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attempts to retreat back to the shadows.
    I grab her by the shoulders and hold her still while scanning her for wounds. “Are you hurt? Did you get bit?”
    She shakes her head, the tears mixing with the blood on her face. “It’s all theirs, it’s not mine.”
    “Tasia, go get some wet paper towels from the kitchen.”
    “Is she—”
    “Tasia! Paper towels!”
    She rushes from the room, still a ball of emotion.
    “It’s alright. You hear me? It’s alright. We’re gonna get you cleaned up and then we’re gonna get out of here. You believe me?”
    She nods.
    Tasia is back with the paper towels. She hands me a thick stack and has another stack for herself.
    We begin wiping down Alisa. She takes one side of her face and I take the other. She takes one arm and I take the other. We go like that until we’ve cleaned every exposed piece of skin.
    Tasia throws the soiled paper towels aside and hugs Alisa to her chest, kissing the top of her head.
    “Feel a little better?” I ask.
    She nods, her chin still trembling.
    The building quakes with another explosion.
    Alisa spooks and grips Tasia tighter.
    “That’s our signal to leave.”
    Tasia scoops Alisa up and follows me back into the living room.
    The scene playing out on the television grabs my attention.
    ‘The military is pushing us back from the barricades now; they’re saying it’s for our own protection.’ The ashen-haired female reporter with the thick eye makeup slides in and out of frame as the man holding the camera turns circles, getting brief shots of the line of heavily armed soldiers forcing them to move. ‘Beyond that, they’re not saying much else. As you can see, they’re being quite hostile. We’ve seen the explosions. We’ve seen them firing on unarmed civilians. We’ve seen the bodies in the streets. The reason given to us has been brief and vague, to say the least. All they’re telling us is that people are sick, highly contagious, and that they’ve been acting out violently. Again, I want to reiterate that everything we’ve heard is, at this point, speculation.’ She stops moving and brings two fingers up to her ear piece. ‘We’re getting word now from one of our sources that the military may be planning to conduct air strikes. That may explain why they’re pushing us back, but at this point, we just don’t know. But again, word is coming in that they may be planning to launch an air strike of some sort on this neighborhood.’
    “We’ve got to get the hell out of here, now!” Tasia says, taking the words right out of my mouth.

6
     
    We’re back in the hall. A quick check reveals that the bodies Tasia and I dropped on the way down are still lifeless.
    “The window!” Tasia points to the single dirty window at the end of the hall. Oddly enough, there’s not a single crack or bullet hole to be seen. It’s a twin to the one I’d thrown Amos out of.
    I look at Tasia and shrug, her message lost on me.
    “We can signal for help, tell them we got our child up here!”
    “Tasia, I’ve seen what they do to people…what they’re doing to people right now! I can’t just—”
    “Try, damn it!” Tasia catches herself and puts a hand over Alisa’s ear and presses her head down against her shoulder, lowering her voice. “We’ll never make it down to the lobby. What do you think it’s like down there? This ain’t no place for our little girl.”
    She’s right. Even before we found Alisa, I was asking myself how we were gonna get her out of here in one piece. I look at the window and remember the men in the helicopter killing all those innocent folks on the roof. The voice of the lady on the news talking about folks getting shot down in the street echoes in my head. But the desire to see my little girl safe is louder than all of that, so I start towards the window.
    The glass is fogged over with grime and I don’t think the window has actually been opened since it was installed. The wood is splintering off and the