[i]Evelyn[/i]

It was possible Evelyn had not fully thought through her plan. As she scrambled her way up the pile of rubble, the combined bass-thumping of every car on the street made the rocks rumble beneath her, tripping her up as quickly as she could regain her balance. [i]Wait,[/i] Evelyn thought. [i]Music isn't that loud.[/i] She threw a glance over her shoulder the exact way you're not supposed to in a life-threatening situation and saw that not only was the lizard grappling it, the world's strongest ginger was as well. They were trying to rip the thing up, and as it convulsed in time with the music, smashing rocks and cars into the ground, her little shrapnel mountain shook with it. She couldn't get her balance. Every impact made something in the mountain shift, and one of those cars or building foundations collapsing on her would kill her just as dead as rock boy would. Evelyn had the unenviable choice of moving slowly across the rubble and letting the golem turn her into a blood paste (still a more popular blood paste than anyone else under twenty tons of concrete, however) or getting crucified by the broken remains of a Subaru.

"I fucking hate this town," Evelyn muttered to herself. Her friends in Seattle never had to deal with this kind of shit. Even in a short time, five or six cars and half of a flower shop had been knocked into the street, and loose stone and metal shifted under her step. "Hurry up," she told herself, reaching the top of the pile. She glanced back again and saw that the thing was starting to eat Titus. She blinked. It was eating him. The rock was sludging up his arms toward his chest.

Evelyn, half crawling to keep her balance on an up-ended Nissan Altima, grime and sweat and blood smudged across her face, stared back. It was eating him. She couldn't look away. It was eating him.

To the casual onlooker, it was not clear if the car shifting under her was from Evelyn springing up to run toward the golem or to run away.

Before she was fully upright, an armored personnel carrier tore straight through the minivan that annoying woman and her annoying baby had been in some five feet from her rubble pile. The shock and the impact tumbled Evelyn off the other side, where a chunk of rebar slashed her between the ribs before she rolled onto the ground. Gunfire thundered out on the other side of the garbage mountain and Evelyn curled into a ball, hands over her head. The motion made the right side of her ribs explode in pain, but no one could hear Evelyn Noblezada scream in the fusillade.

"FUCK!" Evelyn screamed, clutching a hand to her side. It came back scarlet. She blinked. They were eating him. They were eating both of them. [i]My shirt,[/i] Evelyn thought. [i]Mom bought this for me. It's ruined now.[/i] She blinked. She wasn't going to be able to get another one, her - the stores were all crushed. It was eating him. Her mom would be mad. Her hand was red. [i]It's going to eat you too, fuckface,[/i] she heard a voice that sounded an awful lot like herself shout from the back of her skull. It was far away. Her hand was red. Really red. [i]Does it eat you fast,[/i] Evelyn wondered. [i]It doesn't have a face. Maybe you just go inside and get crushed to death. Or stuck under the earth until you drown in dirt.[/i] Evelyn couldn't breathe right now. Was it like that? Was it like that forever?

Something vibrated along the side of her skin and Evelyn rolled onto her back, the adrenaline numbing her to the broken glass and scattered rocks that dug into her as she did so. She turned her head and saw a small swarm of bumblebees buzzing next to her cut. They were gooey. Her side felt sticky. She was in a lot of pain. She did not think she had ever been in this much pain. Why were there bees?

The head of the golem fell three feet next to her and Evelyn punched it before she had time to think. 

This hurt her hand and her side more than she could properly articulate, and Evelyn curled back up as tight as she could. She did not think her heart could've pounded any faster than it did when she was in the alleyway, but it was now. [i]It's going to eat me,[/i] Evelyn thought. Everything inside her was shaking. She could feel her entrails slipping out her side, her guts and her bones pulling her heart and her lungs down and out onto the dusty street and they were screaming trying to stay in place. [i]It couldn't eat her[/i], Evelyn thought. [i]It can't eat me. The music was supposed to stop it. It can't eat me. I can still hear the music. It's not fair, it's not - 
[/i]

A moment passed, and another. Evelyn turned. The head was there. The rest of it wasn't. Something had cut its head off. [i]A big axe,[/i] Evelyn thought, and in the white haze of pain that had blanketed all her senses, that made complete logical sense. 

There was some fucking loser who couldn't pay for college and wound up in the ASA screaming over a loudspeaker but Evelyn didn't listen. To her credit, she wasn't sure if she could. Her brain seized upon things for only half a second before it was just pain again. Evelyn grabbed the piece of rebar that had ripped her side and hoisted herself up to her feet. 

Across the street, hidden behind a trash can, a girl named Brianna Roberts saw Evelyn stand up. She could not see Evelyn's pierced side. From her perspective, there had been a tremendous noise, and then she saw Evelyn Noblezada stand next to the severed head of the golem that destroyed Leesburgh. Brianna Roberts had left Evelyn's fifteenth birthday party with a severe hangover and an early-onset eating disorder. As she saw Evelyn stand, unharmed, triumphant, she wept.

Evelyn's legs melted, but her hand dug into the metal so hard the blood from her side mingled with the blood in her palm. [i]You are not going to fucking collapse,[/i] she told herself. There was a girl who had collapsed at one of the games she coached because of diabetes or something. They'd all clapped for her, but once the game started up again, Evelyn's team had [i]slaughtered[/i] that girl's team in the second half. Evelyn looked down at the head. It ate at least those two. [i]Not me.[/i]The music was still blaring, making the pebbles on the ground vibrate across the broken street. 

Evelyn felt something she was not sure she had ever truly felt before in her life. She could not have articulated it even if she hadn't been standing at ground zero. [i]I won.[/i] The music thump-thumped. The golem head stared at her with stone eyes. [i]If you were worth shit, you'd be made of diamonds.[/i]

Evelyn took a step forward, and then another. Each time it felt like someone had grabbed both sides of her wound and ripped in opposite directions like they were trying to open a particularly stubborn ziploc bag. She took a breath that made her ribs scream. Things were not as swimmy when she focused on the pain. The hand pressed to the bloody cut was shaking, but her mind was getting steadier. Her other hand hung limply at her side, the knuckles throbbing to the bone. [i]So help me God, if you fucking fall over on main street.[/i] Evelyn chose her steps carefully. One or two at a time, always near something she could lean against if her balance gave way. Bees zoomed to her side, smeared honey, and zoomed away. If it weren't for the fact she was pretty sure it would have made her faint, she would've smacked the shit out of them. As they flew away, they stabbed uselessly at the golem head and fell dead beside it.

One of the APCs had the man whose chin had so deep a divide, rappers from both sides of it put diss tracks out on each other. "Hopkins," Evelyn said. The voice in her chest wasn't hers. It was rougher. [i]My shirt,[/i] Evelyn thought. [i]Mom liked that shirt. It's going to eat me. It ate them. It ate them.[/i] Evelyn dug her fingers into the wound and the pain drove everything else away. She clenched her legs as tight as she stood and stayed standing. Hopkins was a decent guy. Her dad had sued the shit out of the ASA a few times. He got on CNN for it once. Evelyn hadn't watched. "Get me to an ambulance before anyone sees me or I swear to Christ I'll say one of those bullets grazed me."