They climbed up a wide set of concrete steps to reach the wooden deck running along the front of the building. A slatted wooden awning also ran parallel to the deck, but it was pretty much wrecked, pieces hanging down from it like dead tree limbs. A glass-faced double door marked the entrance to the building. The glass had long ago shattered and lay in broken pieces around the foot of the door. Emily swiped it away with the toe of her boots. Rhiannon started to push the door open, but Emily dropped a heavy hand on her shoulder.
“Wait a second,” she insisted. “Careful.” She tried to reach down and take her pistol from its holster, but her hands would not comply. Hours of freezing rain had left her hands feeling as though they belonged to someone else, and they were shaking so much she might just drop the damn pistol anyway. They were all slowly freezing to death. If they didn’t get out of this rain and warm up soon, they were going to die. She tried again to slip the .45 from its holster, but her hands just would not obey her. They were just going to have to chance it. If there was any kind of threat inside, she would deal with it when it needed to be dealt with.
Good luck with that, Emily thought. She would be lucky if she could even muster the energy to yell a few harsh words at anything that might be lurking beyond the rotted doors, let alone put up a fight.
Years of rain and wind had warped the doors until they no longer fitted the frame properly. Emily had to pull with all of her remaining strength to move them enough so that she could slip through. Rhiannon followed next, then Thor, who instantly shook a shower of rain water off his coat.
“Thanks for that,” said Rhiannon, managing a half smile despite the new soaking.
Emily silenced her with an index finger to her lips. She swung her flashlight slowly through the inky darkness.
They were in a large room. A horseshoe-shaped glass counter occupied the majority of it, the counter’s glass either broken into pieces or covered in too much dust and dirt to see what was beneath it. Shelves with what looked like figurines ran along the wall behind the counter. A doorway on the opposite wall read “Staff Only.” To their right, hidden within shadows, the light revealed a shambles of broken and wrecked debris that Emily could not make out, but she could see the open gash of the room where the explosion had torn the building open. Waterfalls gushed off the exposed roof beams, collecting into a pool of water like a moat between the two still relatively intact halves of the building. Beyond that were the remains of the rest of the building, but Emily’s light couldn’t cut through the torrent of rain filling the open space to be sure what was in there. To their left were more glass display cases and shelves. This place had been some kind of a store aimed at tourists, Emily decided.
The rain hammered so hard on the roof of their shelter that it was impossible to hear if there was anything else sheltering in here with them. They were just going to have to be damn careful until they were sure. First things first: they needed to find somewhere dry so they could get out of these sodden clothes and, hopefully, light a fire.
“Let’s try back there,” she whispered to Rhiannon, pointing to the “Staff Only” sign over the door on the opposite side of the room.
Debris littered the floor between them and the room, mostly broken pieces of ceramic and shattered glass. Emily did her best to kick it out of the way of Thor’s paws as they made their way around the back of the counter. A cash register lay on its side on the floor in front of them, its tray open, coins and moldy bills scattered around it. An equally moldy-smelling curtain acted in lieu of a door to the staff area. Emily pulled it aside, turning her head in disgust as a cloud of dust and red spores cascaded into the air.
The room behind the curtain was small, only about four by four meters. Taking up most of the wall on her left was a set of ten lockers; the other walls were bare except for what might once have been a work roster but was now just tattered corners pinned to the wall. A small window sat in the north exterior wall. A wooden bench like Emily had seen in some gyms stood near on the right wall. At some point the bench had toppled over onto its side. Rhiannon righted it and sat down; actually, it was more like she collapsed down. In the light of their flashlights Emily could see that Rhiannon’s hands were corpse pale, her body shivering violently.
Thor shook himself one more time, then headed to the far corner of the room, chased his tail in slow motion twice, then sank to the tiled floor, his head resting against his paws, his eyes closed.
Emily knelt down in front of the girl; Rhiannon’s face was almost as pale as her hands. She unfastened the backpack’s belt from around Rhiannon’s waist, then slipped it off, setting it down next to the bench.
