Succinct (Extinct Book 5)

by Ike Hamill

  “I wonder,” Robby whispered.

  “Wonder what?” Jim asked.

  “You remember those MREs we tried a long time ago?”

  Jim made a face immediately.

  “What’s an MRE?” Janelle wanted to know.

  “I don’t think you were there,” Robby said. She scowled. Janelle hated to be left out. Even more, she hated family stories that she wasn’t involved in. Romie said that it was normal for the youngest kid.

  “Your brother and I got caught out in a storm a bunch of years ago, remember?”

  “No,” Janelle said, crossing her arms.

  Robby veered his story another direction. She hated family stories that excluded her, but she loved stories from before the end of the world.

  “When I was a kid,” Robby said, “we knew about all the storms before they came. They would have reports on TV and on the radio.”

  “How did they get the reports on the TV?” she asked.

  “They were broadcast,” Robby said. His kids didn’t really grasp the word. “A bunch of people in a special office would take a video of themselves talking about the storm and that would be sent to everyone at the same time. So, it’s like our video link with Donnelly, but there was just someone talking about what the weather was going to be.”

  She nodded. “Yeah. Groundhog Day,” she said.

  “Right—like that movie—exactly,” Robby said. “Well, every single day, before school, my mom would turn on the TV just before seven and the guy would tell us what was going to happen in the weather. They knew what the temperature was going to be, and they could tell you if you were going to need an umbrella or a winter coat.”

  “Because of satellites,” Jim said.

  “Yes,” Robby said.

  Now that Janelle had unfolded her arms again, Robby returned to the point.

  “Well, since we don’t have that, one day Jim and I went out to get Uncle Brad some parts that he wanted for his stereo.”

  “They were up a bunch of stairs,” Jim said.

  “That’s right,” Robby said. “They were in a tall building in the city on the eighth floor. It was just starting to snow when we went up, but we didn’t think it was going to be too bad. Our barometer on Long Island didn’t suggest a big storm. It actually looked like it was going to clear up. But we got clobbered.”

  “We couldn’t even see the truck from the window,” Jim said.

  “That’s right,” Robby said.

  “We got stuck in that building and there was nothing to eat.”

  “Well…” Robby started. Jim made the disgusted face again. “We found these old military rations. There were expired, of course, but we were hungry enough to take a small chance. We opened a bunch to see if anything was still good.”

  “They were disgusting,” Jim said.

  “But we didn’t get sick,” Robby said.

  Janelle figured out where he was going with the story. “And you think they might have those here?”

  “I would be surprised if they didn’t have something,” Robby said.

  “Who cares?” Jim asked. “We have our own food. They just brought it all down to the storeroom.”

  Again, Janelle figured it out just before Robby was going to explain. “Because, Dad thinks that if someone is living down here, we’ll know because the food will be gone.”

  Robby put a finger on his nose and then pointed to his daughter. She smiled.

  “We’re looking for a pantry. It should be close,” Robby said. “But stick together. Eyes open and no wandering.”

  The kitchen wasn’t so big that he thought they could get lost, but that message couldn’t be repeated often enough in his opinion.

  “Isn’t it right there?” Jim asked, pointing past the prep tables.

  “Good eye,” Robby said.

  The latch was nearly invisible. The seam of the door blended into the wall as well. The only way that Jim had spotted the door was the black line at the bottom that didn’t quite match the corner on either side.

  Robby felt around until he found the latch and pressed. When he released, the latch popped out.

  “By the way, ghosts don’t eat food,” Jim said, trying to rile up his sister. It worked. She tried to swat him and he ducked out of the way.

  Once he pulled the latch, the door began to swing open on its own. It had a strange hinge. After coming toward him a little, the whole big door began to fold back into a recess. The doorway to the pantry was large enough for two people to pass through at the same time.

  The pantry contained rows of empty shelves. Only the bottom shelves of each rack was filled. There, metal boxes had latches on the sides.

  “It’s like a food jail,” Jim said. “Were they afraid it was going to try to get out?”

  “Rodents and scavengers,” Robby said. “How many times have we tracked down a warehouse, only to find that everything was infested with rodents? This whole thing is lined with metal, and that door seals tight. I wouldn’t even be surprised to find out that the room can be flooded with an inert gas to prevent spoilage.”

  “Why not suck all the air out, like Aunt Lisa does with her food bags?” Janelle asked.

  “Any leaky containers with liquid would boil,” Robby said. “If you pulled a vacuum on the whole room, it would encourage leaks.”

  “Oh,” she said.

  “You remember that experiment that your sister was working on last year?”

  “The breathing apples?” Janelle asked.

  “Exactly,” Robby said. “She was trying to come up with a way to store apples in our basement in a nitrogen rich environment.”

  Janelle nodded along.

  “Her thought was that she could keep them fresher longer. It would have worked, too, she just didn’t get a good handle on the levels of the gases before her samples went bad.”

  “And this room does that?” Jim asked, looking up at the ceiling.

