Bad Glass

quick trot.

We found a second staircase on the far side of the building. The door was propped open with another cinder block brick, and there was another eye painted on its metal surface. But this eye was different from the first: this eye was closed, eyelashes hanging down from the shut lid like a line of commas.

I pulled Taylor through the door and started scrambling down the stairs. We got a single floor down before we found our way blocked. The concrete steps beneath the top-floor landing had fallen away, clogging the shaft ten feet down. I was in such a rush, I would have fallen into the gap if Taylor hadn’t grabbed my shoulder and pulled me to a stop. The space was illuminated by light from the open doorway above our heads, but there was absolutely no indication of what had caused the collapse. Time, maybe. Or poor construction.

“What now?” Taylor asked in a trembling whisper.

I shook my head and pushed my way through the door at our side.

I had to find another way down.

Back to the other stairwell, maybe. A bedsheet rope through a window on the fifth floor. Anything to get us out of here, anything to get us back down to the street and back home.

I was expecting more hospital rooms up here on the top floor—gurneys and crash carts, wheelchairs and nurses’ stations—but the hallway on the other side of the door was something different. Skylights illuminated its length. It was long and carpeted—speckled gray—and it no longer smelled anything like a hospital. It was in good repair. The walls were paneled wood, decorated with respectfully spaced pieces of framed art. Abstract paintings in red and gray and black, violent slashes and speckles of pigment.

There were doors on the right-hand side of the corridor. All of them were closed except for one, far down its length. Light spilled from this distant portal, tinting the carpet a pinkish gray. I tried the nearest door and found it locked.

There was nothing for us here. Nothing but the door in the distance. And the promise of a stairwell, maybe, back on the other side of the building.

Taylor caught my hand, and I met her eyes. She nodded, urging me on. We started down the corridor, breaking into a quick jog.

The walls sped past: wood paneling, shut doors, abstract art. I could feel my eyes going wide with adrenaline-fueled frustration. I just wanted this over—the corridor, the hospital, the city. Everything. There was nothing here but confusion and pain. And friends—run through with limbs, consumed by wolves, eaten by ghosts, pushed over the edge by memory and guilt. I wanted none of it. I was done.

No documenting. No shutter flash in the dark. No eye. No unblinking “truth.”

I would have kept running, but Taylor pulled me to a stop. I was panting loudly. She was crying, tears streaming down her cheeks as she doubled over, trying to catch her breath in the middle of the carpeted hallway.

The open door was at our side.

We were here. We’d reached the boardroom.

It was a long room, and it ended in a wall of picture windows. There was a table stretching nearly its entire length—sturdy hard wood, black as night. In the ways of corporate excess, I’m sure the table had cost more than my entire education.

The light was pink, but the view beyond the window was red.

There were large chairs along both sides of the table, but they were all empty. Twenty chairs. I counted them. One of the chairs had been overturned, as if someone had stood up too fast, knocking it to the floor. There were pieces of paper scattered across the table, stacks in front of each skewed chair. I stepped up to the table and passed my hand over the nearest pile. There was nothing printed there. Just blank sheets of paper: white, expressionless.

Is this Cob Gilles’s boardroom? I wondered. Is this what he found when he and the Poet climbed up from the underworld? He’d described a bright golden light and people seated at every chair … waiting. Waiting for something to happen.

Gone now. The room was empty, abandoned.

I glanced back at Taylor. She was standing in the doorway. She looked confused.

“I thought …” she said, trailing off for a long moment. “I thought I heard …” And then nothing. Just more confusion on her face.

She stepped into the room and started toward the window, trailing her hand along the back of the empty chairs.

I turned and noticed graffiti on the wall, just inside the door:

        I was here

all alone.

The Poet. Her words, skewed diagonally across the wall. I couldn’t tell if it was one thought or two unrelated statements. For some reason, it didn’t seem right here, her words. The sentiment seemed unutterably depressing, and I wanted to erase it. I looked around for something to gouge it from the wall, but there was nothing. Just an empty boardroom.

Taylor was standing at the window now. Her hands were raised up at her sides, pressed flat against the glass. She was resting her head there, her forehead pressed against its surface. As I watched, her shoulders dropped, and her entire frame suddenly slumped down.

It was a pose of pure exhaustion. Sudden surrender, spelled out in a single moment.

Without thought, I lifted the camera to my eye and took a picture.

I was a hypocrite. And I knew it. No matter what I told myself, no matter how many times I tried to give it up, the instinct would always be there—the instinct to raise the camera and take the shot.

“There’s nothing out there,” Taylor said, still facing the city on the other side of the window. “I can’t see a thing.”

She was silent for a time. I took another picture of her back, her slumped shoulders.

“Nothing,” she repeated, “and there’s nothing in here. Just red destruction every way we look. And it’ll be the same, eventually, outside the city. There’s no running from this. No escape.” She paused. “How do I know that?” she asked, sounding genuinely confused.

Then she turned and started toward me. Through the camera’s viewfinder, she looked tiny, impossibly far away. I took one more picture and lowered the camera to my chest.

And she kept coming.

“Hold me, Dean,” she said. She stepped right up against my body, lowering her head against my shoulder.

Surprised, I closed my arms around her back. She moved even closer, as close to me as she could get, with the camera still between us. I stepped away for a moment and spun the Canon around my neck, so that it was resting against my back and there was nothing at all separating our bodies. And I pulled her tight. I could feel her shivering against me, and she grasped me even harder, seeking comfort, seeking warmth. Seeking me.

She tilted her head back, offering me her lips.

And I kissed her.

This was the closest we ever got—this moment—our lips locked, our bodies pressed together— or no, no, it wasn’t. And for a time everything was right. I forgot about the city. I forgot about Weasel and Sabine and Amanda and Mac and Danny and Charlie and Floyd. I forgot about the world crumbling down around us, the slowing speed of light, the mushrooms and the spores—everything. It was just the two of us. And nothing else existed. We formed our own universe, and here, in our universe, everything made sense.

Then she tried to pull back.

And she couldn’t.

She made a sound deep in her throat, and I felt pressure pulling my lips away from my teeth. And then she was closer, getting closer. Pressure against my chin, then she was pulling back again; I could feel it in the bones of my jaw. Her hands pulled away from my back, and she gripped my shoulders, her fingers digging in, hard, scared. And this time she didn’t pull away. I opened my eyes and stared deep into hers.

They were wide with terror.