Joseph bent from the waist, panting, sweat now dripping straight to the floor. The little room was small and hot, the light dim. The reflexive need for secrecy warred with discomfort. Secrecy lost. Joseph pushed open the door into the main hall, letting in a waft of cooler air, before trying the top drawer.

It wasn't locked. But his luck ended there.

Who wasted this cabinet by crowding it all up with files? A dull, helpless sort of rage filled him like a purpling bruise. The cabinet was heavy because it was filled with papers, meaningless papers, personnel records, some nonsense like that, drawer after drawer stuffed to the brim with old-fashioned folders.

Joseph had only a moment to savor this deep misery before something fell on him from above.

For a moment, wildly, he thought that part of the roof had given way, as had happened to Del Ray, that the Boer bastard and his henchmen upstairs had drilled through just above him. Then, as the strangely sagging weight pulled him down to the floor and fingers clawed at his face, he thought instead that Jeremiah had come and attacked him, was for some reason trying to hurt him.

Just looking for a drink, he wanted to shout, but the fingers clamped on his throat, squeezing him silent. In a panic, Joseph rolled hard to the side and banged himself painfully against the standing cabinet but managed to dislodge the choking hands. He scrabbled backward, shaking his head, coughing, and managed to whisper the word, "What. . . ?" before his attacker was on him again.

Whoever it was seemed more octopus than man, all arms and legs, grabbing at him, trying to pin him, throttle him. Joseph struggled and tried to shout, but now an arm was across his throat, pressing down until he thought something inside his neck must tear and his head part company with his body. He kicked out wildly. His feet met the cabinet hard; he felt it give and heard it fall back against the wall, then scrape against the concrete and crash to the floor. He got a hand up under the arm that was crushing out his breath and pushed back hard enough to drag a little air into his lungs, but there were still sparkling lights in front of his eyes. Something moved over him, leaning in close, a demon's mask of black and red and whitely-shining clenched teeth. Joseph kicked again but touched nothing and the weight on his neck was now too much to resist. The devil-face began to retreat down a black tunnel, but the grip was growing stronger. He still did not know what had happened, who was killing him.

And then, just as the light-streaked blackness had become almost complete, the pressure lessened and then was gone—or almost gone, because he could still feel a crimp in his throat. He rolled over onto his stomach, wheezing and choking through a windpipe that felt like it would never open again.

Someone was shouting and something was thumping like a heavy weight being dragged down stairs. Joseph felt cool concrete against his cheek, felt the even cooler air rushing down his ragged throat like the finest of all wines. He dragged himself toward the wall of the service closet then turned around, lifting his quivering hands in self-defense.

It was Jeremiah, with a look on his face like nothing Joseph had ever imagined, a look of terrified rage. But what was he doing? What was he hammering on with that stick of his, that steel chair leg, that club he had carried since Joseph's return? And why was he crying?

Jeremiah seemed to feel Long Joseph's dazed stare. He looked at him with brimming eyes, then down at a dark bundle on the floor. The thing lying there was a man—a white man, although in his whole smoke-blackened, bloodied face only a pink curve of ear gave that away. The back of his head was a ruin, bits of bone showing through the wet red. The end of Jeremiah's chair leg was dripping. Jeremiah looked up from Joseph to the wall overhead and the dark hole there that had been covered by the screen. Now Del Ray appeared in the closet doorway.

"My God," he said. "What happened?" His eyes widened. "Who's that?"

Jeremiah Dako held up the bloody chair leg, stared at it as though he had never seen it before. A sickly smile pulled up the edges of his mouth—maybe the worst thing Joseph had seen so far.

"At least . . . at least we've still . . . got two bullets left," said Jeremiah. He laughed. Then he began to sob again.

"He's the fifth one," Del Ray said, "I can still see four of them on the monitor. He's the one we thought got killed when the smoke got them."

"What does that matter?" Jeremiah said listelessly. "That just means there are still as many up there as we thought this morning."

Joseph could only listen. He felt as though someone had ripped his head off and put it back on in great haste.

"It means they probably don't know about the vent," Del Ray said. "He probably crawled in there to get away from the smoke—he may have been cut off by what he thought was a fire, trapped on the other side of the building from the others. Then he just kept crawling until he got to that vent and could get air from our part of the building. Maybe he was even stuck there." He looked at the corpse, which they had dragged out into the better light of the open hallway. "So the rest of them aren't going to be coming down the vent on us in our sleep."

Jeremiah shook his head. He had stopped weeping, but still seemed miserable. "We don't know anything," His voice was almost as raspy as Joseph's.

"What do you mean?"

"Look at him!" Jeremiah shoved a finger at the body, although he did not look at it himself. "He's bloody all over. Dried blood. Burns. Scrapes and cuts. There's a good chance he got them getting into the vent in the first place, hurrying to get away from the smoke. He probably left marks of where he got in—maybe even left a screen lying on the ground. When the smoke clears up there, they'll find them. They'll go looking for him."

"Then we'll . . . I don't know. Weld that, vent in the storage closet closed. Something." Jeremiah and Del Ray had already struggled to hammer the screen back into place, with limited success.

"They can just poison us—pour poison gas down it, smother us." Jeremiah stared at the floor.

"Then why haven't they done that already?" Del Ray demanded. "They could probably find our air intake if they wanted to. If they only wanted us dead, surely they could have done that already."

Jeremiah shook his head. "It's too late."

Joseph was disturbed to see the man so unhappy. Was it because he had killed someone? How could anyone, even a sensitive soul like Jeremiah Dako, regret killing the man who had been trying to kill Joseph?

"Jeremiah," he said softly. "Jeremiah. Listen to me."

The other man looked up, eyes red.

"You save my life. We fight sometimes, you and me, but I never will forget that." He tried to think of something that would make things right. "Thank you. Truly I mean that."

Jeremiah nodded, but his face was still bleak. "A postponement. That's all it is." He sniffed, almost angrily. "But you're welcome, Joseph. And I truly mean that, too."

No one spoke for a while.

"I just thought of something," said Del Ray. "What are we going to do with a dead body down here?"

"They look like bottom-feeders," Renie said. "If it's more than just appearance, maybe we'll get lucky." She was talking mostly to herself. Her companion the Stone Girl was too frightened to be paying much attention.

Renie took another look out the window at the church spire made of brambles, achingly near, but still on the far side of several dozen Ticks, creatures so pale they almost seemed to glow in the dying evening. But at the moment it was a forest of vines and creepers that stretched away from the tower like guy-ropes had her attention.