  “Maybe,” Robby said. “Maybe. Those holes up there must do something. I think there are too many of them to be simple environmental controls, you know?”

  Both his kids examined the room with wide eyes, trying to pry out the secrets of the place.

  “Let’s open up one of these and see what they’re protecting,” Robby said.

  He pulled one of the metal crates from a nearby shelf and let it drop to the floor. The thing was about the size of a footlocker. The kids were quick to unbuckle the latches on either side. Robby glanced around as they tried to lift the lid. He was looking for any trash or debris. He didn’t think there were any rodents in the place, but there might be a scavenger.

  “It won’t open,” Jim said.

  Robby reached down, thinking that the whole metal box might be sealed. His hand froze before he touched it. There had been a noise from the kitchen.

  Robby glanced to Janelle. She had the best ears.

  “Sounded like a metal pan dropped on a floor,” she said. “But let’s open the box. I want to see what one of these meals looks like. I bet I would like it.”

  Robby straightened back up.

  “Just a sec, Janelle. Probably one of the others who caught up with us. Hello?” he called.

  The response was the sound of another metal object clanging to the floor.

  “Hello?” Robby called. He took a step toward the door. He gathered his children behind himself and led them to where they could see down the aisle of the kitchen. On the right, they saw the prep tables. Some of those had pans and trays stored underneath, but they all seemed to be in their proper places. On the left, sinks and appliances lined the wall. Again, Robby didn’t see the source of the noise.

  Robby motioned for the kids to stay put and he ventured a little farther. Before he moved past the table on the end, he ducked down to see underneath. There was nobody there, but he did see one of the metal pans on the floor right in front of the stack of tall ovens. There were no shadows over near the door to the dining area. He didn’t see anything moving. It was like the cha
irs—the thing had moved on its own. Maybe the place was set up to frighten people away. It seemed like an elaborate system, when they could have simple invested the time and energy into a better lock.

  Merle was good at getting into places, sure, but it couldn’t be that difficult to secure the doors in a way to prevent casual explorers from gaining entry. It would certain be a lot easier than creating this strange ghost that did nothing more than rattle pans and upend chairs.

  Robby rounded the corner and bent over to pick up the pan. He didn’t see anything unusual about it. He pulled another from the shelf under the table and compared them. They were stainless steel and looked like any other…

  He didn’t finish the thought.

  The door to the storage pantry had opened silently, but it made a hissing sound as it prepared to close itself.

  “Step away,” Robby called. Janelle was too close to the swing of the door and she was standing there, staring into the storage room.

  “I want to see what’s in the box,” she said as she darted thought he door.

  “No!” Robby said.

  It was too late. She was slipping through the doorway and it the heavy door was gaining speed as it closed. Robby’s hip hit the corner of the table and his momentum spun him. One of the pans flew from his hand. Jim was standing in the doorway to the pantry, trying to decide if he should obey his father or go after his sister. As Robby flew toward him, he took a step back, away from the door.

  Janelle was almost back to the doorway, dragging the metal box.

  The heavy door was shutting fast.

  Robby still had one of the steel pans in his hand. He slid that toward the gap and jumped over it while he still had enough room to squeeze through the door. The pan was caught in the swing of the door. It started to crunch under the force of whatever mechanism was trying to seal up the pantry. Robby grabbed his daughter under her armpits.

  She said, “No!” as he lifted her, swinging her toward the gap that he had just fit through.

  There was probably enough room, but he didn’t want to risk it. He couldn’t bear the thought of Janelle getting caught in that crushing force. The pan continued to collapse. The door and pan battled to a tie with only a four-inch gap remaining. Robby drew close from the inside. Jim was outside.

  “Jim, follow the arrows and go and get help. Tell them to bring a big lever.”

  “I can find something,” Jim said, looking around.

  “I don’t know if this pan is going to hold,” Robby said.

  Jim gave him a single nod and then ran off.

  Robby looked down at the pan, waiting. All the doors that he could think of—elevator doors, or automatic doors at the grocery store, or even the sliding door on the van that he used to drive—they would immediately reverse direction if they hit too much resistance. Those types of doors were meant to value safety over closing.

  This door was different. The panty had been built like a vault. When triggered, the door favored closing over safety. Robby had the terrible feeling that the thing was still trying to close. If he tried to force the thing open, it would fight back. And if it fought back and won, the rest of the pantry’s secrets might be revealed.

  “We need something more sturdy,” Robby said.

  The metal in the pan was ticking as the relentless pressure from the pantry door tried to bend the steel.

  “What about the lid to the box?”

  He glanced to see what his daughter was pointing at. Her motives were transparent, but she might be right. The lid of the storage container had ridges in the metal to make the structure sturdy. The containers were probably designed to be stacked to the ceiling if necessary. It was clearly a lot more structurally sound.

  “Yeah. Okay,” Robby said. He moved away from the door and joined Janelle. She led the way back to the box and waited for Robby to use his fingers to break the seal. When it came open, they heard the air rushing into the container and the lid popped when the pressure released.

