He supposed he would have felt the same way if there was any hope of discovering one of his own relatives alive. How strange and wonderful it would be in the middle of all this violence and horror to see a familiar face! He hadn’t realized until it was too late how much comfort he’d drawn from seeing Cody every day. It had been good to have a friend from before the virus.
Of course she wants her sister.
Empathizing, Adam increased his pace a little bit, even though it taxed him to do so. If Ella noticed, she didn’t say anything.
As the sun began to sink on the horizon, after a full day of brisk walking, Adam saw a cluster of buildings up in the distance.
“Look,” he said, pointing. “Is that Napa Bay?”
Ella frowned. “I don’t think so,” she said. “We should still be about ten miles out, if my math is right. I had given up on getting there tonight.”
“Well, maybe that’s someplace we can camp out for the night, at least,” Adam suggested.
Ella nodded.
They covered a bit more ground in silence and eventually came upon a sign. “Welcome to San Álvaro.”
“San Álvaro,” Adam said slowly. “Why do I know that name?”
“There were a bunch of TV ads about it a few years ago,” Ella remembered. “California was trying to make a big deal of it as a destination spot. I don’t think it ever really took off, because the market was too narrow. It was a luxury destination for people who didn’t want to do LA or San Francisco.”
“Right,” Adam said. “I did see that. I’d forgotten all about it.”
“Well, this is as good a place as any to hole up for the night,” Ella declared. “Maybe we can find somewhere to restock on water. I don’t know about you, but I could sure use a drink.” She started to move forward beyond the sign.
Adam grabbed her shoulder. “Hold up.”
“What?” she asked, glancing back at him.
He had seen something in the overgrown grass around the base of the sign, and he crouched to investigate. It was a plank of wood nailed sloppily to the top of a stake, and as he stood it upright he could see that a single word had been painted across it. “Sanctuary.”
“What do you suppose this means?” he asked, leaning the handmade sign up against the official sign that welcomed visitors to San Álvaro.
“I have no idea,” Ella said. “Sanctuary…”
“It’s encouraging, don’t you think?” Adam asked. “It’s got to be a good thing. Sanctuary.”
“But why was it knocked down like that?” Ella asked. She stepped past him and examined the ground. “Look. Here’s where it was originally planted.” She took the sign and eased the stake into a hole in the earth. “It doesn’t look like it just fell down of its own accord. That’s a deep hole. I think someone uprooted it.”
“Why would anyone take up a wooden sign and then not keep the wood to use for kindling, though?” Adam asked, remembering the struggle he’d been through to tear apart the balloon booth the night before. “That doesn’t make sense.”
“I don’t know,” Ella said. “It’s strange. I don’t like the look of any of this.”
“Should we go into the town?” Adam asked. “We still want to look for water, right?”
“Yes,” Ella said firmly. “Whoever painted this sign might still be in there. And if someone wanted to offer sanctuary, that’s got to be a good thing, no matter what happened next. That might be someone we can meet up with, someone we can work with going forward.” She took a deep breath. “I know you’ll be happier when we have a bigger group.”
“Safety in numbers,” Adam said.
“Such as it is,” Ella agreed wryly.
They made their way into the town and up the darkening main street. Adam could see at once that this town had been built to cater to the wealthy. The road was lined with designer shops and deliberately quaint little eateries. The cars that remained behind were all luxurious and looked as though they’d barely been driven. He and Ella walked slowly, looking this way and that, keeping their eyes out for any signs of life.
“Look,” Ella said quietly.
Something was hanging from a light post a few yards ahead.
A sick feeling settled into Adam’s stomach as he understood what the shape was, but Ella ran forward.
“Hang on,” he called after her. “Don’t.”
She didn’t listen. She only picked up speed, accelerating to the base of the pole, until she was near enough that the feet of the man hanging there could have kicked her in the face.
Adam came up behind her and tried to rest his hands on her shoulders, to turn her away, but Ella was having none of it. She let out an outraged cry and her voice cracked, and before Adam could stop her she was climbing the pole, reaching out for the body that hung there, trying to pull it down.
There was no point in it, and yet Adam thought he could understand. He had felt similarly desperate after what had happened with John. Sometimes you just had to do something, even if it didn’t make any sense.
Before Ella could loosen the rope that held the hanging victim, though, she jerked away with a scream. Her grip on the pole loosened and she began to fall. Adam darted forward, arms up, and caught her, but her sudden weight sent him knees-first to the ground.
Ella was gasping and panting, cradling her hand, and he took her by the wrist and looked. “Christ, you’re bleeding.”
“It was…there’s something sharp up there, I don’t know—God, this hurts.”
Adam applied careful pressure to the wound, which was bleeding profusely. “Try not to move,” he said quietly, gazing up at the rope overhead. The setting sun caught it at an angle and he saw something glisten. Glass. There was glass in the rope.
Someone put that there. Someone set a trap.
He couldn’t think about that now, about what that might mean. He had to keep his focus on Ella.
She was already starting to shiver a little. Adam shrugged out of his jacket and wrapped it around her—he didn’t want her going into shock.
