In the tiny room the report was deafening, like a bomb. Mike’s voice disappeared behind it. Up above, the PA speaker that she’d just put a bullet through dangled halfway off the wall on a braid of wires. Now it just spluttered with an incoherent beehive drone.

As soon as Mike’s voice stopped, the thing inside Snow cringed forward, instantly weakened. Half its color had already slid away toward a kind of pasty pallor and the foreign object glowing within Snow’s skull faded beneath the gray smoothness of the man’s own skin and hair. Eli slid from his arms to the floor and ran back to Sarah, still screaming.

“Please, Mommy, stop it, stop it! Please!”

Snow’s mouth dropped open. “You bitch. I made you a good deal. What have you done?”

“This,” she said, pointing the gun at him, and pulled the trigger.

CHAPTER 48

48.

Mike slammed his shoulder against the door of the hospital operators’ office and felt the latch snap. He’d hit it with everything he had and a little extra, something on loan from God. Leaning back, he drove his foot hard below the knob. The door flew open, crashed against the wall. He was down on the main floor, not far from the ER entrance.

The stairs. Now.

His feet took flight before he knew what was happening, propelling him through the hall to the stairwell. Fatigue felt a long way off, a luxury he might never have again. At the moment he could’ve gone on forever, certainly a few flights of steps weren’t going to stop him, not now.

Four floors up, he ran into Jolie coming the other direction. Her hair and clothes were smoldering visibly, reeking of soot, her eyes frenzied and bloodshot. “Mike—”

“Are they up there?”

“What?”

“Sarah and Eli, are they still up there?”

“I couldn’t see.”

“Keep going.”

She blinked, but didn’t move. “Maybe…I can go back with you and—”

Mike shook his head. “Go. Get help.” He moved past her, up the final flight of stairs, and out the door into Peds. He was standing at the far end of the corridor, where the air was still comparatively clear. Orienting himself to the layout of the hall, Mike looked in the other direction, into the rubbery black burning smell, eyes and nose already watering. He’d been through this once before and knew what it would be like that way, back where they’d taken Frank Snow the first time.

“Sarah!”

He turned and ran into the smoke. Being prepared for how bad it was didn’t make it any better. Within seconds his vision was gone in a stinging wash of tears, black tar clogging his throat. He dropped to his hands and knees and crawled forward.