Page 68 of Colin Gets Promoted and Dooms the World
“You two supervise the evacuation. I’m going to sever the connection between the boardroom and Gehenna so it can’t get back inside.” Ms.Crenshaw turned as she spoke and her dark eyes fastened on me. “You’re still here, Colin. Good. I need you.”
The room swiftly emptied of everyone but me and my boss. She paused for a moment, staring out into Hell, then started for the doorway. I stumbled along behind her on legs that felt as heavy as concrete. Delicate porcelain coffee cups crunched under my shoes and the pages of an abandoned notebook rippled wildly in the wind as I followed Ms.Crenshaw out into the hallway, its polished stone floor gleaming darkly.
“Don’t look down,” she instructed. Reflexively, I started to do exactly that when her voice stopped me, sharply imperative. “Don’t, I said. Every reflective surface is swarming with haunts now, and if you meet their gaze, you’re dead.”
Terrified, I kept my eyes fixed on her and tried not to imagine that I was standing on paper-thin ice over waters teeming with sharks. “Oh god oh god oh god,” I mumbled.
“God has nothing to do with this.” Her hand snaked out and grabbed my wrist, pushing up the sleeve of my cardigan. “Now hold still. I need blood.” A thin blade appeared from somewhere and, before I could react, she made a shallow slice across my wrist. When I tried to pull back, her grip only tightened. Deep red blood welled up from the vein she’d cut.
“What are you doing?” I yelled. “Thathurts!”
The blade disappeared up her sleeve and she started massaging my forearm, forcing more blood to run from my wrist in thick rivulets. Then she cupped a hand under my arm and waited as my blood pooled in her palm. I struggled to get away but her fingers clamped down even harder, bruising my skin. “Don’t move!” she snapped, giving my wrist a hard shake. “We have mere moments before it finds a way to climb back into that room and I can’t afford to weaken myself by using my own blood, so stand still and let me do this.”
The possibility of The-One-Who-Hungers pulling its way over the edge of the broken window and back into the building was so terrifying that I froze, unable to look away from the far wall of the boardroom and the hellish view beyond. Ms.Crenshaw muttered unfamiliar words, an incessant stream of syllables that ended when she lifted her hand and flung a spatter of my blood against the edges of the doorframe. I felt rather than heard a dullsnapas the skies of Hell lurched sickeningly in multiple directions at once, and I closed my eyes against the nauseating sensation. When I opened them again, the view beyond the broken wall was the prosaic and familiar contours of Midtown.
Ms.Crenshaw released my arm, and as it fell limply at my side blood pattered softly against the stone floor. She began undoing my bow tie with swift tugs before pulling it free from my collar and wrapping it firmly around my bleeding wrist, knotting it so tightlythat I hissed in renewed pain. “You should go, Colin,” she told me as she stepped back from me. “Take the stairs.”
“But what about the Stairmonster?” I objected. Using the stairs at the best of times was hazardous; to descend thirteen floors would be suicidal.
She favored me with a glance that brooked no argument. “The board purged it while strengthening the building’s defenses. Go.”
I stumbled away dizzily, clutching my bandaged wrist with my other hand, until a terrible thought occurred to me. Sagging against a convenient wall, I fumbled my phone from my pocket and tapped out a message to Lex with shaking hands, smearing the screen with blood:IF YOURE AT DE GET OUT OF THE BUILDING NOW HAUNTS EVERYWHERE. Then I kept going, wobbling on unsteady legs until I found the metal door that opened onto the stairwell. Pushing it open, I staggered through and contemplated the many, many flights of stairs between me and safety. Below, I could hear other people as they descended, calling questions to one another, and I set out to join them. Two steps later, I clutched the metal railing as the stairwell spun sickeningly around me. I’d lost too much blood.
I slumped against the railing, holding on with both hands. I really wanted to sit down for a minute. My grip on the cold metal was slick now with blood, more trickling past the paisley tie wrapped around my wrist. Maybe it would stop bleeding if I took a little rest. Lowering myself to the chilly concrete step, I sucked in a lungful of stale air and closed my eyes. Just a little rest, and then I’d keep going.
The door behind me slammed open with a hollow bang, and then someone was pulling me to my feet. Opening my eyes, I twitched as Deborah’s scarred countenance swam into focus.
“We need to move,” she growled as she steadied me. “Things are only going to get worse.”
“Leave me here. I’ll gather my strength and then keep going.”
