All the Inside Howling (Hollow Folk #2)(97)

I wasn’t dead. That was the most important part. Somehow, miraculously, I wasn’t dead. But the door behind me had shattered into a thousand pieces, strewing the ground with glass pebbles, and Salerno’s ghost had vanished. Becca crashed into me, shouting something I could barely hear, and dragged me into the station.

Chaos erupted all around us as Becca dragged me forward. A second shot rang out, and plaster puffed out from a pillar ahead of us. I threw a glance back. The crowd outside the station had split in a hundred different directions, spilling away from Lena like water from a shattered bottle. Lena stalked after us. Glass crunched under her combat boots. Her hair, laminated under at least an inch of hairspray, didn’t move, not a single strand, but the bulbous tip of her nose quivered.

Inside the station, the madness was only beginning. The space was large and bright and open, managing to look both modern and, somehow, old at the same time. Couches and tables made comfortable waiting spaces, and a massive chandelier overhead glowed a steady, pleasant yellow. Throughout this space that had been so carefully designed for weary travelers, men and women pushed and screamed and dragged at each other. A police officer fought to pass through the mob, but the frenzy had reached its peak, and after a second glance I realized the officer was going to have trouble saving himself, let alone anyone else.

“That way,” Becca shouted, dragging me towards the back, where ornate black lettering spelled out the word Lockers, followed by an arrow pointing down a hallway. As we pressed deeper into the crowd with Becca still in the lead, she stumbled once, then twice, and then she almost went down. I surged past her, using my bigger size to wrestle a path through the screaming masses.

The actual time we spent in that mob couldn’t have been long: two minutes, maybe three. It felt like an eternity. An older woman with a long, hemp skirt and a beaded tie-dye top threw herself at me, clawing at my face and screaming obscenities as she tried to get past me. A pair of teenage boys, probably no older than I was, were dragging an older man out of the crowd. He wore a turban, and his eyes were huge and dark and frightened as the boys screamed a mixture of obscenities and shrill cries for help, as though they had single-handedly caught the cause of all the madness. One man found himself in an inexplicably clear space within the crowd, and he crawled on hands and knees, scrambling after a prosthetic leg that had been kicked and trampled by a hundred different feet.

I couldn’t stop for any of them. I couldn’t help any of them. Their memories crashed over me, and inside myself, I braced against that inner door, barricading myself away from the storm of confused and frightened minds. Another shot rang out, and a woman just a few inches to my right screamed and clapped both hands over her face. Blood fountained between her fingers, and she fell as the stampede continued. She was dead. I knew she was dead, if not from the bullet than from the maddened herd that was trying to flee this place. But part of me insisted I had to stop and check, that she had to be all right, that this was just a gag, just some sick joke, a prank. The blood had been fake blood. This was a mob, but maybe it was a flash mob, and maybe the whole thing was choreographed. And then even that part of my brain went quiet, and all I could think was stand, stand, don’t fall down you stupid bastard, stand and push and keep moving.

And then, somehow, we broke clear of the insanity. Becca’s face was tight, white, and mottled under her eyes and across her cheeks in angry red blotches. I expected fear, horror, shock. What I saw, instead, was a woman who’d grabbed a cobra by the neck and was ready to pull out its teeth. What I saw was Becca Shockley, and God, she was amazing.

Ahead of us, standing in the arched entrance to the hallway, Emmett waved frantically. As we reached him, he ran alongside us. Even in all the chaos, even when another gunshot echoed through the main hall of the station, Emmett didn’t panic. Worry drew lines around his eyes and mouth, but he still loped along with that same ridiculous ease and confidence.

“So,” he shouted over the din, “you decided not to wait for my text.”

“The gun had a lot to do with that,” Becca panted.

“I guess you were letting Vie use his people skills again.” The hallway opened onto a low-ceilinged room. In contrast to the main hall, this space was clearly meant to be utilitarian: the walls had been painted a grubby cream color, and the expensive tile shifted to carpet squares. Rows of lockers broke off to the left. Emmett snagged Becca’s sleeve and turned. “This way.”

And there it was, at the end of the row, under a flickering light: A57. I slid the key home, turned it, and the locker popped open. This wasn’t a tall, skinny locker like the ones at school, but a square box, perhaps a foot on each side. Big enough, in this case, to fit a small duffel bag. Becca reached for it, but Emmett grabbed it first and slung it over one broad shoulder.

“Now,” Emmett said. “Can we go before someone misses Vie and shoots me on accident?”

Becca grabbed my shirt and pushed, and I stumbled across the aisle. A thunderous gun shot rang out. In the locker opposite me, a bullet had torn a hole the size of a can of fruit cocktail.

“This is exactly what I’m talking about,” Emmett shouted. The lines around his eyes and mouth were deeper now, but he was smiling. He grabbed Becca and pulled her to safety around the row of lockers. Lena stood at the opposite end, near the hallway where we had entered. She dropped the clip from her pistol and slammed another one home.