Arby said, “It’s becoming a cube.”
Thorne pushed the big glass-walled refrigerator in front of the door. The raptor slammed against the metal, rattling the cans inside.
“Where are the guns?” Levine said.
“Sarah has three in her car.”
“Great.” At the windows, some of the bars were now so deeply dented that they broke the glass. Along the right-hand wall, the wood was splintering, tearing open big gaps.
“We have to get out of here,” Levine shouted at Kelly. “We have to find a way!” He ran to the rear of the store, to the bathrooms. But a moment later he returned. “They’re back there, too!”
It was happening fast, all around them.
On the screen, she now saw a rotatlng cube, turning in space. Kelly didn’t know how to stop it.
“Come on, Kel,” Arby said, peering at her through swollen eyes. “You can do it. Concentrate. Come on.”
Everyone in the room was shouting. Kelly stared at the cube on the screen, feeling hopeless and lost. She didn’t know what she was doing any more. She didn’t know why she was there. She didn’t know what the point of anything was. Why wasn’t Sarah here?
Standing beside her, Arby said, “Come on. Do the icons one at a time, Kel. You can do it. Come on. Stay with it. Focus.”
But she couldn’t focus. She couldn’t click on the icons, they were rotating too fast on the screen. There must be parallel processors to handle all the graphics. She just stared at it. She found herself thinking of all sorts of things – thoughts that just came unbidden into her mind.
The cord under the desk.
Hard-wired.
Lots of graphics.
Sarah talking to her in the trailer.
“Come on, Kel. You have to do this now. Find a way out.”
In the trailer, Sarah said: Most of what people tell you will be wrong”
It’s important, Kel,” Arby said. He was trembling as he stood beside her. She knew he concentrated on computers as a way to block things out. As a way to –
The wall splintered wide, an eight-inch plank cracking inward, and a raptor stuck his head through, snarling, snapping his jaws.
She kept thinking of the cord under the desk. The cord under the desk. Her legs had kicked the cord under the desk.
The cord under the desk.
Arby said, “It’s important.”
And then it hit her.
“No,” she said to him, “It’s not important,” And she dropped off the seat, crawling down under the desk to look.
“What are you doing?” Arby screamed.
But already Kelly had her answer. She saw the cable from the computer going down into the floor, through a neat hole. She saw a seam in the wood. Her fingers scrabbled at the floor, pulling at it. And suddenly the panel came away in her hands. She looked down. Darkness.
Yes.
There was a crawlspace. No, more. A tunnel.
She shouted, “Here!”
The refrigerator fell forward. The raptors crashed through the front door. From the sides, other animals tore through the walls, knocking over the display cases. The raptors sprang into the room, snarling and ducking. They found the bundle of Arby’s wet clothes and snapped at them, ripping them apart in fury.
They moved quickly, hunting.
But the people were gone.
Escape
Kelly was in the lead, holding a flashlight. They moved, single file, along damp concrete walls. They were in a tunnel four feet square, with flat metal racks of cables along the left side. Water and gas pipes ran near the ceiling. The tunnel smelled moldy. She heard the squeak of rats.
They came to a Y-junction. She looked both ways. To the right was a long straight passageway, going into darkness. It probably led to the laboratory, she thought. To the left was a much shorter section of tunnel, with stairs at the end.
She went left.
She crawled up through a narrow concrete shaft, and pushed open a wooden trapdoor at the top. She found herself in a small utility building, surrounded by cables and rusted pipes. Sunlight streamed in through broken windows. The others climbed up beside her.
She looked out the window, and saw Sarah Harding driving down the hill toward them.