by Blake Crouch
“Lawrence, you see that?”
“What?”
Emmett came over. “What’s wrong?” he asked.
“Something just came out of the saloon and ran up the street.”
“Probably a deer,” said Scott, who’d been leaning against the wall by the door, quietly observing. “Tons of wildlife out—”
“It didn’t move like a deer.”
“How’d it move?”
“Like a man. You didn’t see it, Lawrence? It moved right through where you were shining the flashlight.”
“I didn’t see a thing.”
Abigail handed Emmett his camera and walked through the suite and out the open door, moving quickly down the hallway to where the staircase had previously merged with the second floor.
“Hey!” she called down into the dark lobby.
Jerrod had extinguished his headlamp. Abigail turned hers on, directing her light across the collapsed staircase, to the front desk, where he’d been standing several minutes ago.
“Did you see something out there? . . .” Her words trailed into silence.
She swept her beam of light at each archway.
“Jerrod?” she called out. A shadow moved down the corridor toward her. “Scott?”
“Yeah.”
“Jerrod left.”
Scott came and stood beside her, flipped on his headlamp, moved his light across the lobby. “Jerrod!” he yelled, then cupped his mouth, shouted again, “Jerrod! Where’d you go?” Abigail heard the others emerge from the suite.
“What’s wrong?” June asked as they approached.
“Jerrod’s gone.”
The five remaining members of the party peered down into the lobby, listening.
Lawrence finally said, “You think something happened?”
Scott knelt down, unzipped his backpack, and dug out a climbing rope.
“I’ll see what’s going on.” Standing there, watching Scott unspool the rope, Abigail realized the soberness in his voice unnerved her. He jogged into the nearest suite, wrapped the rope three times around a heavy chest of drawers, and tied a knot. Then he came back out into the corridor and kicked the pile of rope. It dropped fifteen feet into the lobby. He got onto his knees, worked himself over the edge, his gloved hands gripping the rope. He slid carefully down onto the wrecked staircase.
“If you guys just want to wait up there, I’ll be back in a minute.”
“Hold up,” Lawrence said. “I’ll go with you.”
The older man didn’t make lowering himself look as effortless as the guide had, but he got down safely, and the two men disappeared out the front door of the hotel.
June, Emmett, and Abigail sat down in the corridor.
“I hope everything’s all right,” June said.
Emmett looked over at Abigail. “You got extra batteries for your light?”
“Back at camp. Why?”
“Yours is dying.”
Abigail pulled off her headlamp just in time to watch the bulb fade out.
FIFTEEN
A
bigail pressed the light feature on her watch: 9:59 P.M.
“They’ve been out there ten minutes,” she whispered.
June and Emmett had turned off their headlamps to conserve the batteries, so all she could see of them were the white pairs of facing crescent moons that framed their irises.
From one of the rooms on the second floor came a sound like a shutter slamming against a window frame.
Emmett said, “Wind.”
They sat awhile longer in the corridor, listening to the shutter squeak on its rusted hinges and bang into the window. Finally, Emmett struggled to his feet.
“Okay. I’m gonna go down and see what’s going on here.”
“No,” Abigail said. “We’ll all go.”
June went first, Emmett and Abigail helping her to ease over the edge, her hands trembling as she cursed quietly to herself while her feet dangled above the lobby. She slid slowly down the rope and whispered “Thank you, God” as her feet touched the staircase.
When Emmett and Abigail had lowered themselves into the lobby, the three worked their way over the staircase debris, past the front desk, to the hotel entrance.
They moved through the threshold and out into the misty street.
The loose shutter had gone quiet, and Abandon stood in perfect silence save for the occasional creak of a teetering building bracing against the wind.
“Where’d you guys go?” Emmett shouted. No answer but that of his own voice resounding in fading refrains through the canyon. He shouted again. Echoes again. Silence.
Abigail felt something soft and cold on her face.
Snowflakes passed through the beam of Emmett’s headlamp.
