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As if to emphasize her point, another chunk of ceiling crashed down mere feet from where they stood, sending up a cloud of choking dust.
The group moved as quickly as they could through the crumbling hallway, with Pierce and Gareth leading the way. The two men had cleared more of it than she expected, and luckily, the ceiling was still intact. She could see the door at the end of the hallway marked EXIT in bright red letters.
God, she hoped that was true.
Gareth carried Will on his back in a fireman’s hold like he weighed nothing while Pierce and Mr. Sasaki carried Alan between them on a sling fashioned from a tent they’d found in the ruins of the camping section. Everyone else shuffled silently behind in single file, fear etched on their filthy faces.
Something cracked, the sound like another gunshot, and they all froze. The floor beneath them shuddered violently, throwing several of them off balance. Rhiannon stumbled, nearly losing her grip on Michael. Pierce’s hand shot out, steadying her before she could fall.
“Move!” Gareth shouted, his voice barely audible over the groaning of the building.
They pushed forward, ducking under fallen beams and scrambling over piles of debris. The air grew thicker with dust, making it difficult to breathe. Rhiannon’s lungs burned, and she could feel Michael’s small body shaking with coughs against her chest.
Pierce halted, throwing up a hand to stop the others. Ahead, a gaping hole had opened up in the floor. Rhiannon peered down into the darkness. She couldn’t see the bottom.
Pierce set down Alan’s makeshift stretcher and moved closer to the edge. He picked up a chunk of concrete and tossed it in. For several seconds, they heard nothing, and then…
Splash.
She lifted her gaze to Pierce’s. “Can we jump over it?”
He shook his head.“If we miss, we drown.”
“Fuck,” Gareth muttered and turned to face the others. “We have to turn back.”
chapter
seventeen
“I’m scared.”
Pierce’s heart cracked right down the center at the fear in Rhiannon’s whisper. He curled protectively around her and Michael as another section of ceiling crumbled. Raszta whimpered, and he pulled his dog in closer. If he could expand his body to shield them all, he would, but all he could do was hold them and hope a rescue team would reach them in time.
He doubted it, though.
Rhiannon had accused him of being an optimist, but he was struggling to find any glimmer of hope in their current situation. The air was stiflingly hot and thick with dust. Each breath scraped his throat and burned his lungs.
The group sat in a loose circle in front of the registers, all animosities forgotten. Alan, awake again, clutched his family and said the Lord’s Prayer over and over. The Sasaki family huddled together, their faces pale and drawn. Will lay stretched out between Dottie and Hailey, only semi-conscious. The retirees—for the life of him, Pierce couldn’t recall their names—sat together, wrapped up in each other’s arms. They seemed the most at peace of anyone in the group, and he wondered how it would feel to spend your entire life with the same person at yourside. Would it make facing death easier, knowing you’d lived a full life with your soulmate?
Weird. He’d never wondered that before.
“Why is it getting hard to breathe?” Brooke asked in a raspy whisper.
Gareth, sitting with his arms resting on his knees, looked up. If defeated had a face, it was his. “Air’s running out,” he said flatly. “The collapse has sealed us in completely. No fresh air is getting through.”
Tears spilled from her big blue eyes. “We’re going to die down here, aren’t we?”
Pierce clenched his jaw. He wished he could offer words of comfort, but even if he had a voice, what could he say? He didn’t want to lie.
Neither, it seemed, did Gareth. “I’m sorry. I’m afraid this fucking gift shop is our tomb.”
“How long do we have?” Dottie asked.
Gareth shook his head. “No telling. It could be days or hours. Could be minutes.”
“Will it hurt?” Hailey murmured.
“No. We’ll just fall asleep, and that will be the end of it.”
