They had piled every piece of furniture they could find against the door, but she had no illusions that it would hold forever. The beds were mostly metal frames and soft mattresses like in other rooms, but at least in Carly’s, one designed for a family, there were other, heavier furniture. The table and dresser took a lot of effort to move, and they left jagged, shallow gutters in the concrete floor in their wake. They also added an ugly red felt armchair that Danny liberated from the Starch Public Library. Carly hated the thing because it was so wide and heavy and took up so much space.
“Thank God he never got around to removing this ugly thing,” Carly said as they grunted with the effort of pushing the armchair across the door.
They topped the pile with the mattresses and bed frames.
Lara was intimately aware that the door in her room wouldn’t have lasted more than a few minutes against the ghouls. But here, in Carly’s room, they had a chance. It wasn’t much of one, but there was a chance.
Hurry up, Will. Hurry, for God’s sake.
After the barrage of blood-curling screams in the first few minutes of the siege, things seemed to calm down. The screams were rare now, though they still wafted up and down the hallway, usually preceded by gunshots.
Women’s screams. Men’s, too.
She tried to remember how many people were inside the facility. More than twenty at last count. Ben and Rick were dead, killed by Kate. Not many left now. Soon it would just be them, in this one room, waiting for salvation that might never come.
Hurry, Will, hurry.
She abandoned the door, tucked the Glock in her waistband, and walked across the room and sat down next to the girls. Carly came over and sat down next to her, until all four of them were sitting in a row, eyes zeroing in like lasers on the door and the trembling pile of furniture pressed up against it. Their last line of defense. Their only line of defense.
“Anything from the guys?” Carly asked.
“No,” Lara said.
She unclipped the radio from her belt. It had been a while since she last heard from Will. There was a series of shotgun blasts, and for a moment she was jubilant, expecting Will and Danny to reach them any moment now. But then the blasts stopped, and there was only silence.
“Maybe we should try calling them,” Carly said.
“They might be in the hallways. If the radio starts blurting…” She shook her head. “We need to wait for them.”
“I heard shotguns a couple of minutes ago. That was them, wasn’t it?”
“Yes, I think so.”
“Then it went quiet…”
“Yeah.”
“What do you think it means?”
“I honestly don’t know,” Lara said. “They’ll come. Will promised. And he’s never broken his promise yet. They’ll come. We just have to wait for them.”
The radio in Lara’s hand mercifully let out a loud squawk that made both women jump.
Will’s voice came through, in his usual calm — maddeningly so, at times — manner: “Lara.”
“Thank God you’re alive,” she said. Carly tensed beside her. Lara said into the radio, “Danny?”
“He’s fine,” Will said. “We’re both fine. How is everyone over there?”
“Scared. Where are you?”
“We’re in the Control Room. We couldn’t get through the hallways, there were too many. We don’t have enough bullets to clear them all out.”
Her heart sank. She was hoping Will would have made some progress through the facility, but she knew the Control Room was well on the other side, in Operations. It was near the Armory, where Will and Danny had gone for their weapons.
“What now?” she asked.
“I need you guys to hang on a little while longer. We’re coming.”
“When, Will?” She had managed to keep her voice calm, afraid it would crack at any moment.
“The air conditioner ducts,” Will said. “They run through the facility. There should be a grate near the back of your room.”
She stood up and walked toward the back. She saw it in the corner, a two-by-two foot metal grate that was pushing out warm air to balance out the cold night. “I see it.”
“Can you find a way to open it?”
“We’ll try.”
“We’re on our way, but if we don’t get there in time, if the door doesn’t look like it’s going to hold, you know what to do.”
“Use the air ducts.”
“You’ll have to try to make your way to us and chances are we’ll meet somewhere in the middle. The Control Room has a steel door, so it’ll last indefinitely.”
“Where are you now, Will?”
“We’re coming as fast as we can. Hold on tight.”
“I’ll see you soon?”
“Yes,” he said. Then he added, “Lara.”
“Yes?”
“I’m not letting you go that easily.”
She smiled. “Hurry.”
The radio went quiet, and she laid it on a nearby shelf.
Carly said, “I should tell you something. I’m afraid of confined spaces.”
“I should tell you something, too,” Lara said. “So am I.”
They exchanged nervous grins.
Lara looked back at the grate. Carly stood next to her, taking it in as well. The ceiling was about eight feet high, at least two heads taller than either one of them.
“How do we open it?” Carly asked. “We don’t have the tools, and we can’t even reach it if we did.”
“Chair,” Lara said.
She hurried back to the door and untangled a metal chair from the barricade. The chair was mostly metal tubes and a mesh seat and was uncomfortable to sit in. Every room had one.
She put the flimsy chair down and put a foot gingerly on it, testing to make sure it would hold her weight. She was glad she hadn’t gained weight since The Purge. Not hard to do given that her appetite rarely extended past survival mode, and she ate mostly for the calories.
When she was certain the chair would hold, she climbed up and took a second to orient herself. The chair wobbled a bit with her full weight on it, but held. It gave her an extra foot and a half, and she was able to touch the metal grate with her hands. It felt warm, and a hot wind brushed against her face. They would have to crawl in that.
Better than down here…
“What do you see?” Carly asked.
Lara took in the entire grate. It was a perfect square shape, exactly two feet on all four sides. The grates were designed to have air flow through them, and she could insert her fingers through the slots. She tried jerking the grate free, but it didn’t budge. Not even a little. There were flathead screws along all four sides, one in each corner, and additional screws between the corners, making a total of eight.
She looked down at Carly. “I don’t suppose you have any screwdrivers lying around?”
Carly gave her a wry look. “It never occurred to me to stock up on screwdrivers, sorry.”
Lara climbed back down. “Well, we’re going to need a screwdriver. Or something that can work like one.”
There was a loud bang! behind her, and turning, she saw that one of the mattress frames had tipped over, pushed back by a particular massive hit on the door. Immediately, the girls gasped, and Carly gave her a pale look that didn’t try to hide the horror rushing through her.
“It’s all right,” Lara said, “the door’s still holding.”
Carly nodded, though there was no relief on her face. The door was holding now, but for how long? That last hit was hard enough for the concussive force to travel through the barricade and knock back the mattress frame. How badly had it damaged the door?