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"You okay?" Ada into me fro I feel like I&039;ve stepped out offro, like the nervous relief you feel when you walk aithout a scratch from a crash that&039;s just written off your car You&039;re thinking, How did I get aith it? How close was I to biting the bullet? and then your mind starts with the "what ifs" and "if onlys" I know that if I&039;d have been another hundred or so people farther along the line that night, I&039;d be a dead ainst one of the doors in front of me It moves freely, and I shove it open and walk into what as chamber The dark hides the details of what I know is all around me There are bodies here I have no idea how many, but I can see their shapes stacked up in featureless piles The cavernous roo on dead flesh, and I keep looking up to avoid looking down There&039;s a hole in the roof three-quarters of the way down the length of the rooantries and ays high up on either side Wide-gauge pipeeaves in and out of the walls of the building, and an enormous exhaust fan has beenslowly in the gentle evening breeze

"Let&039;s get out," Ada stinks in here"

I round so I don&039;t trip over anything I can&039;t see, convinced that the entire floor is covered with gore and bits of bodies I kick bits of wood and twisted chunks of metal out of the way-remnants of the fallen section of roof-and finally reach the far wall, , trying to find a way out In the farthest corner, hidden from view by another unidentifiable pile of rubbish, is a wide door that&039;s hanging off its hinges, half open I duck underneath it, then turn back and prop it open fully so Adarunts and moans of effort make him sound like a monster in the shadows

"We can&039;t stay here," he says

"Might be sos around"

As soon as he&039;s coht We&039;ve only taken a few steps when he stops

"Fuck me," he mumbles "Would you look at that"

At the side of the long, narrow building is another clearing, out of sight until now, and the ground is almost completely covered with bodies for as far as I can see There are hundreds of them, thousands probably, stacked up in ain and loole, unidentifiable uishable as hus that stick out froet closer, however, a level of sickening detail is revealed These bodies have been dumped-not even laid out-and those at the botto them unnaturally thin, alher up, countless squashed, frozen, waxy faces stare back atTheir discolored flesh, hollow cheeks, and sunken eyes give each of the them makesfor any of the people here-they&039;re just empty shells now, each of them a spent force-but I swear I won&039;t end up like this

"Look on the bright side," Ada

"There&039;s a bright side?"

"&039;Course there is You got away That could have been you, that could Could have beenfarther into the clearing, following a narrow pathway between another two fifty-yard-or-so-long piles of death Distracted, I lose round suddenly starts to cru on e of a vast hole, at least twenty yards square and deep enough for me not to be able to see the bottorave filled with an incalculable nuet up and carefully walk around the edge There&039;s a bulldozer up ahead with a massivethe pit, but then I see there&039;s a scrap of clothing caught on the teeth of the scoop and I realize they were using it to fill it Directly belowalmost all the way up to the surface, piled up where they were tipped out They look like they&039;re cli back over to Ada myself to look away from the dead How many sites like this were there, and are any still in operation? Even now as I&039; killed elsewhere? Then another thought crosses hter, Ellis Did she end up in a place like this? Is she there noaiting to die? Is she here? For a few desperate seconds I turn back toward the corpses and start looking through theirl&039;s Then, as quickly as sudden panic just took hold, coain If she&039;s here there&039;s nothing I can do I have to believe she&039;s still alive She&039;s all I&039;ve got left

"So where are they all?" Adam asks

"Who?"

"The fuckers who did this Where&039;d they go?"

"I don&039;t know," I answer as I lead hiroup of three square-shaped, light-colored, prefabricated huts that look new in couess Maybe they were attacked?"

"Hope the bastards got what they deserved"

Two of the alated metal roller door on the front of the third, however, is not I open it fully and go inside It&039;s ss of cheht No one with any sense will come here, and even if they do, we&039;ll just play dead I&039;d have fought side by side with any of the thousands of people who died here, but they&039;re just rotting meat now, and we&039;ll use them as cover

Adaet co of any importance I close the door, then find myself a scrap of space in the far corner of the hard concrete floor and try to sleep, resting my head on another plastic sack full of Christ-knohat It could be poisonous or corrosive, but it doesn&039;t matter I cover it with my coat and close my eyes, too tired to care