[i]Evelyn[/i]

The rock thing turned around and Evelyn spat out a curse. "Oh, it has no eyes?" she whined, blinking as the seasonally uncharacteristic sunshine danced along all the glinting steel strewn across the street. Evelyn cocked her head to the side, curiosity replacing her pants-shitting terror for a moment. [i]How does it get around? It can't smell or anything but it's been aiming at stuff the whole time.[/i] Then it stopped killing the lizard and turned to the opposite side of the street. [i]Man even the rocks won't hang out with that guy for long.[/i]

As it moved, best Evelyn could see, the sidewalk started [i]wobbling[/i] just where it was looking. "What the fuck," Evelyn muttered, peering out from behind a garbage can she would later insist she had never hidden behind - ew - and watching it for a moment. The robins and bluejays swirling above her head continued to chirp and shriek as loud as they could, even as she absentmindedly waved a hand at them to shut up. [i]God they're worse than Becky.[/i] 

Evelyn's eyes went as wide as Kelly B.'s unfortunately leaked pepperoni nips and she scrambled as far back down the alley as she could go, turning around the corner of the building and covering her head with the trash can lid as the sidewalk exploded up and smashed back down. The noise was louder than anything she had ever heard, and her parents had taken her to see the Killers no less than three times. She couldn't breathe. Her chest felt like the thing had wrapped its rebar claws around her and just kept tightening, her skull felt too small and she could hear her blood pumping everywhere, her eyes growing wet and her throat dry. 

Then the impact hit. The force of it knocked Evelyn over into a discarded mess of Pabst Blue Ribbon cans. Disgust briefly flickered into her mind before the fear took back over. Evelyn stayed down for a moment, trying to push herself back up off the broken glass and crinkled aluminum. As best she could tell, it wasn't looking at her. "Of course not," Evelyn said. "It doesn't have any fucking eyes." 

Evelyn pressed herself back up against the wall, peeking out. She wasn't able to run any farther - there was a flat brick wall at the end of the alley, and the fire escape on the building across from her had been knocked onto the roof of the one she stood behind. Evelyn took a deep breath, forcing herself to look back out further. [i]It can't see you,[/i] Evelyn snapped at herself. [i]Why even fucking hide?[/i] She felt like it was her first fucking sleepover all over again, and she'd been picked three times over for seven minutes in heaven, and she didn't know why, like everyone else knew but she didn't, just small and dumb and out of the loop.

Evelyn stared. It has no eyes. And it has no ears. Or nose. So it's not, like, seeing or smelling any shit. And it's so loud that even if it could hear it had to be as deaf as the rest of them. That made no sense. [i]No it does,[/i] Evelyn heard herself say. She was talking to herself like she was the Becky of this situation, and [i]no one[/i] treated her like Becky. Not even herself. "It's a rock whatever," she said. "It probably, like, sees the way moles do, or whatever." Maybe it felt vibrations or something. Was that why it hit the Verizon store?

"Literally don't be a dumbass," she told herself again, trying to think. That felt right though. It had to have some kind of, like, vision. Just no eyes. Or ears. And it was a rock thing. Like bats used echo-whatever.

At the moment, as best she could even tell, it was "turned" away from her. It was focusing on the store maybe a dozen yards to her left and a few doors over. If it turned back her way, it was going to smash all the bricks between her and it and kill her, and she was going to die surrounded by PBRs and the most unfuckable student to ever come through Jack Kirby High School, and then he'd probably lay eggs on her corpse or whatever lizards did.

Before she had time to talk herself out of it, Evelyn sprinted down the alleyway. She darted over the piles of bricks and rubble as easily as those hurdles in soccer practice - which, by the way, still bullshit she couldn't play varsity, because - 

As soon as she started, she stopped, because as if God chose that moment to humble Evelyn's sense of athleticism, Dexter materialized in front of her, talking as fast as he ran and presumably, fu -

All the glass windows shattered in the building to her left and Evelyn screamed, pissed at herself for making noise, then remembering that the thing couldn't hear her, then remembering that everyone else still could, and that she would just blame it on Letitia or some shit if anyone mentioned it after. If they lived. If she lived.

Evelyn blinked, trying to process everything through a brain that was at the moment expending most of its energy trying to convince her she would be better suited to just curl up in a ball on the ground. She forced that thought away. "Dexter," she huffed, noting somewhere in the back of her mind that if any rumors of her freaking out when this happened spread, he was the rat. [i]Of course he comes to the end of the world dressed like a Mormon.[/i] "I - my other idea sucked, listen - " she huffed for air, her throat too tight to breathe right. "It has no eyes, right, so like - it has to - like - forget the metal thing, that was dumb - " he said vibrations. Evelyn was about as sure of this hunch as she had been the sunlight, but it's not like the National Guard was rolling up the street anytime soon. "I think - it sees through the ground or some shit, so we gotta stop that." As she talked, her legs went from running water to frozen ice. More and more, the fear started changing to annoyance. This thing tried to kill [i]her[/i]. On a [i]Friday.[/i] "Try to find any cars you can and crank the bass way up or rumble the engine or something. It's all I got." She paused, thinking. "Oh - and if there's people in the cars we should probably get them, too." The golem twisted and raised a hunk of rock that could've doubled as the foundation for Evelyn's house. Well, maybe not her house. Maybe the pool house. Regardless, Evelyn decided she'd been standing still for too long. "Run!"

