One Door From Heaven

torches waiting to be lit.
        Edging backward, Noah rapped his head against the ceiling. He froze as the compacted mass trembled under him. Remained frozen until it grew still once more. Then he dropped into the safe passageway, joining the others.
        Safe like the Titanic. Safe like Hiroshima, 1945. Safe: like Hell.
        The rescue operation had taken at most a minute and a half, but conditions had worsened noticeably in the meantime. Night seemed to have arrived toward the front of the maze, though it wasn't night: more like a tsunami of black water, suspended by the magical stoppage of time, powerful and roiling within itself, but not yet advancing. Veins of red fire opened in that thick blackness, bled for a moment, closed up, and new veins ruptured elsewhere. And here, the cloying air pressed upon him, heavier with portent than with smoke, pregnant with a sense of tremendous forces rapidly building beyond restraint. Blackened pages of old magazines, little more than large flakes of ash, glided lazily toward them through the air, like stingrays seeking prey, and great schools of tiny lanternfish swam overhead in sinuous parades, sometimes extinguishing themselves when they collided with the maze walls, but in other places sparking small new fires, not yet attracted downward to the hair and clothes that they would eventually find so tasty. The heat demanded a toll of greasy sweat, but then parched Noah's mouth and cracked his lips and seared the linings of his nostrils.
        They were all coughing and clearing their throats, sneezing and wheezing, hawking black spit and gray phlegm.
        Cass declared, "Outta here, now!" and led the way, followed by Leilani and Micky.
        Last man in line,.38 revolver drawn in case Maddoc still had something to prove, Noah saw the throb of firelight toward the back of the house, where they had encountered none on the way in. Maybe there would be a path around it.
        TURN BY TURN, through the convolutions of the labyrinth, as if exploring the gyri and the sulci on the surface of a brain, Preston chose his route according to his understanding of the classic maze pattern imprinted in the human racial memory, to which all ordinary maze-makers unfailingly resorted. Maybe the Toad, in spite of bib and bristle, wasn't ordinary, after all - subhuman seemed more likely - or maybe Preston's recollection of what he'd learned in that long-ago logic class was flawed, because he seemed to be getting nowhere, and he suspected that more than once he had doubled back and crossed his path.
        Blame might best be placed on the bullet wound, which steadily drained him, or on the quality of the air, rather than on faulty memory or on the Toad's failure to get in touch with his inner primitive. The Black Hole worried frequently about the ever worsening quality of the planet's air, which was under continuous assault by barbecue grills and flatulent cows and SUVs and bathroom deodorizing cakes and, oh, so many things, so many. The air in here had gotten more disgusting than the air in a vomitorium. It probably contained more psychoactive chemical toxins than the Hole kept in her entire drug supply. The Hole, the good old Hole, mess that she might be, she sometimes got a thing or two right. Preston had a buzz on, a paper-chemical buzz, exacerbated by heat and by the thin haze of smoke that lent these wooden-Indian catacombs some of the atmosphere of an opium den, though the smell was not as pleasant, and no bunks were provided for those who had toked the pipe and felt wasted, as he felt ever more wasted, step by step.
        He attempted to determine which of these coral-reef accretions of trash might be piled against an outer wall of the house, because windows lay behind those stacks, windows offering escape and clean air, or as clean as air ever got in a world full of barbecue grills. Unfortunately, he couldn't stay focused on the task. One moment he would be searching urgently for concealed windows, and the next thing he knew, he'd find himself standing at a bafflingly complex juncture of passages, muttering, spitting on his shoes. Spit. Disgusting. So many fluids in the human body. Noxious fluids. He felt sick. He felt sick… but then he found himself peering warily around corners, searching not for windows but for the mysterious damn, sneaky damn extraterrestrials that had been eluding him for years.
        For most of his life, he hadn't needed to believe