[F] Welcome to Greenvale, Zach.

From York's newly reoriented perspective, peering through the spider-webbed windshield, he could see they had landed at the bottom of a tree-lined ditch. No telling how high up the main road was, or how far they'd fallen. He half expected his laptop and cell phone to float past his eyes like in a Saturday morning cartoon, but they were probably fully underwater by now, transformed into inert lumps of metal and plastic by the moisture invading their electronic circuits. Leaving him with no way of contacting the outside world for help...

At least his gun seemed to be relatively functional.

He set about awkwardly knocking the shattered windshield out of its frame, for the crumpled metal had made it impossible to open any of the doors. He could feel the impact of each kick vibrating all the way up his injured arm and back down to his wallet, painful reminders of how much money he'd spent on every inch of the Mustang's custom-made build. Zach fluttered in his mind like a consternated butterfly, as if it were him lying upside-down in the mud with a creature in his belly trying to hammer out bits of him from the inside.

"Don't be so upset, Zach... She's not the one They're after. Our car may be close to our hearts, but to Them, she's just collateral damage. We'll get help for her just as soon as we get out of-"

One final stamp, and a reluctant crunch as the glass laminate popped free of its frame and fell to the ground with a splash. York crawled out into the storm, tie flapping behind him like a sad substitute for a cape in some dramatic scene from a movie. It was as if he'd escaped one jail cell, only to find himself in another; looming tree trunks formed a wall of shadowy verticals, the sharp deviance of their branches making them look like spiked prison bars. York brushed himself down with one hand, futilely, his suit plastering wetly to his legs.

"I must say, I feel more like a primate emerging from his cave than a superhero," he said, squinting against the gale that kept threatening his green eyes with particles of stone and twig, bullets of water. "Welcome to Greenvale, Zach. A perfect recreation of Earth at the dawn of pre-history. You think we'll see a woolly mammoth? Or perhaps a T-Rex, like from Jurassic Park?"

As York stood next to the wreckage of the beloved Mustang, him and Zach trying to decide whether the possibility of seeing a real live dinosaur out here would make all this trouble worth it, other things were moving... Restless, seeking, and closing in...

The appeal of imagining himself and Zach inside the set of Jurassic Park was quickly starting to wear off on York as he picked his way through the dark woods. If there was a moon somewhere above them, it was hidden either by rainclouds or a vantage point that made it impossible to distinguish sky from treetops. Neither of them were medical experts, but all field agents were required to know something about treating broken limbs, and there were plenty of branches lying around from which to make a crude splint. York only wished there had been some other alternative to using his tie as the binding material- He had won it as a door prize while staking out the Humbug Hacker at a Christmas Party in '02, and it always reminded him of how good the punch had tasted.

"You remember, Zach, how hard I tried to duplicate that recipe at home? I'm pretty sure canned pineapple was the main ingredient, but beyond that... Ah well. Some things are destined to remain forever a mystery, and I guess that punch was one of those-"

The gun in York's right hand had aimed itself even before his mind had registered the thick, purple fountain of goo bubbling up from behind the bushes, an overwhelming smell like overripe bananas and curdled milk washing over him through the rain. Then it retreated... and there was a lone young woman standing in its place, swaying slightly on her feet. Her hair hung down over her face like a black waterfall. She was wearing a strangely old-fashioned dress... and there were more just like her emerging from the darkness, men and women, even children, twitching, pathetic creatures, eyeless sockets visible only for the pale skin surrounding them. Perhaps thirty or more, their soft, gurgling pleas rising towards an unseen moon that would never hear a word:

"KkkKKKkiiiiIIiiilLLLLlll meeeEEEeeEE...."

