rolling it around in the hot, claustrophobic air. Then she arched her back and reached for the next board.
Her hand found something else. Something furry and bony.
A dead mouse in a trap.
Jessie Lee screamed. She couldn’t help herself. Mice freaked her out. She pulled her hand away so fast that her elbow banged into some overhanging support beam. This brought fresh tears to her eyes and a tingling sensation that felt like she’d licked her fingers and stuck them in an electrical outlet.
She froze, squeezing her eyes shut, holding her breath, waiting to see if her outburst had been heard.
Ten seconds passed.
Twenty.
She was met with only silence.
The tingling passed, and Jessie Lee brought the mouse hand back and wiped it on her jeans. She could smell the rot on her fingers—or perhaps she only imagined it—and her tongue curled in her mouth and she gagged. She maneuvered two feet sideways so she’d avoid the mouse trap and then continued forward.
After three more boards she heard something. A man’s voice, faint, coming from below. She thought it said,
Jessie Lee eased her body down, resting her chest on a joist. It hurt her boobs and made it hard to breathe, but the board took her weight and she lowered her hands to pull back a ceiling tile below her. She lifted it a centimeter, pushed it to the side, and stared. Her view revealed nothing but tile floor and empty lockers.
“I don’t know.”
Merv’s voice, and it sounded like he was crying.
Jessie Lee finessed the tile back into place, did a push-up to get onto all fours, and crawled two more boards forward.
Beneath her, Merv screamed.
The sweat made Jessie Lee’s long blond hair cling to her face in spaghetti strands, and she was having a hard time keeping her arms from shaking. Partly from exertion. Mostly from fear. Again she dropped down to chest level and peered through a crack.
This time she saw Merv, sitting in a chair. His chest was covered with blood, and blood drenched the floor around his feet. Behind him, she saw a pair of legs walk past. Legs dressed in black. The face was out of view, but she guessed it was Taylor.
“Where’s Warren Streng?” Taylor said.
Merv whimpered. The strong, self-assured man she’d seen only a few minutes ago was gone. Merv had become a frightened shell of himself.
Taylor touched Merv with a small black object, which made a cracking sound. A stun gun. Merv convulsed, moaning.
Jessie Lee knew she had to reach her cell phone and take a picture of this. She could show it to the town, and they’d do something. But she trembled so badly she feared losing her balance and falling through the tiles. She couldn’t take her hands off the joist.
Below her, Taylor pulled Merv’s head back, exposing his throat. His other hand held a knife.
The motion Taylor used wasn’t slitting. It was gouging. Like digging into a peach to remove the pit.
Jessie Lee sucked in both of her lips and bit down to keep from crying out. She watched Merv shake and twitch and bleed an ungodly amount, eventually falling out of his chair and flopping around on the floor like a fish. His palms slapped at the bloody tile, sending droplets skyward, misting Jessie Lee’s face. Slowly, eventually, his horrible gyrations slowed down, and he rolled onto his back, the hole in his throat making gagging sounds. He stared upward, locking eyes with Jessie Lee. Then his mouth opened as if to say something.
No words came, though a low gurgle came through the hole in his throat. Then Taylor grabbed his ankles and began to tug him away. Jessie Lee needed to take the picture before he went out of view. Shaking, she reached a hand behind her, seeking the purse strapped to her shoulder, and her hand brushed something sitting on the joist.
Jessie Lee heard a loud
She had stuck her fingers in a mouse trap.
Without being able to stop it, she screamed. And as the sound left her lips, Jessie Lee Sloan realized she was as good as dead.
Fran watched, impotent, as Josh fired twice more at the door between her and her son. The bullets pinged off without even making a dent in the steel.
The smoke had gotten so thick that every breath provoked coughing. The door was too hot to touch, and the temperature around them had risen to the point where the air shimmered at their feet. It seemed as if every bit of moisture in Fran’s body had been baked away. But she still picked up the sledgehammer, still pushed Josh aside, and still swung at the doorknob with everything she had.
The door didn’t open.
Josh said something to her, but she couldn’t understand him above the roar of the flames surrounding them. He pried the sledge out of her grasp, eased her back, and swung it. But not at the door; Josh aimed for the door frame, next to the deadbolt.
The wood gave, and the head of the sledgehammer made a chip in the wall. Josh repeated the process. Fran had to get down on her knees to breathe—the last of the good air formed a pocket below waist level. Josh continued to stand, continued to hammer. Fran kept her eyes glued to the doorjamb, saw it splinter away, and then the dull thud of striking wood was replaced by the clang of metal on metal.
Josh fell to his knees next to her, coughing.
“… forced,” he croaked.
“What?”
“The doorway … it’s reinforced. We can’t get in this way.”
Movement, behind them. Erwin knelt next to Fran, put a hand on her shoulder.
“We have to get out of here! The structure is giving out!”
“I’m not leaving my son!”
Erwin and Josh exchanged a glance. Then they each grabbed an arm and dragged Fran out of the house.
Fran kicked. She screamed. She locked her mouth onto Josh’s arm and bit him. But they manhandled her out the front door and onto the lawn, through puddles of raw sewage. Fran felt like she was made of glass and about to shatter.
“DUNCAN!” She continued to fight, but they wouldn’t let her go. “Please! I have to get—”
And that’s when the house collapsed.
Sweat soaked Duncan’s hair and ran down his face. The oversized T-shirt stuck to him like he’d worn it swimming. He’d never been this hot before. Hot and thirsty. His tongue felt really big.
“I want something to drink,” he said to Mrs. Teller.
“I’m sorry, Duncan. I don’t think there’s anything left.”
Two of the four walls of shelves were burning, along with the supplies on the shelves. The brightness of the flames could be seen through the thick smoke, which had almost filled the room.
Duncan coughed, patted Woof on the head.
“It’s going to be okay, boy,” he said.
But Duncan knew it wasn’t going to be okay. The stairs were on fire. Mom and Josh probably couldn’t get to them. He still hoped that they would. Maybe Josh had a fireproof suit. Maybe he had a fire truck with a big hose that would put out the flames really fast.
Duncan wiped his face. The heat was so bad that it was starting to hurt his skin, like sunburn. His head felt funny, too, like he just woke up and was still groggy.
“We’re not going to burn,” Mrs. Teller said.
Duncan looked at her, squinting through his red-rimmed eyes. Did she know how to escape? He recalled Bernie’s lecture, about how bad it hurt to get burned. He didn’t want to burn to death. He didn’t want to get burned at all, not even a little bit.
