“But how does that work? ” Sasha asked.
“Like a toaster oven, ” I said, meaning who knows?
Doogie pressed his thumb against G and kept it there. We didn’t want the
door to open on B-1. B for bedlam. B for bad news. B for be prepared to
die squishily.
Aaron Stuart said, “Mr. Snow? ” I took a deep breath, “Yes? ”
“If Mr. Halloway didn’t die, then whose blood is on your hands?
” I looked at my hands. They were sticky-damp with Bobby’s blood, which
had gotten on them when I’d dragged his body into the elevator.
“Weird, ” I admitted.
Wendy Dulcinea said, “If the body went poof, why didn’t the blood on
your hands go poof? ” My mouth was too dry, my tongue too thick, and my
throat too tight to allow me to answer her.
The shuddering elevator briefly caught on something in the shaft, tore
loose with a ripping-metal sound, and then we groaned to B-1.
Where we stopped.
Doogie leaned on close door and on the button for the ground floor.
We didn’t ascend any farther.
The doors slid inexorably open. Heat, humidity, and that fetid stench
rolled over us, and I expected the vigorous alien vegetation to grow
into the cab and overwhelm us with explosive force.
In our slice of time, we’d risen one level, but William Hodgson was
still out there in never land, where we had left him. Pointing at us.
The man beyond Hodgsonlumley, according to his helmet also turned to look
at us.
Shrieking, something flew out of that baleful sky, among the black
trees, a creature with glossy black wings and whiplike tail, with the
muscular, scaly limbs of a lizard, as if a gargoyle had torn itself
loose of the stone high on an ancient Gothic cathedral and had taken
flight. As it swooped down on Lumley, it appeared to spit out a stream
of objects, which looked like large peach pits but were something
deadlier, something no doubt full of frenzied life. Lumley twitched and
jerked as though he had been hit by machine-gun fire, and several
perfectly round holes appeared in his spacesuit, like those we had seen
in poor damn Hodgson’s suit in the egg room the previous night.
Lumley screamed as though he were being eaten alive, and Hodgson
stumbled backward in terror, away from us.
The elevator doors began to close, but the flying thing abruptly changed
directions, streaking straight toward us.
As the doors bumped shut, hard objects rattled against them, and a
series of dimples appeared in the steel, as if it had been hit by
bullets with almost enough punch to penetrate to the interior of the
cab.
Sasha’s face was talcum white.
Mine must have been whiter still, to match my name.
Even Orson seemed to have gone a paler shade of black.
We ascended toward the ground floor through crashes of thunder, the
grinding rumble of steel wheels on steel track, harsh whistles, shrieks,
and the throbbing electronic hum, but in spite of all those sounds of
worlds colliding, we also heard another noise, which was more intimate,
more terrifying. Something was on the roof of the elevator cab.
Crawling, slithering.
It could have been nothing but a loose cable, which might have explained
our quaking, jerky progress toward the ground floor. But it wasn’t a
loose cable. That was wishful thinking. This thing was alive.
Alive and purposeful.
I couldn’t imagine how anything could have gotten into the shaft with us
after the doors had shut, unless the intermingling of these two
realities was nearly complete. In which case, at any moment, might not
the thing on the roof pass through the ceiling and be among us, like a
ghost passing through a wall?
Doogie remained focused on the indicator board above the doors, but the
rest of us animals, kids, and adults turned our faces up toward the
menacing sounds.
In the center of the ceiling was an escape hatch. A way out. A way in.
Borrowing the Uzi from Doogie once more, I aimed at the ceiling.
Sasha also covered the trapdoor with her shotgun.
I wasn’t optimistic about the effectiveness of gunfire. Unless I was