York had hesitated at the appearance of the woman, but when the lumbering figure behind him nearly clipped him in the shoulder with the blade of its shovel, Zach fired backwards almost from muscle memory and the thing's head exploded like a rotten pumpkin dropped from a twenty story building. York's injured arm twinged as he wheeled around, desperate in the knowledge that if he slipped in the quasi-swamp of roots and mud under his feet, he was finished. With Zach helping to hold his aim steady, shooting as he was with one hand, York backed through the opening Shovel Man had left, trying to open up some room to escape. He didn't have enough bullets for all of them... And reloading quickly with one hand would be near impossible.

<Would you shoot a child, York? Even if it were a monster?>

"What a question to ask, Zach, at a time like this," York gasped, stumbling backwards, away from those grasping limbs. "But to answer it anyway... Remember Michael Moriarty in 'It's Alive III: Island of the Alive'? How far he went to protect his son, even though it was a mutant killer? So there you have it. No, I wouldn't, not if I could help it-"

A moment and three bullets later, and he couldn't help it. It was okay, though. The Shadows would never have been rehabilitated by government-mandated isolation on a desert island, no matter what Hollywood had said might be possible.

[For the record, It's Alive III is actually a pretty good movie. As York, I heartily endorse any of the Moriarty/Cohen films as fine entertainment.]

York was contemplating just throwing his empty gun at the nearest Shadow and running, when physics and inevitability finally caught up with him. He slid round a tree, miscalculated the distance and landed flat on his back in a tangle of roots and dirt and pain, the latter so acute that at first he thought the burst of lightning tearing through the dark woods was in his head. Too dazed to even blink the rain out of his eyes, he lay there, looking up at a circle of nightmare slashes and dripping socket tar... And beyond that, a patch of open sky...

"For the first time in my life, Zach, I have nothing to say," he said, all his muscles strangely relaxed. "Except, look... We can finally see the moon from here..."

One of the Shadows, a snarling woman with jowls like a ghastly pit-bull, reached her hand towards him... With her came a marrow-blackening stench, so powerful that York's right hand went up to cover his nose instinctually... He held his breath and looked at the moon and pretended the rain coming down was the phased out starlight of a spaceship in warp drive... Just like when we were kids, Zach, remember? The moaning grew louder, then wavered hesitantly, as if his attackers were confused...

And then, shattering the soft haze of moonlight and sound, someone's crystal-pitched voice, shouting randomly... This was followed by a hail of debris, some of which impacted the ground dangerously close to his head. But then the voice was moving away, and with it, the Shadows were retreating, heads bowed unnaturally back, swaying blindly for the source of the commotion. York tried to look for his savior too, but the effort was too much. He resumed looking up at the cold, clear disc lighting the treetops with silver, indifferent to the drama below.

"Zach... Whoever it is that's helping us out... I hope she knows what she's doing."

They listened carefully, but the moans and the yelling had been swallowed by the rain-swept darkness. Could be a good sign... or not. York sat up, the bones in his forearm creaking, and stared down at the gun he had managed to not throw away. Loaded, somehow, while he was pretending to be in a spaceship.

"Ah, Zach. What would I do without you? No, don't answer that question... Just do me a favor and stay sharp. Now, let's go find out who this Guardian Angel of ours is... And maybe they'll have some answers for why we've suddenly become the center of attention for our shadowy friends."

Limping slightly, he got to his feet and trotted off in the direction that he'd last heard the shouting come from. The moon overheard dimmed, went out behind a cover of clouds.. But York didn't notice, too intent on keeping his balance, the dull fire in his left arm sending up sparks with every step he took.

York and Zach had witnessed the last part of this bizarre game of hide and seek from afar, trying to keep up with the chase but occasionally losing sight of it through the foliage and downpour. Finally, York ground to a halt, leaning against a tree with his gun held down and to the side, waterlogged and dizzy. He felt as though the appearance of the tiny red-haired woman currently zig-zagging her way into a deathtrap was almost more inexplicable than the Shadows... Almost. They had emerged so substantially, in such great numbers, that he'd been taken by surprise. He'd never been attacked so directly before, at least, not during his waking hours.

