Hands on her throat.
Walter on top of her, foul breath in her face, pressure shutting off her windpipe.
“Kill her. Break her—”
The table rocked, tilting back, banging the wall.
Walter glanced up.
The table swayed forward, top-heavy with the weight of the TV, and Elizabeth tore free of the hands that held her and gave the taut cords a final, violent yank.
She heard Walter make a small noise, something midway between a grunt and a groan — a scared, childish noise that made her feel almost sorry for him.
Then the table pitched forward, the TV cracking free of its bolts, and the picture tube exploded around Walter’s head in a brief, sizzling fury of sparks and smoke.
He slumped, maybe unconscious, maybe dead.
Elizabeth was pinned beneath him. She thrashed and flailed, fighting to wriggle free. The man was two hundred pounds of dead weight, with the table and the ruined TV fixing him in place.
He stirred.
Alive.
Regaining consciousness.
And she was still stuck beneath him, his heavy midsection and legs draping hers.
She had to liberate herself, and do it now.
Gasping, she twisted onto her side and dug her fingers into the short carpet fibers and clawed until she had a secure handhold, then dragged herself forward an inch at a time.
Walter murmured, his face showing a flicker of animation before going slack again.
She got one leg free, then planted her shoe against his shoulder and used the leverage to pry loose her other foot.
Now get out. Get out now.
She tried to stand, but at first the effort overwhelmed her, and she fell on one knee.
Walter moaned.
On her second try she stood without falling. Some blind reflex guided her to her purse, which she had dropped on the counter when she was packing her suitcase in a rush.
There was no time to salvage her belongings now. Half of them lay scattered across the bed and the floor.
The purse was all she could take with her, all she had left.
She sprinted for the door, then heard a clatter of wood and glass behind her, and turned instinctively to look back.
Walter was on his feet. He’d come fully alert, swept clear of the table and the smashed television set, lurched upright. And he had done all this in less time than she had taken to cross ten feet of carpet.
Run.
Outside, into the glare and heat, fishing her car keys from her purse and stumbling, her shoes pounding asphalt, heart vibrating like a plucked wire, currents of dizziness all around her.
Then she was at her car, thrusting the key at the keyhole of the door on the driver’s side, and Walter was loping toward her in a coltish, loose-limbed gait, covering ground with deceptive speed.
The key turned, the door unlocked, and she was behind the wheel, trying to find the ignition slot, missing it, missing again.
Her hand was shaking wildly, and strands of hair had fallen in hectic disarray across her face.
Finally she got the damn key in the slot, and she cranked the ignition and heard the motor rev and fail.
It wouldn’t start, the damn car wouldn’t start.
This had happened before. The Chevette was old. It had been used hard for many years. Sometimes she had to nurse the engine to get it to turn over.
Walter was ten feet away.
“Come on, Kaylie,” she whispered, “do this right.”
Distantly she realized that she had just called herself by her true name for the first time in a dozen years.
She took a long, slow breath and forced herself to turn the key slowly while gently, gently depressing the gas pedal.
A feeble growl, the motor coming alive, then a cough and a rattle and silence.
Slap of a hand on the windshield, Walter’s left hand, leaking blood from the cuts on his arm, leaving long pink smears on the glass.
Elizabeth pumped the accelerator slowly, slowly.
The door shook. Walter had grabbed the handle, but miraculously she had locked it after entering, though she had no recollection of doing so.
She pumped again, in a careful rhythm, the way she had taught herself. No panic. Panic would kill her.
Walter snarled.
His face had been empty of expression before, but there was rage stamped on it now, a crazed fury born of years of frustration, of being unable to follow directions or answer simple questions or understand what other people were talking about, and now even in the simple task he had set for himself—kill her, break her neck—he had failed, he had once again been humbled by the world, and he hated her for it.
Elizabeth keyed the ignition. The motor struggled. Wavered.
Walter smacked the driver’s-side window with his fist, and a loose mosaic of hairline cracks shivered through the safety glass.
Another blow would open the window, and his hands would plunge inside and tear her apart.
The motor caught.