“Put your hands between your thighs,” Emily ordered. “It’ll keep them warm.” Rhiannon did as she was told.
Emily’s own hands were shaking too. Even out of the rain, it was still horribly cold in the building. She could feel her soaking-wet clothes wicking the heat away from her body. They needed a fire, and they needed one right now if they weren’t both going to die of hypothermia or pneumonia.
She began looking around for something they could use as fuel. The bench was too thick, and, besides, she had nothing to break it apart with. The rain had ruined any chance of her using the debris lying outside the building, which meant she would have to find something dry inside. Her brain was sluggish with fatigue and the cold, but she remembered the wooden shelves she had seen in the main room of the store.
“I’ll be right back,” she said. Rhiannon barely acknowledged her as she disappeared back into the front of the room again.
Emily knocked the remaining figurines off the set of wooden shelves near the counter, then pulled five of the half-meter-long shelves from their fastenings. She didn’t have time to worry about the noise the figurines made as they shattered on the floor; her energy was fading too fast.
She leaned the first of the shelves against the wall and the floor, lifted a foot that felt like it was made of lead, and aimed a swift side kick to the center of the shelf. It broke in two with a satisfying crack. She took each half and did the same until she was left with several long strips of wood that were small enough to burn easily. When she had finished doing the same to the remaining shelves, she gathered up the pieces and carried them into the back room.
Rhiannon lay on the bench, her hands tucked under her head, the bench vibrating against the tiles of the floor from her shivering body.
“Shit,” said Emily. She dropped the sticks beneath the window, then moved to Rhiannon’s side. “Sit up, come on,” she ordered, sliding her complaining hands under the girl’s arms and pulling until she was upright again. Emily began stripping the clothes from the girl layer by layer until she stood there in just her underwear, hands laced together beneath her chin, her pale body shivering in the cold light of the flashlight. Emily tossed the sodden clothes into a pile, then grabbed the girl’s backpack and rummaged through the contents. It was just clothes and an ancient tube of Pringles potato chips, no blanket. She pulled a dry set of Rhiannon’s clothing from the bag and set them down.
She was getting this all wrong, her frozen mind yelled at her. But this was the best she could do, her brain barely capable of processing thoughts in any semblance of order.
Emily pulled a blanket from her own backpack, placed it around the girl’s shoulders, and began rubbing her as quickly as she could to try and bring some warmth back to her. She kept rubbing until the shivering had subsided, stimulating Rhiannon’s circulatory process to pump warm blood around her body. The activity seemed to help her too, tapping a reserve of energy Emily did not know she still had.
When Rhiannon’s skin started to take on a rosier hue, Emily quickly dressed the girl again in the dry set of clothes, then draped the blanket around her shoulders again and parked her butt back on the bench.
Rhiannon had said nothing through the entire process.
Seconds after stopping, Emily felt the old dull ache begin to creep over her again. It felt as though every joint within her body
had begun to seize up. It was getting harder and harder to move, and her brain seemed to be finding itself incapable of holding on to any single thought for more than a few seconds. She stumbled back to the pieces of broken shelving and began to lean each stick against the other until she had built a pyramid.
She was missing something, though. Her sluggish mind dug for an answer. Kindling!
“Ah shit!” she mumbled and allowed herself to flop down next to the useless fire. Without tinder she had little chance of being able to get the fire going.
“What’s wrong?” Rhiannon asked weakly from across the room.
Emily twisted around to face her. “No kindling,” she said. “No kindling. No fire. Sorry.” It was impossible to keep the feeling of utter despair out of her voice. But even without kindling she knew she was going to have to try, anyway, but it would just be wasting gas from her lighter. But first she had to get herself out of her own clothes. She went to stand, but Rhiannon spoke first.
“Potato chips,” Rhiannon said, pointing to her backpack.
“What?”