"But then again, Zach," York said, wiping water out of his eyes, "it takes a true philosopher to be able to tell the difference between dreams and reality... And we're rank amateurs when it comes to that sort of thing. Best to just take things as they are, or appear to be, and ask questions later..."

When he finally caught up to the pack, the situation had turned dire. He was just about to pull the same stunt the woman had, distract the crowd of shambling, ethereal ghouls surrounding the tree trunk in which she was hiding, when suddenly they began to disperse, melting back into the depths of the woods with a collective sigh of resignation. The forest was given back over to the natural elements, and even the ensuing lightning flashes thereafter seemed positively benign.

Zach prodded him forward, and York started to pick his way towards the hollow tree, just in time to see the red-haired woman leap out of her hiding spot and dash like a bat out of hell away from him.

"Hey!" York shouted, alarmed. He stumbled down the incline after her, waving his gun in the air. "Stop!"

York pulled up short as the red-haired woman turned on him, a flash of silver in her upraised fist. He blinked, the sound of her voice cutting clear through the buzzing interference in his head. The splint had gotten dislodged when he'd tripped and he hadn't had time to set it straight, and his vision kept darkening around the edges at steady intervals. He lowered the gun, too fatigued to hold it up any longer, and tried to see straight.

"For such a small woman, you have very healthy lungs," he shouted back at her over the rain. "I, on the other hand, am in need of immediate medical attention, so if you don't mind giving me a lift to the nearest hospital, I'd appreciate it."

He looked around, woozily. "This is Greenvale, isn't it? You do have hospitals out here? ...Zach, she's carrying a switchblade. This isn't the peaceful, small town America I was expecting to see... Maybe she's an escaped convict from a nearby woman's prison."

The question about what exactly had happened to his arm, he simply decided to ignore. It wasn't really any of her business, and Zach was all jumpy at her use of their private codeword: Shadows. If and when they got to a place where it would be safe to talk, that was the first thing he wanted to know about.

As close as he'd come to nearly blacking out while following the Nameless Redhead through the forest, York couldn't help but be impressed by her car. He sat in the passenger seat, adjusting the splint (which was too far gone now to be helped, but it gave him something to do with his hands now that his lighter was missing), talking more animatedly than a person in his condition should have been, and causally marking everything he brushed up against with smears of mud.

"A Toyota Celica... Celica, from the Latin, meaning 'heavenly'. Although it always bothered me that the name is only one letter swap away from 'celiac', which is a disease you get in the small intestine. About as far from heavenly as you can get, wouldn't you say...?"

He realized he didn't know her name, and she hadn't asked him for his. He decided not to introduce himself until she did. It would be like giving her an unfair advantage... Better if they were both kept in the dark about each other's identities, at least until he was sure she wasn't on the run or something. He was confident it would all sort itself out in the end. Gun holstered, door shut tight, he put his free hand to his temple and waited for her to start the car.

"Zach... Whatever she was tapping on the steering wheel sounded catchy, but her rhythm's a little off. I'd tell her, but it might be rude considering I don't know the name of the song..."

"As curious as I am to hear the stupid nickname, proper introductions should probably come first," York agreed. He fumbled in his pocket; his suit jacket was being used as a temporary sling, and he was having trouble finding the right one. Finally he pulled out his badge, which he held almost under the woman's nose, leaning over with his right arm crossed awkwardly over his chest.

"FBI Special Agent Francis York Morgan. But call me York, everyone calls me that." He put the badge away, looking pleased, and added, "Speaking of monikers, I was going to refer to you as the Nameless Redhead for the remainder of the trip, but I'm guessing you have a real name as well? That is, unless you're a fugitive hiding from the law and don't want to reveal it..."

He leaned back in his seat, trying to combat the sleepiness stealing over him. "You probably ought to tell me anyway, though. I'll find out who you really are, sooner or later."