  Back at the door, the pan was beginning to groan. The door was gaining in the fight to deform the metal and it was picking up speed. Robby snatched the lid to the container and darted for the door, slipping it in the gap. The door caught it, pinning it in place as the lid caught the pressure from the door’s mechanism.

  Robby let out a breath. He glanced at Janelle.

  “Well, we’re stuck, but at least we…”

  He was cut off by the sound of hissing gas. They both looked up and saw the white fog shooting into the pantry from the jets in the metal ceiling. Robby grabbed his daughter’s hand.

  “Come here,” he said, gently pulling her toward the door. He pressed his face to the gap between the door and the frame so he could breathe the air from the kitchen. He helped Janelle line herself up as well.

  “Is it poison?”

  “I’m sure it’s not poison, but that doesn’t mean it’s breathable,” he said. “Better safe than sorry.”

  He could feel the gas escaping the room as the draft blew through his hair. Robby was afraid that whatever the gas was, they were breathing too much of it.

  “You let me know if you start to feel lightheaded,” Robby said.

  “Okay,” Janelle said.

  He took a deep breath and looked over his shoulder at the pantry. He couldn’t help feeling that something was back there, watching them.

  Chapter 65: Lisa

  The light sat atop a hill. It stayed steady as they crossed the expanse of river, so it wasn’t a reflection. Lisa thought it was a fire at first, but the light was too consistent to be flames. As they neared the shore, they lost sight of the light behind the trees. Penny became antsy, dancing near the side of the raft. She jumped off when they raft began to scrape the bottom.

  “Penny,” Tim said, “don’t go far.”

  Lisa could hear Penny sniffing around in the dark. She wished that she could see as well as the dog did. Between the moon and stars, she could only make out the occasional detail of what waited for them in the dark.

  “You guys are going to have to check it out without me,” Tim said.

  “Tim, we talked about this,” Lisa said.

  “Yeah, and last time you guys chose to not investigate at all because I would have slowed us all down so much. That was just a reflection before—this is something emitting light. Regardless of what it is, we need to investigate. That means you have to go on without me,” Tim said.

  “Lisa is right. We’ll stay together and go as slowly as it takes,” Ashley said.

  Tim sighed as he gave up.

  Ashley jumped off and Lisa felt the raft shift as it was tied up to a tree. Tim limped off next. Lisa followed behind. Once she committed to the darkness, she found that she was able to see a little more. The bank was muddy at the edge of the river, but it climbed fast and the terrain dried out. Just ahead, she could hear Tim and Ashley’s conversation as they made the slow ascent. When they passed through a shaft of moonlight, she could see that Tim was leaning on Ashley and they were carefully keeping the same pace.

  Even without Tim, they wouldn’t have gone any faster. Lisa was barely able to keep up with them. She could see the trees well enough, but she could see nothing of the ground, so she had to feel around with each foot before she trusted her weight to it. The last thing they needed was two people with sprained ankles.

  Penny stopped and growled.

  “There it is,” Ashley whispered.

  It took Lisa a moment to see it, she had to shift to her right to see around a tree. They could see the light up the hill. They were on the right course.

  “I need a break,” Tim said.

  “A little longer,” Ashley said.

  He didn’t complain again. They kept climbing. Lisa had to grab a tree branch to make it over the pile of rocks in their way. She wasn’t sure, but it looked like it was part of a stone wall. Lisa’s memory took her back to another trip through the woods and a cold chill ran through her. That time, they had been running from killer liquid
and they had ended up in a cabin with a corpse. The memory was so strong that she wanted to turn around and go back to the raft.

  Ashley and Tim hadn’t been there in New Hampshire though—they wouldn’t understand the fear. After the wall, the terrain was smoother. Lisa heard Tim and Ashley pick up their pace. Lisa paused and blinked at the structure at the top of the hill.

  An unbroken line of windows ran along the top of the building, just below the roof. They were too high to reveal anything of the interior. It bothered Lisa that anyone would build a structure at the top of a hill and then put the windows up so high that there was no view from inside.

  “What is it?” Lisa asked.

  Nobody had an answer.

  Once the ground flattened out, and they had some light from the building, Lisa was able to pass Ashley and Tim and reach the building first. The simple architecture had made the place look small from a distance. Now that she was close, she could see the size of it.

  She saw a pool of light around the corner and she rounded the building to see a door flanked by windows that went all the way to the ground. They didn’t show her much. Lisa pressed her face against the glass. It was foggy with dirt from the inside. She could make out the wall opposite the door, and not much else.

  “Is it open?” Ashley asked, coming around the corner.

  “Oh. I hadn’t checked,” Lisa said. That was the difference between the generations—Lisa automatically assumed that houses and buildings belonged to someone. She wasn’t quick to just waltz right in. For Ashley, everything was assumed abandoned until proven otherwise.

  Ashley turned the handle and pulled open the heavy door.

  “It’s open,” Ashley said. She began to cough and wave her hand in front of her face.

  Tim and Penny came around the corner to join them.

  “What is it?” Tim asked.

  “A horrible smell,” Ashley said.