We had to stop the elevators from running.
I closed my eyes, trying to concentrate, but every thought was shrouded in a red-tinged panic. “How many elevators are there?”
Nicky didn’t answer and I turned to face her. “How many?” I asked again, and she kind of flinched as though my words had been physical.
“Just these two,” she finally answered. “Why?”
Behind the metal doors I heard the cables whirring, from the bowels of the building, floor chimes rang one after another, growing louder. Other people were entering the building. Like water rising, they would get to us eventually if we didn’t find a way to pull the plug.
On the other side of the vestibule a sign for the billiard room hung on the wall next to a set of double doors. I tried the handles but they were locked. “Can you get me in here?”
Nicky’s face was pale, her lips white and dry and the rims of her eyes raw. She was shutting down; my words seemed to be getting trapped in her head in some kind of endless cycle. Instead of answering, she stood there blinking.
Behind her the elevator’s engine hummed. Blood roared through me—that feeling of having the perfect strategy for winning a game and just hoping you have the chance to play it out.
And knowing just how many ways it could all go wrong.
A crisp ding sounded, and even though we’d been the ones to call the elevator, its arrival startled us. We turned as one, waiting for the doors to slide open. I braced myself for a monster to come stumbling out and felt almost light-headed when I saw that the car was empty.
Except for the glistening pool of blood oozing along the floor.
“Oh my God,” Beatrice started mumbling over and over. She backed down the hallway, a low wail building in the back of her throat.
“Don’t let it leave!” I called to Gregor as the doors began to slide shut. He had to dive for it, his foot slipping on the blood and his elbow crashing against the wood-paneled wall
I turned to Nicky and wrapped my fingers around her shoulders, forcing her to focus. “I need you to get me in that room.”
Her hands shook as she held out the same black electronic key she’d used to access the top floor. I pressed it against the lock and the door opened with a click.
I didn’t care anymore about trying to appear smooth and confident. I only cared about what could be coming in that second elevator. Hearing its ascent, the beep of buttons as it climbed past floor five, then six, then seven. Knowing that eventually someone else with a key to the top floor would come home, bringing with them more danger.
Those men who’d dropped from the top of the skyscrapers earlier—the ones who’d stayed dead which meant they were probably uninfected—had to have jumped because that was less terrifying than whatever was coming for them. I didn’t want to know what that was. I didn’t want to face it up here in this dim hallway.
As I’d hoped, the billiard room had a few heavy comfortable chairs, and I grabbed the closest one, dragging it over the thick carpet into the hallway. Gregor kept having to battle the elevator doors as they tried to close over and over again. The alarm started to buzz, the sound grating and horrible in what had been almost silence before.
Gregor helped me maneuver the chair into place to block the doors, and then he climbed out, cradling his elbow. “Call the other one,” I told him as I went back for a second chair.
Nicky tried to stop me. “What are you doing?”
I moved around her. With the alarm going I couldn’t hear the cables of the second elevator, couldn’t tell how close it was. “Locking it down.”
“But my dad . . . ” She grabbed my sleeve.
I pulled free. Said nothing. Started dragging another chair out into the hallway.
She jumped in front of me, kneeling on the seat and leaning over the back toward me. “My dad’s still out there,” she argued.
My hands clenched the armrests. I felt the words rising in my throat, pushing against my vocal cords. “Screw your dad!” I wanted to scream in her face, because seriously, what were we supposed to do? Camp out in the hallway and stand guard? Hope that her dad eventually showed up and wasn’t as bloody as the last guy?
Instead, I took a deep breath. “It’s not safe.” How could she not understand?
The other elevator dinged, and even before the doors opened we heard banging and moaning. “Oh crap,” Gregor breathed.
Beatrice took off running down the hallway, and Felipe chased after her. But I didn’t follow. I couldn’t. We had to block the elevator so more of those things didn’t get up here. I kicked the chair I’d been dragging toward Gregor and then grabbed Nicky, throwing her into the billiard room.
When the elevator doors whisked open, I wasn’t looking. I was racing toward the row of pool cues hanging on the wall.
It was the first time I’d heard the moaning up close and personal. Not filtered through the TV as background noise in a newscast or as part of the panicked stampede out of Uptown earlier.
This was the sound of something that used to be human and was no more. It was the kind of thing that could make your heart stop, your lungs constrict, your nerves shrivel.
Later the sound would become the backdrop to everyday life, the way the hiss of electronics and the buzz of traffic used to be. But not in that moment. Right then, I realized that death had a sound and it was coming for us.
“No, no no no nonononono,” I kept muttering under my breath. I’d had the winning hand here—I’d known how to keep us safe, and this wasn’t part of it.
I swept the pool cues into my arms, hating how flimsy they felt. How in the world could these protect us? Protect me? They’d snap instantaneously. No way could they inflict the damage necessary.
When I got back to the door I saw Gregor in the hallway, holding the chair up like a lion tamer, trying to push back a tall woman in a business suit. One of her sleeves was ripped off and her skirt was twisted. A gash ran the length of her face, flapping open to show her teeth and the bones around her eye. Her hair was drenched with blood. It was still wet, hanging in ropes that splashed against her neck and sent droplets flinging onto the walls and the front of Gregor’s shirt.
I could just close the door, I thought. My hand curled around the knob. Nicky and I would be safe locked in here. We could survive.
Behind me, Nicky gurgled in panic, and Gregor must have heard, because he glanced up at me. With that one look he knew. I could see it register in his eyes. I was going to abandon him.
Every man for himself, he was thinking, remembering the way I’d said it earlier.
The thing about decisions is that sometimes you don’t make them for the right reasons. Sometimes you have an idea of yourself that isn’t real. It’s an aspiration; it’s the picture you hold in your mind so that you don’t weep at all of your failings.
In my head, I was the savior. I was the strong one, the guy in charge who could keep us safe. But I knew standing there that that would never be me. Never could be me.
In reality, I was the coward. The one so terrified of dying I’d sacrifice anyone and everyone for the chance to keep my own heart beating for just another second.
With that single glance, Gregor knew this truth about me. It was written in the disappointment that shuddered his breathing with the terror-laced understanding that suddenly, he was alone in his fight.
What’s funny is that if I’d just let him die, he’d have taken that knowledge with him. I’d have been safe from his censure. I could have repositioned the mask of competence over my face and stared down the next challenge, hoping not to waver and fall again.