Silas steps back over the door. The bottom of his white sock makes a squelching sound as it hits a thick pool of dark, oily blood.
He kicks the wet sock off right away. It slaps against the polished hardwood. He takes off the other one and drops it on the rug. His bare feet leave red, wet footprints on the way to the mudroom.
He puts on heavy work boots with steel toes. He ties the laces in tight, hard double knots.
This is the change. They don't have time to grieve for their old life.
Maeve goes by him. Her hands are steady. She goes right to the front closet and gets Silas's old aluminum baseball bat. The silver grip is old and peeling.
She pushes it into Hazel's chest. "Take this."
Hazel looks blankly. Her wide, scared eyes are fixed on Mr. Aris's crumpled body, which is bleeding out in the hallway. She is breathing fast, shallow, and in a panic.Hazel. "Look at me," Maeve says softly.
Hazel makes herself look up at her mom.Hold it with both hands. Keep it close. "Stay behind your father and in front of me." The sound of Maeve's voice is the most important thing in the room.
Hazel swallows hard. She nods one time. She holds the aluminum bat so tightly that her knuckles turn completely white.
Leo is frozen in the foyer, dragging his blue fleece blanket across the floor."Drop the blanket, bug," Silas says softly as he stands up to tie his boots.
Leo's bottom lip shakes. "I want it."
Silas doesn't fight. He gets down on one knee, picks up the heavy fleece blanket, and wraps it tightly around the boy's shoulders like a shawl. He puts the ends inside Leo's puffy jacket."It's not going to trip you now," Silas says. He runs his hand over his son's messy hair. He feels a wave of despair wash over him because of how innocent the boy looks, but he fights it off. "I'm going to get you now. You hold my neck. Got it?
Leo shakes his head.
Silas lifts the eight-year-old up onto his left hip. His right hand grips the bloody shaft of the ice ax.
He looks Maeve in the eye.
There is a heavy, unspoken conversation going on between the husband and wife. Over fourteen years of marriage, they came to a quiet agreement. They are leaving the cozy home they made. They are going into the dark. They will drown in blood before they let anyone touch these kids if it comes to that.
Maeve puts a heavy canvas backpack on her back. It makes a noise with the bottled water and random pantry cans she threw in without looking."We're ready," she says.
They leave the door to their apartment wide open behind them.
The hallway smells really bad. Death in real life isn't clean. The smell of copper, rusted iron, and empty bowels is so strong that it makes you want to throw up. Hazel gags violently as she carefully steps over the pieces of their neighbor that have been torn apart."Eyes front," Silas says in a low voice. "Look at my back." Not anywhere else.
He walks toward the heavy doors of the fire escape at the north end of the hall.
The fluorescent panels on the ceiling suddenly make a loud noise. They turn completely black. The amber emergency lights come on half a second later. The dull yellow light that warns of danger fills the eighty-floor hallway right away.
Silas pushes the heavy steel fire door with his right shoulder.
The hinges that are rusty screech loudly. The air in the stairwell is still and cold. It smells like old dust and cold concrete.
Around a hollow, rectangular drop, a dizzying abyss of concrete stairs spirals down and down.
Silas puts his bare hand flat against the cold cinderblock wall of the stairwell to keep himself steady.
He can feel it right away.
A sharp, vibrating pressure blooms right behind his eyes. It doesn't hurt. It is completely clear in math. His engineer's gut feeling goes into overdrive.
His fingers feel the whole concrete wall humming.
He shuts his eyes for a short time. In his mind, a wireframe of the eighty-floor tower flashes.
The high-rise's structural steel is in a lot of trouble in a small area. He can feel the wave of mass panic moving through the building's vertical spine. Hundreds, maybe even thousands, of bodies are rushing down. Heavy, panicked footsteps hit the concrete slabs forty floors below.
Then he feels the other rhythm.
A heavier, darker weight moving quickly up. A swarm of animals crushing against the frantic flow of people going down.
Silas takes his hand off the wall. His heart sinks.Silas whispers to Maeve over his shoulder, "They're swarming the lobby.""Are the stairs blocked?"Silas says, "They're a meat grinder right now." "It's a funnel." Thousands of people are rushing into a narrow space on the ground floor. "Before the monsters even bite us, we'll be crushed."
He moves Leo around on his hip. He takes them down. Floor 78. Floor 79.
