Then there were more of them, pouring out of the building, through its windows and doors, launching themselves into the air. Ten, eleven, twelve. And soldiers too, everywhere, running and yelling and shooting, but their bullets did nothing; the demons were too fast, or else the bullets were harmless against them; one by one the demons fell upon the soldiers and they died.

This was why she had come—to save Amy from the demons.

Quickly, Lacey. Quickly.

She stepped from the edge of the woods.

“Halt!”

Lacey froze. Should she raise her hands? The soldier appeared from the woods where he’d been hiding, too. A good boy, doing what he thought was his duty. Trying not to be afraid, though of course he was; she could feel the fear coming off him, like waves of heat. He didn’t know what was about to happen to him. She felt a tender pity.

“Who are you?”

“I am no one,” Lacey said, and then the demon was upon him—before he could even point his weapon, before he could finish the word he was speaking as he died—and Lacey was running toward the building.

By the time they got to the base of the tube, Wolgast was sweating and breathing hard. A faint light was falling down upon them. Far above, he could see the twin beams of an emergency light and, farther still, the stilled blades of a giant fan. The central ventilation shaft.

“Amy, honey,” he said. “Amy, you have to wake up.”

Her eyes fluttered open and closed again. He guided her arms around his neck and stood, felt her feet clamping around his waist. But he could tell she had no strength.

“You have to hold on, Amy. Please. You have to.”

Her body tightened in reply. But still, he’d have to use one of his arms to support her weight. This would leave only one hand free to pull them up the ladder. Jesus.

He turned and faced the ladder, set his foot onto the first rung. It was like a problem on a standardized test: Brad Wolgast is holding a little girl. He has to climb a ladder, fifty feet, in a poorly lit ventilation shaft. The girl is semiconscious at best. How does Brad Wolgast save both their lives?

Then he saw how he could do it. One rung at a time, he’d use his right hand to pull them up, then hook that same elbow through the ladder, balancing Amy’s weight on his knee while he changed hands and moved up another rung. Then the left hand, then the right, and so on, moving Amy’s weight between them, rung by rung to the top.

How much did she weigh? Fifty pounds? All suspended, at the moment he changed hands, by the strength of a single arm.

Wolgast began to climb.

Richards could tell from the shouts and the shooting that the sticks were outside now.