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Morris looked down at his b.l.o.o.d.y mess of a foot. He pressed it down harder — the woman stopped fighting. She drew in wet, broken hisses of air.

The man looked back to Steve, hope blazing in his wide eyes. “Can I kill her? She was always b.i.t.c.hing about everything. Like the G.o.dd.a.m.n toilet seat. Like she’s such a helpless princess she can’t reach a finger out and tip the G.o.dd.a.m.n thing forward? Can I kill her? Can I?”

Steve stepped closer and looked down at the woman. Her wide eyes pleaded for help. In those eyes, Steve saw fear. She was afraid, because she wasn’t him, and he wasn’t her. She was human.

“Kill her,” Steve said.

Morris pumped a fist like he’d just scored a goal in hockey.

“f.u.c.k yeah!” He screamed down at his wife. “You shoulda been nicer to me, you nagging b.i.t.c.h! You shoulda been nicer!”

He raised the b.l.o.o.d.y foot, then slammed it back down again heel-first into her throat. She grunted. She stiffened. Her arms and legs twitched.

Morris stomped again and again. Steve watched.

The woman stopped moving. Wide, dead eyes stared out. Her throat was a real mess.

Steve took off his laptop bags, set them on the floor.

“Carry those,” he said. “We have to find more friends. And after that, I think we need to find a place for you to lie down.” Steve reached out, his fingertips tracing the firm outline of the hard, bluish triangle on the man’s chest.

“Tomorrow, I think,” Steve said. “Tomorrow, something wonderful happens to you.”

THE BOILER ROOM

Cooper moved down the concrete-and-metal stairwell. He kept one hand on the rough, unfinished walls. In the other, he carried Jeff’s coat.

He moved slowly. He didn’t want to make any noise, because every time he pa.s.sed a landing he heard plenty of noise coming from beyond the heavy, reddish-brown metal doors.

Yelling. Shouting. Screams of rage. Screams of pain. And laughter: the kind of laughter only insane people made.

Three times he’d heard another kind of sound, a sound that d.a.m.n near made him p.i.s.s his pants. Twice from below and once from above, he’d heard the sound of a metal door opening and slamming against a landing wall, the echoing of a laughing/​screaming/​giggling/​yelling man or woman running into the stairwell. Cooper had held his breath, waiting for them to come his way, but all three times he’d been lucky and they’d gone in the opposite direction.

He reached the first floor. Past the heavy fire door, he heard more noise than he’d heard on any floor before it. He briefly thought about opening the door and taking a peek, but a line from some old book popped into his head — when you look into the void, the void looks back into you, or something like that.

All that mattered right now was tracking down his friend. Together, they would find a place to hide until the cops or the National Guard or whatever came to make everything safe again.