Deadly News: A Thriller (25 page)

Abby approached the corner. The streets were nearly empty at this time of night. A breeze opposed her progress, and she wrapped her coat tighter around her body. The sounds of the city late at night seemed far away. Distant sounds that could be screams or could be laughter, the occasional blaring of a horn, the sound of sparse traffic. She looked around for signs of anyone, for a folder flapping in the breeze or hidden in a crevice. There was nothing.

“I don’t see anything,” she mumbled, pretending to breathe into her hands for warmth.

“Nothing here either,” came the voice in her earpiece. “This is exactly when they said to be here.”

“You sure?” Abby asked, scanning the area. But she knew it was: she was the one who’d gotten the call, been told the time, and it was exactly eleven hours and fifty-eight minutes later. She’d been watching the clock for the past twenty minutes, just waiting to leave. She might be a few seconds off, but she’d had a view of the corner, and no one had walked by in the five minutes before she walked out here.

“We double checked your phone logs. If we’re off, it’s by less than a minute.” There was a voice in the back, Abby couldn’t make out what it said. “Wait. Alvereze says to look at that sign.”

Abby looked up at the street signs.

“No, on— To your right. Yeah. See that poster?”

Abby started as she instantly recognized the face, a feeling of horror seeping through her armor as she stood transfixed by the missing person poster. A poster with her face large and drained of color, a photo that could have been taken at a DMV, but wasn’t, the length of the photo, and lack of a shirt collar at the bottom edge of the frame giving it away to anyone observant enough to take note.

It took several moments for her to notice the name below the photo was not her own.

Finally, she said, “Getting this?” She assumed the camera she wore faced the same way she did, but it was on her chest, not her head, so she couldn’t be certain the poster was visible to whoever was watching the feed. She let her jacket fall open a bit in case it was in the way.

“Yep, hold on.” There was a several second silence. “That looks like an address.”

Abby reached up and ripped the poster off the pole and shoved it into her pocket. She looked around, standing next to the pole, facing the street. She had to resist looking up at the building where her guardians were, resist trying to find the window with them in it. It would probably be dark anyway.

They told her to wait for a bit.

She did.

Ten minutes passed; nothing. Then fifteen, then twenty. At a half hour past the scheduled time, a voice in her head told her to go. She knew at once it was from the earpiece she wore, but that didn’t remove the sense that it came from somewhere deeper, and darker.

Trying for speed to warm her now chilled self, Abby walked quickly to the address on the poster, the voices in her head guiding her when she lost her way.

The building looked abandoned. Maybe at one time it was apartments, or some kind of shop. Now it was just the broken down hull of something that used to be.

There was a note on the door.

She tried the door. Open. The smell she was assaulted with was much less potent than she had for some reason been expecting.

Now that she was inside, it wasn’t even that bad, just stale.

The floor creaked as she traversed it. The room she was in was almost too dark to see, but the light leaking in from the open door was just enough.

She ignored the stairs to her left, not least because a few were missing and she wasn’t eager to take out any more, and proceeded into the next room.

The shift in atmosphere was sudden and unexpected. Whereas the previous room had been old and more or less what she’d expected from the building’s exterior, this could be a newly-constructed room, the builders having left only hours ago.

She wanted to ask What now?, but was worried the place might be bugged.

“Is it just the camera, or does that area look much nicer?” Fe asked in the earpiece.

Abby didn’t respond. There were only three doors. She picked one and opened it.

It was empty. The walls were metal, like perhaps this had been a freezer. The door was normal, however. “Weird,” Abby said.

The next door was a kitchen that also looked empty.

The third and final door led into a downward sloping hallway. “What’s this?” she wondered aloud, hoping it sounded natural and knowing it didn’t.

“We’re trying to get blueprints for that place. We found it on a real estate agency’s site, but the website layout is confusing on a phone. Give us a few, Alvereze is tethering his laptop.”

Abby entered this descending hallway. There was a soft light coming from somewhere, though it was not obvious where.

