* * * * *
The same gale that had blown the door open buffered us out into the hallway, so strong I felt as if my clothes and hair were fighting to escape me. Ghi threw his weight into the door, struggling to shut it against the wind and releasing one of his arms from me in the effort. He made no progress until the vicious air turned on itself, changing directions and sucking the door shut with hurricane fierceness. Had Ghi not let go, it would have taken his hand off.
We were cut off from Corin and Jesse instantly, from everything in that bathroom except the sounds of raging wind and seamless wailing. We didn't stick around to listen, not for a second. With a firm grip on my hand and Abe fast at his heels, Ghi charged down the hallway and around the first corner. I started to speak up several times, to beg or to argue. I didn't want to leave Jesse, and I was afraid to be out here, where they were.
There were more, he'd said.
I didn't want to die either way, but I definitely preferred an instantaneous death-by-vacuum to an end spent feeling myself decompose.
There wasn't going to be any negotiating with Ghi, though, and so I said nothing. He looked terrified, just as terrified as I felt, but his terror seemed to fuel him forward rather than petrify him. Without hesitation, he led us down the longer hall, past the carnival of shrunken and bloated bodies, and swiftly around another corner.
"Do be a bit more cautious," Abe panted, hustling to keep up. "Hollows could be anywhere."
Ghi swallowed. "Then I'll give them something worth being here for." He tightened his already painful grip on my hand and kept walking, rightly sensing that if we stopped for one second, then some of us wouldn't be easily persuaded to move again.
The walls of the long corridor rang with our footsteps and the horrible sounds we'd left behind. A sustained rumble from elsewhere began to pull our attention, growing louder the farther we went. I wondered fleetingly if it was storming outside, if we were getting close to the actual exit. Without warning, the steady sound of Abe's steps dropped out of our cadence. He'd paused at a thick steel door with a tiny, sooty window.
"Just a minute," he said.
Ghi halted, pivoting me around with him.
"Stairwell," said Abe. He pressed his hand against the door to push it open, then immediately pulled away, drawing in a sharp breath.
"What is it?" Ghi let go of me and stepped toward him.
Abe wrung his hand, grimacing. "Door's hot," he croaked.
Ghi spun to the door and held a hand up close to it. Abe wasn't exaggerating. The door was hot. The surface itself rippled with heat, enough to be felt from a foot away. Without a doubt, there was one serious fire going on inside that stairwell. Khan could very well be in there, possibly in a state similar to Jesse's. Which was a great reason to get the hell away, in my opinion, but Ghi couldn't be moved.
Withdrawing his hand into the sleeve of his sweatshirt―and into the two or three sweaters underneath―he gripped the door handle, turned it, and pushed. The door didn't budge, didn't even wiggle. He took a step back and kicked it. Once, twice, a half dozen times. Sharp, diagonal kicks with his whole body behind them, the way the police do it on TV. The door remained fixed in its frame. Ghi's hands slid into his hair and he leaned back against the wall, avoiding our eyes. If Khan and Jackson were in there, then there was nothing he could do for them.
"I'm sorry," I said. It was a dumb, meaningless thing to say. It wasn't my fault I'd wound up in that place. It wasn't my fault they'd been reckless enough to come after me. But they had, and so I had to say something.
Ghi looked at me. Abe and I were still right there, still alive. He dropped his hands and stepped past me.
"Let's hurry," he said.
He didn't grab my hand and he didn't have to. When he started walking, Abe and I were right behind him. We left behind the burning stairwell and whatever―whoever―was trapped inside it.
A distant, escalating howl rang out. Jesse, without a doubt. I pushed myself to walk faster, choking back a rush of anguished shame. Just keep walking, was my disgusted, numbed mantra. Just keep walking. A wide set of elevator doors loomed ahead at the corridor's end, where another main hallway started. I don't know if taking that elevator became Abe's idea the moment he saw it, or if he was still trusting Ghi with the original exit plan.
It was about to be the only option we had, regardless.
The sound was incredible. I thought it was an explosion of some kind. A deep, powerful booming, without prelude and without end. The sound of it drowned out the roar of the fire. It was louder than the distant howling wind, louder than Jesse, and growing louder still. I couldn't have been more wrong. It was not an explosion.
Ghi stopped and spun around, and we all froze there, straining to comprehend the immense white noise and the crashing, breaking chorus that accompanied it. The linoleum trembled beneath our feet.
Whatever it was, it was coming.
Abe scrambled to the elevator and gave the "UP" button a good slap, half sure that nothing would happen. To our complete and grateful astonishment, however, the doors slid shakily open. I dove into the rickety elevator without a second thought. Without a first thought, for that matter.
"Ghi ...," Abe said, for once using a senior tone. He crossed the threshold after me and held the door open.
Ghi hadn't moved. Still halfway down the hallway, he was a heartbeat away from running back to that bathroom, however useless it would have been. I know he was. But Ghi understood what had happened back there. He understood what was coming, who was coming, a split second before he saw it.
He turned and ran to us, to the elevator, as fast as he could.
Behind him, all the way down at the far end of the corridor, a tidal wave crashed into the wall.
Floor to ceiling, the massive swell of water rolled back into itself, gathering strength, and then plunged forward down the hall, driven by the inexhaustible torrent behind it. Corin had not survived Jesse's death. And, like Jesse, his body now had no end―only places to flow, things to smash.
Things like us.
Ghi smacked into the back of the elevator, bounced, turned, searching frantically. He lunged for the control panel and pushed the "close door" button as we watched the thousands of tons of water building, racing toward us. "Come on! Come on!" he screamed, pushing repeatedly, his finger tapping so fast it blurred.
The wave undulated upwards and slapped against the ceiling lights, which burst in pops and fizzes as more water rolled forward underneath. Forty yards. Twenty yards.
Ten yards. The elevator doors slid to a close with a tired sound, shutting out the sight, the monstrous fluid wall. There was a hum, a tug. There was upward movement for a fraction of a second. We looked at one another, hopeful that we had made it, knowing that we had not.
Then the elevator quaked and plummeted under the impact.
C H A P T E R 2 1
Vessel, Book I: The Advent Page 62
