It was the smell of the river.
The water that had filled the shelter must have been from the river. And if he couldn’t drink the water in the shelter …
He couldn’t drink the water in the river.
What’s more, the rocks he heard trickling down the slope behind him were not still falling from when he had skidded down—
No, something was coming up behind him.
“Rett.”
He whirled to face her—Bryn, her jumpsuit still wet, her hair damp from the rain.
Her hand at her side curled around the gun.
“What did you do?” she asked.
Rett’s heart jumped into his throat. “Wait, Bryn.”
“What did you do?” she asked again.
“I—I don’t know.” Did she mean pushing the button, flooding the place? Heading out without her? Or was she talking about the blood on the jumpsuit he’d hidden from her, the one he’d found dragged from its hiding place? His answer was the same either way. “I didn’t mean to hurt anyone.”
The rain pattered against the dirt. Otherwise—silence.
“Please, Bryn. We’ve got bigger things to spend bullets on. There’s something out here, something—”
“Rett.” She raised the gun to aim at his forehead.
Rett froze, every muscle taut with fear. “Bryn, listen…” His voice was hoarse, completely lost in the rain. For a moment, neither of them moved. I was right to try to get away, Rett thought, grimacing with fear and regret. I wish I’d been wrong.
Behind him, the rain tapped an uneven rhythm on the rocks.
It’s not the rain, Rett realized.
Tap tap tap-tap-tap.
Rett knew that sound.
He dove to the ground just as an earth-shattering crack sounded above his head. The sound rippled outward before it was covered by the pop and sizzle of something burning.
Rett dared to lift his head and found Bryn, a statue, arm outstretched, gun smoking in the rain. He whipped his head around in time to see the segmented body of a monstrous insect crumple to the dirt, squirming in agony against a burning mass of blinding red. A flare, Rett realized. Bryn’s gun is a flare gun.
He managed to breathe, though he shook so hard the rocks clattered in the dirt around him. “Thanks,” he said to Bryn.
His voice seemed to snap her out of some spell. She lowered the flare gun. With the sunlit clouds behind her, she made a dark sentinel. “You’re welcome.”
7:54 A.M.
“Why is there blood on a dirty jumpsuit in the closet back there?” Bryn demanded, her hand still clenched around the gun. “Why are you wearing a clean jumpsuit?”
Rett had gotten to his feet, and now he looked down at the dirt that clung to the front of his jumpsuit.
“You know what I mean,” Bryn said.
“I woke up. There was blood on my clothes. I don’t know why—I swear I wouldn’t hurt anyone.”
“Unless.”
“Unless…” Her cold stare unnerved him. “Unless they were trying to hurt me. Okay? Yes, I would defend myself.” In his head, he heard knuckles breaking under a wrench. His stomach clenched.
Bryn’s gaze didn’t waver. “That makes two of us.”
Rett wiped his sweaty palms on his jumpsuit. I believe it—I believe you’d defend yourself.
“That picture you drew back in the shelter,” Bryn said. “How did you know about the…?”
“Six-foot-long killer insect?” Disgust pulsed in Rett’s stomach at the thought of the monster behind him. “I can’t explain that, either. I saw it in a dream. Or I think I did.”
He had that premonition again, the feeling he’d gone through all this before. He looked back at the black mass still smoking in the rain. It smelled of rust and rot. Near the creature’s ruined head lay the charred stub of the flare Bryn had shot.
“Was that the only flare?” Rett asked Bryn, wrinkling his nose at the terrible smell that lingered in the air.
“I don’t know.” Bryn slipped off her backpack. “There’s a case in my pack but—” She jerked open the zipper. A red case tumbled out, and Rett retrieved it from the dirt.
His heart drummed in his chest. “If there’s another flare in here we could—” He wrenched open the case. Inside lay a block of foam cut into the shape of the flare gun. And underneath the foam lay one unspent flare. “—signal for help,” he finished breathlessly.
