The espresso machine makes a humming sound.
It is a low, vibrating purr against the marble counter.
Silas leans on his hands and watches the dark liquid drip into a ceramic cup. The time is six-thirty in the morning. The city outside the penthouse window is a blur of gray rain and faraway brake lights.
It smells like roasted beans and wet dirt inside.Maeve says, "You're drowning it."
Silas looks back over his shoulder. Maeve is sitting on the hardwood floor with her legs crossed, wearing one of his big flannel shirts. In one hand, she holds a small metal trowel, and in the other, she holds a misting bottle. She carefully moves an orchid that looks like it has been hurt. Dark potting soil stains her pale knuckles."I'm getting the most out of it," Silas says. He picks up the mug and lets the heat soak into his hands. "It's a rule for how things are built. "Fluid dynamics."
Maeve rolls her eyes. A soft, familiar smile pulls at the edge of her mouth. "It's burnt water from beans, Si." "Just drink it."
A door creaks open down the hall.
Leo walks out. He is eight years old and pulls a blue fleece blanket behind him like a royal cape. His hair looks like a bird's nest of bedhead. He doesn't say anything.
He just walks right up to Maeve and falls against her side. He puts his face in her shoulder.
Maeve lets go of the trowel. She hugs him and puts her chin on his messy hair. "Morning, bug," she whispers.
Silas drinks some of his coffee. He keeps an eye on them. His wife. His kid. Hazel is probably still asleep in her room, completely out of it until noon.
There is no noise. It's just right.
After that, the TV goes blank.
The morning news anchor's low, background voice goes away. This is not a problem with the computer. The screen flashes a bright, solid red.
A high-pitched sound cuts through the apartment. It is a long, unbroken scream that shakes the glass in the window frames.
Leo jumps and covers his ears with his hands. "Mom?"
Silas puts his coffee cup down on the counter. He doesn't look at the screen. He looks down at the city.
The long line of brake lights on the wet highway has come to a complete stop.
People are running on the pavement that is slick with rain, eighty floors below. Not running to get away from the rain. Running. Crazy, out-of-control running. People who are commuting are leaving their cars behind, leaving the doors wide open in the traffic lanes.
A thick, dark plume of smoke starts to rise from the financial district."Silas," Maeve says.
Her voice is tense. The living room's deep, soothing warmth disappears, leaving behind a sudden, cold vacuum.
Silas moves closer to the glass that has been reinforced. He stares at a man on the sidewalk below. The man pushes a woman in a gray trench coat right onto the concrete.
The man's jaw snaps down. It goes around the woman's neck. A bright, horrible fan of blood sprays across the windshield of a yellow taxi. The blood is too thick and dark to be natural.
The espresso machine turns off with a click. The soft hiss of steam stops."Get Hazel," Silas says.
His voice is completely calm and steady. But his heart is pounding against his ribs like a bird that can't get out. His blood is full of cold, metallic adrenaline.
Maeve doesn't fight. She sees his eyes. "Clothes?""Not at all," Silas says. He doesn't take his eyes off the streets. He figures out distances, bottlenecks, and populations. A structural engineer's mind breaking down a collapse as it happens. "Not wearing clothes. Wear thick denim. Put on your boots for hiking."
There isn't a bright flash of light that ends the world. It ends on a Tuesday morning, just before breakfast.
Maeve takes Leo's hand and pulls him up from the floor. The ceramic pot for the orchid falls over. Dark soil spills out over the polished wood, making the floor dirty."Come on, Leo," she says. "Get out of the way."
Silas goes into the hallway. There's no point in panicking. People die in burning buildings because they panic, and this whole city is about to catch fire.
He hits Hazel's door with his shoulder.
There are a lot of comforters on top of his daughter. The room smells like old teen perfume and dry shampoo. Silas holds on to the edge of the blankets and rips them off her bed with a lot of force.
Hazel groans and curls into a ball because of the sudden cold. "Dad, what the hell?"Shoes. Right now.