“Well,” he said finally, “I’ll walk up the street toward camp. June, you and Abigail head the other way. We have whistles in our emergency kits, so I suppose we should blow on those if we find the others.”
“I think splitting up is a horrible idea,” Abigail said.
“All right, then which way do you—” Emmett stopped mid-sentence. “What the hell?”
He looked past them now, his brow deeply furrowed, his mouth dropped open.
Something staggered toward them down the middle of the street, and it occurred to Abigail that the way it moved through the fog, in slow, exaggerated steps, resembled something from a horror movie—a zombie or some demon that had just crawled out of its own grave. It was close now, within ten feet of them, dragging its right foot and clutching its side.
Their guide collapsed in the hotel doorway, Scott’s yellow fleece slicked with blood, and down blowing out of a gaping tear in his vest.
Abigail felt her stomach lurch, something rising up her throat. Her mouth tasted of salt and metal.
Emmett was already on his knees, cradling Scott’s head.
“What happened?” he asked.
Scott moaned, his face so drained of color that it seemed to glow in the dark, his body quaking with the onset of shock. “I wanna see it,” he gasped. “Lift my jacket.”
Emmett unbuttoned Scott’s down vest and unzipped his fleece jacket, Abigail at his ear, whispering to him that everything would be okay. Emmett peeled away the layer of thermal underwear and they all stared at the black hole in his side, blood sheeting down his pale abdomen into a widening pool on the old boards.
“Fuck!” Scott said. “Fuck, it hurts!”
“What do we do?” Abigail asked. “You’re our guide. You know first aid, right? Tell us how to help you.” Scott’s eyes rolled back in his head. She slapped his face.
He came back, his eyes only slits now. “Run,” Scott hissed. “They’re coming.”
“Who?” Abigail asked.
“We aren’t leaving you,” Emmett said, but Scott’s eyes had already closed. “Scott! Scott! June, keep pressure on the wound.” She pressed her palm into Scott’s side, blood leaking between her fingers.
A scream blasted through the canyon.
Abigail whispered, “Turn off your headlamp, Emmett.”
He did, everything still, and, for the moment, quiet.
A snowflake landed on Abigail’s eyelash. She blinked it away and rose to her feet. “We need to get out of here,” she said.
“There,” June said. Abigail saw it, too. Fifty yards ahead, at the north edge of town, something sprinted toward them, arms pumping.
“It’s Jerrod,” Emmett said.
Abigail had begun to backpedal even before she saw the shadows emerge out of the fog behind Jerrod. The one in front slipped something out of its belt. As it reached him, it placed a hand on the back of Jerrod’s head, jammed something into the base of his skull.
Jerrod dropped without a sound.
June released an involuntary whimper.
Emmett said, “Oh my God.”
Abigail thinking, This is not happening. This is not happening. But it was. The shadows had passed Jerrod’s body and were now closing fast on the hotel.
/> “We need to split up and run,” Abigail said. “Right now.”
SIXTEEN
T
he ghost town screamed by in a blur of fog. Abigail glanced over her shoulder, saw movement in the mist, though she couldn’t tell if they were still chasing her. She had put a hundred yards between herself and the hotel when she veered off the main street and bent over. Having come from sea level in Manhattan, the thin air of Abandon crippled her lungs. She crawled through a hole in the side of a building, tried to turn on her headlamp, then remembered the bulb had burned out.
It took a moment for the faintest suggestion of shapes to appear—a table, dismembered chairs, tall windows, remnants of a stove. Abigail stood in the dance hall.
At the far end, the ceiling had collapsed and crushed a small stage.
Footsteps approached from outside. With quick, careful strides, Abigail traversed the rotten floorboards. Some creaked under her weight and she couldn’t help but think of the staircase in the hotel, how suddenly it had given way. She stopped where the floor had fallen through, looked back toward the double doors that opened out onto the street. Abigail couldn’t hear the footsteps anymore, only her accelerated breathing. The sound of whispering passed through the broken windows and something ran by on the street.
