“Five seconds.”
I’m sprinting out for Sissy, knocking over a few of the girls on the platform. Behind me, Epap is shouting at David, ordering him to stay put. I seize Sissy’s shoulder, pull backward. But there are too many girls clinging to her.
An electronic series of pings sounds from the row of doors on the far wall. Even from where we stand, on the other end of the platform, the sound jars us. Whatever is going to happen next, it’s starting. Now. For the briefest of moments the girls’ hold on Sissy grows slack as they turn to the sound. I quickly slink my arms under Sissy’s armpits and heave backward. I feel the snap of grips broken, and then we’re crashing onto the platform floor.
On the other end of the platform, the metal doors slam open. Black shadows pour out with frightening speed. Glistening fangs, gleaming claws. Wet, wild, desirous eyes. They move in a swift blur of movement. The girls nearest to the doors are killed before they can even scream. All I hear is the wet splat of fluid against walls draped in darkness. More shadows glide out of the opened doors, swim across the walls and floor. Then the screaming starts.
Now it’s Sissy pulling me up by the back of my shirt. Before I’ve even found my footing, she’s dragging me to the elevator. The screams sharpen and rise behind us, but we know better than to turn and look. We run around clumps of girls panic-plodding toward the elevator, their faces frozen in the garish elevator light.
“Sissy! Gene!” Epap shouts. “It’s closing!” He’s standing in the doorway of the elevator, his back against one sliding door, his arms and legs pushing against the other. But it’s a losing battle. His arms are crooking and folding with the pressure of the closing doors. Inside, David is searching frantically for a control switch I already know does not exist.
The screams reach fever pitch. Knowing better, I glance back. In the wide cone of light, I see girls pouring out of the train cars in blind panic now, stumbling and falling to the ground. A few are frozen in place, cowering in the corners of the train cars, arms wrapped tightly around one another, their hands white-knuckled on the bars.
Meters from the elevator, Sissy dives first, sliding between the closing doors and into the elevator. I follow a second later, banging my shin and scraping my back as I slide under Epap through the narrowing gap. Epap, screaming with pain, can’t extricate himself; he’s too tightly bunched into a fetal position, his ankles pressed up almost against his head. Sissy, off the floor, wraps her arms around his legs even as I grab hold of his shoulders. We give each other a quick nod, then lunge backward. Epap pops inward, ankles and wrists twisting in ungainly angles.
The elevator doors slam shut.
Outside, girls smack against the elevator like birds into windows. Their hands slap against the glass with staccato panic. Their faces smush against the glass, pleading, begging, distorting as they’re pressed flat.
“We have to do something,” David whimpers. “We can’t just leave them.”
But we say nothing. Because there’s nothing we can do. There’s no way to open the doors, no way to squeeze in one more person even if we could. More girls smack against the glass on two sides, then all around, encircling us. Cassie squeezes her fingers into the gap between the closed doors in an effort to pry them open. We don’t bother stopping her. Soon enough, she gives up. She places her palms against the glass, head shaking, crying softly to herself. More bodies press up against the glass, flattening those already there.
And then the elevator starts moving. Slowly up the glass shaft.
A cry of panic sounds.
Epap puts his arm around Cassie. “You can’t do anything for them. You tried—” His voice stops.
I see the duskers. To my surprisie, despite the mass bloodshed and cacophony in the tunnel, it’s only a handful of them. I’d expected more. Their faces are blood splashed, eyes delirious with this unexpected arrival of culinary paradise. Judging from their drab uniforms, these duskers are nothing more than low-rank crew consigned to work the graveyard daytime shift. They came only to unload the train. Now they’ll have a tale to tell for the ages. But it’s not over for them. Not yet. Shielding their eyes against the light streaming from the elevator, they bound toward the girls pressing against the glass shaft.
“Close your eyes, David,” Sissy says, and he does, burrowing his head into the crook of her arm. Vicious thumps rock the elevator, signifying the duskers’ arrival. Screams erupt around us, screeching, pleading, seemingly loud enough to crack the glass. David cups his ears with shaky, pale hands.
The elevator rises. Blood splatters on the outside of the shaft like buckets splashing their contents. No matter how high we rise, the blood follows us, the screams surge up at us. Epap puts his arm around Cassie’s quaking shoulders.
