She did so.
Swallowing, glancing up at the lip of the ladder-shaft one last time, Sophie backed toward the shelter door. Having decided there was no one watching her up over the brim of the shaft, she went back inside again.
Several trips passed uneventfully. After she had made the shaft floor crowded with supply pallets, Sophie toke a few moments to cover the girl’s body. Each trip in and out, she scanned the brim of the ladder-shaft every time. She only tripped over the cinderblock once, but that one time had nearly ended in an ankle sprain or worse.
She was panting, her lungs were burning. She had coughed up water and her faceplate was covered with fitful bouts of mist.
She had fitted pulleys to corner hinges, and moved the five (not seven) pulley-pallets of supplies out into the shaft in forty-seven minutes, all told. A little less. Silas had not awakened. She surveyed the absurd heaps of duct-taped plastic, sheets of gray and interwoven ribbons tangled over all of the supplies. Food, water, maps, the radio, most of the binders, batteries, medicine, the guns of course, ammunition, the lighters, notebooks, the toilet paper, the tackle kit (if there were any fish up there, still alive), the lead curtains, so much clothing, so very many things…
And so she was ready at last to rise and explore the cave, and then to raise all the supplies as quickly as possible.
And then Silas…
When she flashed the light beam up again, searching the ceiling, she looked for the painted box which hid the utility crane. She could not see it.
She felt a thrill of panic. Tom had completed the crane some months ago, the binder had said so. But why couldn’t she see it even if she was looking for it?
Too far away, too high. There was only one way to find out.
Sophie left the flashlight on, clipping it to her utility belt. She took a deep breath, wrapped her gloved hands around the ladder’s slippery rungs, and she began to climb.
As she raised herself, with Pete’s body at the edge of sight, with ashen shadows up above her spun into twisting dances by the ever-reflected waterfall, Sophie was certain that she was going to die. Someone was going to pop his head over the brim of the shaft so high above her, leer down and gloat over her and her sealed fate. But only for a moment. Then, the man above was going to shoot her before she could do anything at all.
And after she fell, as she laid at the bottom of the shaft crippled and broken and dying, before she bled out… would she feel him? What was he going to do with her body?
No.
Patrice cackled deep inside her. Oh yes, Sophie love. That’s how it goes, goes, goes. First he’ll shoot you in the shoulder, keep the meat fresh. And then you’ll fall, and then your back will go snap-crackle-pop, and oh! Then he will be on top of you! And you’ve left him a knife, taped to your suit’s boot. So good of you! He’ll use that instead of the gun. He’ll slice the suit open to get at you, and snag you a little and gouge out some flesh from your belly because he’ll be very eager you see, and…
“Shut up.”
She kept climbing. Somehow, the careful-yet-frantic climb up the shaft was timed by her suit readout at eighty-seven seconds. In reality, however, it lasted an eternity.
As Sophie climbed through the last half of her isolate ascent, painted all over by the glo-lite reflections, shivering, she quelled her terror by listening to the jingle of the car keys taped inside her suit.
If the H4 was still there, if no one had managed to hotwire it or push it or tow it out (And how could they, Soph, how could they?), then she might well be able to start the car.
Maybe.
She had recovered the ring of keys only a few days before, when at last the final pieces of her plan to leave the Shelter with Silas’s guidance were falling into place. At some point she had tacked the ring up on the salvaged bulletin board, and the poster map of southern Wyoming and northeastern Colorado — of Kersey — had engulfed the keys and left them dangling there, hidden and forgotten.
No more. She had them. This was actually happening, she was making her escape.
This had all been planned with Silas, all of it and so many times. How many vehicles were up above? If Silas’s observations still held true, then at least three: the H4 jammed near to the cave wall (although it had rebounded slightly, if he recalled), the police car filled with dead bodies, and Silas’s own vehicle. Another car in the canyon, or two? He didn’t think so. He could not remember. But if there were more cars, it would mean…
Keep climbing.
Which vehicle would work, if any? Silas had said the older the better, yes. All the way up to Black Hawk, tested newer cars had failed him. All of their circuitry had been burned out by the pulse. But old clunkers? A few of them worked fine.
She would prefer the H4 for its familiarity, for its four-wheel drive and strong suspension. For its toolbox if it was still there, and for its power enough to ram or push things off the road whenever she had to. Yes, if the H4 would work — and there was reason to hope, after all despite its newness the Hummer had been sheltered in the cave and was probably better shielded than just about any other surviving vehicle they could ever hope to find — then it would be ideal.
And if it did not, well… perhaps the police car. Could she bear to pull out all of the bodies piled up inside it that Silas had described? What about the trunk? Was the shotgun there? Where was it? And there was one body at least that he refused to talk about. What of that? Would Pete’s patrol car even start again if it was mired in the pool beneath the waterfall? What if she had to walk out along the canyon to Silas’s car to test its ignition, or to siphon gas?
Stop thinking about all that. Just go.
And she did. Something would work, anything. If there was a way to drive to Kersey and find her Lacie, she would make it work. Or die in the trying…
Her grip began to slip and she swayed there, a horror of doubt rushing over her all at once: Oh God oh you’re hanging from a ladder with only a dying man to hear you scream if you fall he can’t save you he’s stuck in bed in the shelter if you break your legs if you break your legs if you —
And the slurring, delicious giggling of Patrice began again deep down inside her, riding that wave of hysteria up through her and lilting into her mind.
Oh, don’t worry, Soph. You have your gun with you, you’ll fall and there will be broken bones and agony but don’t you worry, Sophie love. You think you’ve loaded the gun to use on others? Oh no, no. See, I’m waiting for you to realize this so that you can join me here in dancing, dancing, dancing: sister love, that loaded gun is just for you. No need to suffer long. Just fall and get it over with, get it over with and come to me!
“Leave me alone,” Sophie hissed. Her voice grated with surprising force inside her suit.
Grimacing, she clutched at the ladder rungs and kept on climbing.
She came to the top of the ladder, with both hands still on the top rung. She knew there were handholds out there, which she could feel about for and clutch and haul herself over the brim. But she could not see them, she would need to pad her gloved fingers about blindly and anyone out there could grab her clumsy hands and haul her up and pin her there before she could ever raise her gun, and that is the thought that froze her there.
She had both hands on the top rung and was in the process of bunching her body up beneath her, her legs still moving but her hands and arms refusing to obey.