She dropped down through the hole in the floor, a nail catching on her parka, ripping through the sleeve, her pink fleece jacket, her long johns, all the way to her skin.
With less than three feet of space between the floorboards and the ground, she crawled away from the hole, through puddles of freezing water, until she found a dry spot. Crouched in the darkness, shivering under the floor of the dance hall, she felt a warm trail of blood meandering down her right arm. Her breathing still sounded deafening, but she couldn’t stop herself. The darkness sparked with her own dizziness.
What happened to Lawrence? She wondered what had happened to her father.
The floor creaked above her. Abigail held her breath, her pulse thrumming against the back of her eyes. The floor moved again. She raised her hand to see how near it dipped to the top of her head. Her fingers passed between the boards, touched the tread of a boot.
She froze. For a full minute, no movement, no sound. Her quads were cramping. They’re listening. Did I make a noise? Can they hear my heartbeat? The cut on her right arm stung. Sweat ran down into her eyes, and she shut them tightly against the burn.
This made her think of growing up in the suburbs of Baltimore. She’d been a tomboy, and on Friday nights, in the summer of her tenth year, she would meet the neighborhood boys at a city park to play something they’d invented, called the “Dead Game.” One kid was named the “killer,” and everyone else had one minute to run and hide. The killer would then go hunting, and if he touched you, you were dead and had to lie on the ground until he’d caught everyone. She recalled hiding under a sliding board one night, watching the killer pass by, and the exhilaration, the pretend-fear that had flooded through her.
The boot lifted and she listened to the footsteps trail away.
As she huddled in the darkness, trying to fathom what was happening, she heard June’s voice at the other end of Abandon, shouting her husband’s name. For a moment, she considered hiding there indefinitely, days if she had to. But what if they’ve seen me? What if they know I’m somewhere in town? In daylight, it won’t take them more than a few hours to search every structure. Safer to escape now, in the dark.
Abigail remembered her cell phone, which was sitting in the top compartment of her backpack in the vestibule of her tent. She probably wouldn’t get service in this canyon, but earlier today, when they’d crested the pass, she’d gotten a signal, even called her mother.
Abigail crawled back through the puddles and the dirt to the hole in the floor, rising up slowly, until only her eyes peeked out.
The dance hall appeared empty. June’s screaming had stopped. Even the wind had died away. Abigail scrambled up onto the floor. She felt safer, less exposed on her stomach, so she crawled along on her belly back to the hole in the wall she’d come through.
She peered through the busted clapboard out into the fog. It would be too dangerous to run back to camp through town. She’d have to follow the side street, climb the slope, and stay above Abandon as she worked her way upcanyon. Then she could go straight down the hill into camp, know before she arrived if anyone was there. Her battery was charged. If she had a signal, she’d call 911, but assuming she didn’t, it might be an hour up to the pass.
Abigail took a moment to calm herself, filling her lungs with oxygen in preparation for the run. She tried to ignore it, but the thought forced itself on her: They see me, I’m dead.
Abigail ducked through the hole and stepped outside.
She jogged down the side street. Five more seconds and she’d be out of the ghost town.
Something darted out from behind the dance hall. A hand covered her mouth.
“It’s me, Abby.” Lawrence’s voice. He pulled her down behind the building.
She said, “Jerrod’s dead, and Scott’s hurt bad.”
Wood creaked in a structure across the street.
“Listen,” Lawrence said, “there’s a house up that slope, with a bay window in front. I want you to go there, hide inside, get out of the open.”
“My headlamp’s out.”
“Take my flashlight.”
“What about you?”
“I tweaked my ankle. You’ll move faster without me. Here.” He handed her his day pack. “There’s a gun inside and a box of rounds.”
“I can’t.”
