How long did I have? I backed into a wedge of dark between the up-ramp’s curve and the outer wall. The floor dropped away . . . no, just a step. One down, then another. A dank odor rose, the all-too-familiar scent of death. But old death, which I’d pretty much learned to live with. No time to find another hiding place. Testing ahead, my foot nudged a rattling softness. I recoiled, then kicked it away. Bones, from the sound, in a twist of old fabric. When you work at night in the flooded city, smells and sounds you never dreamed you’d know about become old friends. At least the rats had already done their cleanup job.

Thunder overhead, and a sudden revving as the car roared toward the down-ramp. I stumbled, hands flung out. Instead of hard concrete, they met a smooth, cool surface that instantly gave way ahead of me.

Walls in motion, I’m falling, the raw roar overhead. Was the structure collapsing?

The wall came to rest with a mild jolt, pressing my arms into my chest. A draft stirred my hair. A rectangle of faintest light in front of me. A door. I’d fallen against an unlatched door, with space beyond, tucked beneath the third-level ramp. A hidden room? Tires screeched on the curve above. I ducked in and shut the door behind me.

Insane, you’ll say, to wall yourself up in unexplored darkness. Who or what else might be in here? But the shooters in the car were certain death if they found me. Behind a closed door, any door, I stood a chance.

Bam! Bam! Bam!

The car roared past, revved into a turn, and sped back up the ramp for another round. I was stuck in this bolt-hole until the boys got bored and left. Boys? Could as well be grown men. But boys was where my mind went. That memory quake was pressing hard to surface.

I scrabbled at the door for a locking device. Nothing. I sniffed and strained to listen past the pandemonium upstairs. The side walls felt close. Was there another way out? I heard no scuttling in the corners or scratching in the walls, smelled nothing dead, at least not recently. The faint glow came from a small blue light on a box high up on the right-hand wall. Was power still feeding this long-abandoned building? Never seen that yet, in my weeks on the streets. Maybe still functioning solars on the roof? On a far wall, strips of gray light seeped around a gust-blown blackout drape. A window. Once my eyes adjusted, it gave just enough light to survey the room.

The ceiling dropped low by the door but rose with the ramp above it, ribbed with metal trusses. The right-hand wall followed the curl of the ramp. The left was the outer wall of the structure. I was in a narrow triangle of leftover space put to some sort of use.