Oh, fuck.
She let out a trembling breath. If the safety had not been on…
Tap tap.
“Do this. Come on, Sophie. All this, all this practice. You’re ready. You do this.”
Yes. She picked up the gun, extended the stock, checked the clip, and carried it barrel-down as she had read was the proper stance for close-quarter interior fighting.
Her fear was struggling to drive her muscles down into a wet and quaking mess, but the disciplined under-grid of her mind was clacking up from its foundations and beginning to take over. Do this, then this, then this. She would go to the vault door and check the vid screen, and if she could see any of the intruders, she would activate the door pressure wheel, back up to the protective corner of the radiation trap, and crouch with her gun braced over the cinderblock notch made for just such a point defense.
And wait.
She would wait for the door to be pushed open by an intruder, and without a second thought, she would open fire. If the first intruder died horribly in a spray of facial gore, the others were almost certain to back off. Those seconds of chaos and horror would save her life.
Yes. Aim for the core body, walk the gunfire up his throat. If you’re going to live for Lacie, you’ve got to. You’ve got to do this.
She would cover herself with the cinderblock wall as best she could, and she would unload a full clip of ricocheting bullets into the gap and anyone else who dared to enter. And then she would fall back to where the gun safe was.
If she could.
Just remember, Patrice was trilling again in her mind, enthroned and smiling down upon her breathing sister. If you let them do whatever they want out there, they want in. They want to end you, and then to enshrine themselves where you die screaming. Nothing more. You leave them alone, and they will kill you.
“Make this happen, Sophie. Okay.”
She went to the vault door’s vid screen, flexed her gloved fingers and flipped the panel on. An angry burst of white-gray static snowed across the display, following her fingers in LED pools of crystalline afterglow. As she moved her fingers away, the static pulsed and swirled once more into the undulating sine curves of rasterized pixels. There was the black-and-gray blood, pooled and curdled into tendrils around the floor grating. There were Pete’s legs, his outstretched hand, but he was covered by a tarp and his sheriff’s hat was gone. And, in frail and skeletal silhouette looming beside his covered body, there was something else.
No.
Someone else.
Sophie gasped.
An elderly black man was standing out there, sweating and shivering. He frowned at the vault door and then at Peter Henniger’s uncovered hand and back again. There were pulpy ropes of burn tissue bulging out on his throat. Cables of fresh scar tissue stood out upon his forearms. His chest must have been burned as well — he was wearing lumpy work boots and corduroy trousers, but instead of a work-shirt or a jacket, he was wearing something else entirely.
He shifted and rolled his shoulders, wincing in pain. And as he moved, Sophie realized what it was. The man was wearing a black and loose-fitting plastic trash bag over his torso, with ripped and duct-taped holes plucked outward to let his arms peek through. Atop his bald and burned head there glinted a cracked pair of ski goggles, and two stubborn gun-cotton tufts of white hair were puffed out over his ears.
The man did not seem to be carrying any weapons, or tools, or even any water. He was leaning his meager weight upon a polished blackthorn cane, an antique and well-worn masterpiece, crowned with a silver fox head which glinted its sparkling eyes from between his bloated fingers.
The man shuffled forward, tapping the cave wall at random, and as he did so a fresh gust of static blizzarded across the video display.
Tap tap.
When Sophie could speak, she whispered to the screen. “Oh my.” She swallowed past the dryness that was creeping up her throat. “Oh, oh goodness, how did you… how—”
The man scratched the side of his nose. He bent down and scowled at something to his left, where the edged cuts of radiance from the glo-lites cast their deepest shadows. He tapped there once, and the vid screen puffed up a blossom of pearlescent static once again.
Sophie cleared her throat. She lowered the HK submachine gun and pressed one of her gloved hands against the door. She called out loudly through the door seam: “Who are you?”
The tapping stopped. On the vid screen, the old man took a jerky step back and then stood very straight, peering over his left shoulder and then over his right. His lower lip jutted out, and then he idly stuffed a pinky into his ear. Then, almost casually, he decided to address the vault door itself.
He said the words very clearly, but still, they did not register with Sophie because they were impossible. “Name’s Silas, ma’am. Silas Colson, of Ol’ Littleton. Oh you know, down out west o’ Denver, down by Little’s Creek? Well. You don’t know me. Lady, you got dead people out here. And this, oh this man. Are you — are you Mrs. Sophie? Sophie S.-G.?”
And how in the Hell does he know that?
When she did not answer, he lifted a gray scrap of bloodstained notebook paper and rustled it toward the camera. He called out, “Because this good man, this good man o’ the law who pass away down here, well now. He wrote you a note if you are, if you are her, that Sophie, see? He wrote it out to the last, I reckon. Was balled up in his hand when I climb down here. Me, I put that hat upon his chest, for he had a good heart and I can see that, writing you love and apologies and all, and I cover him best I can. Cut-up plastic tent from the trunk of that police car. Oh, those poor souls piled up high in there. Didn’t mean to find you, see? I’s just looking for a place… a place to lie down. To find mine own last.”
Still in shock, Sophie could not reply.
And the man named Silas, he leaned with both of his hands laced over his fox-head cane and with his toes pointed outward, rocking back and forth. He was too proud to do anything but grimace away the pain. He almost looked like a somber, indefatigable Charlie Chaplin. And he shrugged — he shrugged of all things — and he said: “Well-up. Reckon I understand. And so? I’s sorry to bother you and all. I’ll be going now.”
And he turned, giving the body of Peter Henniger the widest berth the shaft’s confines would allow, and he limped his way back toward the ladder.
What am I seeing? Is this real? Is he real?
Sophie tried to breathe out a laugh of humorless disbelief, but her mouth hung open and her jaw worked futilely for purchase. She was no longer in shock. She was flabbergasted.
The man plucked at the garbage bag over his right shoulder blade, and winced a little as he pried it free of his scarred and peeling skin. He crooked his cane under his left armpit, then smoothed the sweat off of his palms in preparation for the climb.
Pounding on the door, Sophie found her voice at last. “Wait!”
And the elderly man did not turn, but he cocked his head to gaze at the vault door over his shoulder. One of his pulpy hands spread out, its fingertips each covered with some kind of reflective and hardened glaze. He was waving.