“You can if you want to live. There’s a button on the left side of the Ruger. Press it. Cylinder flips open, you put the shells in. It’s double-action. No safety. Just squeeze back the hammer and fire. Now listen. When I say ‘Run,’ you go and you don’t stop and you don’t look back, no matter what happens. I’ll go a different way, try to meet you in the house. We’ll figure something out.” Footsteps moved toward them up the side street.
“What’s happening here, Lawrence? Who are these—”
“I don’t know, but you have to get going. Now run.”
Abigail scrambled to her feet, shouldered the pack, and took off.
Soon she was passing wiry firs and vacant cabins, dreary and haunted-looking in the freezing fog, fighting with every step the urge to look back. She suddenly emerged onto a long, narrow glissade, lost her footing on the old ice, and slid upside down on her back, racing toward the bottom. The ice ended, but she still tumbled through the scree, finally crashing into a boulder. Blood streamed down her face from a gash above her left eyebrow. Down in Abandon, someone screamed. She got up, pushed on, nearing the timber-line, with the ghost town a hundred feet below, scarcely visible through the fog.
Just ahead was the house with the bay window—two stories, still intact. She glanced back. Too dark and foggy to see a thing. She came up on the house, saw a doorway toward the back of the old structure, slipped inside, scrambling over a pile of boards into a large empty room. She could see the bay window—four glassless rectangles with a view of the ghost town. She dropped the day pack on the floor and glanced through a window frame on the side of the house, spotted movement at the base of the slope she’d just climbed—two black specks slinking through the shrubs. She lost them amid the ruins of a homestead, then picked them up a moment later, larger and close enough that she could see their deformed eyes, protruding long and sharp, like fangs. Night-vision goggles. They know I’m in here.
Abigail knelt down in the corner and unzipped the day pack, shone the flashlight inside, saw the dull gleam of the revolver.
She didn’t realize how badly her hands were trembling until she tried to grab the gun.
Holding the flashlight between her knees, she tore open the box of .357 Magnum rounds. Hollow-point shells spilled across the floorboards, most of them disappearing into a hole. She felt the button on the left side of the frame, pushed it. The cylinder swung open.
With her hands shaking, it took her three tries to get the first round into the chamber.
Footsteps approached. Abigail pushed in three more shells, wondered if she’d even loaded them correctly, having never held a gun until this moment.
With the six chambers loaded, she pushed the cylinder back and stood up. Through the window, she saw it was snowing now, and the two shadows were much closer, less than twenty yards downhill. They moved up a steep section of the slope, climbing on all fours, like spiders, up the mountain. She turned off the flashlight, hunched down in a corner, knees drawn into her chest. Thumbed back the hammer, total dark save for the faint outline of night through the bay windows. Blood running into her eyes. Outside, rocks shifted. She couldn’t slow her breathing down, her chest heaving, hyperventilating. You have to be quiet. You have to.
She closed her eyes, stilled her mind. Her heart followed. Then came the awful silence. No more whispering voices or clandestine footsteps or distant screaming.
Ice pellets ticked against the house, pinged on the tin roof.
She waited. A minute passed, and the image took hold again—that shadow thrusting something into the back of Jerrod’s head. It wasn’t just the brutality that horrified her.
Why is this bugging me? She remembered. Oh Jesus.
One of the interviews she’d conducted for her article on PTSD vets had been with a col o nel in spec ops. They’d stumbled onto the topic of the silent kill, and he’d told her that, contrary to common belief, slitting a throat wasn’t the quietest way to kill a person. He’d explained that when Force Recon or SEALs wanted to kill instantly and with minimal noise, they’d jam a combat knife at a forty-five-degree angle through the base of the skull, where the bone was thin. It scrambled the medulla oblongata. Instantly wiped out all motor control.
That’s what happened to Jerrod. Are these guys spec ops?
In the darkness several feet ahead, someone exhaled.
The floor creaked.
Liquid fear, pulled the trigger, muzzle flash burning her eyes, ears ringing, and in that light splinter, she saw the rotted interior of the ghost house and two men garbed in night camouflage and face masks, suppressor-fitted machine pistols slung over their shoulders.