Relief gushed through her. Not Eli. A man’s body, one of the cops maybe, but not her son.

“Please,” she whispered. “Let him be here. Let him be safe.”

Talking, Sarah? To whom, the ghosts? The dearly departed? Frank Snow? You’d have better luck beseeching the dead themselves for mercy, wouldn’t you?

Rising up, she took a broad step to the right and tripped over the second body, landing squarely on top of it. The corpse’s nose pushed against her cheek, stubble scraping her chin, half-open lips brushing her mouth as she gave a strangled scream, fending off its mannequin-armed embrace. Faintly, under the blood smell, she caught a whiff of Old Spice, onions, stale urine. Stiff fingers poked at the small of her back, scratching under her shirt, probing the knobs of her lower spine.

“No!” She wrenched sideways and fought to disentangle herself. There were at least two other corpses and she was lodged between them, kicking and swinging her arms as one of the bodies released a drawn-out gargling sound from deep inside its abdomen. She spun, levered herself upright. Her hand grazed one of their thighs, encountering a long, hard shape and jolting back as if scalded.

With a scream she was up, backing away, knowing she’d betrayed her location if Snow was down here.

Gasping she leaned against the wall, literally panting with fright and panic. The moment replayed in her brain, the bodies and the singular coldness of them…

Can’t see! If only I could see!

She thought of the object she’d encountered at one of the corpse’s thighs, a stiff, tubular shaft.

No, she told herself, I’m not reaching down there again. You don’t understand. I can’t.

The seconds spun out as her heart continued thudding in her chest. She took a breath of blackness and put her hand out into its impenetrable depths. Down to where the dead men were, down the blood-encrusted length of his uniformed leg and up the seam of his trousers.

The ribbed steel case of the flashlight was exactly where she’d felt it. She tugged it free, her thumb finding the button, snapping it on.

She shined her flashlight at the bodies on the floor, her three gore-streaked Lotharios sprawled next to a linen cart that had fallen on its side. A bloody trail led around the corner. Had one of them gotten up and wandered away?

Where was Snow? Just around that corner?

If he was down here, you’d already be lying there next to them with your throat ripped out.

Yes, she thought. For the moment at least, Snow was elsewhere on other business in a different part of the hospital. The thought gave her no solace, but the flashlight did. She pointed it up the corridor, in the direction she’d come, pushing back whatever had been grasping for her out of the primordial caves just moments before.

“Eli?” she called out. “Eli, it’s Mommy. Can you hear me?”

The only sound that came back was the echo of her voice. Sarah kept the flashlight beam aimed straight ahead. With the focused deliberation of a tightrope walker she placed one foot in front of the other and began her way down the long hall, calling her son’s name.