Her footsteps were silent on the thick carpet lining the hall. Or maybe it was a wide rug, she couldn’t tell. This too was dark, and it made it hard to judge distance or height. When she turned around to look back the way she had come, she was surprised to see the door was no longer in sight, just what was now a clearly curving wall.

“Like a big spiral staircase.”

“What?”

“I—” Abby stopped herself. She was being paranoid, but that wasn’t unreasonable given all that had happened.

“Okay, we’ve got something. It looks like it’s a multilevel building. It has a few floors below ground. It used to be a club, then some kind of… I don’t know. In any case, where it looks like you are leads to a large open area.

“I don’t like this. We might lose connection with you if you go too deep. The lower level is completely below ground.”

“I’m fine,” Abby whispered.

“Abby, you need to come back up. They wouldn’t make the folder hard to find, it would be in plain sight.” There was someone else’s voice, then Fe said, “Exactly. Yeah, Abby, you haven’t even checked the kitchen, and the note mentioned milk.”

Abby made like she was wiping her nose, whispered, “Empty.” The truth was though, this was too interesting to not investigate. She’d been fascinated with urban exploration since moving to the city, and this was the closest she’d come in real life.

She reached a doorway. The barely there light of the hall tapered off into complete darkness. She only had the sense of a doorway, the empty space beyond, like her mind could recognize that there was no physical door there, just a hole. But she couldn’t actually see this. She held her hand out, and as expected it swiped through empty air.

She should have brought a flashlight. She dug out her phone. It had a flashlight. She flipped through the apps trying to find it.

A voice in her ear, telling her to go back.

Screw it. She faced the screen forward, the screen barely illuminating the doorway, and stepped through.

The quiet was odd. She had the sense that the space she just entered into was very large, yet there didn’t seem to be any echo. She felt along the wall for a light switch, but then recoiled. It was slimy. She rubbed her fingertips against one another. It felt like butter, but stringier. She wiped her hand on her coat, then regretted it. Dry clean only.

She was moving her phone to shine on the wall when a voice startled her: “Abby —— out —— ow!”

It took her several milliseconds to register where the voice came from. “What?” she said, before she could stop herself.

The dark room suddenly seemed more menacing

She slowly backed out, phone forward, lighting her retreat. As she did, her footsteps seemed to echo. Her teeth began to feel like they were vibrating, and she quickened her pace, feeling along the wall for the gap that led to the hallway. The light from her phone went out. She couldn’t see anything at all. She moved her thumb to turn it on again, dropped it instead. Her other hand passed over dry and wet wall alternately. She bent down, running her hand across the floor to locate her phone, keeping her other on the wall for orientation. There! Her hand hit the phone and it skittered away. She lunged in that direction and her hand fell on it with a crack. She grabbed it and stood, turning it on. She shined the cracked screen around, finding the wall again and keeping both hands on it as she made her way out. The phone’s screen flickered once, twice, then would light no more. Suddenly her footsteps were quadrupled. Her pawing became more frantic. Where was the door? The hallway had been lit, even if it was dim, she should be able to see it.

Feeling like she’d somehow passed it, she went in the other direction. The echoes of her footsteps were louder now, but she didn’t think about whether that was because she was moving faster, or because they were closer.

She fell. A burning pain in her wrist, another crack from her phone, something sharp in her palm. Get up, she told herself, now! The vest weighed heavily on her, like it was anchoring her to the ground.

She may have screamed. She pushed with all she could, pushing on her bad wrist and hardly feeling it, but now she was up. She stumbled around, the echoes of her footsteps out of sync. She hit something, a wall, but soft. Then another wall. The footsteps again; not hers, she thought. Wall, wet, dry. Then the frame. She fell.

She was in the hallway.

She quickly glanced behind her to make sure she wasn’t pointed in the wrong direction, then got up and ran. The vest bounced up and down, grinding her shirt against the soft skin of her ribs, armpits. It burned as more sweat flowed. Her jacket threatened to trip her, a promise she didn’t want kept.

