“I know. But if this is ground zero, where are all the people that turned?”
“Maybe they migrated like the others we saw,” Alice offered, turning in her seat.
“Maybe.”
The rain had let up for a time when they were locating a boat, but now it fell again in steady layers. They waited for another five minutes without talking before Quinn opened his door.
“Maybe you guys should stay here, just in case,” he tried again.
“Maybe you should give up a lost cause when you see one,” Alice said, climbing out of the car.
The rain was even colder than before, and they rushed through it to the solid awning over the entrance. Several lights glowed within the building, and a card reader mounted to the side of the door blinked a red LED. Quinn dug in his pocket and brought out Harold Roman’s ID and slid it through the reader slot.
The door clicked open.
They stepped inside.
Quinn drew the pistol he’d taken from the boat and glanced around. They were in a high-ceilinged lobby. A dark waiting area sat to the right, magazines spread across a low table, padded chairs against the wall. To the left was an unmarked steel door painted the same color as the wall. Ahead was a long reception desk, business card holders, pamphlets, and pens adorning its top. Before the desk was a towering glass sculpture of a DNA strand, its round base filled with water. As Quinn stepped closer, he saw that it was a fountain, the double helixes drilled with holes for water to drip through.
Their footsteps echoed on the marble flooring as they approached the desk. To either side there were double doors leading farther into the building. The rectangular windows set within the doors were dark.
“One or two?” Alice asked.
Quinn moved past the desk and peered through the left door’s window. A hallway lay beyond, doors closed on both walls. But there was something on the floor and ceiling, something uneven and stretching the length of the hall where it disappeared into darkness. Quinn squinted, trying to discern what it was. He tried the door, but it was locked. When he looked for a card reader, he found none. There was only a standard lock set in the door’s handle.
He moved away from the entrance, watching the small window the entire time, waiting for movement to slide past it.
They closed in on the other set of doors. Just as he was about to swipe Roman’s card across the reader beside them, Ty paused, holding Denver back.
“Momma, I don’t like it here,” the boy whispered. Quinn and Alice turned to him. He looked so young in the dimly lit lobby, so small.
“I know you don’t, honey,” Alice said, shooting Quinn a look. There was something there and gone in her expression. Unease. He felt it too. The whole building gave off a chill as if the temperature had dropped below zero the moment they stepped through the doors. They shouldn’t be here.
Quinn faced the doors again and swiped the card.
The locks clicked open.
They pushed through the doors into a hallway twice the width of the first he’d seen. The same strange shadow grew on the ceilings and floors as well as the walls. At first he had the wild impression that roots from some gigantic tree had invaded the building, shoving tendrils further and further inside. The shapes were humped and irregular, their ends coming to rounded points, all heading toward the doors they entered through.
“What the hell is that?” Alice said.
“I don’t know.”
There were offices to either side, and at the very end of the corridor another door without a window waited. Quinn leaned into the first room to the right and slid his hand along the wall until it met a switch.
He flipped it up.
Light bloomed within the office, spreading part way down the hall.
Alice sucked in a breath.
The ‘roots’ were gnarled tangles of white growths, their surfaces pocked with spongy holes and sharp protrusions not unlike a coral reef. Quinn moved to the center of the hall and knelt beside a patch of the material. He reached out and was about to touch it when Alice spoke.