Evelyn came out onto the street, where the reek of sewage and spilling gasoline hit her before the cloud of spring sunshine caught up to her and whisked it away. Gasoline? Oh, great. Lovely. Now she'd die surrounded by melted PBRs. Evelyn took half a second to glance left and right. She was maybe fifteen feet from the thing. It was big. It was really big.

[i]Move, fatass,[/i] Evelyn's inner Evelyn told herself. She remembered her plan. The sunshine hadn't worked. Whatever. Not her fault. She ran to the nearest car, going right past Henry without checking on if he was okay. He was either dead or not at this point, and the thing had moved on. A small part of her felt her stomach roll - it felt [i]cold[/i], nauseous, like she should stop and check, but it was accurate. He couldn't kill it and it wasn't like she could drag his ass away. There were people stuck in cars that couldn't bench press a school bus. Not that she was particularly concerned with the people, at that moment. It was the cars.

Evelyn went to the nearest car, an SUV that looked like a Hot Wheel that had gone through a garbage disposal and then the Vietnam war. A mom was screaming into her airbag trying to get out. Evelyn grabbed a brick off the ground and smashed out the window. She was pretty sure you were supposed to hit the windows away from the person stuck inside, but she was in a hurry, and this was a beggars and choosers type situation.

"Help, help - "

"Shut up, dear God," Evelyn muttered. She handed the lady a piece of glass, noticing absently there was blood on her hands. She'd cut her hands. [i]Oh I better not scar.[/i] She moved over and smashed the backdoor glass out, reaching over and inside to the latch to open the car door, which she had to wedge open with both her legs and a sizable grunt. Fortunately, Evelyn's irritatingly in-shape quads calves and glutes were not for show. She was able to pry it open enough to wedge inside and yank the baby or whatever out the back. It was crying too.

"Ugh, you too?" she muttered. The mom, essentially a menopausal Becky, just a vague cloud of annoyance at the edge of her mind. A large part of her wanted to turn and run and run and run and just go, but some part of her wasn't. She wasn't sure why. There was a corner of her brain that just saw this as when her dumbass U12 team was down by like 6 at halftime and she wasn't going to lose the -0 on her scorecard. The lady fumbled out and fell face-first on the ground, clearly dizzy. Evelyn figured she probably should've stopped that from happening, but again, there were bigger issues. The longer Evelyn fumbled with the car, though, the lady seemed to regain her balance, the gloss melting from her eyes and the airbag burns on her face and arms dulling a bit. Evelyn half-handed, half-threw the baby at her and then gave them both a shove down the street away from the thing. [i]I have to do everything around here,[/i] she thought, sparing a moment to look at the ground for the right sized brick she needed. There was another world-breaking smash and Evelyn jumped up, gulping down a yelp before yanking a ten or fifteen pound chunk of concrete off the ground with both her hands. She clambered into the front seat and grabbed at the dials, needing a minute to sift through the panic to remember the numbers. It took three seconds, then four, then it came. 104.8. The most hated channel by the Pennsylvania Quaker community. Evelyn's #3 preset on her car.

[i]"-no good bloodsucker, fat motherfucker now look who's in -[/i]

Evelyn stretched as far as she could to reach the other dial, punching the button for settings, then bass, then turning it as far up as it would go along with the volume. 

It occurred to Evelyn in that moment she probably should've planned this a bit better.

Immediately the subwoofers blared and the car, tilted at a 45 degree angle on the rubble. Evelyn thought her eardrums committed suicide. The ground started shaking beneath her. Everything started shaking. Evelyn glanced at the PRNDL, eyeballed the beast and twisted the wheel to match. Then she yanked it into drive and dropped the rock on the gas pedal. The car lurched and Evelyn was this time unable to suppress the yelp as she fell out on her ass, rolling on bits of historic downtown Leesburgh until she stopped. It stung pretty bad and sent a shooting pain down her legs, and peppered the rest of her like hornet stings. Though she did not notice, the songbirds were clutching her shirt with their tiny claws and flapping desperately to pull her away, their screaming song lost in the blasting rap music.

[i]I need another car,[/i] Evelyn thought, the music and the screams and the crashing sounds so loud she could barely think. [i]There has to be a fuckin' lowrider here somewhere,[/i] she thought.

There was a [i]whoof[/i] and Evelyn blinked. Someone had lit the rock on fire. "There's gasoline everywhere, dipshit!" Evelyn tried to scream, but her Escalade-turned-bass-thumper drowned her out. Ugh. It occurred to her that she was still sitting on the ground, and she scrambled up on her feet before she had the chance to see if her plan worked. The lizard was somewhere to her left, forgotten, and that other 2/10 was throwing stuff at the golem from across the street.

Evelyn realized if it did work, this thing was going to be turning toward her, and probably be on fire, and probably kill her. She glanced to her right, where the alleyway was obliterated by a mountain of bricks. Just her luck. Ahead the lady and her stupid baby were stumbling along. She turned left, feeling the concrete shaking under her feet as the SUV screeched at the thing, smashing two other cars in the process. Evelyn whirled left and started clambering over the wreckage. There were too many cars piled up here, but maybe another one on the other side. 

[i]Do I go up or under?[/i] Evelyn thought, clenching as hard as she could to keep from pissing herself as the golem let out another scream. There was a mountain of broken cars and concrete and what looked like that statue of some important dude from a hundred years ago all dogpiled in the middle of the road. [i]Or around? [/i]

She glanced back at the rock beast and then started climbing.