Day 13

C:\

With a small beep, a command prompt appeared on the laptop screen, followed by a long line of mysterious code, strings and combinations of random digits and numbers. The code flew down the monitor as if blown by wind, expanding and extending for almost a full minute. Then, as quickly as it had come, it disappeared, leaving the screen pitch black. With another small beep, the monitor went out.

Then, with an ear-splitting roar, the floor of the apartment opened in fire and smoke.

Jordan Longfellow jolted upright and jumped out of his futon. He staggered for a moment, and very nearly fell into the gaping hole in his third story floor. In a daze, still caught in his dreams from a moment ago, he inched around the bedframe, toes burning, until he reached his closet door. He threw it open and searched the shelves frantically, hands grasping in the dark until they hit a small rubber Tuppermaid. He yanked it open and pulled out a military grade gas mask and a thick, ugly gray coverall. He pulled them on, zipped the fire suit up and checked the breathers.

The panic struck him then, as his adrenaline finally began to press through his exhaustion. How had they found him, here, in one of his sanctuaries? The apartment was barely bigger than a closet, but somehow they had managed to break through.

He glanced quickly across the gaping, flaming maw. His laptop. He eyed the gap, then took a deep, filtered breath. With a few short steps and an enormous effort, he leaped over the gap to the other side.

A piece of concrete buckled, cracked.

Jordan threw himself forward.

His hands touched the cool metal of his computer, and he grasped it to his chest as he fell backward. There was no stopping it.

He cried out in pain as the back of his head collided with the arm of the loveseat in the lower apartment. For a moment, Jordan thought his neck might have broken. He lay there, weary to his bones, breathing through the filters of his mask, staring up through the black, flaming hole.

A shatter of glass.

A small pop.

Jordan’s eyes flew to the window, then he flung himself over the back end of the couch. He fell to the floor, but it didn’t feel right. Too lumpy and disfigured. He looked down, and had to stifle vomit in his throat.

The corpses had obviously been dead for a few hours. The man’s eyes bulged, and the woman’s skin was beginning to turn a horrible shade of blue. Jordan rolled quickly off the man and instinctively checked for a pulse, then withdrew his hand just as quickly. It was obviously part of their plan.

He had to get out of there, had to find some way out and into the darkness. Well, he thought bitterly, at least I only have two floors to go.