. This was it for me.

I reached into my pocket and took out the revolver. I flipped the safety and straightened my arm, pointing the gun at the stalker ahead. My arm shook but I tensed my muscles and bit down on the glob of bile that slid up my throat.

The stalker got closer. It was moving in on my scent, testing the ground and making sure of its senses. Any second now, it would pounce, but I wouldn't give it that chance.

This was it.

I took a breath and held it in my chest to steady my aim, the way I had seen snipers do it in films before they took a kill shot. The stalker moved back into its knees, crouching and ready to pounce. I pulled the trigger.

The barrel of the gun exploded, sending sparks shooting out of the chamber and filling the hollow tree with a deafening bang. I felt a searing pain burn through my hand, and I dropped the revolver in my lap. My hand was in agony, and it was so bad that for a second I couldn't even look up to see if the stalker was dead.

I looked down and saw that the firework powder on my palm had caught fire from the spark of the gun. My skin was burning and all I could think about was the agony of it as my nerve endings cried out. I shoved my hand as deeply as I could into the sodden earth and though the dirt cooled it a little, my skin still felt like it was on fire.

Ahead of me the stalker roared. I looked up and saw it crawling toward me in a jagged movement. There was a hole in its left leg from where my bullet had hit. It was a good enough wound to slow it, but not a lethal one. Bleed, you bastard, I thought. If you want to eat, you’re going to have to fight for it.

I picked up the gun with my good hand and tried to aim again, but my left hand hurt so much that I couldn't focus. My ears rang from the explosion of the gun and threw me off balance, making it impossible to know if I was even aiming straight. I took a breath and fired, and the bullet disappeared into the trees far away from the stalker.

Unperturbed by the shot, the stalker moved closer. Did these things have no fear?

I pushed the pain of my hand back and filled my lungs. One last chance.

 I fired again.

The bullet zipped away into the night.

The stalker got closer and closer. My whole body shook, and I had the sickening feeling that this was it for me. Fifteen years a survivor and this was how it would end; packed up tight in a hollowed-out tree stump with a stalker chewing through my intestines. Whatever happened, I would give it a fight

The stalker was six feet away now. It stuck its long wet tongue out of its mouth and trailed it along its bottom lip. Spit pooled down its chin. This was the closest I had ever been to one of them, and the reality of it sent sharp shivers through my spine. Up close I could see the vague remnants of the person it had once been, but now it was more monster than human.

I reached to my belt and grabbed my knife, and I prepared for my last fight.

"Over here!" said a deep voice.

To the right of me were flames; orange and red and glorious. They got closer to me, and as they came near the stalker shied away a little. It took a cautious step back and looked at me and then the fire, deciding whether the proximity of an easy snack was worth enduring the heat.

The flames were actually three torches, and they were carried by three worried-looking men. I didn't need to be told who they were; it was Noah and the others from the shack. They’d come back for me, the idiots.

The adrenaline seeped out of me, and I started to feel faint.

Noah looked over at me, his face shining in the flames.

"He's alive." he said.

I stretched out my arm and pointed to the stalker. This simple act drained me, and I felt faint.

"It's wounded," I said.

I saw the men crowd the stalker and beat it with hammers and bats. It fought back ferociously, sinking its teeth into Noah’s shin bone and breaking it with a crack. He screamed and dropped his torch into the wet earth, where it extinguished with a fizz.

Angered by the screams of their friend, the other two men fought harder, raining down blows on the monster with animal-like fury. Before long the stalker didn’t have any fight left in it, and as I saw one of the men cave its head in with a hammer, my vision turned black and I fell back, smashing my head on the tree behind me.

Chapter 3

When I woke up it was daylight. I was in a bed in a strange room, the bed sheet drawn up to my chest and tucked tightly into the sides of the mattress. My head banged and my body felt weak. I wriggled myself into a sitting position in the bed, but when I put my weight on my left hand a shock of pain ran through me. I pulled my hand out and saw that it was covered in bandages, and I remembered the previous night and how the gun powder had exploded on me when I fired the revolver. I winced. To my right there was a window, and on the streets below I could see a few people stood shooting the breeze. I knew that I was in Vasey, the only real civilised place left in Lancashire. The question was, how did I get here?

It was probably the men who had helped me fight the stalker, the ones who had offered me shelter. They must have carried me here during the night after I blacked out. However I got here, it didn't matter. All I knew was that I wasn't staying. I had avoided Vasey all this time for a reason - the people. If I wanted to be around people, I would have come here a lot sooner.

I put the weight of my body onto my right hand and swung myself out of bed. An ache ran all the way up from the bones in my toes to my skull. My lips felt dry and my left hand stung like a bitch. I put my feet down on the floor. I wasn't sure I could even make it to the door, let alone outside, but there was no way I was staying. I got to my feet and stood shakily. How had I let myself get like this? I felt drained. An image flashed in my head of the previous night, of the men beating the stalker to death, its blood splashing out onto their clothes, of it clamping its teeth around one of the men's shin bones and squeezing until it snapped. The man screaming, and falling.

My stomach gurgled. I felt bile rush up my throat, and I sank to my knees and heaved. Nothing came up but air. I wheezed and wanted to die.

Across the room, the door opened, and I lifted my head. A boy walked in with a grin on his face. His hair was buzzed almost to the scalp so that the top of his head was dotted with little black pin pricks that looked more like a five o'clock shadow than hair. He was tall and skinny, and he had an awkward gait to his walk, as though he weren't fully in control of his own body. When he saw me his eyes widened and he looked at me in wonder.

"What are you doing down there?"

He walked over to the side of the bed and stuck his arms out toward me as though to help me up.

"I got it." I waved his arms away.