Standing crouched in a firing stance inside the elevator, her Lawgiver cocked and ready, Anderson looked out as the elevator doors opened on the thirty-eighth floor and saw a scene from a nightmare. There were dead bodies everywhere: the corpses of men, women, even children, lay strewn across the hallway alone or in small untidy heaps and piles like rubbish sacks awaiting collection. Charles Whitman Block had been turned into a slaughterhouse. She saw dead faces staring up at her with unseeing eyes while their blood covered the floor and walls with drag marks and spatter. She smelt the stench of fresh blood and cordite, and something worse. As she moved from the elevator into the hallway, she felt a rush of emotions hit her as she was exposed to the psychic residue left by the carnage. Every step of the way the last memories and experiences of the bodies before her hung in the air like screaming ghosts: impressions of pain, fear and horror left indelibly imprinted on the victims' surroundings by the violence of their deaths.
