TORMENT (40 page)

He nudged her. “We need to move.”

A large part of keeping people alive had to do with keeping them aware and moving. A slow, injured or unconscious person was nearly impossible to save, especially while on the run. When she didn’t reply, he shook her shoulder.

She moaned in response.

He hated what he did next, but there was no choice. Austin took careful aim and slapped Mia square across the cheek. Her eyes burst open and she sat bolt upright. Before she could realize what had caused the pain, he got right down in her face and said, “Get up and get moving now or you will die.” He took hold of her arm and yanked her to her feet, his former gentleness gone.

Austin’s rough approach snapped Mia awake. She could see fear and anger in his eyes, but also concern. She was the last survivor under his care, and she could see that he was terrified she would die. She realized he felt more afraid of losing her than he did about his own death.

She stood on wobbly legs, found her balance and took a step toward the remains of an old concrete stairway. She took hold of the rusted railing and hung on it. Water poured from her clothes and while the coolness felt good, the smell clung to her. She wondered if she would ever be free from the stink, but when Austin nudged her up the stairs she realized she wouldn’t have much time to care.

Mia took the first step and her leg shook from the effort. Kicking through the water combined with nearly drowning had sapped the life from her legs. But a single sentence from Austin propelled her up the stairs.

“I can hear them,” he said.

Them
.

The killers.

If they could get up the stairs and into the mills then maybe there was a chance the horde would lose track of them.

Mia tripped on a landing halfway up, where the staircase turned ninety degrees. She fell to her knees, reopening the skinned wounds. The sharp sting energized her. She pushed off the concrete, and launched up the stairs.

“Keep it moving,” Austin encouraged.

They reached the top of the stairs a moment later, crouching behind the last few steps and looking over the top. They couldn’t see anyone, but they heard plenty of voices, in front, and behind.

Austin looked back. The killers pursuing them had yet to reach the river. But he knew it wouldn’t be long.

He stood and ran across the parking lot to the back of the mill. Mia followed. The long brick mill was falling apart in places, the result of the nearby nuclear explosion, but it looked solid enough—a fact they confirmed a moment later when Austin attempted to open a green metal door at the top of a short stairway.

“Locked,” he said.

Mia moved on without waiting. She dropped down into a loading bay where a large green garage door led into the mill’s basement. “Here,” she said. She gripped the door’s handle and pulled. It opened with a loud metallic groan. The sound made her cringe. Someone must have heard it.

The door jammed a foot from the ground.

“Good enough,” Austin said. He lay on his back and wriggled beneath the door. Halfway through, he stopped and braced the door with his arms. “Slide under.”

Loud voices echoed around the back of the mill. The loud garage door had attracted some nearby killers.

Mia dove for the door, dragging herself into the darkened interior.

Austin rolled inside behind her. The door dropped, bouncing to a stop. The voices arrived a moment later. The thick metal door muffled the words, but the apologetic tone was impossible to mistake. The bottom of the door hovered an inch from the floor, leaving a crack through which they could see daylight, and feet. The killers outside were inspecting the door. Feet shuffled back and forth. Hands slid across the rough metal. One of the killers, against her will, lay down outside the door, peering beneath the crack.

Austin and Mia lay only five feet away, but darkness concealed them. They could see the woman in the bright light of the heat lightning. Her dark brown eye searched the darkness for them, but the eyebrows were turned up with worry. Despite the fervor with which her body hunted, she wanted nothing to do with it.

When the woman’s head shifted away and she stood, Mia sighed with relief. But a moment later, she heard hands grip the handle outside.

Austin saw what was about to happen and knew he had to act. But what could he do? Killing the people outside would be a temporary solution. A minute later they would be back on the hunt again, and they would know he and Mia were hiding inside. If he used his gun, the sound would attract even more killers. As the door started noisily sliding up, he acted without thought.

In two quiet strides, he reached the door, took hold of the handle on the inside and held it tight. The door stopped moving only an inch higher than it had been before, simulating a jam. The door shook as the killers outside tried two more times to pull it up, but Austin held steady. As long as one of the killers didn’t look under again and see his feet, the jam might be convincing enough to turn them away. But a sharp breath from Mia coupled with a shifting shadow below denied him an easy escape.

He let go of the door and took a leap away. He stood still, holding his breath. The woman’s eye returned, scanning the darkness.

Austin moved a hand to his handgun. If they tried the door again, while the woman was looking, they’d be found. The woman stood again and after a moment, the shadows outside the door moved away. A distant scream started them running.

Mia and Austin let out long breaths and stayed there, silent, in the dark for fifteen minutes. They felt safe in the quiet dark.
Alone.
Without a word shared between them, they
lay
down and fell asleep, exhausted from the chase.

As the first hour of sleep passed, the scuffling of several hundred pairs of feet shifted past the garage door. By the time they woke up, three hours later, the mill was surrounded.

