Richard could hear his own breaths, loud and rough in the stillness. He could hear nothing from the floors above. It was horrifically eerie. He didn’t know how much of this section of the theatre was still standing. He couldn’t think about that, couldn’t think about Lainie, or he would lose his mind.
He braced one hand against the far wall, then snatched it back as he felt the stones move. Rubble had spilled over the length of the hallway, blocking the way to the north stairs. His dressing room, to his left, was scrap metal and broken mortar. There was only one way to go.
He tripped and stumbled several times in the dim light. It was slow progress as he inched forward, wary of each careful step as the building shuddered around him. Dust clogged his nose, and he took a glancing blow to the shoulder from falling stone.
He’d once done an independent film set in a bombed hotel during the Second World War, and the staging had not been entirely dissimilar. It was a lot less enjoyable without the cameras and crew.
He crawled over a pile of bricks, got his first glimpse of stronger light and realised that the south hallway was intact. If he hadn’t already been on his knees, he would have dropped down in gratitude.
Behind him came a low, rumbling, metallic groan, as if the Metronome was in its dying throes and wasn’t going to go out quietly.
It almost drowned out the faint cry for help. He so nearly didn’t hear him.
Richard froze, listening, his eyes fixed on dingy, beautifully solid walls and floorboards, every instinct of self-preservation urging him forward. He turned his head, looked at the shivering wreckage. It was going to come down.
Oh, hell.
Despite the mess they’d made post-collapse, the walls had been thin. He’d heard the sounds of an iPad game next door, and it hadn’t been that long ago. Fifteen minutes at most. He was on his feet again. He took a step back.
“Farmer.” His voice echoed down into the depths of the ruined corridor.
A faint scuffling noise in the distance, unmistakable this time.
The Metronome might have the structural stability of Jenga blocks, but it didn’t have man-size rats scrabbling in the walls.
All he could think of in that moment was Lainie’s face. The look in her eyes when she’d told him about her sister.
The prospect of telling her that she’d lost someone else.
Because she was all right. She had to be. Any other outcome was totally unacceptable.
He went back.
Moving as quickly as possible, trying to keep his weight away from the fragile remains of the walls, he retraced every slow, painful step.
When he found where the other dressing room door should be—and was not—he swallowed on a nauseated wave of dread.
“Farmer?” he said again, sharply. It sounded shockingly loud, and startled his brain back into some sense of normality. “Will!”
A strange sound, between a moan and a gasp. He fought his way through the heavier wreckage in his path. Something sliced into his foot, but he ignored the pain from the shallow cut.
He found his castmate under a wooden beam. The gods continued to shine on Wonder Boy, he was relieved to see. The light at this end was so weak that the vacuous Ken doll face was a white blur.
“You all right?” Richard bent at his side and tested the weight of the beam, trying to see if Will was actually trapped or if he was just shocked into immobility. He felt around the side of the beam, hoping it wasn’t supporting anything essential, because it was going to have to move. It was wedging the other man’s leg against the far wall. “Farmer. For the first and hopefully only time, I’m going to need you to talk to me.”
“What?” Will sounded dazed. His voice was hoarse. “What happened?”
“In the immortal words of Radiohead, ‘go and tell the king that the sky is falling in.’” Richard got down on his haunches and braced himself. “Taking a reckless guess, the builders really cocked up in the greenroom. On the count of three, move your right leg back toward your chest. One...two...three!”
He heaved the end of the beam upward, just about dislocating his own shoulder in the process, and Will shoved himself free. Richard hauled him the rest of his way to his feet. They were bent over like a couple of elderly golfers, both of them far too tall for what was now basically a hole in the ground.
Inevitably, because Richard was reaping all sorts of cosmic payback for his past sins today, the other man began to panic.
“Oh God,” he said, and the words rose in pitch. “OhGodOhGodOhGod.”
“Not to be insensitive to your religious needs,” Richard said sarcastically, “but if you let me know when you’re finished praying, perhaps we could get going. I’d prefer to be out of here when the rest of this comes down.”