Bryn looked around at the endless stretch of bleached dirt and rocks, the silent boulders, the shadowed canyons. “Do you think anyone would see a flare if we shot one up? Would we just be giving ourselves a nice light show?”
Rett squinted against the glare of the slopes shining in the humid air. Every part of the landscape seemed to be set against them—the wet crumbling ground, the snarled canyon paths. The stony emptiness, on and on for miles around.
“No other buildings anywhere,” he said, “no helicopter, no radio tower.”
“If we shoot the flare into the sky and no one comes to help us, we’re stuck with no way to fight off any more monsters.”
“I had the metal pole, but I dropped it in the shelter. You didn’t bring it?”
“Does it look like I’m carrying a giant metal pole?”
“We could shoot the flare and get back into the shelter to wait for help.” It occurred to Rett that they were making the decision together, that Bryn no longer gripped the empty gun like she wished another flare were loaded into it.
“Door’s locked, remember?” Bryn said. “And the water will have drained away, and I’m too fond of my ankles to make a two-story jump. Maybe we could…”
There it is again, that “we.”
Does she believe me, then—that I don’t mean to hurt anyone?
Or should I keep holding on to this last flare in its case?
“What is it?” Rett asked. A maze of lines had appeared on Bryn’s face.
“We said earlier that we thought we were here to find something.”
“Yeah … but I don’t think that something is inside the shelter. I think it’s out in this wasteland.”
Bryn nodded, and Rett had a terrible feeling she was agreeing to a plan he hadn’t meant to propose. “So,” she said, “we head out and try to find it.”
Rett gaped at her. Was she joking? Hadn’t she just watched an oversized bug monster try to attack him? “And how are we going to do that?”
Bryn wiped the rain-slicked flare gun against the leg of her jumpsuit as casually as if she were wiping sweat from her brow. “I found a map.”
Rett launched into a fit of coughing, suddenly bothered by the dirt in his lungs, the rotten stench in the air. “A map?”
“It was drawn in chalk on the back of the wall,” Bryn added.
“What?”
She inspected the flare gun in a way that made Rett relieved it wasn’t loaded. “I found it when you shut me in that room.”
Rett rubbed the back of his neck. “Sorry about that.” White chalk, on my fingers—I remember that. “What exactly was on this map?”
“The drawings weren’t as detailed as the horror prophesy you sketched in that notebook, but they were labeled: a river and three depots.” Bryn tilted her head toward the shelter behind her. “Ours is Number Three.”
Scatter 3, Rett thought, remembering the logo on the inside of the door.
“And something else,” Bryn said. “Something was marked on the map in between the depots.”
“What, like ‘X marks the spot’?”
“Sort of. It was a skull and crossbones.”
Rett started coughing again. He threw his wet arm over his mouth, trying to block out the stench from the dead creature behind him. “Maybe we should get away from this thing,” he said into his sleeve. “It’s almost worse dead.”
He started back toward the shelter—the depot, Scatter 3—taking a wide path around Bryn for fear of triggering her defensive reflexes. After a long moment during which Rett’s heart thumped with equal hope
and anxiety, she followed.
“We need the GPS units from your pack,” she said behind him.
He turned. “How did you know they were GPS devices?”
“I know all kinds of things I haven’t told you.”
The ground seemed to tilt beneath Rett’s feet. “What?”
She rolled her eyes. “I’m kidding. I guessed. There were numbers written on the map. Coordinates.”
Rett had to stop himself from launching forward and embracing her. “Coordinates? That’s all we need, then. We can use the GPS units and get to…” To what? The answer brought dread to settle in his stomach: a skull and crossbones. “What exactly do you think they lead to?”
“Something valuable. Isn’t that what we decided? Back in the depot?” Bryn held out one hand, ready to receive a GPS unit from Rett’s pack.
