The Christmas Killings ♕ dancemoms

CHAPTER TWENTY

The scream knocked sense back into Mackenzie. Suddenly, she wasn't gasping anymore and she could breathe as well as she could back home, when she was sitting down in her own backyard. All that mattered was getting to Brynn - because that scream, it had definitely been her.

"Kenz?" She heard Ezra ask into the dark from somewhere in front of her, and she pushed of the wall she'd been leaning on to keep her standing. She jogged her way to him, almost tripping over his foot as she reached the boy.

"That was Brynn, I know it," Mackenzie told him, "we have to keep going."

If it had been light, Kenzie would have seen his nod. Instead, she went to grab for his wrist. She missed, instead finding her hand encircling a chair leg, but that was good enough, so she began to yank him along.

After a few more seconds of running, another gun shot sounded, though this time there was no scream. What if they were too late already? What if Brynn - and Thomas - were already dead, murdered by Chloe? That had to be her shooting the gun.

Mackenzie couldn't see where she was going, but she followed the loud bangs of a gun as they came, running in the direction she thought they were coming from. Her uggs were hardly running shoes, and slipped around on her feet, but she didn't let that bother her. Ezra was practically dragged along behind her.

There was a seventh shot now as her feet pounded against the hard dirt floor of the tunnel. Could Brynn still be alive? She hadn't heard her voice since the scream. Then there was another shot - eight now.

Almost running into a wall, Kenzie turned a corner, and suddenly she was thrust into light. She stood in the entrance to a larger cavernous space, all illuminated from the light of a torch held in the hand of tall, blonde figure.

Mackenzie hardly recognised the girl. Blood streaked her clothes and body, and the blank expression written on her face seemed to show a loss of all humanity. Kenzie had prepared herself for something awful, if she were to see Chloe again, but this wasn't what she'd expected. She'd expected a storybook killer, someone who wore an evil sneer. Her mind had even run away, giving Chloe a scar running from her eye to her mouth. But the blonde didn't look like that. Not at all.

And in front of Chloe, their backs facing towards Kenzie, stood Brynn and Thomas. A rush of relief flooded Kenzie as she realised they were still alive, but it was quickly sucked away as she saw the state they were in.

Front the back, they looked awful. Brynn was wobbling on one leg, the other one obviously causing her pain. Blood trickled from the side of that ankle, but only slightly. At their feet lay long decomposed bodies, too horrific to look at.

Suddenly, a hand wrapped around Kenzie, yanking her back out of the light. "We can't let her see us!" Ezra hissed, letting go of her waist and repositioning the chair in his hands. The light from the torch faintly filtered into the passageway, and she could see the ashen look on his face. "Surprise is the only thing we have on our side."

She couldn't fight that - Chloe had a gun, and they had a chair and a wooden cutting board. But as she peered around the corner, a wave of fear, sickened and nausea rolled through her as Chloe raised the gun she held in her hand again.

"On the count of three, we run." Ezra whispered to her, and Mackenzie bounced up and down on her toes, getting ready to try and save her friend. "We go around the sides of the room, you go left and I'll go right. Charge Chloe from the side, and try and get the gun."

Kenzie nodded. Maybe she could knock Chloe out or something with the cutting board.

"Three. . ." She heard Ezra mutter and readied herself. "Two. . ."