Her eyes pop open. She is fourteen and ready to fight, but she hears the low, dangerous gravel in his voice. The flatness of it scares her.What is wrong? Hazel asks, "Put on your warmest coat and pants. I need you to come out here in 60 seconds. Silas backs up into the hallway. "If you take sixty-one, I'm going to drag you out in your pajamas."
He goes out of her room. He runs to the closet in the hall.
There isn't enough time to pack rolling bags. They are not very graceful. They get stuck on stairs. He doesn't pay attention to them and pulls down a heavy, faded green canvas duffel bag from the top shelf.
Silas kneels down. He throws his tool bag on the floor.
Screwdrivers and wrenches bang against each other. He grabs a pair of thick leather work gloves, a heavy-duty flashlight, and a pry bar made of cold-forged steel. He shoves them into the duffel bag made of canvas.
He takes a heavy ice ax from a lower shelf. It's an old climbing tool with worn red tape on the grips. The spike is very sharp and dangerous. He holds it in his right hand.
A woman screams outside the apartment door, in the fancy hallway on the eightieth floor.
The sound is clear. It is high-pitched and vibrating with pain.
Then a wet, heavy tear of meat and fabric happens.
Slowly, Silas turns.
At the end of the hall, Maeve is standing. She is holding Leo tightly against her side. Leo is shaking. Hazel leaves her room wearing a thick gray beanie over her dark hair and a winter coat that is only half-zipped over her sleep shirt.
She looks at the front door, which is locked. The yelling stops all of a sudden.
Outside their door, heavy, uneven footsteps shuffle across the carpet.
*Thump. Pull.*
*Thump. Drag.*
Something hits the smooth wood of their apartment door. A wet smear hits the peephole. There is a low, ragged wheezing sound coming through the space under the doorframe.
Silas walks to the door. He feels the weight of the ice ax in his hand. The polished wood floor is cold under his bare feet.
His mind flashes through a wireframe of the building. Up eighty floors. A main part that holds the elevator shafts. A single wraparound stairwell with emergency fire escapes.
The coffins will be the elevators. The stairs will be a meat grinder.
There are 4,000 people living in a sealed vertical tower. It is a death sentence in math. There is no extraction from the roof. Down only. Only into the city's bedrock.
Silas and Maeve look at each other. She sees the axe in his hand. She knows what's going to happen. Her eyes fill with a wet, scared shine, but she lifts her chin.
She takes a half step back, putting both kids all the way behind her. She blocks their view.Maeve tells them not to look. "Close your eyes, Hazel."
Silas locks the door. In the quiet apartment, the lock clicks open loudly.
He doesn't open the door. He doesn't talk things over. Silas turns the handle and pushes the heavy oak wood out into the hallway.
The door hits whatever is on the other side with a lot of force.
A hollow crunching sound comes from breaking bones. The heavy shape stumbles back into the light in the hallway.
Mr. Aris is here. The stockbroker who used to live in apartment 80B.
His silk bathrobe, which was made just for him, is torn. Mr. Aris's jaw is completely unhinged. Dark, oily blood runs down his chin in rivers, leaving stains on the plush cream carpet in the hallway. He has a strong smell of copper, old cologne, and sour stomach acid.
Mr. Aris lunges. The movement doesn't have any humanity. He doesn't feel any pain from the broken ribs he just got. It is a violent, mindless muscle spasm.
Silas turns his hips. He uses all of his strength to swing the ice ax.
The steel beak bites into the man's neck, cutting through tendon, cartilage, and cervical bone with a sickening crack.
The man falls like a puppet that has been cut. He hits the floor with a dull thud. Black blood starts to pour out and quickly pools around Silas's feet.
There is no noise in the hallway.
Silas sees the blood spreading toward his white socks. He can feel a terrible, vibrating chill moving up his spine.
He is breathing heavily. His hand shakes uncontrollably for exactly two seconds while it is tightly holding the tape-wrapped handle of the ax.
He opens his mouth with a lot of force. He stops shaking. He has to be strong. He can't break."Put on your boots," Silas says, not looking back at his family. He looks down the long, clean hallway that leads to the fire escape. The emergency lights start to blink.We're going down into the dark. "We're not coming back up."