Amanda lifts her chin higher yet.

– Come on, Joe, slit it. Sela, he won’t. He can’t. Just come over here and he’ll push me at you and run. He won’t even use me as a shield. He won’t risk hurting me if you two fight. Just scare him off me, knock him down and, I mean, the baby, Sela.

– Be quiet, babe.

I back us through the door into the hall.

– Pull it closed.

Amanda goes limp.

– No.

Sela steps closer.

– Do not play games with him.

I jerk her upright.

– Amanda.

– Joe, dear.

– I killed your mom. I murdered her.

She stiffens a little.

– That’s a lie.

Sela, getting closer.

– Babe.

I think about Amanda’s mom. Her neck breaking. Just after she kissed me. A long time ago.

– I killed her. And if you want to know why, close the fucking door.

Amanda reaches for the door as I let her go.

Sela moves.

It’s shut. I have the keys, snap a lock, and run.

Amanda grabs me.

– Joe. Tell me.

The door rattles in its frame. Double cylinder locks, take a key to go in or out. Sela will have to find hers to open it. Seconds. More if she loses it and goes feral.

– Joe.

I look at Amanda.

Worm at the middle of the world.

I sheath the blade.

– Girl, you don’t want to know.

I shove her away, vault the banister, hit the next landing down, feel it in my bad knee.

Door being pounded above, Sela screaming. Doors pounded below, howling, increasing floor by floor as Phil and the kids descend.

But all I can hear is her.

– You couldn’t do it, Joe. You couldn’t hurt me. Not really. You couldn’t.

But she’s crying while she says it.

So I know it’s not true.

I can hurt anyone. Experience counts for something.

We’re fucked before we hit the ground floor.

I catch up to Chubby’s kid and her boy. She’s waddling down the stairs, he’s got her arm, helping her. I hit the landing next to them, racket from the door there, whatever’s behind it can smell her blood.

I grab the girl and swing her off the floor and turn to the kid.

– Carry her.

He takes a step back.

– She’s a little heavy right now.

She’s trying to writhe out of my arms.

– No one need carry me.

Door upstairs is hammered. Sela screams.

– She’s going to rip off your legs if she catches you.

I shove the girl into the kid’s arms and drop her and he takes the weight of her before she hits the ground.

– Run.

He takes off, faster now, but not fast enough. I follow to the next landing, one of the empty floors. Quieter upstairs. Sela’s stopped screaming. No smell of blood outside their doors, the good people on the upper floors have settled down.

I hear a jingle of keys at the top.

Because any asshole would know that Amanda has a set of keys. Shit.

When the door on this floor came down they used a catering table as a battering ram. One of the steel legs is on the ground. I pick it up. It’s hollow, the top jagged and bent where it was ripped from the bottom of the table.

I can hear Amanda whispering, jingle of keys, snap of the lock, the bang of the door slamming open and I look up and Sela is over the banister and dropping, flicking her arms, she pushes off the narrow middle of the stairwell, silent now, just the rush of air as she falls at me, little thumps as she controls her plunge, sounds like a giant cat running on a wood floor, headfirst she’s coming, gives a hard shove off the opposite rail just above, changing course, sudden angle onto my landing, heedless, fast, she’ll break me when she hits. The steel table leg will bend around her when I swing it, thin and feeble, but it might knock her off course long enough for me to run another half flight.

Guns. Why am I always losing guns?

She’s in my face.

I jam the jagged end at her, catching the soft flesh above her collarbone, her momentum forcing it deep and she slams into me and we both go down, her blood sprays my face, tastes like acid on my tongue, I can’t reach the blade, she screams and wheels off me, table leg jutting from her shoulder, right arm hanging at her side, something inside severed. I push to the edge of the landing and tumble down, crawl, she’s making wet coughing noises, the end of the leg in her lung. I tumble down the next flight.

– Joe.

Phil and Chubby’s daughter and the boy, standing at the door that opens toward the front of the building.

– Joe! Keys, man!

I stand, bent over goddamn broken ribs, start toward the door under the stairs.

Phil shakes his head.

– Aw shit, no, man. No. This way, man.

I get the keys out.

– Predo will kill us all.

I shake the keys at him.

– And Sela’s not dead.

She screams, there’s movement up there.

Phil grabs the keys.

– Shitshitshit.

He opens the locks.

The kid moves closer, Chubby’s daughter still in his arms.

– I don’t think it’s safe down there.

A sound like rusty chain scraped over a blackboard.

Chubby’s daughter shakes her head.

– There is peril.

I push them both through the door, grab Phil, drag him after, pull the door closed.

– Lock it, Phil.

– What if we want to get out fast?

– Lock the fucking door.

One by one he does the locks, cursing with each one.

– Fucked. Oh, now we’re fucked. Double fucked. Fucked for sure.

Light comes from a half-dead exit lamp over the door. No light down below. Howls. Good news seems to be that whatever lives down here hasn’t killed us already.

Things are looking up.

We go down.

Concrete steps and walls. Phil and the girl keep a hand on the wall as they go down and the light at the top fails their eyes and they become blind. I lead, still able to pick out the shapes of things. Kid is at the rear. No specialist, but he can see.

Hit bottom after a flight, and I can see something dangling from above. See a squat shape in the corner at the base of the stair, smell gasoline. I go over there, feel around, find a primer, pump it, find a handle, pull it. Takes three yanks and the generator kicks to life, feeding power to the work lamp hanging overhead.

– Sir.

I look at the girl.

– I fear we are not safe here.

She’s wearing moccasin boots with a rim of fringe at the top, several lace skirts, a peasant blouse tented over her belly, skinny dreads pulled up on top of her head. No end of bracelets, rings, necklaces and charms. The boy’s got the same boots in black, brown cords tucked into the tops, kind of a pirate shirt, black leather jacket with epaulettes, a load of silver amulets dangling from leather straps around his neck or tied to the jacket, and a thin goatee.

I go to the door under the work lamp.

– You don’t like it down here, go back up.

She rubs her arms.

– It was supposed to be a haven here. Safe from the rising storm.

Another steel door. More locks. And an iron bar braced across it, ends resting in U-joints bolted to the concrete.

Phil raises a finger.

– Joe.

The girl looks at some trash piled near the wall.

– My father spoke so highly of Percy. Our expectations were overmatched by reality. He seemed more a fool than a wise man. And the Hood itself, more a prison than a paradise for people of color. Cure. The very word promised safety. How were we to know?

I think about jamming my fingers in my ears, but keep looking for a way out instead.

There’s no ventilation to speak of. Exhaust from the generator flows into a plastic tube that runs duct-taped to the wall until it reaches a tiny vent above the door up top. A bundle of wires comes in through the same duct, snakes down the wall and into a hole drilled in the concrete wall next to the steel door.

Phil edges closer.