'Why didn't you leave?'
Jin Xueli could almost hear the furious shriek in her own mind. She knew she had no real reason to be angry, but in that instant, she came dangerously close to screaming curses at the bushes.
'Did the residents eat her brain?'
Three hours. It had taken her three hours to get to this phone booth. Jacqueline had all that time—she could have gone anywhere. Why did she have to stay here?
'Why did she have to talk to me?'
'Why did she have to let me know where she was?'
"You—you're human," the woman's voice from the bushes gained a hint of certainty, as if she were grasping at a rope. "I can feel it... You're human... Please, help me."
"Don't come out!"
Jin Xueli hissed. A hint of flesh-colored skin, peeking from behind the trembling leaves, froze in the gloom of the bushes. Only with great effort could one faintly discern the shape of a hand.
"I'm not one of those monsters, I swear…"
She was wrong. Jin Xueli wished the woman *was* one of the residents.
