47

 

“HELP ME,” I whisper through clenched teeth.

“Gene,” Sissy says. Her eyes do the rest of the speaking. They are pleading with me. Because she can’t hold me much longer.

A dark shape looms above her. It’s a dusker.

“Sissy!” I shout. “Let go of me.”

Still she holds on. Its shadow falls over her.

I let go of her hand. In that same moment, she flips over to face the dusker.

For a moment, I’m suspended in air, touching nothing but the emptiness of a vacuum. I begin to fall. With a shout, I grasp for something—anything—and my hand catches a thick outcropping at the bottom of the elevator floor. I scrabble for purchase until my hands meet the metal framework of the elevator and I’m able to pull my whole body up and over onto the elevator floor. Gravity presses down on me as the elevator continues to rise.

Sissy is holding the dusker by the cuff of its neck. She’s the weaker creature, but not now, not after what the dusker’s been through. Its skin and joints and muscles and bones have softened under the burn of sun rays, and it is now more soft putty than hard bone and muscles. Digging into some hidden reserve of energy, Sissy slams its head into the wall that’s still rushing down past us. And she holds it there, the skull that’s been softened by the sun into the consistency of an unshelled boiled egg. And even though the dusker fights back, flailing its arms and trying to kick, Sissy doesn’t ease up one bit. She holds its head pressed against the passing wall, and like cheese being grated, its head is shredded into oblivion.

The elevator reaches the top floor.

Ping.