In the function room, the music is deafening, the scent of perfume stronger than ever. Curtis stands in front of the low table. Lit up by the glow of his flashlight is a tiny boom box. It’s running off a battery, it must be, because it’s not plugged in.

I glance around the room into the dark corners. There’s nobody here but us.

Heather clamps her hands over her ears. “Make it stop!”

Curtis raises the axe.

“No!” I shout.

Curtis looks my way, his face demonlike in the flashlight’s blaze. I limp forward to jab the stop button. The music cuts off. I open the lid and lift out the CD, hoping we might learn something from it, but it’s an unmarked disc. I slot it back in the machine to see if there’s anything else on it, but there’s just the one track.

I haven’t seen a boom box for years. Do they even still sell them? Remembering our lack of batteries, I check the boom box’s battery compartment, but they’re way too big for the flashlight.

Curtis pushes past Heather and Brent and out the doorway. We follow him along the corridor. He opens every door he passes—the toilets, the cleaner’s cupboard—until he reaches one that doesn’t open.

“Hold this.” Curtis hands me the flashlight.

Before I realize what he’s about to do, he grasps the axe in two hands and swings it at the door. It takes half a dozen blows to make a big enough hole to see through. He snatches the flashlight from me and shines it in. Swears and hands the flashlight back. Its glow is weakening by the minute but I daren’t point that out.

Curtis’s shoulders are heaving; sweat glistens on his forehead. I reach out to touch him and think better of it. He wrenches the handle of the next door down, then takes the axe to it. The rest of us stand back as he hacks his way through that door and the following one.

The flashlight is about to die; my leg aches; I’m so tired I’m nearly asleep on my feet. And if I’m tired . . . Curtis stumbles as he swings the next blow and strikes the doorway instead of the door.

Cautiously I touch his shoulder. “Enough.”

He slumps with his forehead against the wood. The axe slips to the floor.

“Look,” I say. “It would take all night to hack through every locked door in this place. There’s nothing we can do right now except lock ourselves in our dorms and get some sleep. Tomorrow at first light we get out of here.”

Without a word, Curtis heads back along the dark corridor and down the stairs. Brent picks the axe up before I can, so I limp after Curtis, lighting the way.