We crossed the room, stepping carefully to avoid the shards of glass, until we stood at the doorway. I took my flashlight from my jacket pocket and handed it to Sophie. “Stay right in front of me,” I said quietly.
“I should go first,” Peggy said.
I shook my head. “You’re too tall. I need to be able to shoot over her.”
She opened her mouth, shut it, and nodded. Sophie and I counted a silent one, two, three together and then stepped into the doorway, swinging the flashlight and rifle together to the left and then the right. There was a door, half-open, almost directly across from us, and another to the left of it; beyond that the left-hand hallway opened into a room that looked like it spanned the breadth of the cabin. To the right I could see three doors, all on the facing wall, before the corridor faded into darkness.
Peggy pressed against the back of my jacket, trying to squeeze into the doorway with us. “Which way?” she asked.
I nodded at the door across the hall and Sophie and I moved forward together. The wooden door swung inward as she kicked it. The room lit up as she pointed the flashlight inside, with mirror, tile, and porcelain bouncing the light back at us.
“Let’s try to the left,” I said. “It’s not as far from the front door in that direction—maybe we’ll get lucky.”
The smell we had noticed earlier grew stronger as we opened the next door on the left. It was a smell I had known before I ever came here: every home I ever worked in had it, no matter how hard it had been scrubbed.
The flashlight’s beam picked up a carpet, dresser, and two single beds, on each of which lay an unmoving body. I started to cover Sophie’s eyes with my hand, but the smell had already reached her: she spat up water and half-digested berries and dropped the flashlight onto the floor. It rolled into the room, and Sophie reached down to pick it up; as her hand closed on it, something seized her and pulled her forward. I took a step, trying to get a bead on the end-stager who had grabbed her, but Peggy rushed past me, knocking me to my knees. In the dim light I saw her grabbing Sophie’s other arm, pulling hard, and I heard Sophie scream.
I didn’t bother to stand but instead rose to one knee and tried to sight the end-stager. All I could see, though, was Peggy: she had knocked Sophie aside and leapt onto the one who had grabbed her, clawing at him with a savagery that was, I was sure, entirely foreign to her nature.
“Grandma?” Sophie asked.
Peggy turned back to us; her face was chalk-white, her eyes wild. I kept my rifle where it was, watching her carefully.
“Sophie, go,” I said. “The way we were going.”
Peggy looked from me to Sophie and then back again. She opened her mouth but remained silent, a perplexed look on her face. She took a step toward Sophie and my finger curled inward, touching the cold metal of the trigger.
“No,” Sophie said. “Don’t . . . ”
Peggy froze. I rose to my feet, keeping her in my sights. “We have to go now,” I said. I backed up toward the door, putting myself between Sophie and Peggy. Sophie reached from behind me and grabbed my arm, pulling it down until the .30-06 was pointed at the floor.
I took a step back out into the hall, still watching Peggy, and glanced to my left. Two end-stagers had emerged from the large room at the end of the corridor. One was a bald male in faded blue pajamas, his bare feet trailing blood; the other was a female dressed in just a dirty, pilly gray bra who had a halo of frizzy gray hair and little round bumps all over her body, like someone had slipped a sheet of bubble wrap under her skin.
“Go.”
Sophie looked at her grandmother for a moment before heading down the long corridor, the flashlight’s beam jumping around the walls as she ran. I took a step backward, trying to keep both Peggy and the two end-stagers within my arc of fire, then turned and ran after her. I could hear the male and female pick up their pace behind me and swore under my breath, cursing myself for triggering their instincts by running.
Sophie looked back at me, slowing her pace to let me catch up. We were already past the doorway to the room we had come in, so we ran until we could see the end of the hallway. There was a door on the left, just before the furthest wall; beyond it the hallway turned left, with a hint of light visible at its end. The exposed logs on our right showed that we were following the outer wall, and ahead of us we could see light coming through a transom over a wooden door. When we got closer, though, we saw that the door handle had been removed and nails driven through the door into the frame.
I took my jackknife from my pocket and tried to work the blade into the empty socket where the handle had been, thinking that if I could get the latch free I might be able to force the door open.
“Can you use your gun?” Sophie asked.
I took a step back and raised my rifle, aiming at where the handle had been. “I don’t know,” I said.
“No, the other end—bang it on the hinges.”
I nodded, then handed her my knife. “You keep working on the handle.” I slid open the bolt and let the cartridge fall to the ground, then turned the rifle around and slammed the butt into the upper hinge. I could see the screws pulling out of the frame, but just barely.
Sophie was kneeling in front of the door handle, trying to disengage the latch with the knife. She glanced behind us, saw the two end-stagers rounding the corner, and screamed.
“Just keep trying,” I said. “We can get out of this—”
When I moved to hit the hinges again, though, something was pulling the other way: I turned to see the bubble-wrap woman’s hands on the barrel. My finger went to the trigger, but by the time it had gotten there I remembered I had taken out the cartridge.
The bubble-wrap woman had both hands on the barrel now and was trying to pull the rifle away from me. The bald man crouched down, trying to creep past the woman and me to get at Sophie, who screamed again.
Suddenly the bald man’s head flew forward, slamming into the door. I glanced away from the woman to see Peggy stumbling back from where she had collided with him. The bubble-wrap woman looked at her, too, and that gave me enough of a chance to pull the barrel out of her grasp; I swung the stock forward and it hit her head with a crunch, knocking her back into the wall. Sophie was curled up into a ball, covering her face with her hands, but the bald man had forgotten about her and was struggling with Peggy, scratching her face with long, dirty fingernails.
I turned back to the hinge and hit it again, saw the ends of the screws come loose from the doorframe. “The doorknob,” I said to Sophie.
She moved her hands from her face, then froze as she saw her grandmother struggling with the bald man.
“Sophie, the doorknob,” I said again. “If you can get that, I think I can open it.”
She nodded and turned back to the door, sticking the point of the knife between the door and the frame. A few moments later the whole door moved slightly within the frame and I lowered the rifle, took a half-step back and slammed my shoulder into the door. The top half of the door pulled free of the nails holding it to the frame and with another slam the whole door came loose and fell onto the ground.
I stepped outside but Sophie didn’t follow. “Come on,” I said, but she was frozen. Peggy was still wrestling with the bald man, his teeth sunk into her shoulder as she punched him in the stomach. I took the box of cartridges from my pocket, loaded one into the rifle, and drew a bead on the man’s bald head. “Don’t look, Sophie,” I said, then pulled the trigger. The shot drove the man into Peggy, knocking them both over.
“Come on.” I grabbed Sophie’s wrist and pulled her after me. “There should be another radio up in the firewatch tower.”