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mesh. He realized how futile his plan was and abandoned it.
    The door began to bend inward, and he could hear cracking as the wood started to split under the weight of the crowd in the hall. Soon the door would burst open. He pushed his dresser over toward the door, another futile gesture, so he stopped before he made it all the way. He felt panicked but tried to remain calm. He looked around his room, wondering what else he could do. The ceiling was too high to get to, and the roof on the other side would be as hard to break through as the stucco wall. He was at a loss.
    The door crashed open and slammed against the wall. He reacted immediately and rammed his body against the dresser, smashing it into the crowd trying to pour in. He couldn’t hold it forever, but at least none had gotten into his room. The dresser was sliding bit by bit into the room, and it wasn’t going to be long before they spilled in. He had to do something now.
    He planned to go to the last place available, the closet. He jumped away from the dresser and bodies spilled in, falling over each other and piling in the doorway. He was in the closet in a single long step and spun around to pull the door shut. What he saw reminded him of a video he’d seen where a crowd was trying to get out of a burning building. People had been stacked and wedged tightly into the doorway. None of them could move or even be pulled out by the firemen, they were so tightly compressed in the doorway. They were in a full-blown panic, the ones who were still alive. It had been a horrible thing to see, even on a small screen. That was happening now, in his room, but they were all still smiling. Even the ones who had expired, even the ones whose ribs cracked so loudly he could hear them over the clamor.
    He shut the door and sat in the dark on the floor of his closet, holding it shut. He dared not move for hours. Eventually he could no longer stand the stale air. His body was cramped and hurting, and things were pretty quiet. Over the hours, the grunts and groans and thumps of the people in the door had slowly subsided as they passed away. All that was left, to his knowledge, were the few people who had made it into the room, but they were being pretty quiet. No one had tried to open the door since he had been in the closet. He was relieved, but he was also still trapped in the house.
    He let go of the knob and lay on his side to try to look under the door. All he could see were a few feet moving around. It looked like the three people in the room were all together against the far wall. He wasn’t sure what he was going to do.
    He tried to remember what was in his closet. Clothes, sports gear—he couldn’t remember much of anything else and didn’t want to dig around and make noise. He felt around on the ground around him and felt coarse canvas. It was his backpack and it felt empty, but he slid his hand into several of the pockets. He felt an object he immediately could identify, his buck knife. When opened, the blade was five inches long and locked in place.
    He’d considering breaking through the Sheetrock to the next room but didn’t want to make the noise. The people in the room would open the unlocked door well before he would be able to get through the wall. But now he had a chance.
    Cooper moved slowly into position so he could put his weight behind the knife. He planned to pierce the wall several times until he cut through it. It took a long while, but he finally managed to cut a hole he thought he might be able to squeeze through. There was still the wall on the other side, and he would have to cut through that too. He started to work when the door clicked open. He reached back and pulled it shut. Whoever was trying to open it didn’t stop, but they weren’t putting a lot of effort into it either. He reached up with his free hand and found a belt. He wrapped the belt around the knob and held it with one hand to keep the door shut as he started kicking in the