“We need to get inside and get this cleaned up,” he said, pressing a little harder against the cut on her hand. “Can you walk?”
“I think so.” She got to her feet and swayed a little.
He wrapped an arm around her, letting her lean against his shoulder. “That’s a hotel, right?” he asked, indicating a large building up ahead. “The Ocean View?”
“Looks like.”
“Let’s head there,” he said. “I bet we can find water and medical supplies.”
“Did you see the fence?”
“What?” he asked, worry flooding him. Was she delirious?
She pointed. There was a message painted on a wood fence a few yards away from where they stood. “No More Sanctuaries.”
Adam felt chilled. That was the same message they’d found with the pile of dead bodies on the highway. How did this fit together with the uprooted sign they’d seen indicating Sanctuary? What was going on? It was definitely starting to seem as though someone was killing these people to send a message—but what was the message? Was it just that no place in the world was safe anymore?
Ella staggered against him. He tightened his grip. “Let’s get you inside,” he said.
She shook her head. “I can keep going,” she said. “We don’t want to stay in this place tonight, Adam. Napa Bay isn’t far. Let’s just press on.”
He was tempted by her suggestion. San Álvaro had turned out to be one of the most frightening places they’d encountered since returning to the mainland, and Adam definitely wanted to get out of there as quickly as possible. And he could understand Ella’s desire to keep moving too, especially now that she was injured. Of course she would want to get to her sister as quickly as she could.
But it wasn’t practical to try to cover any more ground with her losing blood like this. She might even need stitches, Adam realized, and that was something he’d never had to do before. He would need to devote a lot of time and attent
ion to examining her wound, and that was something he definitely didn’t want to do by the side of the road.
Securing the duffel bag on his shoulder, he swept Ella up into his arms. She didn’t weigh as much as he’d anticipated, and he knew he would be able to carry her the short distance to the hotel easily. She struggled against him a little, but she didn’t have the energy to put up much of a fight.
Her face was twisted with pain and she was breathing hard. “Keep pressure on your hand,” Adam said. “We’ll be there soon.”
“Put me down, Adam.”
“No way. Sorry.”
“I’m fine. I can walk.” But her face was gray and her eyes were closed.
“You can’t walk,” Adam said. “You’re barely keeping it together. Does the sight of blood bother you?”
“Don’t be stupid. I just watched you shoot a man in the head yesterday. Besides, your face is covered in blood.”
“Is it?”
Ella laughed weakly. “You ought to try and find a mirror when we get to this place,” she said. “You look like a mess.”
“I’m flattered, Ella, thanks.”
“Seriously,” she said, “we should keep going. We could probably make it to Napa Bay by midnight.”
“I don’t want to travel at night,” Adam said. “I wouldn’t want to do it even if you hadn’t been hurt. I thought you felt the same way. We agreed to stopping here, didn’t we?”
“That was before, though. Before we saw…what it was like here. What if the people who killed that man are still around? They could be watching us right now, Adam. Have you thought of that?”
“If they are, they haven’t made a move against us,” Adam pointed out.
“That doesn’t necessarily mean anything, though,” Ella said. “Maybe they’re just waiting to see what we’ll do first.”
“Well, we’re not going to do anything except to clean up your injury. And that isn’t negotiable,” Adam said before she could argue further. “I can carry you for a few blocks, but there’s no way I can carry you all the way to Napa Bay.”
“I can walk, I said.”
“No, you can’t. Shut up and let me call the shots for once, will you?”
To Adam’s surprise, Ella actually complied. Her head drooped against his shoulder and she let out a little sigh. She sounded thoroughly exhausted.
“We’ll get to Julie’s tomorrow,” Adam said. He wanted to reassure her, even though she already seemed to be complying with what he’d suggested. “You’ll be talking to her a few hours from now.” He wasn’t even remotely confident of this, but Ella still wore that pained look on her face. He thought he would have said anything to help distract her from her suffering.
“What if she needs me?” Ella asked. “What if she and her family are in trouble and they need my help?”
“There’s nothing you could do for her right now anyway,” Adam said. “Not arriving at night. Not with your hand all cut up like it is. Let’s get ourselves back into fighting shape, and then we’ll make the rest of the journey to Napa Bay in the morning. It’s only ten more miles. We’ll be in far better condition with a night of sleep under our belts.”
“Promise we’ll go first thing in the morning, though?” Ella asked. “No more delays?”
“No more delays. We won’t even stop if we find a stalled truck full of canned goods.”
Ella chuckled weakly. “And what if we find the last working cell phone in the universe?”
“Nope. Not even then.”
The little game had put a smile on Ella’s face, and she relaxed in Adam’s arms. But his focus was drawn to the hotel that loomed up ahead in their path, massive, ominous, and dark.
Chapter 14
Up close, Adam saw that the Ocean View Hotel was only about six stories high. It was the width that made it look so imposing. It seemed to squat in the middle of the road, ready to swallow them up.
He set Ella on her feet by the front door, which he found to be locked. “Can you wait here?” he asked. “I’ll go around and find us a way in.”