Until all is silent. Blood flicks up like the dotted splatters of a paintbrush. Spread beneath us, on the platform, inside the train cars, is the specter of gruesome atrocities. The elevator rises and the arc of light thankfully withdraws from the scene of violence beneath. Darkness blankets the carnage below.
A dusker leaps up at the elevator, its pale body slapping stickily onto the outside of the glass shaft. Its face, only inches from mine, regards us coolly. Then its hold, compromised by the slick blood, slips, and the dusker slides down.
We stare up, praying for an exit. The black ceiling looms ever closer. And only when it seems like we are going to bump up against it does it suddenly slide open to expose an even darker blackness. The elevator ascends into it. And once again, we are swallowed by darkness.
Four
NOTHING HAPPENS FOR five minutes. Long enough for the air inside the sealed elevator to grow stale. And for claustrophobia to set in.
“What happens next?” Cassie whimpers. “What should we do?”
Nobody answers.
Then we start moving, sideways, a slow trundle that quickly picks up speed. We must be on some kind of track, but it’s hard to tell in the darkness. We come to a stop again, then start moving, in a different direction this time. The elevator dips and turns, the constant changes in directions and speeds disorienting. After a couple of minutes, we suddenly stop.
We wait with bated breath.
Searing light floods our vision. We clamp our eyes shut, then almost immediately pry them back open, desperate to see. The elevator sits in the center of an enclosed space, large as an auditorium. Tracks coil around us in a tangle of crisscrossing and encircling loops.
David starts kicking at the door in panic.
“Don’t,” Sissy says softly, her hand on his shoulder. “It’s not helping.”
We wait for five minutes. Breathing shallowly, trying to conserve the diminishing air.
“Sissy,” David murmurs. “I can’t breathe.”
“Try to stay calm,” she says. “There’s air enough for all of us.” She brushes his hair back, slick with sweat.
“We’re going to die in here,” he says.
“No, we’re not. Sissy’s right,” I say. “We just need to stay calm. The light is meant to annihilate duskers, not humans. Any dusker somehow able to steal into this elevator would be dead by now.”
David turns quiet, his expression pensive.
“We can be hopeful,” I say. “There wouldn’t be all this light to kill duskers here unless there are humans at the end of this ride.”
David puts his hand on the elevator door. “How much longer until we start moving again?”
“Any time now—”
The lights blink out. Just like that, we’re submerged in darkness. The elevator starts moving again, picking up speed, descending.
And then we’re slowing down. A thin vertical line of light suddenly pierces through the darkness, widening into a column as we draw closer to it. And finally we’re right up against this light, then merging into it, blinded by its brilliance, the brightness flooding the interior of the elevator. A series of loud electronic beeps jolts us. The elevator doors suddenly open. And just as quickly, they begin to close.
“Hurry!” Sissy says, pushing us all through the brightly lit opening. We tumble out of the elevator, falling to the ground.
It’s the smell that hits us first. A stench of unwashed hair, ripe armpits, the effulgence of raw sewage. A fluorescent ceiling light glares down on us.
The elevator door clicks shut behind us.
Silhouettes emerge out of the brightness in front of us, bony and angular. Their voices are male and young.
“There are five of them!”
“No way. Not five. There’s no way—”
“Count them yourself!”
“We’ve never had more than three at a time!”
“—doesn’t make sense—”
I stumble toward the voices, the silhouettes.
“Look at this one,” a young, boyish voice sounds from the dark. “Kind of old, don’t you think? Must be almost twenty. Positively ancient.”
I blink, coaxing vision into my eyes. Faces merge into view, young and uncouth, sneering. “Where are we?” I demand.
“Where are we?” A rough, caustic voice, mimicking. The group of boys starts walking away.
“Wait,” Epap says.
They ignore him, keep shuffling down the corridor.
Epap grabs the nearest one by the shoulder. “Where are we?”
The boy regards Epap coldly, then whirls his arms around dramatically. A smile touches his lips, but his eyes remain icy. “This is the Civilization! Where all your precious dreams come true!” The smile twists into a sneer as he turns to a group of boys standing nearby. “That’s what they always ask. Is this the Civilization? Without fail. Please.”
The boys break out in cruel, mocking laughter.
“Brother?” says Cassie.
And just like that, the laughter stops. One of the taller boys steps forward. He’s all bones and sharp angles. His cheekbones jut out.
“Is that you?” she asks. “Matthew, is that really you?”
His lips tremble. “Cassie?” The name comes out hoarse, as if long unspoken.