A Rib Cage

Part Three

The four children walked out of the door of their room with their snacks.

The 8th floor hall was devoid of life. The children stood alone with the foreboding dark doors and the faint humming noise of the air vents that lined the walls. Enna walked down the hallway with her siblings, almost afraid to make noise. The sound of their shoes on the metal floors seemed as loud as thunder. Willow flashed a reassuring smile at Enna. At the other end of the hall stood two figures all dressed in white, muttering softly to each other.

"Do you think they're medics of some kind?" Willow asked to nobody in particular.

"I don't know, but aren't they the same ones we saw when we came in?" Robin replied.

"But then there were a whole bunch of them, now there are only two," Enna pointed out.

"Who cares?" asked Alva. The whole group fell quiet as they reached the end of the hall. As they passed the people in white uniforms, Enna noticed that one of them was a young girl, maybe a little older than Alva and Robin.

"I wonder who that was," Enna thought aloud, as the four children entered the elevator. Enna thought she had seen the girl glance at her as the doors were closing.

"Okay, so are we going down to the kitchens first?" asked Alva

"Yeah, I guess so," replied Willow. She pushed the button for floor 4 on the small keypad by the door.

The elevator started to descend through the body of the Crawler. As the elevator slowed, the group heard a small ding. The elevator doors opened, revealing another long hallway, this one bustling with people. The doors that lined the hall were ajar and spread further apart than those upstairs.

"C'mon," said Alva, walking out of the elevator and down the hallway. "Make a left here," he muttered as they rounded a corner, staring at the map.

"I think we're there," said Alva, looking up at a pair of tall doors, also metal, but painted brown to look like wood.

"You think?" Willow said sarcastically, looking at the doors in front of them.