48

When Mia awoke on the floor of the subterranean loading dock, she wasn’t sure if she was really awake, or if this was part of some dark dream. When she heard the shuffling feet and familiar apologies uttered just outside the large garage door, any doubt that she was dreaming crumbled. The nightmare had not yet ended.

With her eyes adjusted to the dim light provided by the slightly open door, she searched the room. Buckets of old paint hung from hooks on the ceiling. There were overturned wheelbarrows against the far wall and buckets of old pavement sealant. Half of the garage floor was taken up by a five foot stack of crumbling tar roofing sheets, possibly removed from the roof at some point long in the past. The floor beneath her was covered in oil stains from years of leaky trucks.

No wonder it smells so bad in here
, she thought, and then remembered that as bad as all the tar, paint and oil smelled, the odor lingering since her dip in the ammonia-stinking water was far worse, and impossible to escape.

Just like them
, she thought, looking at the shadows shifting outside the door. She turned around to where Austin had been and found the floor empty. She spun around, searching for him, too afraid to even whisper his name.

She stood and found that while her legs, and most of her body, ached, the severe energy drain from crossing the river had faded. But a strong thirst scratched at her throat. She tried swallowing some spit to moisten her stinging throat, but there wasn’t much.

Fear overrode her hunger and thirst. She turned toward the loading ramp at the back of the garage. A large doorway led to darkness beyond.
Only way out
, she thought, and headed for the door, her breath shaky with fear. Her hand scraped against the rough, cool bricks as she balanced herself on the wall. She stopped next to the door, afraid to enter the darkness alone.

But she had no choice. She could stay and wait for Austin, but she didn’t know where he’d gone or when he might return. Maybe he’d even gone scouting for something to eat and been killed. If she stayed here much longer, listening to the killers just outside the garage door, she’d go insane long before she died of dehydration.

Mustering her courage, she turned toward the dark opening just as a large hand reached out for her. A scream built in her throat, but a second hand covered her mouth. Austin’s face came out of the gloom next, worry lines on his forehead. After Mia had caught her breath and calmed, he whispered, “You scared the shit out of me.”

“Likewise,” she replied.

Austin motioned to the dark hallway. “I found a way upstairs.”

“Did you go up yet? Is it clear?”

“I’ve only been gone a few minutes.
Didn’t want to go too far without you.”

Mia took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “Thanks.” She looked at the shadows moving at the base of the garage door. “When did they come back?”

Austin shrugged. “They were there when I woke up. C’mon, let’s put some distance between us and them.”

He took her hand. The warmth of his skin sent a shiver up her back and covered her arms with goose bumps. His strength and confidence reassured her. If he was right about finding other survivors, about eking out some kind of life in the north woods, she felt glad it would be with him. She followed him into the dark without question.

She couldn’t see anything in the hallway, but Austin held onto her hand, navigating them past unidentifiable debris that smelled like dry mold and rust. When he stopped, she walked into his back and nearly fell. But he turned and caught her. “Careful. The stairs are just ahead.”

In that moment of closeness, Mia didn’t want to move. She didn’t want to find out what was above them. She didn’t want to run anymore. She just wanted to stay inside that safe embrace and never leave.

Austin removed his arms and pulled her a few feet further. She heard the creak of a stair as Austin put his weight on it. She saw the staircase in the dim light seeping through the cracks around the closed door at the top.

Austin took another step. The stairs creaked again, making both of them cringe. Any noise felt like too much noise.

“Try stepping on the outside of the stairs,” she whispered. “The wood won’t bend near the joint.”

He stepped again, this time in silence. “Good trick.”

“I grew up in an old house.
Came in handy as a teenager when I came home at three in the morning.”
Mentioning the old house she grew up in reminded her of the home she and Matt had bought. The stairs there squeaked even worse. Getting up them without making a noise had been impossible. She’d thought about that just before screwing Matt’s best friend. If her mom or Margo had come to visit and let themselves in she’d have heard them long before they reached the top stair. She’d locked the bedroom door, too, just in case. But every second gained would give him time to slip out onto the back porch and into the backyard where he could continue doing the yard work he’d come over to do. The memory chased away her thoughts of a future with Austin. She followed him up the stairs.

Austin stopped at the door, listening. When he heard nothing, he twisted the rough metal handle and gave the door a push. It swung open with a light squeak. The space beyond was a short hallway that led to either side. The dropped ceiling above was brown with water stains and the white walls were peeling, but nothing else seemed out of the ordinary.

Light streamed into the hallway from both sides and a gentle, stale breeze tickled their noses.

“Which way?”
Austin asked.

“Up,” she said, pointing to the staircase to their left that led to the second floor.

They took the stairs quickly and repeated the process until they reached the fourth floor. Mia felt herself relax a little, knowing that four flights of squeaky stairs separated them from the killers.