“Potato chips, you can use them.” Rhiannon leaned over and dragged her backpack to her. She rummaged around inside and brought out the tube of Pringles. “Here, I was keeping them for a special occasion.” Rhiannon offered the tube to Emily. “They burn real good. Try it.”
Emily took the tube; the cardboard was a little damp, but the chips inside seemed dry—and smelled delicious. “The cardboard’s damp, it won’t burn,” Emily said flatly.
“Not the cardboard, the chips,” Rhiannon repeated. “Just put them under the wood and light them.”
Emily pulled out a handful of the chips, each an almost identical clone of the other, her cold, clumsy hands shattering half of them. She laid the intact chips around the base of the wood as though they were tinder. She had brought a box of matches but also a gas lighter, and she fished that out of her pack and pressed the igniter. She touched the orange flame to the edge of one of the chips. It instantly started to smolder, and then a tiny flame began to burn around the edge. She touched the flame to the other chips one by one.
“Wow!” she said a minute later as the chips burned like the wick of a candle, filling the room with the delicious scent of burning potatoes. “That’s just . . . Wow!” Within a few minutes the flame had spread to the pieces of shelving, and they had a fire. And they had smoke . . . a cloud had already collected at the ceiling. Emily forced herself to her feet and unlatched the window. It opened along a horizontal hinge at the top of the frame. The storm still raged outside, the rain hammering just as hard, but the window acted like a flue and began to suck the smoke outside.
Rhiannon had moved from the bench and now sat beside the fire, warming her hands, a smile of contentment on her face. Thor got up from his corner and sat next to her, the smell of wet dog almost as strong as the smell of burning wood.
Emily took a moment to warm her own hands beside the fire. When its warmth had permeated through her fingers and she could feel them again, she slowly stripped off her own clothing.
“Here, let me help you,” said Rhiannon. She helped Emily slip from her clothes.
Even with the warmth of the fire, the cold air of the room against Emily’s naked skin had her shivering again. Rhiannon offered her the blanket, but she refused.
“Keep it,” Emily said.
She changed quickly into her dry clothes and sank down as close to the fire as she dared.
Ten more minutes beside the fire and she could feel sensation returning to her limbs and muscles. They ached and complained with every movement she made, and the fingers on both her hands tingled and twitched with pins and needles, but pain meant she was still alive. And with the return of feeling, Emily also felt the tug-tug-tug of her son pulling at her, a nagging sensation that she knew would only subside when she was moving toward him again. But even that siren call could not motivate her exhausted body to do anything other than sit in front of the fire for the next hour and feed it pieces of broken shelving.
The smoky aroma, life-giving warmth, and exhausted muscles conspired to drag Emily toward sleep. Even though she fought it, she was no match and felt herself drift off.
When Emily awoke in the middle of the night, she was stiff from having sat too long in the same position. Rhiannon was asleep across from her, her knees pulled to her chest, the blanket beneath her. Thor had retreated back to the corner, and she could see him watching her, the light of the fire’s flames reflected in his eyes.
She allowed herself the luxury of simply sitting there, her mind empty of almost all thoughts other than how wonderful it was to feel warm. Even the wet rumbling complaints of her stomach could do nothing to dampen the feeling.
Eventually Emily set about picking up their wet clothes from where she had dumped them. She hung them over the metal cabinets to dry by the warmth collecting within the room.
She had packed light, with only the second set of clothes she was now wearing and her soaked set, the rest of her backpack taken up with the MREs. Rhiannon, on the other hand, had taken a little more time and had an extra set of neatly folded clothes and shoes.
The fire was rapidly eating through the first batch of wood, so Emily made another trip back into the main room of the store and scrounged up enough wood to last through the night. By the time she returned to the back room, her arms laden with broken pieces of wood, Rhiannon was awake again, kneeling next to the fire, a saucepan full of food heating over it. Thor was already busy munching on his own dinner.
The two women devoured their meal in silence, occasionally smiling at each other across the fire, savoring the satisfying feeling in their stomachs.
