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The door opens to Wilford's dressing room. The blue walls are decorated with framed vintage movie posters, opening up for a vanity that doesn't look like it's been used since Wilford moved into the building. Along the exterior brick wall is where Wilford's set up his office, with a few shelves and filing cabinets behind the massive desk. The other side of the room is more of a lounge, with a black leather sofa and matching chair, and a smudged up glass coffee table that shows evidence of small, sticky hands.

Wilford closes the door behind them, only to open it again to reveal the large closet where he keeps several other guns. He stores the rifle in with the rest, making sure the door is locked so the nosy little toddler can't find his way in.

Beyond the door leading to the hall, people are obviously coming and going. Someone's having a heated argument, but the soundproofing in the building is heavy enough that nothing specific can be made out.

Now that there's signal, Wilford pulls out his phone to check the traffic report. Wilford sighs. "Someone dropped a yacht on the beltway," he says.

His phone isn't buzzing with missed texts though, so he's hoping it happened after Andy got past that point.

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"It's going to be hard on him. It wasn't very easy to take as an adult."

The skiers are watched with a sense of morbid fascination.

"I don't have any family on my side either," Wilford says. He takes another drink of his beer. "But he's got enough shit to deal with as it is without wondering why we don't go see Grandma on the weekends."

Wilford figures that if it's out in the open to begin with, there will be no awkward conversations later.

What's left of the jet skiers abandon their machines in the water and start swimming toward shore. Except for one guy, who didn't get the memo, and runs over one of his friends. The guy that got run over surfaces eventually and rushes to catch up with the group as they head up toward the boardwalk.

Somehow, the beach doesn't seem much quieter with them gone.

"All he needs is you."

Then again, Tess' opinions and experiences with family are rather unusual.

"This chaos is all completely normal to you, isn't it?"

He shrugs. "It's..."

Her question brings him out of his own head. He got kind of lost there for a minute. The beach is awfully noisy, even for a Saturday evening. Lots of people screaming.

A lot of people are screaming. It might have something to do with the dozen or so ATVs painted a rainbow of colours tearing down the beach.

"Fucking shit!" Wilford throws his beer at the one heading straight for him, as if it will help.

She turns to see what the commotion is about and stares with wide eyes.

Unfortunately, she's always been more fight than flight.

The beer bottle, predictably, does nothing. It hits the sand, and fails to explode or do anything to help. The ATVs at the back of the pack don't seem to be paying too much attention to the race, or whatever it is, and are swerving around to run over beach-goers.

Wilford checks his inventory for anything that would help, but it's crammed full of crayons and toys and a box of crackers. It's a rather alarming thing to realise in a moment where he'd really like to have a gun.

He remembers all too late that he locked everything up in his dressing room. Luckily (unluckily?) the jet ski guys come back with their grenades, and decide to start flinging everything they have at the rampaging ATVs.

"Time to run," he says, turning to try to run away from the pack of speeding death machines that are already starting to make the path back to the boardwalk a little scary.

"Yes." She barely manages before starting to do just that. Of course, running in sand isn't the best of ideas.

It also isn't comforting that her life is starting to flash before her eyes. Again.

It doesn't take long before they're right in the middle of the pack. A few seconds at most, and now the drivers have lost interest in their race (if they even were racing in the first place) and have decided to just chase down beach goers.

Wilford has never been particularly fast, especially in the sand, and without a gun he's feeling rather trapped. The morons with grenades aren't helping, partially because they're also being run over.

Tess. He should probably focus on getting Tess off the beach. He'll pick her up and carry her if he has to. He tries to grab her to pull her along with him, but he gets clipped by one of the ATVs, which throws him off his balance long enough for a second to get him with its fender. He goes down into the sand, which is not particularly easy to breathe. He tries to get up, but something is very, very wrong.

She does her best. It's a crowded beach and her bare feet sinking into the sand isn't helping her at all. She tries to reach out for Wilford but something stops her.

It's not what she expected. She's not prepared this time. But that familiar darkness descends on her anyway.

Wilford stays in the sand for longer than he needs to or should. Eventually, the roar of engines fade off further down the beach, meaning it's probably safe to get up. It takes him longer than he wants it to. He can't seem to support his own weight, but he eventually manages to get to his feet by rolling over onto one side. His arm is pain from his neck to his fingertips. He's bleeding. His glasses are god knows where. Other people on the beach are getting to their feet and fleeing before anything comes back for them, while lifeguards and paramedics start making their way out to help get people off the sand.

He can't see very well, but Wilford is pretty sure he should be hearing Tess shouting at him right now. She's not. But something that is vaguely Tess-shaped and coloured is lying in the sand not too far from where Wilford got flattened.

Fuck. That's just... fucking great. What in the hell is he supposed to do about this?

Tess

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