From behind her came panting, the sound of something colliding with a wall.

What the fuck, she thought, what the fuck.

There was the door. She was almost there. That’s when the smell registered, hit her like a slap. Had she simply missed it before? It was obvious now that she was taking in heaving breaths. It was horrible. She couldn’t even place it.

She burst through the still open door and skidded to a stop, turning as quickly as she could and slamming the door shut. She fumbled with the handle and twisted the tiny knob that locked the door, then braced herself for impact.

“Abby?”

She jumped.

“Fuck!”

“Talk to me!”

“I’m fine. Jesus Christ.”

“Did you get a good look at him?”

Abby’s throat suddenly felt like it had something lodged in it. “What?” she choked out.

“Whoever was down there. We could barely see him on the cameras. We don’t even know if it was a him.”

“What else would it be?”

“Well, it was really too dark to tell. Given how little visibility we had, it could easily have been a women or even a child.”

“Oh.” Abby stepped away from the door and stared at it. She doubted it was a child. The game being played was not one for the likes of those.

The room was quiet when she held her breath. Her gaze was fixed on the door. It wasn’t going to burst open, she told herself. “I hope the folder wasn’t there, because I am not going down there again.” In fact, she had the very strong desire, an urge, to just get out of here.

“There’s only one room left, just check it on your way out. We’re sending units there now just in case.”

Abby nodded, realized Fe couldn’t see this, added, “Yeah.” She waited seconds, expecting something to slam into the door, or a shout, or noise of any kind.

Silence.

Standing there, the moments stretching out like a melting rope, she was struck by the idea that they had gone the other way, some way she hadn’t seen, and were doubling back to take her from behind.

She turned.

The kitchen door was open. There was no one here but her.

The kitchen looked old, but clean. The center of the room was taken up with an island, the white tile counter gleaming in the pale light washing in. This room was much brighter than the rest of the house, or building or whatever it was (Hell, she thought), due to the three uncovered windows. One above a large sink, and two others without much to reference them by.

She checked all the cupboards, and the street light that leaked in was enough to show her they were empty.

“There’s nothing.”

“Check the oven and fridge.”

Abby did. There was a dead rat in the oven. There was something plasticy about it, so she just told herself it was a toy. The barely glimpsed things that crawled in the dark upon it belied this.

“Was that a rat?”

Abby didn’t answer. She checked the fridge and the freezer. Both were empty. The inside smelled new, like it had never seen food. That was odd.

“Okay, I’m gone.”

“Wait. Check the freezer again.”

Abby stopped, already almost out of the room, almost out of this nightmare place, steeled herself, went back to the freezer. Peering inside, she said, “What?”

“That panel. Yeah, you see?”

On one side was a panel, distinct from its surrounds, and obviously concealing something. Abby nodded, and reached toward the bulge and pried the panel off. Taped to it was a folder, which itself was sealed with more tape. She peeled the attaching tape off, which came free easily since it was only stuck to more tape, and not the folder itself. She checked behind the panel for anything else, but there was nothing.

Abby set the folder on the center island. “Open it?”

“Uh. Just be careful.”

This would be an easy way to kill her, she thought. She somehow doubted even
They
would go through so much trouble, and so began opening it, slowly peeling the tape away.

“Go slow,” someone whose voice she hadn’t heard before said into her ear. She was so focused on the process of opening the folder, that by the time she registered the voice wasn’t Fe’s or Emily’s, the impulse to be surprised by an unexpected presence was gone, and her brain had informed her the voice had come from inside her ear. “No shit,” she mumbled.

She put her palm on the edge of the folder as she peeled the final strip away to prevent it from popping open.

“Get down at eye level, and slowly lift it.”

“If this blows up, I’m gonna be pissed.”

“Too thin,” that same unfamiliar voice assured her.

It looked empty. She opened it some more, then straightened. Inside was a single sheet of printer paper.