Rett slowly pulled his pack around, thinking. “Yeah, but a skull and crossbones? Isn’t that usually … something bad? Not to be too incredibly obvious.”
“It’s not like whoever drew that map wants to advertise that there’s something valuable at those coordinates. They probably figured that symbol would keep away the wrong people.”
It actually sounded like a logical conclusion. “But still … a skull. And crossbones.” Rett dug out a device and handed it to her. A weight dropped into his stomach.
“Remember you said that someone knew we would end up here?” Bryn said, tapping on the device’s screen. “Someone sent us out here to find whatever’s at that location. I don’t think we’re going to be able to get home until we get to that spot and find what we’re supposed to find.”
A voice echoed in Rett’s head: There’s only one way left to do this. You’ll have to find it … The woman in the lab coat—the one who must have sent them out here.
What did she send us to find?
“What if we get there, find whatever we’re supposed to find…” Rett couldn’t believe he was considering this. “But no one’s there to help us get back?”
“We can’t just sit here and run out the clock, wait for the game to end.”
Rett winced. “You think I’m treating this like a game?”
“I think we must have had a plan. We must have come out here knowing how to get back. And those coordinates are part of the plan.”
“And the coordinates lead to…” Rett shook his head. “What?”
“Something valuable, or something we’re getting paid to find. Right? I know I’m pretty desperate for a payday. Aren’t you?”
A memory flashed through Rett’s mind of Times Square at night: towering columns of light and motion, the rush of wind and sound and excitement. “Bigger than I ever thought it would be,” he’d said, and reached for his mother’s hand, full of an electric fear that he might be swept away at any moment. His mother had crouched next to him so that suddenly, he didn’t feel so small. She had pointed at brilliant Times Tower with the black night sky behind it and said, “Brighter than stars.”
He looked now at the crumbling spires in the distance, the endless waves of barren rock. Bigger than I ever thought …
“Yeah,” he admitted. “I’m desperate. But who would send us out to the middle of a wasteland to find something? No water, no trees. Just dirt. It’s like a moonscape, completely barren.”
“But that’s exactly why someone chose us to do this.”
“Wait, what?”
“Walling Home isn’t holding its breath waiting for us to come back.”
Rett’s spine tightened.
“No one will care if we never get out of this,” Bryn said. “No one’s even going to realize we’re gone.”
“My mother—”
“—will think you gave up on her just like she gave up on you.”
Rett clenched his jaw. That email. His mother had told him not to worry about her, to make a life for himself instead of trying to take care of her. Even though he’d insisted he’d come help her.
She has to believe I’m coming. She has to know I won’t stay away.
But he’d written so many angry emails before that, before she’d gotten sick. I’m better off without you …
Terrible words that still haunted him. If he looked down he might see evidence of them on his clothes, his skin. Same as he’d seen that bloodstain when he’d awakened this morning.
More than anything else he feared in this place, he feared this: that his mother had believed those words.
“She always planned to come back. She just never could.” Rett curled his fists and uncurled them. “She didn’t have any money, any place for us to live.”
Bryn grimaced at her feet, like she regretted what she’d said.
“What about your boyfriend?” Rett asked. “You’re telling me he won’t notice if you never show up?”
Bryn’s expression went blank. “He’s … not exactly expecting me.”
Rett didn’t know what to say to that. He decided it was best not to say anything.
“We can send up a flare if you really believe someone will come save us,” Bryn said. “But there’s not much good in getting out of here if we’ve got no money for where we’re going.”
“Trust me, I know that.” Rett looked at Bryn out of the corner of his eye. He’d remembered something about her from Walling Home, although he wasn’t sure when it had come to him. The glint in her eye now made him think of it. “What about…” He hesitated. “I heard that you had something saved up for when you graduated.”
Bryn tensed. “Saved up?”
“Some things you took. From Walling’s staff.”
She paled.
“Never mind,” Rett said quickly. He shouldn’t have brought it up. “Forget I said—”
Bryn started trudging ahead of him. “That’s all gone now.”
