Free The Outside by Laura Bickle

brightness flooded the compartment. The door was torn open, and a short silhouette stood in the open void. And that figure held fire in her fist.
    â€œLeave those kids alone,” Ginger’s voice bellowed.
    The vampires turned toward her, snarling. She held a bottle in her hand with a flaming rag trickling from the top. I dimly registered it as her prize—the bottle of vodka she’d scavenged from the convenience store cooler.
    She hurled the bottle into the trailer. It sailed over our heads and struck the far wall with a sound like a gunshot. It exploded into glass and flame.
    I ducked, trying to shield my eyes. Fire blistered from the makeshift bomb, and raced over the wall in a liquid rush of blue and orange flame. I heard howling, smelled burning meat . . .
    . . . and there were hands tangled in my apron straps. Alex hauled me through the door of the trailer, into the daylight. I landed on my shoulder on the blacktop, gasping as the wind was knocked out of me.
    I felt Alex land on top of me. I rolled back, under his arm, seeing shadows seething at the mouth of the trailer through blurred vision. I clutched his arm, struggling to breathe.
    Ginger stood before the opening of the trailer. In each hand, she held a bottle of lighter fluid. She twisted open the cap of one bottle and hurled it into the conflagration.
    Squeals and screams echoed from inside. I wanted to clap my hands over my ears. It sounded like the screaming of pigs. The neighbors’ barn that had burned when I was a child held two dozen pigs inside. It was not a sound I’d ever forgotten.
    â€œBurn!”
    Ginger’s glasses reflected the fire inside the truck. Her face was twisted into something I didn’t recognize. I had always known her to be motherly, passive. She’d faced the end of the world with a soft shock, hesitating and confused.
    But now . . . now, she was wrathful.
    She hurled the second bottle into the truck. The open neck of it arced into the air. Flame licked from the interior of the trailer, igniting those clear drops. They splashed on the pavement, burning in a puddle.
    Ginger turned her back on the truck, her gait stiff as she approached us. She seemed a different woman now, full of the power of anger that sang through her.
    â€œGinger,” I wheezed. I could barely squeak, so I pointed behind her.
    Something was crawling out of the trailer.
    She turned, her skirt swirling in the backdraft. A flaming creature clawed beyond the lip of the truck, slipped to the blacktop like a bat startled during daytime. It scuttled right and left, flopping, as fire crackled along its spine.
    But it was daylight. And daylight was just as deadly to these creatures as fire.
    Ginger stared at it as its blackened jaws opened and closed, as its fingers spasmed and curled in on themselves like burning paper.
    â€œBurn!”
    I saw then that her eyes were damp beneath her glasses. Of all of us, Ginger may have lost the most. And I could see that she wanted these creatures of night to suffer.
    My eyes fell to the trickle of lighter fluid on the pavement. The burning creature scuttled to the nearest shadow—the underbelly of the next truck.
    The one with fire on the placard.
    I drew half a breath to scream at her. Alex pulled me to my feet. I saw understanding cross Ginger’s face, and she began to run.
    We ran to Horace. The horse had begun to retreat, cantering along the shoulder of the road, away from us. Away from the evil. And away from what he could smell coming.
    Thunder roared behind us. I skidded to my knees and covered my head. Gravel rattled along the side of the road. Behind the ringing in my ears, I could hear bits of metal striking the blacktop parking lot.
    I turned, gripping my bonnet strings.
    The tanker truck was an open shell, burning. The fire soared beyond the roof of the truck stop. I heard a thin, high whistling in the wreckage. I didn’t know if that was the