“Honey!”

“Mom!”

Michelle, being dragged toward the exit doors, used every muscle in her body to turn toward her daughter, but she was helpless, crushed between two patrons: a heavyset man in a T-shirt already savagely torn, his skin red and bearing scratch marks from fingernails, and a woman whose fake breasts pressed painfully into Michelle’s side.

“Trish, Trish, Trish!”

She might have been mute. The patrons’ screams and wailing—from fear and from pain—were numbing. All she could see was the head of the man in front of her and the EXIT sign they surged toward. Michelle pounded her fists on shoulders, on arms, on necks, on faces, just as she too was pounded by other patrons.

“I have to get my daughter! Go back, go back, go back!”

But there was no stopping the tide streaming for the exits. Michelle Cooper could breathe only an ounce or two of air at a time. And the pain—in her chest, her side, her gut. Terrible! Her arms were pinned, feet suspended above the floor.

The houselights were on, bright. Michelle turned slightly—not her doing—and she could see the faces of the patrons near her: eyes coin-wide in panic, crimson streaks from mouths—had people bitten their tongues out of fear? Or was the crush snapping ribs and piercing lungs? One man, in his forties, was unconscious, skin gray. Had he fainted? Or died of a heart attack? He was still upright, though, wedged into the moving crowd.

The smell of smoke was stronger now and it was hard to breathe; maybe the fire was sucking the oxygen from the room, though she could still see no flames. Perhaps the patrons, in their panic, were depleting the air. The pressure of bodies against her chest, too.

“Trish! Honey!” she called but the words were whispers. No air in, no air out.

Where was her baby? Was someone helping her escape? Not likely. Nobody, not a single soul, seemed to be helping anyone else. This was an animal frenzy. Every person was out for himself. It was pure survival.

Please…

The group of patrons she was welded to stumbled over something.

Oh, God…

Glancing down, Michelle could just make out a slim young Latina in a red-and-black dress, lying on her side, her face registering pure terror and agony. Her right arm was broken, bent backward. Her other hand was reaching up, fingers gripping a man’s pants pocket.

Helpless. She couldn’t rise; no one paid the least attention to her even as she cried out with every foot that trampled her body.

Michelle was looking right into the woman’s eyes when a cowboy boot came down directly onto her throat. The man tried to avoid it, crying, “No, move back, move back,” to those around him. But, like everyone else, he had no control over his direction, his motion, his footfalls.

Under the pressure of the weight on her throat, the woman’s head went back and she began to shake fiercely. By the time Michelle had been yanked away, the Latina’s eyes were glazed and her tongue protruded slightly from her bright red lips.