Kyle opens the rear-side door of the jeep. Abigail cowers away, her eyes flickering between him and the distant Sickers.
Kyle takes a step back, giving her space. “Abigail,” he says, and at the sound of her name, her gaze settles on him. “Why don’t you come out? We’re going to explore. It’ll be fun. And we won’t let anyone hurt you.”
Abigail tilts her head, as though weighing her options. Then she slides onto hands and knees. When Kyle takes a further step back, she scampers past him. She hesitates, eyes interrogating the street in sharp jerks. But when Kyle starts toward the open doors, she hurries after, moving upright now.
Johnson edges aside to let them pass, shoves the door shut, and considers the crude mechanism on its interior. “Help me,” he says. He doesn’t seem angry that Kyle defied him.
Together they manage to maneuver the beam back into position. Once it’s done, Johnson inspects the empty foyer. “Is everything like this?”
“The next floor isn’t so bad,” Kyle says. “But I don’t think anybody’s been there in a while.”
“Then we’ll work our way up to the top,” Johnson decides.
Kyle leads. Out of curiosity, he chooses the opposite direction to the one he arrived by. The corridor beyond is a mirror image, and there’s another stairwell at the end. He’s intending to carry on upward, but Johnson hesitates at the first landing. He pushes through the fire door, into the passage that runs the length of the building’s front.
Kyle follows, keeping as close as he dares to Abigail. She’s evidently anxious, but at the same time curious, and he senses that obvious attention will make her skittish. It occurs to him, too, that she’s very different from how she was in Aaronovich’s apartment; that much of her apparent tameness has worn off during the drive, as though the wilderness and the desolation of the city have exerted their influence upon her.
Most of the doors are shut, but halfway along, one lies ajar. Johnson pauses to look inside, leading with the gun barrel. It’s a wasted precaution. Kyle sees that the space is as empty as could be. Only lighter marks on the dark green carpet hint at where furniture has stood: a bed and bedside table, a wide cabinet with rounded feet. However, there’s also a window in the far wall, and that strikes Kyle as strange, for he remembers from the map that no road runs there.
When he goes to look out, the view from the window is a genuine surprise, so much so that Kyle finds himself staring longer than is necessary, as if to test its reality. It’s clear now that the building is actually a hollowed rectangle, longest on its front and rear edges. The inner area, which is substantial, was most likely a garden back in the hotel days.
More recently, it’s been put to a new and quite different purpose. The farm beneath them is smaller than the one in Funland, but better planned. Among the tangled undergrowth are remnants of wood and wire fences, raised beds and other signs of diligent cultivation. There’s even a sort of shanty greenhouse, the plants within running riot, struggling to force their tendrils through what few mottled panes of glass have endured.
Johnson, who has come to stand beside Kyle, lets the silence drag out. Finally, he says, “I think this place was some kind of a commune. That garden’s too well established to have been started after the sickness. But the way the front’s been defended, that points to an altogether different mindset. Someone knew what was here and realized they could make use of it. Probably they drummed out the squatters, if they hadn’t already got sick, that is.”
“Why do you think that?” Kyle asks. “I mean, that they’d have driven them out?”
Johnson shrugs. “It’s what I’d have done.”
Kyle wonders about that as he recrosses the room, about how he doesn’t believe Johnson, and whether Johnson believes himself. He wonders, as well, why what Johnson revealed to him before they entered the city has so alleviated his hatred. Is it only that he imagines himself unburdened of the responsibility he’s carried since the moment of his father’s death? Even if he’s surrendering to weakness, doing so feels right.
He’s first into the passage, with Johnson close behind. Kyle stops there, caught by sudden doubt, though not certain why. Then he comprehends.
“Abigail!” he calls. His raised voice sounds weird and too loud in the desolate corridor.