Hauling my arm across her shoulders, Deborah heaved upward until my shoes barely touched the stairs and then started descending. I could feel the rigid tension in her muscles as she pulled me along, though she did so with ease. “One thing I learned in the Abyss? You don’t leave people behind.” She reached the first landing and turned to descend the next flight of stairs. “I wouldn’t have survived if someone hadn’t carried me to safety, once.” We rounded another landing and kept going.
I was doing my best to help, trying to support myself on each step we passed, but everything still wobbled and spun. “I’m sorry that happened to you,” I mumbled woozily. “It must have been so terrible.”
She barked out a harsh laugh. “Trust me, you can get used to anything.”
The door below us opened and several people spilled out, including a toupee that I recognized. They must be coming from the Repository. “Lex!” I said. “We need to see if Lex is in there.” I made a weak attempt to free myself from Deborah’s grasp, but she only tightened her grip on my left arm where it was slung across her shoulders.
“No time.” She barreled down the stairs, shouting at the people in front of us, “Start running or get out of the way!” Startled looks and one twitching toupee blurred past as Deborah scattered them to either side. A moment later, orthopedic shoes squeaked rapidly on concrete as the curators and librarians hurried to match our pace.
“Where’s Lex?” I called back. “Is Lex safe?” No one answered.
We kept going, floor by floor, joined by an increasing flood ofemployees evacuating the building. Had everyone decided to come in today? Deborah’s pace slowed, not because she was tiring but because there were too many people ahead of us. My dizziness faded a little and I was able to stand on my own feet. Clutching the railing with my blood-slick hand, I focused on taking one step at a time as Deborah’s support eased until she was steadying rather than carrying me.
I have no idea how long we spent in that stairwell. All I had was a confused impression of anxious voices echoing from the walls and the shuffling of dozens of feet as I concentrated on not falling. Then, with jarring suddenness, I hurtled out of the stairwell and into the lobby. Floors of polished obsidian stretched around me, and in their endless depths moved the inverted reflections of fleeing employees, keeping pace like predators stalking their prey, features distorted with hunger and anticipation. Haunts. I knew there was one under my feet as well, watching, waiting for me to meet its gaze so it could pull me down into its cold, deadly world.
Panicked screams and yells reverberated from the high ceiling as people became aware of the danger. They scattered in all directions, and Deborah was yanked away from me by someone falling heavily against my back. I stumbled and almost went down, my eyes snapping shut instinctively. More people buffeted me as they ran past, but I managed to regain my balance as I looked carefully upward and then opened my eyes again. A few employees were running for the massive reception desk, as if that would save them, but most were sprinting for the revolving doors where a mob of people already struggled to escape onto the sidewalk outside. Below them, in the floor, haunts climbed over one another in a nightmarish, writhing mass of desperate hunger.
As I began moving toward the doors as well, a man in a gray suitbarreled past and into a woman not far in front of me. She went down, hands flying out to brace herself against the polished stone, and I realized it was Beverly, my former colleague from HR. Her unflattering glasses went flying with the force of the impact, and as she groped for them her gaze met that of the reflection sprawled beneath her, its hands pressed against hers. That was all it took. Those hands reached up through the floor and seized her wrists, pulling her closer until inhuman fingers tangled in her hair and clawed across her face, leaving black smears on her pale skin. “Help me!” she screamed as the haunt pulled her into the floor. In a heartbeat, she was gone, leaving only her glasses behind.
Despite myself, I looked down, first at my own reflection and then past it to where Beverly receded into darkness, both hands reaching for me and mouth open in a final, silent cry.
Icy fingers burned against my ankle. Grotesquely familiar hands tore at my shoes, my khakis, wrestling for purchase. I flung out my arms in an attempt to keep my balance, but it was no use. I fell painfully, sprawling onto the floor. Surprisingly, my panic receded as the haunt seized the front of my cardigan. Maybe it was for the best, dying like this—easier, certainly, than disappearing into an Abomination after watching it eradicate every last person on the planet.
The sound of breaking glass echoed through the lobby. Someone had thrown a chair through the tinted glass wall next to the revolving doors, sending thousands of tiny shards showering onto the sidewalks of Midtown. Employees began leaping outside, escaping the deadly, polished floors and the horde of haunts scrabbling hungrily at the dark stone. They’d come in on a weekend hoping for safety, but nowhere was safe now.
Fingers clawed at my shirt and I turned my gaze to the distorted reflection of my own face. It leered up at me, mouth opening widerand wider to reveal rows of serrated teeth. With a terrible, inexorable strength, it began to pull me through. The cold beneath the floor was painfully sharp and I gasped, unable to look away from the thing pressed up against me.
