… The vampires are targeting inhabited houses. Of course. To toy with them or to drive them out, she doesn't know, but she'd hazard a guess at the latter.

This does not bode well for her but – is her car okay, maybe that'd count as – protected – residence –? Unless it's destroyed.

Car: intact.

Oh joy of fucking joys.

She turns to face her son, crouches down, and looks him in the eyes. "Alexandre, I'm gonna need you to be really brave, okay?"

He's still crying, a little, and looks rather terrified in response to this.

"It's not safe for us to stay in here." She's trying to impress the point on him without terrifying him, she doesn't need to mention the house will go up in flames. He may have already guessed. "Do you have anything small you want to bring with you – we might not be back anytime soon."

He bites his lip a little, then nods and looks over at his bed.

Clarice tries not to sigh. "Is it in here? Would you get it, I don't know what it is."

He does so. Apparently it's his little toy elephant. Of course it is. She should've guessed.

"Okay, you know what I told you? How to get out of the house safely, if it's not safe to go down the stairs? We're going to do that, but I'm here so it'll be fine, you just have to do as I say." She grabs the mattress off the bed, having gone through this all before – the window is large enough to squeeze it out, the mattress is relatively small, and the drop is not far enough to be too dangerous – and so she does that, checking just before that there are no evident dangers –

And then it's time to jump out the window of the burning-down house into the open area including vampires so she can pray for the faint hope the car will protect them and let them get out of this godforsaken area.

It's a faint hope.

She goes first, trusting Alexandre to follow after her.

There are no vampires in sight.

And she has her bag on her, fetches her keys out of it and unlocks the car –

A small oof sound from behind her, Alexandre, but then he's getting up and stumbling over to the car with her –

Something slams against the car just as the doors close, an insanely fast mass of snarling and hatred that resolves into the shape of a teenage girl with unnatural blue eyes.

She jumps, Alexandre cries out – she fumbles with the keys, trying to put them in the ignition and get the car going –

And then a different vampire slams against the first one, sending her flying. "Go!" her husband growls.

– She puts the car into reverse, slams down on the accelerator to get out of the driveway.

Her husband is fighting the other vampire so she's clear to go.

Then she halts the movement of the vehicle and puts it into forward gear, ready to get the heck out of here.

The heck out of here is that-a-way.

She gets going, then looks over at her son, briefly, and back at the road. "Alexandre – put on your seatbelt."

He does so, ducking down from the window – he's so small, why is he in this whole mess – and then looks at her. "What about yours?"

"Your mother is busy right now, I'm afraid, driving away from the danger," responds Clarice. "But it's good of you to check and she will put it on in a minute."

Corpse.

She tells Alexandre not to look – he does as she says, probably, mostly, or at least pretends – and she routes around it.

More of those!

...car on fire!

Is she still able to route around the vehicle? She's aiming to get out of town, somehow, if she can. Low chance it works but staying around doesn't seem better.

She can!

...traffic!

… With other living people or just cars in the way?

Well there are cars in the way and people trying to get around them so both.

No obvious route around it, in the car?

No.

Fuck.

She tells Alexandre to stay behind, gets out and tries to look over the cars – is there a route ahead, is it clear? (She stays nearby, not leaving Alexandre.)

It's not clear. As far as she can look there's destruction.

And a suspicious absence of vampires.

She's in a horror movie with no good options. She and her son are in a horror movie with no good options. Her husband is – missing, hopefully not attacking other people – and there's no clear way out.

She gets back into the car so she can drive around for some other route out of town.