His fingers came up red as well. He hoped it was just a bloody cheek, and not internal bleeding.
More screams came from inside the elevator shaft. Closer. They were climbing back up.
“Let’s go,” he said.
He pushed away from the wall.
Dorcas had to help him.
76
“Where now?” asked Christopher. Ken waited for someone to answer, then realized with a start that they were looking at him.
Waiting for him.
He didn’t know why. Maybe because he was from Boise? But so was Christopher.
Because he had family? That didn’t make much sense.
Regardless, they waited. And he hated it. He hated that suddenly he had more than just a daughter in a coma and another who wanted to go to the monsters and a wife who hated him for losing their son to worry about.
Now he was responsible for everyone? When had that happened?
He didn’t have time to figure it out, or time to argue about the fairness of it. He looked around. They were in another hallway, and one that didn’t look familiar. He’d never been here before. He’d been in the upper floors of the building – though the floors had been several blocks over at the time – but he had no idea if the layout was the same or not.
He decided to assume they were.
“Left.”
They moved. Christopher took point, leading the way with his light, sweeping it left and right. Buck and Maggie followed, each holding a silent child.
Ken and Dorcas limped behind them.
Aaron brought up the rear. Ken saw the older man sag for a moment, and wondered how badly he was hurting. But then the dangerous look returned to the cowboy’s eyes and Ken knew that anything – man, beast, or monster – that came upon Aaron in the next few minutes would likely regret the move.
The corridor was deserted. Doors lined the way, and papers littered the floor where they had fallen from several billboards on the walls. Probably advertising local businesses and clothing drives and the upcoming “Fill the Boot” drive where local firefighters stood in the streets with empty boots asking for donations for burn victims.
No more of those. Plenty of victims, but the first responders were gone. Dead or themselves converted to the scourge that had swept the earth nearly clean of human life.
It was a marvel that this place was even standing. The top of the building had been blown clean off by a combination of a collision with a stealth fighter and exploding ordnance, and Ken figured it wouldn’t take a whole lot more for the whole place to come down around their ears.
Everyone else seemed to be thinking the same thing. No one spoke. It felt like they weren’t in a building, but in a hole deep underground. The kind of place where touching the wrong thing would cause a subterranean landslide.
He and Dorcas were falling behind the others. Ken realized it at the same moment he felt a hand at his back, gently urging him to greater speed.
“I don’t know if he can,” said Dorcas, responding to Aaron’s unspoken exhortation.
“Gotta,” said Aaron.
And Ken knew why. He could hear it, too. Could hear the things coming out of the elevator shaft in the darkness behind them.
Some of them must have perished in the fall. Or if not perished, then at least been damaged beyond the ability to climb back up. Laying at the bottom of the shaft, their broken bodies intertwined with the wreckage and cables.
But some had made it up. More than some.
It sounded like a lot.
77
“Here!”
Ken heard Buck shout, then saw the big man dart to the side. A moment later Christopher wheeled around and followed. So did Maggie.
Ken moved through the open doorway the rest of them had disappeared through, partially of his own volition and partially because Dorcas more or less pushed him through. He didn’t know what would happen if she let go of him, but suspected he’d just fall and lay there. Maybe twitch a bit if he was lucky.
Once inside the door, everything disappeared. Literally. There was no trace of Buck or Maggie or Christopher or the kids. No trace of anything at all, for that matter. No office, no floor, no nothing. Just empty space before them, dimly lit from somewhere below.
It took a moment for Ken to refocus, to crane his neck down, each vertebra popping and screaming in protest as he did so. He felt something trickling on his lip and figured his nose was bleeding as well.
Can’t keep this up.
Not much choice.
Sure, keep telling yourself that, Ken.
He finally saw the floor. It had collapsed a few feet past the doorway, falling away at a forty-five degree angle and ending in a pile of rubble on the level below.
At the bottom of the ramp, Maggie was being helped to her feet by Buck and Christopher. Buck was still holding Hope, and Liz sagged from her carrier, arms and legs limp and lifeless-seeming. It was clear that they had all slid down, and just as clear that this was the best way to make their way one floor closer to freedom from this building.
“Come on!” shouted Buck.