Asher kicks open the door, and peers inside, like he has at least a hundred times in the last hour. But this time, when he emerges, he has a smile in his voice.
“Found one.” His voice is scratchy from exhaustion.
While I get down from Starshine, he pulls a flashlight from one of the packs. “Come on, we’ll check the rest of this building out together. I don’t want to leave you out here all alone.”
I don’t want to be alone either, but … “What about Gavin?”
He frowns. “What about him?”
I make a disgusted sound in my throat. “What if he comes while we’re inside? How will he know where we are?”
He rolls his head on his shoulders and rubs his eyes. “Evie…”
I know what he’s going to say, but I don’t care. I cross my arms over my chest. “Look, I don’t care what you think. He got away from the birds. All right? He got away and you’re not going to convince me any different. Now how is he going to know we’re inside?” Even I can hear the desperation in my voice, but I ignore it.
His eyebrows have winged up under his hair and he just stares at me. Finally, he sighs. “Starshine. She’ll wait here until we get back.”
“Wait.” I glance over at her and see her staring at us with sad eyes. “We just can’t leave her out here.”
He mutters something under his breath, but says aloud, “We won’t. We’re just going to check this place out and make sure it’s safe. We’ll come back out for her in a few minutes. I’m sure no one’s around here to care whether we bring her in the building to stay warm. And by that time,” he continues when I open my mouth, “I’ll have figured out a way to mark that we’re here.”
Uncomfortable with leaving her out here and still doubtful Gavin will find us, I don’t immediately follow when Asher disappears through the open door.
Only when he pokes his head back out and asks “Coming?” do I make up my mind and follow him in. It’s only for a few minutes. We’ll be right back out.
Inside, our flashlight reveals glimpses of the place. It’s a strange mishmash of a house and some type of military outpost. As if someone lived here until the very moment the army took over. I wonder if that happened before or after the bomb drop. If it was before, that would explain a lot—the calcified statue people, and how they were just left. They were probably used as a deterrent to keep people away from this area. The statues certainly gave the abandoned city a creepy feeling and if I could have avoided it, I would have.
I follow Asher as he wanders around the tiny building until we locate a steel door set into the wall of a long hallway.
He hands me the flashlight and forces the door open. Surprisingly it opens without so much as a squeak or squeal. I hand him back the flashlight, then follow closely behind him as he walks through the door.
It’s nothing but a pitch-black corridor. No light reaches in here, and my nerve endings go into overdrive. I try to focus on the area illuminated by the flashlight, but a memory is tugging at my mind.
Without warning, the lights flicker and go out throughout the complex. The red emergency lights stay lit, but ahead the hallway is dark. I reach into my pack and pull out my flashlight pin.
When I click it on, the light cuts through the darkness. It’s actually brighter than the lights that would have lit the hallway, but it isn’t big enough to dispel all of the gloom.
We keep our guard up, sticking close together. Our arms brush together, and at first I have to fight the urge to jerk my arm away. I bite my tongue, hoping the pain will be enough to distract me from my homicidal thoughts, but it isn’t until he squeezes my hand—a simple gesture of his promise to protect me—that I’m able to push the thoughts to the side.
I can’t fight this much longer. I hope we reach the submersibles soon.
After a few minutes, he releases my hand and I have to resist the urge to grab out for him again. It’s the only thing grounding me from going crazy, but we can’t take the chance of holding hands. We don’t know what’s ahead.
Suddenly my foot slides in something wet and I almost fall to the ground. I throw my hands out to the side to catch myself with the walls.
When I lift my foot, my shoe makes a sucking sound. I tap Gavin on the shoulder, then point to the floor. “There’s something here,” I say.
He nods and stands watch over me, while I kneel to shine the small light onto the floor, careful not to let my knee dip into whatever the sticky mess is. It’s a puddle of something dark red, almost purple. I tilt my head, then stick my finger in it and bring it nearer to me to study. It’s slightly tacky, like wet glue or drying paint.
Bringing it to my nose, I sniff at it. It has a metallic scent, like rust. Then it hits me. I know exactly what this is. It bothers me that it took me that long to figure it out.
When I turn to show Gavin, he’s already staring at the puddle with a look of horror on his face. “Blood?” he asks.
“Oh, Mother,” I whisper, staring at my hands. They’re covered in blood. “No. No. It’s not real. Not again.”
“Evie?” Asher asks, turning toward me. When he does, he illuminates the walls, revealing a patchwork of gory handprints.
I shake my head. “No. No.”
I stare, unable to blink while a rivulet of blood escapes and trickles down from the tip of one print’s thumb. They’re fresh. Whoever made these isn’t far away.
A sound comes from behind me and I spin around, finding more prints. Some of these are near the floor and aimed upward, as if someone had crawled up from the ground. I press my hands to my eyes. This can’t be real. Not again. My hands are wet—tacky—and I remember the blood on them. I yank them away with a whimper.
“Evie?” Someone touches my arm. It must be Asher, but the voice warps like a record slowing down. “What’s wrong?”
It isn’t Asher. It’s Gavin, and he’s smiling at me. His chin is already red, and more blood oozes from the space between his teeth. It’s not a smile. Not at all.
“Gavin!” I can only whisper because fear has robbed me of my voice. I can’t breathe. My chest feels like a horse is sitting on it.
His jaw drops, almost as if he means to speak, but instead blood spills out to patter wetly into the congealing puddles at my feet. He raises one hand to me, stretching his fingers like he can’t decide if he wants to caress my cheek or grab my face. The action splits white cracks into the blood coating his palm. I want to run, but all I can do is lean away from him, my muscles tight and protesting.
“You must be starving,” he says with that same strange smile. When he lifts his other hand into view, he’s holding a severed arm.
Finally, my body frees me from its paralysis. I spin around and try to race away, but I find myself looking into the face of a girl about my age. Her blond hair is stained pink and red, matted to her head. There’s something gray clinging to her temple that for some reason I’m certain came from inside her head. Her scalp is split open there, showing a glint of bone, but she doesn’t seem to care. She stares at me, unaware of the trickle of blood running into her right eye. I have the strange thought that her eyes are a lovely sapphire color, but it’s obscured by the hate in them as they bore into mine.
Macie! my mind whispers. And for a second, I’m overjoyed, but— “You’re dead,” I say.