She hadn’t accompanied them into the room. Now she’s nowhere in sight. How long has it been? Not much more than a minute, yet she can move quickly when she wants to. Scrutinizing the dusty boards for some clue, Kyle can make no sense of the muddle of overlapping footprints there.
“Abigail!”
Johnson brushes past him and looks left and right, as though Kyle might somehow have missed her presence. “There’s no way out,” he says. “Either she’ll catch us up or we’ll find her when we come back this way.”
Kyle would like to argue. Johnson’s logic doesn’t hold. Perhaps Abigail is lost, perhaps she’s scared. They don’t know what dangers lie within these walls. But he can see that Johnson isn’t going to be swayed.
“You promise?” Kyle is willing to be convinced. When Abigail behaves predictably, it’s easy to trust her. When he has no idea what might be going on in her head, it’s harder. He doesn’t want to contemplate searching for her alone.
“I promise,” Johnson agrees.
When he starts toward the stairwell, Kyle falls in behind. She’ll be okay, he assures himself. Only, that isn’t what has stirred his feet, it’s the suspicion that Abigail has understood more than he’s dared to suppose.
Maybe, after all, this is what she wants. And maybe it’s even for the best.
* * *
This time, Doyle leads.
That way, his face can’t betray how the Sicker girl’s disappearance has unsettled him. That way, Kyle won’t guess at his first thought, the one he now can’t escape. Perhaps she knows something we don’t.
Doyle follows the stairs up to the next floor. From the moment he pushes through the door, he feels a difference, though it’s difficult to place. It’s as subtle as a change in the air, but he’s sure that people have been here recently.
As below, the stairwell stands at the junction of two corridors, one running along the front of the building, the other retreating along its shorter side. The front corridor boasts more brass numbers, presumably representing yet more shabby hotel rooms. In the opposite direction, however, a pair of double doors stands open, beneath a faded sign that reads ‘STAFF ONLY’. Half crescents in the dust suggest that these doors have been used in the recent past, and so it’s that route Doyle chooses. He levels the pistol before him, moving with renewed caution.
If he’d had doubts that this was the section the survivors had chosen to make their home, they’re dispelled as he enters that doorway. The doors have also been reinforced and fitted with brackets for a bar, like the main entrance. There are the tight rows of beds beyond, too, surely salvaged from the nearby rooms. The exactness of their arrangement dismisses any possibility that this could be the work of squatters, as do the clear signs that this large dormitory was once divided into smaller chambers. Doyle can see where walls have been knocked through, where doorways have been bricked up. Everything speaks of a disciplined, coordinated effort, favoring security always over comfort.
The other unmistakable fact about the room is that it’s abandoned, and has been for some time. The same is true of the next he checks, a storeroom from the racks of shelving and rectangles of crushed carpet, and the one after that, a long kitchen.
Doyle refuses to give up his caution. He keeps the gun held ready. Yet he’s conscious that he no longer envisages finding anyone, at least no one alive and uninfected. When he glances at Kyle, the boy’s expression is desolate. Perhaps he’s concerned for the Sicker girl, but Doyle suspects it’s more that this place is rapidly dashing whatever tatters of hope he had left. Doyle tries to look inside himself, to identify similar disappointment. Wh
at had he expected, coming here?
There’s nothing. He came because he said he would, because doing so was the only way he could conceive of to divert Kyle from his path of self-destruction, or maybe just for the most selfish of reasons, because he needed to be free of Funland’s walls for a little while.
They travel the length of the next corridor, passing room after room, the recent purpose of each plain but their inhabitants long gone. Ahead, the passage meets the corner of the building and veers left, past which point, Doyle assumes, will be more empty guest rooms. There’s one remaining door, closed and unmarked, so he pushes it open. The space within was clearly an office back in the hotel days. Since the sickness, it’s perhaps been used for a similar purpose; the dust on the desk is a fine sheen.
Then he thinks, no, not an office. Upon the chipboard desk is a wide rectangular stain, whitened like scar tissue on the brown, laminated skin. He recognizes that shape from Plan John’s apartment, enough to have a hunch what object left it.
