The Pull

Chapter 28

The first floor. One damn floor to go to reach exits out of the building, and this was where the rout ended. The staircase had completely collapsed, and it felt like everything was burning. We were going to die here. Ben didn't say anything, he just pushed the door leading out from the stairs open with his shoulder and gestured for me to follow, so I did and with me the train of people behind me. I held my breath, involuntarily. If the floor we were entering were to turn out to be a fire inferno that would be it. A dust of smokey air met us – easier to breathe than what we left behind us. It was, however, a place in total ruin. We entered an open space, nothing like the corridors we'd come from. Practically every wall had crashed, leaving enormous piles of cement, steel bars, electrical wires that would probably kill you if you touched them, water pipes gushing water dangerously close to those wires, plaster, broken furniture – and what had to be parts of a person. Right in front of us. Legs. Feet without shoes, in black socks. Angled in such a way I knew there was no chance of the person still being alive. I closed my eyes for a moment, fought the nausea that came in waves. Although not as chokingly thick, the smoke and dust still made it hard to breathe. Ben put Marko down gently on the floor.

"Puck. Come with me. We're going to find way out." He had something in his eyes that made me want to just fall into his arms, but instead I let go of Shiloh and followed him. His firm hand snaked into mine, holding on tight and providing both comfort and support as we navigated through the rubble.

"There." He stopped, and pointed at a window frame, the glass completely gone. I could see it too: the end of a ladder sticking up from the outside. I realised others had to have found a way out or they would all be here. Unless they were, when the walls came crashing down on them. Pushing that thought out of my head, I started walking towards the window, following in Ben's footsteps. We both leaned out the window to examine what we hoped was our way out. The ladder seemed so random, standing there. No one in sight down in that small alley it led down to. A car with a smashed window, two garbage containers. Nothing else. Not one person. It was strange. It was almost like the chaos from the street outside of the alley didn't manage to reach its way in here at all. But I could see fire trucks go by, people running, police cars, ambulances. Dust and smoke, out there too. Not in this alley. Some shattered glass on the ground, bits of concrete, but not much. Ben frowned. Then his face changed.

He saw it the same moment I did.

Three dark green duffle bags on the ground, next to the ladder. Opened. They weren't empty, but it was obvious they had contained more than they were now. I saw two things that made my heart race, my mouth dry and my eyes sting. A blue rope. Rolled up, there had to be a lot of it, because it was almost filling one of the bags up. The kind of rope you would use for mountain climbing, laced with yellow and red. And next to it: a gun.

This wasn't where people had gotten out. This was where those responsible for all of this had gotten in.

"Fuck." Ben rarely used profanities; not like I did. I had a foul mouth and made no excuses about it, but Ben. Well-mannered gentleman down to the bone. This was, however, one of those moments when no other words would suffice. He kept staring at the bags, his fists clenching the glassless window frame in a way that made his knuckles white. "Fuck."

"Do we go down here?" I couldn't stop staring at the bags either, but my sluggish brain was starting to realise this may be our only chance. I couldn't take my eyes of that rope down there. I made up my mind.

"Get the others," I said to Ben. I'll go down for the rope, we're going to need it to get Marko and Lareina down. Ben looked like he wanted to object but the thought of leaving us all here and go down himself probably felt like the worse of two horrible options in his mind, because he pressed his lips together into a thin line and nodded. Once.