When they were done Rhiannon climbed into her sleeping bag and was soon asleep. Emily vowed that she would remain awake to make sure the fire stayed alight, but the warmth of her own sleeping bag soon overwhelmed her; she felt her eyes begin to close, and soon she was gone too.
Emily awoke sometime later to an almost dead fire and a concerto of rainwater splat-splat-splatting off of hundreds of unseen leaks.
She poked around in the glowing ashes of the fire with a stick of firewood, blew gentle encouragement on the embers she found there, and gradually added more wood until the flames were established again. Her wristwatch said it was just after three in the morning. The rain had stopped at some point after she’d fallen asleep.
Rhiannon was curled up in a ball, her face the only thing visible above the caterpillar form of her sleeping bag. Thor lay next to her. The Malamute’s eyes opened when he sensed Emily was awake, his tail giving three slow beats against the floor.
Other than the continual drip of water, the occasional creak of the building’s rotting wooden bones, and the crackle of the fire, the world seemed to have ground to a complete stop.
Emily’s body ached. The last twenty-four hours had been one of the most physically stressful days of her life. Each time she shifted position she found a new pain. But her pummeled body was nothing compared to the inner turmoil she felt.
It was almost as though Mac’s announcement he was leaving for Norway had started a chain reaction of negative events. It escalated with Adam’s abduction, her realization that he was alive, and then Valentine’s attempt to murder her. She realized her mind was probably making connections where there really were none, but it was so much easier to link them all together as part of a single huge event than to simply allow for a confluence of multiple unrelated actions—a really, really shitty confluence.
Valentine. That woman. Emily understood, expected even, the Caretakers’ murderous motivations, but Valentine? She was human. She understood how precarious the human race’s position was right now, or should. They were all on life support, for Christ’s sake, and here was Valentine making a bid to demolish the hospital and put up a set of condos. It was simple to Emily. The future of humanity teetered on the brink of extinction, so you put aside whatever petty differences you had and you worked together to ensure the survivors, well
, survived. How blind did Valentine have to be to ignore that?
Pretty fucking blind, apparently, because she was more than willing to have Emily murdered to ensure that whatever fucked-up plan she had would become reality.
Emily had already concluded, if only halfheartedly, that Valentine was crazy, but she wondered now if that was actually the answer. A sociopath was someone who held no regard for people other than themselves, who had no conscience, right? That description would seem to fit Valentine perfectly. She had already cost two lives.
In the glow of the fire Emily thought back to the guard she had hit . . . and killed, albeit by accident. There was no doubt she had caused his death; she took full responsibility. That Valentine would use his death against her was a foregone conclusion, which kind of put a big speed bump in the way of any return back to Point Loma. Under any other circumstance she would have pleaded her case to the council and accepted whatever penalty was handed down to her. But the truth was, under any other circumstances, the events of the past couple of days wouldn’t have ever happened. She was convinced that there was no way Valentine would give her a fair trial. The woman had already trumped up the charges against her to murder when she had seen the opportunity. The death of the guard would be all she needed to have her shot at dawn.
And she was still at a loss for how it had all happened. How it had escalated so incredibly quickly. Had Valentine been planning to get rid of her all along? If Adam had not been abducted, would she have met with some kind of unfortunate “accident” while she was out taking one of her strolls? Or had the woman simply taken advantage of the situation when it had presented itself? Jesus! The fact that people like her were willing to screw over a fellow survivor when the human race was hanging by a such a precarious thread was almost impossible for her to imagine. A week ago she would never have entertained the possibility that anyone would have been willing to kill to advance their own agenda. What was even worse was to find out that there were still men like the guard Curtis, sadistic bastard that he was, who were quite happy to work with Valentine. Emily wasn’t sure whom she despised more: Valentine for coming up with the plan, or Curtis for being so fucking eager to carry it out.
Extinction Point (Book 4): Genesis Page 11