Not an office but a radio room.
Doyle spares the desk the briefest of glimpses. For above it is a whiteboard and on the whiteboard is writing, two long numbers in precise strokes of blue permanent marker, both split with decimal points and the second preceded by a minus sign.
“Coordinates,” he says. The word sounds strange to his own ears. This is more, far more, than he’d ever foreseen them finding. “They’re map coordinates.”
Kyle stands beside him. “You think that’s where they went?” His voice is small, reverential.
Doyle doesn’t answer, knowing there’s no need. Somehow these people were convinced to pack up and set out, and he can imagine only one reason, when they were safe here with their garden, their order, their locked doors and barred windows: the prospect of something better.
“Can you read it?” Kyle asks. “Could we get there?”
“With the right maps. Yeah. We can get there.”
“And will you?”
Rather than answer, Doyle searches the drawers. Mostly they’ve been cleared out, but in the bottom of one are a few yellowed sheets of paper with Alexis Hotel letterheads and a pack of cheap disposable pens. He writes out the coordinates twice, at top and bottom of a page, tears the sheet in half and folds each half in four. One he slides into a pocket. The duplicate he hands to Kyle.
“In case we get separated,” he says. “Come on, it’s time we started back.”
For the sake of completeness, Doyle opts for the direction they haven’t explored. As he’d predicted, the rear of the building consists solely of vacant hotel rooms. At the next corner is what he supposes to be a stairwell, the entrance bricked up. Around the turn, along the fourth side, yet more bedrooms are interspersed with offices, these locked, and a small laundry. Halfway along is another reinforced doorway. When he passes through, Doyle feels an unexpected pang, a distant echo perhaps of what those who dwelled here experienced as they moved from the security they’d carved out into the dangers of the outer world.
He’s almost at the corner stairwell when he discerns the noise from below. It’s the sort of sound, neither interesting nor distinctive, that would have passed unnoticed if not for the deep silence that lies upon the city. A moment after it’s faded, Doyle can no longer decide what it had been, a tapping or a scraping. Only an effort of will stops him from mentally filing it as meaningless. Doyle tilts his head, trying to recreate the sound in his mind.
A creaking. From below. In the street? No, not the street.
Floorboards.
“Johnson….” Kyle murmurs.
“I heard it.”
“Is it Abigail?”
The possibility hadn’t occurred to him. Doyle had all but forgotten about the girl. “Come on,” he says.
He begins to move again, walking fast rather than running. He slows to descend the stairs, taking pains not to trip; so often it’s the stupid mistakes that get you. Doyle moves his body like an engine, gripping the gun as if it’s welded to his palm. Whatever this is, and he knows that it’s not the girl, he will find a way to deal with it.
He pushes through the door into the second-floor corridor. Though he isn’t surprised to see them there, he can’t resist how his heart leaps in his chest. The Sickers are clustered between the stairwell doorway and the window where Kyle clambered up. What had ever made Doyle assume they couldn’t follow? He ought to have reparked the jeep. Their sickness doesn’t mean they can’t think, can’t climb, and no doubt this building has been a longstanding source of fascination to them.
“Listen to me,” Doyle says. “You’re going to go downstairs. Go out the front. Get in the jeep and drive.”
Kyle only looks at him.
“Take care of Carlita. The doctor. Do what you promised me you’d do.”
“Johnson, wait—”
“Shut up. Go.” When Kyle still doesn’t move, Johnson grips his arm, spins him around, and shoves hard against his back. “Go!”
This time, Kyle doesn’t resist. He staggers through the door, and Doyle can hear the clatter of his shoes upon the metal-edged steps.
At that, some of the tension goes out of him. Doyle looks back at the Sickers, the six of them clustered in the narrow passage, watching him without expression.
Now it’s him and them. Just as he needs it to be for what comes next.
