The Trap Read Free

doors. Inside, David is searching frantically for a control switch I
already know does not exist.
    The screams reach fever pitch. Knowing better, I glance back. In the wide cone of light, I see girls pouring out of the train cars in blind panic now, stumbling and falling to the ground. A few
are frozen in place, cowering in the corners of the train cars, arms wrapped tightly around one another, their hands white-knuckled on the bars.
    Meters from the elevator, Sissy dives first, sliding between the closing doors and into the elevator. I follow a second later, banging my shin and scraping my back as I slide under Epap through
the narrowing gap. Epap, screaming with pain, can’t extricate himself; he’s too tightly bunched into a fetal position, his ankles pressed up almost against his head. Sissy, off the
floor, wraps her arms around his legs even as I grab hold of his shoulders. We give each other a quick nod, then lunge backward. Epap pops inward, ankles and wrists twisting in ungainly angles.
    The elevator doors slam shut.
    Outside, girls smack against the elevator like birds into windows. Their hands slap against the glass with staccato panic. Their faces smush against the glass, pleading, begging, distorting as
they’re pressed flat.
    “We have to do something,” David whimpers. “We can’t just leave them.”
    But we say nothing. Because there’s nothing we can do. There’s no way to open the doors, no way to squeeze in one more person even if we could. More girls smack against the glass on
two sides, then all around, encircling us. Cassie squeezes her fingers into the gap between the closed doors in an effort to pry them open. We don’t bother stopping her. Soon enough, she
gives up. She places her palms against the glass, head shaking, crying softly to herself. More bodies press up against the glass, flattening those already there.
    And then the elevator starts moving. Slowly up the glass shaft.
    A cry of panic sounds.
    Epap puts his arm around Cassie. “You can’t do anything for them. You tried—” His voice stops.
    I see the duskers. To my surprisie, despite the mass bloodshed and cacophony in the tunnel, it’s only a handful of them. I’d expected more. Their faces are blood splashed, eyes
delirious with this unexpected arrival of culinary paradise. Judging from their drab uniforms, these duskers are nothing more than low-rank crew consigned to work the graveyard daytime shift. They
came only to unload the train. Now they’ll have a tale to tell for the ages. But it’s not over for them. Not yet. Shielding their eyes against the light streaming from the elevator,
they bound toward the girls pressing against the glass shaft.
    “Close your eyes, David,” Sissy says, and he does, burrowing his head into the crook of her arm. Vicious thumps rock the elevator, signifying the duskers’ arrival. Screams
erupt around us, screeching, pleading, seemingly loud enough to crack the glass. David cups his ears with shaky, pale hands.
    The elevator rises. Blood splatters on the outside of the shaft like buckets splashing their contents. No matter how high we rise, the blood follows us, the screams surge up at us. Epap puts his
arm around Cassie’s quaking shoulders.
    Until all is silent. Blood flicks up like the dotted splatters of a paintbrush. Spread beneath us, on the platform, inside the train cars, is the specter of gruesome atrocities. The elevator
rises and the arc of light thankfully withdraws from the scene of violence beneath. Darkness blankets the carnage below.
    A dusker leaps up at the elevator, its pale body slapping stickily onto the outside of the glass shaft. Its face, only inches from mine, regards us coolly. Then its hold, compromised by the
slick blood, slips, and the dusker slides down.
    We stare up, praying for an exit. The black ceiling looms ever closer. And only when it seems like we are going to bump up against it does it suddenly slide open to expose an even darker