Marcus Webb had lived on the ninth floor for six years before the world ended, and he'd spent the last several weeks watching it end a second time, slower, in a building that no longer had the decency to simply flood and be done with it.
He gathered them in what used to be a shared laundry room, eleven people crowded between dead machines, candlelight throwing long shadows across faces he'd known by nothing more than a polite nod in the elevator before all this started. Now he knew their names. He knew whose children were coughing. He knew who'd stopped eating so their kids could.
The room smelled like mildew and melted wax, the dryers behind them rusted shut, one window boarded over with a door someone had pried from its hinges weeks ago. Outside, the rain hadn't stopped in longer than anyone could remember exactly, and the building groaned sometimes at night now, low and distant, like something settling its weight wrong.
