“We can’t go this way!” Wally yelled.
Zahra heard him, even past the ringing in her ears. “Like hell, we can’t!”
Wally squeezed her wrist, but they kept moving higher. “There’s no exit!”
She didn’t care. Anywhere was better than sitting idly by where they were. If anything, they could get to the top, and back outside, and call for help. The concrete walls of the lighthouse tower were surely blocking all cell service, not that Zahra had the time to check. She kept her Glock trained on the route behind her and climbed higher.
Wally slowed and allowed Zahra to pass him. He was tiring and in need of a break. The break came in the form of a crack in the landing beneath his feet. The fault grew quickly, suddenly giving way and depositing Wally onto the landing, a floor below.
“Wally!” Zahra shouted, leaning over the gap in the staircase.
“Go!” he shouted, holding his bad knee. He slowly got back to his feet and waved her off. “I will find another way out!”
She couldn’t believe her eyes. Wally had just fallen over ten feet and had somehow been spared a devastating injury. One by one, the stairs beneath Zahra’s feet fell away, chasing her up to the next landing. She didn’t stop there. Zahra kept going, round and round, until she reached the outside observation platform.
Zahra took a moment to catch her breath and gripped the rail, setting her forehead on her hands. A series of unnerving quakes interrupted her respite. She looked over the edge at the grounds just outside the ruined entry point. The asshole armed with the RPG swung it back up to his shoulder and swiftly fired a second explosive at the base of the lighthouse. The subsequent detonation was enough to get a groan and an ear-splitting crack out of the monument. Massive chunks of concrete broke away from the tower and fell to earth. The thunderclaps continued, as did the upward moving crack.
Zahra was nearly two hundred feet in the air with nowhere to go but straight down. She desperately surveyed the area around her for an escape plan but found nothing. Even from where she was, her grappling hook wouldn’t reach anything useful. With one last shudder, the lighthouse separated a third of the way up. The top portion, and Zahra, slowly tilted northeast. She hung onto the railing for dear life and reflexively closed her eyes and locked her jaw.
No! she thought, snapping them open. This isn’t over!
People scattered, getting as far away as possible. Zahra did a double take when she spotted a cloaked figure leap from a hole in the side of the lighthouse. Wally launched himself out of the crumbling structure, landing somewhere within the bushy canopy of a pine tree. Zahra couldn’t tell if he made it to safety or fell to his death. She couldn’t concentrate on Wally’s circumstances. Zahra had her own shit to deal with first. If she survived, then she’d check on the older man.
The lighthouse leaned back to the north, directly into the newer three-story building. It was the mall that Zahra had spotted earlier. And based on the current rate of descent, she and the lighthouse were about to squish it like a bug. For good measure, Zahra unclipped her grappling hook from her belt and snapped its clawed head open. She wasn’t sure when or how she was going to use it, but she needed to be prepared.
The last of the compromised tower gave way, and it fell like a cut redwood. Zahra laced her hook into the railing and coiled the cord around her right wrist. The lighthouse smashed through the mall’s roof but didn’t completely obliterate the much smaller building. The modern construction held its own and absorbed most of the impact. The abrupt stop jarred the railing, and Zahra, free and they both went tumbling through a hole where a twenty-by-twenty skylight used to be. Zahra covered her head with her hands and was surprised when she didn’t go splat!
Instead, she bounced off a, now-ruined, mattress set and thanked her lucky stars she had entered directly above the retailer’s bedding supplies.
But she didn’t stick around to gawk.
Another section of the ceiling broke free.
The overwhelming girth of the lighthouse was going to eventually win the battle. Zahra needed to not be around when it happened. She untangled herself from the bed’s comforter and turned and planted a hand atop a dresser, and vaulted over it, heading for the center of the department store. Up ahead, a sign dangled dangerously from the ceiling, showing her where the nearest escalator was. Multiple escalators were situated on the outskirts of a wide opening at the center of the department store. Here, Zahra would be able to clearly see the floors beneath her. She ran for the exit as the sign fell. It nearly clipped her heels as she passed beneath it.
An enormous section of ceiling caved in directly in front of her, and she quickly changed course. As Zahra had done with the dresser, she planted her hand on the railing next to the escalator and jumped. She fell six feet and landed gracelessly on the still mobile stairway. Zahra was stunned to see that it was operational. Between the suddenness of the landing, the forward momentum of the moving staircase, and the rumbling of the room, Zahra went down, falling sideways. She rolled and bounced down the unforgiving metal stairs and landed on her chest.
“Ouch…”
Zahra flopped onto her back and stared up through the open hole in the ceiling. She could just barely see the clear blue sky through the ever-widening gap. And through that hole, Zahra witnessed the entire uppermost section of the lighthouse — the lantern room — tear away from the rest of the tower and plummet directly toward her, smashing through the remains of the ruined skylight with ease.
Eyes wide, she rolled onto her hands and knees and dove forward, curling into a ball and covering her head with her arms. As the living room-sized wrecking ball passed by, a mangled section of the observation platform’s railing snared her open grappling hook. Zahra didn’t notice it in time and was unable to unwind the cord from her wrist, and she was swiftly yanked along with it.
“Shit!” she cried, disappearing below.
Chapter 59
Baahir
Baahir wanted nothing more than to leave, return to his station, and put this grotesque show behind him. He went to step away but stopped when he saw movement from someone other than the doctor. Grant’s hand twitched once. Then, again.
“It’s working,” Ifza whispered. She grabbed Khaliq’s arm and squeezed. “It’s working!”
Grant’s movements appeared to worry the doctor. Baahir thought he saw fear in the guy’s eyes. He backed away from the subject and headed for the door but was unable to leave. Khaliq calmly pressed his thumb against another door pad, locking the man inside. The doctor tried several times to unlock the door. When he discovered that he couldn’t, his confusion quickly morphed into terror. He rushed to the examination window and banged on it. The thick glass quieted his frantic impacts down to nothing. It felt like Baahir was watching an old-timey, silent movie.
A horrifying one.
Miraculously, Grant sat up. He lifted his hands to his head, squeezing it hard, going as far as to beat his own skull with his closed fists. Whatever was happening to him, Baahir got the impression that Grant wanted it to stop.
Then, he stopped, slowly lowering his hands and looking them over as if he was seeing them for the first time. Baahir couldn’t describe it in any other way. His attention turned to the rest of his body. He ran his hands across his chest and poked at his right biceps. He slowly swung his legs over the edge of the table, and for the first time, Grant noticed that he wasn’t alone.
He lifted his eyes away from his own body. The sight made all four people take a giant step back.