What Happens in the Darkness by Monica J. O'Rourke

on the ledge where neon guy had been standing, hit the banister like a poorly passed basketball, and tumbled into the gap the crowd quickly provided.
    Neon-guy’s head rocked on the floor until finally coming to rest against the baseboard. It stared at the wall like a punished child.
    Utter silence filled the room. Janelle gasped, not quite grasping what she had just seen.
    One scream started a chain reaction. People started to run, in circles, into walls, into one another, scrambling toward secret exits now blocked by people unable to realize they needed to pull the doors in toward themselves.
    Janelle dropped to the floor and climbed beneath the cot, panting into her fingers splayed across her mouth, peering through squinting eyes, afraid to look but terrified not to.
    Sandy and Matt ran around the room, as panicked as the rest.
    Suddenly they appeared, seven strangers now filling the doorway, scanning the room.
    The stranger with yellow hair moved first, grabbing Sandy as she ran screaming past. She kicked and punched him, but he seemed unaffected. “Get off me!” she shrieked, clawing at his face and eyes, her forearms attempting to block his attack. But he pulled her arms down, seemingly unaffected. The expression on his face remained until he lowered his face toward her neck. Then a look of anger overcame him—his eyes blazed with fury, and he sneered. He opened his mouth wide and bit her throat. Her head went flying back, and her arms shot straight out, stiff. She screamed once but it was quick, as if he bit the sound right out of her. When he came back up his face was covered in her blood. He flicked his head to the side, and with a gruff argh! sound, he flung away the chunk of her throat embedded in his teeth.
    Gunshots filled the room, but either the victims were really bad shots or the strangers were really lucky.
    A bullet found the head of the female stranger wearing a fluffy blue sweater. It entered her forehead and exited above her ear, a spray of blood coating the wall beside her, but the woman barely reacted. Her head jerked for a second, but the impact didn’t even knock her off her feet. She reached out for the gunman and grabbed hold of his arm, pulling at his wrist until she took the gun away from him—hand and all. He fell to his knees and screeched, tucking his stump under his armpit, leaning forward until his head practically touched the floor. She lifted him by his scalp, ripping away a chunk of it. He threw his head back and squealed, blood pouring down his face, blinding him. He lifted his stump into the air as if a sacrifice, his mouth open wide, great sobs shaking his body. She kicked him over on his side and drank from the hairy, bloody chunk of his scalp like it was a chalice.
    Some managed to escape. The hidden exits had finally been remembered, but only a handful made it out. Janelle was nowhere near an exit and couldn’t get her legs to cooperate anyway.
    Across the room, the two little boys who had been fighting over the candy bar were being dragged toward the vault by their moms. But bodies were piled up on the floor, blocking the vault door, so they were unable to close it.
    The boys were grabbed by two of the strangers, and the two moms attacked, screaming and punching and kicking.
    “No!” the shorter mom cried, grabbing the woman’s long black hair, trying to pull her off her child. But the stranger turned quickly and backhanded her, and the short woman flew through the air, smashing loudly against the wall with such force her shattered teeth flew out of her mouth. She collapsed dead, her head twisted halfway around her broken neck.
    “Mommy!” the boy shrieked, but the black-haired stranger pulled him back by his shirt and grabbed him by the throat, tearing it out, the flesh separating from his body in a loud ripping sound, like fabric being torn. Blood poured out, covering the woman’s arm, and she lifted it to her mouth and sucked it back.
    For a moment blackness filled