What Once We Feared Read Free

nothing. Started dragging another chair out into the hallway.
    She jumped in front of me, kneeling on the seat and leaning over the back toward me. “My dad’s still out there,” she argued.
    My hands clenched the armrests. I felt the words rising in my throat, pushing against my vocal cords. “Screw your dad!” I wanted to scream in her face, because seriously, what were we supposed to do? Camp out in the hallway and stand guard? Hope that her dad eventually showed up and wasn’t as bloody as the last guy?
    Instead, I took a deep breath. “It’s not safe.” How could she not understand?
    The other elevator dinged, and even before the doors opened we heard banging and moaning. “Oh crap,” Gregor breathed.
    Beatrice took off running down the hallway, and Felipe chased after her. But I didn’t follow. I couldn’t. We had to block the elevator so more of those things didn’t get up here. Ikicked the chair I’d been dragging toward Gregor and then grabbed Nicky, throwing her into the billiard room.
    When the elevator doors whisked open, I wasn’t looking. I was racing toward the row of pool cues hanging on the wall.
    It was the first time I’d heard the moaning close up and personal. Not filtered through the TV as background noise in a newscast or as part of the panicked stampede out of Uptown earlier.
    This was the sound of something that used to be human and was no more. It was the kind of thing that could make your heart stop, your lungs constrict, your nerves shrivel.
    Later the sound would become the backdrop to everyday life, the way the hiss of electronics and the buzz of traffic used to be. But not in that moment. Right then, I realized that death had a sound and it was coming for us.
    “No, no no no nonononono,” I kept muttering under my breath. I’d had the winning hand here—I’d known how to keep us safe, and this wasn’t part of it.
    I swept the pool cues into my arms, hating how flimsy they felt. How in the world could these protect us? Protect me? They’d snap instantaneously. No way could they inflict the damage necessary.
    When I got back to the door I saw Gregor in the hallway, holding the chair up like a lion tamer, trying to push back a tall woman in a business suit. One of her sleeves was ripped off and her skirt was twisted. A gash ran the length of her face, flapping open to show her teeth and the bones around her eye. Her hair was drenched with blood. It was still wet, hanging in ropes that splashed against her neck and sent droplets flinging onto the walls and the front of Gregor’s shirt.
    I could just close the door
, I thought. My hand curled around the knob. Nicky and I would be safe locked in here. We could survive.
    Behind me, Nicky gurgled in panic, and Gregor must have heard, because he glanced up at me. With that one look he knew. I could see it register in his eyes. I was going to abandon him.
    Every man for himself
, he was thinking, remembering the way I’d said it earlier.
    The thing about decisions is that sometimes you don’t make them for the right reasons. Sometimes you have an idea of yourself that isn’t real. It’s an aspiration; it’s the picture you hold in your mind so that you don’t weep at all of your failings.
    In my head, I was the savior. I was the strong one, the guy in charge who could keep us safe. But I knew standing there that that would never be me. Never
could
be me.
    In reality, I was the coward. The one so terrified of dying I’d sacrifice anyone and everyone for the chance to keep my own heart beating for just another second.
    With that single glance, Gregor knew this truth about me. It was written in the disappointment that shuddered his breathing with the terror-laced understanding that suddenly, he was alone in his fight.
    What’s funny is that if I’d just let him die, he’d have taken that knowledge with him. I’d have been safe from his censure. I could have repositioned the mask of competence over my face and stared down