All Together Dead

shook. Eric’s eyes were a little wider now, and he was concentrating so heavily on keeping himself moving that his strength was pulling on mine.
    “Pam,” I said, trying to push him into more action. I opened the coffin, after some desperate fumbling. Eric went over to his sleeping child, walking like his feet were sticking to the floor with each step. He took Pam’s shoulders and I took her feet, and we picked her up, blanket and all. The floor shook again, more violently this time, and we lurched over to the coffin and tossed Pam into it. I shut the lid and latched it, though a corner of Pam’s nightgown was sticking out.
    I thought about Bill, and Rasul flashed across my mind, but there was nothing I could do, and there wasn’t any time left. “We have to break the glass!” I shrieked at Eric. He nodded very slowly. We knelt to brace ourselves against the end of the coffin and we pushed as hard as we could till it slammed into the glass, which cracked into about a thousand pieces. They hung together, amazingly—the miracle of safety glass. I could have screamed from frustration. We needed a hole , not a curtain of glass. Crouching lower, digging our toes into the carpet, trying to ignore the rumbling noises in the building below us, Eric and I shoved with all our strength.
    Finally! We punched the coffin all the way through. The window let go of its frame and cascaded down the side of the building.
    And Eric saw sunlight for the first time in a thousand years. He screamed, a terrible, gut-wrenching noise. But in the next instant, he pulled the cloak tight around him. He grabbed me and hopped astride the coffin, and we pushed off with our feet. For just a fraction of a minute, we hung in the balance, and then we tilted forward. In the most awful moment of my life, we went out the window and began tobogganing down the building on the coffin. We would crash unless—
    Suddenly we were off the coffin and kind of staggering through the air, Eric holding me to him with dogged persistence.
    I exhaled with profound relief. Of course, Eric could fly.
    In his light-stunned stupor, he couldn’t fly very well. This was not the smooth progress I’d experienced before; we had more of a zigzag, bobbing descent.
    But it was better than a free fall.
    Eric could delay our descent enough to keep me from being dashed to my death on the street outside the hotel. However, the coffin with Pam inside had a bad landing, and Pam came catapulting out of the remains of the wood and into the sunlight where she lay motionless. Without making a sound, she began to burn. Eric landed on top of her and used the blanket to cover both of them. One of Pam’s feet was exposed, and the flesh was smoking. I covered it up.
    I also heard the sound of sirens. I flagged down the first ambulance I saw, and the medics leaped out.
    I pointed to the blanketed heap. “Two vampires—get them out of the sun!” I said.
    The pair of EMTs, both young women, exchanged an incredulous glance. “What do we do with them?” asked the dark one.
    “You take them to a nice basement somewhere, one without any windows, and you tell the owners to keep that basement open, because there are gonna be more.”
    High up, a smaller explosion blew out one of the suites. A suitcase bomb, I thought, wondering how many Joe had talked us into carrying up into the rooms. A fine shower of glass sparkled in the sun as we looked up, but darker things were following the glass out of the window, and the EMTs began to move like the trained team they were. They didn’t panic, but they definitely moved with haste, and they were already debating which building close at hand had a large basement.
    “We’ll tell everyone,” said the dark woman. Pam was now in the ambulance and Eric halfway there. His face was bright red and steam was rising from his lips. Oh, my God. “What you going to do?”
    “I have to go back in there,” I said.
    “Fool,” she said, and then threw herself in the ambulance, which took off.
    There was more glass raining down, and part of the bottom floor appeared to be collapsing. That would be due to some of the larger explosive-packed coffin bombs in the shipping and receiving area. Another explosion came from about the sixth floor, but on the other side of the pyramid. My senses were so dulled by the sound and the sight that I wasn’t surprised when I saw a blue suitcase flying through the air. Mr. Cataliades had succeeded in breaking the queen’s