Rett followed her, regret and embarrassment roiling inside of him. Just drop it. Shouldn’t have asked. “So how far away are these coordinates?”
“I don’t know,” Bryn said over her shoulder.
“Can’t you tell?”
She held up the screen so he could see an icon of an antenna surrounded by moving lines. “It’s still searching for signal.”
Rett’s stomach shrank. “But it’ll pick up, right?”
Bryn stopped walking, her eyes fixed on something in the distance. “What’s that?”
Something small and black lay in the dirt near the wall of the depot. Rett trudged over to pick it up. “It’s a hat.” A dirty, rain-soaked cap …
… marked with a familiar symbol: overlapping, jagged lines.
Rett slowly turned as he sensed something behind him. Lying in the rain-darkened dirt was a man twisted into an odd position. A body, Rett thought, and horror washed over him. He scrambled away from it as Bryn let out a gasp and then a tortured moan.
“What happened to him?” Bryn said with a shaking voice.
The man was pale as paper, completely bloodless despite the fact that his torso had been nearly severed. Rett’s stomach threatened to empty itself, and he lurched away.
“Let’s go,” he said to Bryn. “Come on, hurry.”
They skidded down a crumbling slope, into the shelter of some scraggly gray junipers twisting out from a cleft in the canyon wall.
“You okay?” Rett asked.
Bryn stood with her face turned away and didn’t respond.
Rett tried to rid himself of the images seared into his mind, tried to stop feeling them in his stomach, in his nose, where the smell of death was suffocating. His stomach seized, but nothing came up.
“Bryn?” he said again.
She finally turned back to him, her face pale, lips trembling. “The monster,” she said. “It got him.”
Rett didn’t respond. He wrestled another GPS unit from the plastic packet in the backpack.
“Who is he?”
“He had the symbol on his hat.” Rett touched the same collection of jagged lines on his jumpsuit. “I wonder if he was sent to help us.”
“Could be he w
as stuck out here just like we are.”
Rett worked the buttons on the device he held and shuttered his mind to all other thoughts.
“That would have been us.” Bryn turned away again and leaned over her knees like she might be sick.
“We have the flare. We can defend ourselves.”
“He was near the door,” Bryn said, still doubled over. “Do you think he was trying to get inside?”
Rett’s stomach dropped. That man had been outside the entire time, just trying to get to safety. As desperate to break into Scatter 3 as they had been to break out. “The door wouldn’t have opened. We couldn’t have helped him.” Rett said it as much to himself as to her.
“If he had come up onto the roof…”
“It probably still would have gotten him.” True? Rett couldn’t let himself answer that. His hand shook as he tapped the screen of the device. The antenna icon appeared again, along with the moving lines. “Still no signal.”
“Is it broken?” Bryn asked, coming closer to look.
Rett swiped water from his hair, trying to think of what to do. The bloodless corpse kept flashing before his eyes. Locked out, left outside … Rett’s thoughts swirled madly. If I’d known he was out there … if I’d had any idea what would happen … What? What could I have done?
“Rett?”
“Maybe it takes a while to find a signal out here,” Rett answered.
“There could be more of those things.” Panic edged her voice. “They could come for us at any moment.”
The flare gun in her pocket caught Rett’s attention. He looked at it, at Bryn. “We could try … See if anyone…”
Bryn seemed to read his thoughts. “That man was from Scatter. He was in trouble and Scatter didn’t come to help him.”
The humid air went heavy in Rett’s lungs.
“No one’s going to come for us. We’re on our own.” Bryn slid her pack off and yanked angrily at the zipper. “We’ll have to make it to where we’re going if we’re ever going to get out of here.” Her hands trembled as she pulled out a compass small enough to wedge into her palm. “The place is northwest from here. I saw on the map. We can head in that direction until the signal picks up.”
The Echo Room Page 10