The sounds of panic, death, and destruction carried on for a matter of minutes. Until suddenly, it was quiet. Too quiet. The people upstairs had to have heard that, right? We didn't have too much time to process all of that before the elevator hummed to life again. The lights kicked on overhead, the buttons lit up, and with a loud mechanical groan, the elevator descended downward. All of us crammed into one another to fight for a spot furthest away from the doors.
It came to a rest on the second floor, and, like any other day, the doors slid open. None of us moved from our molded position in the back of the elevator. All we did was look at what was waiting for us, hoping it wasn't a murderer.
Thankfully, no one was standing there. There were, however, two headless bodies lying right outside as if they were waiting to take the elevator themselves before they unfortunately lost their heads. I don't even think anyone was breathing in those first few seconds. Just a perfectly knotted together statue.
Daniel was the first to ease away from the back. He caught the door before it closed, and very slowly, he leaned his head out of the elevator to peer to the right, then the left. He leaned back in and shook his head. "No one out there." He finally said aloud. Then quickly added, "No one with a head anyway."
"Is there anyone left alive?" Randall asked.
"Only one way to find out." Daniel stepped over the couple of corpses. The rest of us followed very carefully. All of us except for Debra. She stayed glued to the back corner, clutching her ruler with white knuckles.
"I'm not going out there." She shook her head, trembling. "Whoever did this is still out there! We need to go back upstairs!"
"Oh." I said in a matter-of-fact tone. "Finally, believe me that I'm not the freaking killer?"
"I don't want to die!" She yelled.
"Easy." Daniel held his hands up, "Let's not get hysterical."
"Hysterical?" The word definitely set her off, "I'd say that I'm the only freaking person responding appropriately to our situation! We need to get out of here!"
"And what if there are people down here that need our help?" I asked her. "We can't just abandon them."
"I can!" She snapped.
"We need to stay together." Bea reminded us. "We could all go back together. Or we could all move forward together."
"This isn't a democracy!" Debra argued, "This is life and death. And I'm not rolling the dice to end up dying with you idiots! Sorry, not sorry!" She came far enough out of the corner to press the button. None of us were about to try and stop her. The doors closed, and she was heading back up. That just left the four of us.
"Honestly, I'm kind of glad she's gone." Randall announced. "I mean, a ruler? What was she going to do with that?" I wasn't going to say it out loud, but I was a little relieved, too. Now, I wouldn't have someone accusing me of murder every time I breathed.
We made our way through the lower office, past desks, and cubicles. It looked like a bomb had gone off here. Everything was thrown all around. Desks were knocked over. And then, of course, there were all the dead bodies. I looked each of them over, trying to see if I recognized any of them. But without their strongest identifying feature, their head, it was impossible to know who was who. I couldn't help but wonder how many precious minutes I had left before the killer finally got to me.
"Who could have done this?" Bea asked softly. The sadness was all over her face. These were people we knew. People we chatted with from time-to-time. They had families. They had lives. And now they had nothing.