The rhythmic slapping of their boots echoes loudly in the concrete cylinder. The cold air goes right through their clothes. The noise coming from the bottom of the shaft gets louder with each flight they take.
Screams bounce off the hard walls and get louder. As they go up the vertical chamber, the painful sounds change, turning into shrieks that overlap.
Floor 73. Floor 74.
Carrying Leo down the never-ending, steep steps makes Silas's thighs hurt.
67th floor. 68th floor.
A loud metal bang echoes up the shaft all of a sudden. It sounds like a heavy door to a secure area is being ripped off its hinges.
Gunfire breaks out. The loud, staccato cracks echo angrily from fifty floors below. Then a sound comes that makes Silas's blood freeze.
It is a low, collective roar. Not a human scream, but a screech that sounded like a hundred broken, breathless throats. The infection is moving like a hive.
The shooting stops all of a sudden. The screaming from the people doesn't stop."Dad," Hazel whispers. The awful sound makes her voice break. She holds her mother's hand behind her back."Keep going," Silas says.
Floor 63. Floor 64.
The noise from the massacre below is rising up like a fire that won't go out.
They can't go down to that slaughter. It is an impossible roadblock. If they run into that swarm in this narrow, six-foot-wide stairwell, they will be crushed by a wave of snapping teeth and dying bodies.
Silas suddenly stops on the landing of Floor 60.
He puts Leo down right on the concrete landing. "Stand on your own two feet, buddy."
Leo is quiet. He pushes his small back flat against the cold cinderblock wall. He has been biting his bottom lip out of fear, and now it is bleeding.
Silas walks up to the thick steel door with the number "60" on it.
He runs his fingers along the door frame. The hidden resonance sends pings through his nervous system.
He is familiar with this layout. He used to go to local meetings about zoning for buildings. There are no apartments on Floor 60. It's a mechanical hub in the middle. Boilers. Elevator pulley systems. Main air handlers.
More importantly, it has the lines for maintenance drops.What are we up to? Maeve asks, pushing up against the narrow landing behind him. The screams below sound very close now. They are running up the stairs in a flood that can't be stopped."We have to go around the lobby," Silas says, wiping his forehead. The heat from the massacre below suddenly makes the air feel heavy.
He grabs the thick handle of the door and leans back with all his might.
It is locked up. The reinforced frame keeps the heavy steel deadbolt in place.
The swarm's loud snarls and chaotic footsteps are less than twenty floors below them. Five minutes. Four. Time is going away.
Silas lifts the heavy ice ax, which is wrapped in tape, with both hands. He doesn't pay attention to his tired muscles.
He drives the sharp steel pick of the ax straight into the small space between the door and the strong steel frame, right over the locking tumbler.
As he pries down, the metal screams. The locking plate bends because of the strong leverage. Sparks fly off the iron that has rusted.
The amber emergency lights start to flicker in the dark center of the stairwell gap because of violent movements on the floors below.
*Crack.*
The steel locking bar bends in. Silas pulls the ax out and kicks the handle hard in the front.
The heavy door swings open and hits Floor 60.
A wave of very hot, mechanical-smelling air hits their faces. It smells great, like motor oil and rusty metal grating.
In one smooth motion, Silas picks Leo back up and puts him on his hip."Inside," Silas says. "Go. Go."
Maeve grabs Hazel by the hood of her jacket and pushes her hard through the dark door. Maeve follows right away. Silas ducks in last and drags his boots along the heavy concrete edge.
He pulls the heavy steel door shut just as the loud stampede starts on floor 55 below.
Silas pushes the heavy forged steel pry bar from his duffel bag through the big handle grips and holds it horizontally against the thick doorframe. A makeshift deadbolt that can't be broken.
They are locked inside.
He turns on the flashlight that is very strong.
A thick beam of bright white LED light cuts through the dark. They are standing on high metal grated catwalks over a sea of huge humming machines. Huge gray ventilation tubes twist and turn along the ceiling like metal worms. The cone of white light makes the dust look thick and shiny.
The loud hum of the huge industrial air conditioning units drowns out the sounds of the dying stairwell.
It's dark. It smells like a factory. But the heavy metal grating feels like real ground.
Maeve puts her hand on the back of Silas's coat. The deep, throbbing vibration of the heavy machinery around them slowly matches her breathing.
The tension lets go violently, and for a moment, everything is safe. The quiet inside this huge steel stomach is lovely.
Silas lets out a heavy, shaky breath into the dark. "We're past them."