She nodded.
“Don’t pass out,” he warned her. “I need you to scream if anybody comes.”
“I’m not going to pass out,” she said, and Adam heard a grain of her usual steel in her voice. That was good. If anyone could suffer a serious injury and keep on going, he thought, it was probably Ella.
He quickly located an unlocked window at the back of the building. It had actually been propped open, which gave him pause for a moment, but then he figured that if anyone had wanted to break into the Ocean View, they could have done it easily without propping open a window. He grabbed the sill and hauled himself up and over, executing a sort of messy somersault into the building and landing in a crouch.
It was a mess inside. He had entered into the kitchen, which appeared to have been ransacked—doors to cabinets and the refrigerator stood open, and everything looked bare. A few moldy loaves of bread lay on the floor. He made his way out into the lobby and saw that things were similarly disastrous there—the stand of brochures that had once advertised area attractions had been overturned and it looked as if someone had broken into the register and then thought better of it and left handfuls of money all over the floor.
He went to the front door. Thankfully, it opened easily from this side—the lock appeared to have one-way functionality. Ella was standing right where he’d left her. Thank goodness for small mercies, he thought, and helped her into the hotel.
There was a chaise in the waiting area, and he led her to that and settled her on it. “Wait here,” he said. “I’m going to have a look around.”
“You keep running off,” she complained, but she didn’t even try to put up a fight. She lay back and closed her eyes. Her hand was still bleeding, and Adam was beginning to feel frightened. I’d better be able to find a first aid kit, or we’re going to be in trouble.
He vaulted over the reception desk and found himself face-to-face with a little office space. This, too, had been ransacked, and it looked as if whoever had run this place had grabbed whatever they could get their hands on and taken off with it. There was no sign of anybody else in the building besides themselves, though, and Adam thought that just maybe they’d gotten lucky. He would have wanted to examine the place thoroughly, checking every room, if they were planning to stay here long term. But the lobby might be safe enough for the medical procedure he needed to carry out.
Adam found the first aid kit he’d been looking for tucked into a small locker. He brought it out and examined the contents. Antiseptic and bandages. That was a start.
“I need to look at your hand,” he told Ella, and she nodded and held it out, turning her head away so she wouldn’t have to watch what he was doing. He pulled out one of their bottles of water. It pained him to do so—their supplies were so short already—but Ella needed it right now. Carefully, he unscrewed the cap and spilled some water over her palm, washing away the blood.
Right away, he could see that the cut wasn’t as deep as he’d feared. He didn’t think she would need stitches. He sprayed the area with disinfectant—Ella let out a little cry as he did so, but he didn’t allow himself to get caught up in sympathy for her. This needed to be done.
The gauze in the kit was self-adhesive, and he wound it carefully and tightly around her hand and wrist. When he had finished, he packed all the supplies back into the first aid kit and tucked it into their duffel bag. If we hadn’t found that thing when we did, she might have had it a lot worse, he thought. He didn’t want to be caught out without a first aid kit again.
“All right,” he said, returning her hand to her and helping her to sit up. “Take it slow for a minute. You should start to feel better soon.” He handed her the bottle of water he had used to clean her wound. “Have a drink of that,” he said.
Ella shook her head. “We can’t be wasting water.”
“It isn’t a waste.”
“You already used half of that bottle just on rins
ing my hand.”
“Yeah, because I don’t want you to get an infection and die. Now drink. You’ve lost a lot of blood and you’re dehydrated.”
“What about you?” she asked. “You’ve been carrying me all over creation. You’re dehydrated too.”
“Will you have a drink, please? I promise I’ll have some too.”
He was afraid she was going to keep arguing, but she didn’t. She just nodded and raised the bottle to her lips, taking a long swallow of water. She passed it to him and he took the biggest drink he’d had all day before handing it back. She needed it more than he did.
All too soon, the water was gone. “Don’t even think about opening another one,” Ella said. “We’ve used more than enough.”
He knew she was right. “There are room keys behind the desk,” he told her.
“Electronic ones? They’re not going to work.”
“No, not key cards. The old-fashioned kind.”
She nodded. He was pleased to see that some of the color was returning to her face.
“It might be safer to stay in the hotel rooms tonight,” Ella said, clearly thinking along the same lines he was. “If we’re up on the sixth floor, no one will be able to break in through the windows, and we’ll be able to lock the door.”
Adam nodded. “My thoughts exactly. But let’s get some dinner going before we head up for the night, what do you say?”
Ella groaned. “I’m too tired to cook. I think I’m too tired to even open a can. We’ve been pounding pavement all day, and honestly I’m still a little dizzy.”
“That makes sense,” Adam said. “You did lose a lot of blood. Don’t worry about it, though. We’ve still got some of Chase’s jerky in the bag. We can have that for dinner.”
Ella nodded. “That kid was good for something, at least.”
Adam pulled out a plastic baggie of jerky, divided up the pieces, and handed half of them to Ella. The two of them ate in silence for several minutes.
Escape The Dark (Book 3): Into The Ruins Page 11