Afraid

made. She reached ahead of her, sticking her fingers around a square of ceiling tile, and it tore away without supporting her weight.

She lifted her other leg—the one that wasn’t caught—but that put too much weight on her trapped knee, causing instant pain.

The creaking got closer and all she could do was hang there, like a pinata waiting for the stick. She tried to scream, but her breath came in shallow pants and all she managed were squeaks.

Control yourself, she thought. Stop panicking. If you scream, you can save yourself. Someone in the gym will come and investigate. Just fill your lungs with air.

She tried. She tried harder than anything she’d ever attempted in her twenty-eight years of life. But every time she sucked in a bit of air she saw someone else in the mound of death, someone else she recognized, and the oxygen whooshed out of her.

If she couldn’t pull herself up, and couldn’t scream, there was one more possibility for escape.

Not wanting to, but not having any choice, Jessie Lee reached out for her best friend, Mandy, atop the pile. She didn’t look at her friend’s face, frozen in wild-eyed terror. She didn’t look at her throat, which had a cut so deep you could see inside of it. Jessie Lee concentrated on Mandy’s hand. The same hand she held when they spied on the boys taking showers so long ago, giggling madly.

Mandy’s fingers splayed out, as if expecting to be given something. Jessie Lee stretched, but she was inches away from touching them. She tried to swing by her knees, remembering the school-yard trick known as the penny drop. The first pass, she barely touched Mandy’s finger. The second time, she grasped her hand but couldn’t hold on.

Third time was the charm. Jessie Lee entangled her fingers in Mandy’s, then she brought her other hand around and locked on to her friend’s wrist.

Dear God, she’s still warm.

Jessie Lee reflexively let go, panicked to the point of hysterics. This couldn’t be happening. Less than an hour ago she’d been planning her wedding, thinking about the extra things she could do with the lottery money. And now she hung upside down over a stack of her dead friends and neighbors while a psycho tried to kill her.

She made fists and pounded her thighs several times, trying to focus, trying to force courage. Then she began to rock back and forth again. This time when she caught Mandy’s hand she held on and pulled. She pulled for all she was worth.

But instead of freeing herself, all Jessie Lee did was drag Mandy off of her roost. Her friend slid across the corpse beneath her and then headed face-first down the pile. Jessie Lee tried to hold on, but the strain on her knees became too great, and then Mandy tumbled to the floor. She landed in the pool of blood, arms and legs akimbo, her eyes staring up at Jessie Lee accusingly.

Jessie Lee again tried to scream, but her lungs wouldn’t cooperate.

Not even when Taylor began to bite her knee.

Fran kicked Erwin in the stomach and he released her arm, which allowed her to also twist away from Josh and run back to the blazing house.

The second floor had collapsed onto the first, blockading the doorway with smoking debris. But Duncan was still alive. She felt it. All she had to do was get to him.

Fran ran through grass wet with sewage, around the side of the house, eyes scanning for window wells. She found one and hurried over. It had been filled in with concrete.

Damn Mr. Teller, the paranoid lunatic. Toward the end of his life he’d lapsed into dementia, thinking people were out to get him. Mrs. Teller had mentioned the bomb shelter he’d built in the basement, but Fran had never asked for a tour. She should have. What if there wasn’t any other way in?

She ran to the back of the house, saw another concrete plug, and swore. Maybe they could dig, break through the walls …

There! A few feet away from the filled-in window well. A metal grating, about half the size of a manhole cover, set into the foundation at ground level. Smoke billowed out. Fran slid across the grass on her knees and banged on it. The square duct was covered with wire mesh, bolted to the concrete.

“DUNCAN! DUNCAN, CAN YOU HEAR ME!”

Josh came up next to her, then Erwin.

“Must be the ventilation for the shelter,” Josh said. “Stand back.”

He carried the sledgehammer Fran had dropped. Fran leaned away, and Josh made easy work of the grating with two big swings. Fran pried it away, then stuck her head into the opening.

“DUNCAN!”

Smoke poked at her eyes, but the heat was bearable. She could crawl down. Fran shoved one arm in, alongside her head. But she couldn’t get her second shoulder through no matter how hard she pushed. The hole just wasn’t big enough.

“Mom!” Duncan called, faint but frantic.

“Duncan!” Fran stretched, splaying out her fingers as if she could touch his voice.

“Mom! There’s something wrong with Mrs. Teller!”

The smoke, Fran thought. Oh, God, no, the smoke.

Then came the thundering BOOM of a gunshot.

Duncan jumped to the side just before Mrs. Teller fired the shotgun at him. It was the loudest noise Duncan had ever heard in his whole life, making his ears hum. The pellets hit the concrete floor, and one of them bounced off and hit Duncan in his leg. It stung, like someone had slapped him hard. He looked and saw some blood on his calf.

Then Duncan heard the sound of another shell being racked. Mrs. Teller walked through the smoke, looking very calm except for her eyes, where black soot clung to the tears on her face. She pointed the gun at his head.

“Mrs. Teller! No!”

“I’m so, so sorry, Duncan. It’s time.”

Duncan’s voice cracked. “Time for what?”

“Time for us to go to heaven, Duncan. It will be okay. I promise. It won’t hurt at all. And we’ll see Mr. Teller there, and we’ll all bake cookies.”

Duncan’s hand darted up and knocked the gun to the side, then he crawled away from her as fast as he could, hiding in the smoke.

The shotgun BOOMED.

“I won’t let us burn, Duncan.”

Duncan couldn’t see her through the smoke, and her voice seemed to be coming from everywhere at once. He hugged his knees and tried to make himself smaller. Why were all of these bad things happening? Where were Mom and Josh?

“Please, Duncan,” Mrs. Teller said. “It’s better this way.”

The shotgun fired, to his left. A large box of toilet paper fell off the shelf and onto the floor, spilling its contents. Woof continued to bark, then growled deep.

“Woof, come!” Duncan yelled, as scared for Woof as he was for himself.

His dog kept snarling. It was too smoky to see what was going on. Duncan thought he heard Mom calling him again, but he couldn’t tell. The flames were crackling really loud, and Woof was barking at the fire like it was the neighbor’s cat. Three of the four shelves were burning, and the smoke was so bad that every breath hurt.

Then the shotgun BOOMED again, and Woof was silent.

Duncan’s heart ached, but he didn’t cry—maybe he was finally all out of tears. More than ever he wanted Mom, wanted to give her a huge hug. She’d protect him. She’d make it better.

But Mom wasn’t here.

That man, Bernie, had scared Duncan. But he was even more scared now, of Mrs. Teller. She was supposed to be looking after him. How could she do this? Duncan buried his face in his hands, his whole body shaking, wishing none of this was happening, wishing it was a dream.

Then Woof barked.