Taking a deep breath, I went back into the hall and made my way into another classroom. This one had fewer people in it, but it also had a stench that wasn’t shit and wasn’t piss and wasn’t old food. It was death. These weren’t just the bodies of living people huddled around on the floor, they were people who’d checked. I looked over in one corner and thought I saw motion under one of the blankets. What living person would stay in this room, I wondered, with all this death? Then I saw the blanket fall away and saw that there were two huge rats gnawing away at one of the bodies. I saw the light flash in the rats’ eyes as I jumped back, pulling the door shut behind me.

After looking inside a few more classrooms, I finally found one filled with people in army fatigues. They seemed to have set up in there, with glowing wristscreens and boxes of water and slurree. I tried to turn the handle on the door to get in, but it was locked. I knocked.

At first they ignored me. But I kept knocking. And knocking. Finally a man with a handlebar mustache and a cap over his brown hair came to the door.

“What?” he practically yelled in my face.

“I need help,” I said.

“You all need help,” he replied, and went to close the door again.

“No, I need help getting out of here,” I said, jamming my leg in the door so that he couldn’t close it. For a minute he tried to anyway, and I felt pain in my thigh and calf. “I need your help.”

“Nobody’s getting anywhere,” he said.“Not until the water goes down.”

“My grandmother is all alone out in Gravesend,” I said. “I know this storm must have hit hardest out there. You’ve got to help me get to her.”

He laughed derisively, but he had stopped trying to close the door on me. “Nobody’s going anywhere.”

I pulled my leg out from the door. He slammed it behind me and I heard the lock click into place. Sure enough, when I tried to turn the knob again, the door was locked.

“Motherfucker!” I screamed, slapping the door with my hands. One of the soldiers inside turned his eyes to the door, but that was it. Much as I yelled and hit it, the rest of them didn’t even bother looking at me. I was going to have to find another way.

I made my way through the halls back out to the landing we’d come up on when we first entered the building. Maybe if I waited there long enough, someone would come along who would help me.