Chapter Forty-Six
Aaronovich wakes early. Opening the door a sliver, she can see a parallelogram of gray-white sky, spattered with flakes of cloud that make her think of desiccated skin.
She can’t say what disturbed her. She has a distant memory of shallow sleep, of troubled dreams. She can hear wheezing snores and knows they belong to Contreras. A part of her mind studies his anguished respiration for evidence of a cracked rib, a bruised lung, and is satisfied that it represents nothing of the kind. Contreras’s breathing might be harsh, but it’s steady, another reassurance that he hasn’t sustained any serious or lasting damage.
Aaronovich listens, then, for the noise of Carlita’s breathing – and sits with a jolt. She needs only an instant to confirm Carlita’s absence. And she recalls what woke her: the faint squeal of untended hinges.
The morning is cold, much colder than the day before. Even within the shelter of the prefabricated walls, even wrapped in her fleece-lined jacket and the blankets she brought, Aaronovich can feel its bite. Winter is coming, hour by hour, or so it seems. What possible reason could Carlita have to abandon this relative warmth? Aaronovich struggles to her feet, rubbing sensation into chilled muscles. It isn’t solely concern she’s experiencing but also distrust. Might Carlita conceivably have decided she’d be safer with the others? That her loyalty lies with those formerly imprisoned and now made free?
And in the crudest terms of survival, Aaronovich thinks, would she be so wrong?
But she’s jumping to conclusions, letting the hunger, the tension, the sleeplessness, sway her. She slips through the door, careful not to rouse Contreras. As she assays the roof space, Aaronovich acknowledges how unlikely it is that Carlita has betrayed them. For if she had, she would of course have gone downstairs, into the Big House, and from there to the cellblock.
So, what? With each slight movement, the cold strikes at Aaronovich like an open-handed slap. She can scent snow on the air. What could have tempted Carlita out here?
Then she catches the sound, a glutinous rasp. At first she has no idea what it could be, though she’s heard the same often enough throughout her professional life. Finally understanding, she follows. There’s a shaded area, cut off by a barrier of the ductwork, in the corner that faces toward the administrative wing. Once Aaronovich knows where to look, she can see Carlita’s back quite clearly. She’s crouched, leaning forward, and her shoulders are heaving.
Aaronovich, too, stays low, so as to be invisible from the yard below. After a while, she perceives that Carlita has se
nsed her presence. Yet Carlita waits until her own heaving breath has settled before she wipes a palm across her lips and turns.
“How long?” Aaronovich asks her.
Carlita shrugs. She looks weak, deflated. “A couple of weeks. Three, maybe.”
“It might not be—”
“No,” Carlita agrees. However, what she’s left unsaid, what’s apparent in her face beneath the dull morning light, is more eloquent: the balance between hope and terror.
“Does Johnson know? I mean—”
“No.”
“You don’t think he deserved to?”
“He’d still have gone,” Carlita says, and there’s certainty in her voice, certainty mingled with defeat. “Even if he’d known, he’d have gone.”
Aaronovich wants to argue Johnson’s case. She can’t. That last time they spoke, she’d seen the expression in his eyes, the utter surety. Could even this have introduced doubt into that sealed-off mind of his?
“You should rest,” Aaronovich tells Carlita, and then notes how the sentiment sounds. “We both should rest.”
“Are we safe?” Carlita wonders.
She seems dubious. Yet it’s equally clear that she has no qualms about submitting to Aaronovich’s authority. She trusts her judgment, not merely as a doctor but as someone with the right, even the obligation, to make decisions on her behalf.
Perhaps that fact should frighten her. A part of Aaronovich questions why it doesn’t, and how the rest of her can look so calmly on the responsibility she bears. Maybe the reason she wants to defend Doyle Johnson is that she, too, has set herself upon a course she can no longer deviate from.
“A couple of hours more,” Aaronovich says. “Then we’ll see.”
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