She picks one, edge of the highway behind some trees.

"Next step?"

don’t go in through the front door because it would be suicidal and you can’t anyway.

the house has a storm cellar.

So she gets out of the cab, with her raincoat on, and makes her way towards the house, being careful to try to stay out of sight as much as possible.

there's a key under the flowerpot he doesn’t know about.

Flowerpot?

She looks around the cellar entrance for a flowerpot, carefully, and then upon finding it lifts it up to grab the key and then open the doors.

even though you set out this morning to deliver toys and weren’t expecting to come face to face with the grim spectre of death, do not stand there like a slack jawed idiot when you find a surreal medical torture dungeon complete with two corpses, the bells helpfully inform her.

… Fuck.

She goes through into the storm cellar and does not stand there like a slack-jawed idiot when she finds the surreal torture dungeon and where is the girl.

Someone seems to have gone and installed a Facility with a capital F in the basement of this family home. There are machines. There are tubes. IV drips. But also electrodes and wires and metal hooks and things out of a horror movie. All of it hastily arranged, unpacked from cases that were brought in by pick-up truck, like an impromptu meth lab.

No clear purpose to any of it. If there is a purpose, it's lost in a wall of medical notes and diagrams, hastily tacked up near the bodies—wiring diagrams, crudely written instructions, things like that. Quick reference guides for the madman on the go. Pencil notes on drywall around it all, jotting down numbers, scribbling out unreadable writings. Words which start out coherent but then wander off towards nonsense...

One word keeps repeating. Repeating often enough that Rachel can spot it easily, no matter where she looks.

Bedlam. Bedlam. BEDLAM.

And unfortunately, she's too late to rescue everyone.

Mother and father, dead. Previous owners of the house, before their home invasion experience. Lying on the floor and dead for a few days, from the smell and the look of it. Still hooked up to drains and siphons and worse. The shabby man hadn't bothered unplugging them—he just shoved them into a corner for later disposal. Plenty of dirt around here to bury a body in and no rush to get it done when your nearest neighbor's miles away.

It's perfect, really. Need to slowly and horribly murder people for purposes unknown? The Outlands will provide the ideal victims in the ideal scenario. Too far away from any stable community. Nobody will know. Nobody will care...

The angel on the other end of Rachel's golden telephone cares. And for what it's worth, their daughter is still breathing.

Maybe six, maybe seven years old. Malnourished and unbathed for days. Unconscious, but she's alive. Lying on a makeshift cot, some token gesture of comfort, while she runs through a gauntlet of nightmares...

She's – sorry but she's not going to spare time worrying about the parents.

Can she detach the girl, she hopes she has some instruction and she doesn't have to guess with possibly complex horrifying medical equipment.

It's probably safer to just yank all the flimsy tubes and cords than detaching the electrodes and needles themselves from the girl.

Okay, she can do that – and she does, trying to be careful to not pull anything the wrong end, and tries to wake the girl, carefully…

Yeah she's not waking up.

She hesitates, momentarily, and then prepares to pick the girl up and run – and then yanks the tubes and cords.

Nothing beeps angrily at her for this.

And then she's got the girl, making sure the cables don't pull on anything or wrap around things, and she's making her way back towards the external door.

Nothing stops her.

Through the door, left open carefully from when she went in, and a quick, careful dash to get away from the property –

The rain patters on but she manages to get to her truck without problems.

She places the girl in the passenger seat, trying to be careful but not at the expense of too much time, shifting the undelivered bear into her lap, and then buckles her in, and then gets into the vehicle herself.

Time to get away, no time to call for help –

The girl instinctively curls her arm around the bear, holding it tight against herself—

Roar of the demon. Light in her hindsights. Headlights. Engines.

Doctor Demento fired up his pick-up truck, and is coming to retrieve what he has rightfully stolen.

Fuck is he getting her back.

Engine's still on, all she needs to do is put the headlights on and then get going and hope for the best with the slow speed of this freaking truck.

Yeah. She reaches the highway, stabilizes her truck, and the big green truck is in her rearview mirror, moving at speed... and gaining on her.

Fuck, fuck fuck fuck.

She doesn't suppose her truck has a higher top speed than the other one.

Nope! The opposite actually.

"I don't suppose you have any suggestions?" she asks, tentatively.