Posted on December 16, 2007

Part 52

Evajean said, “Is that—”

“Yeah,” Elliot said. “That’s them.” He pushed off the boxes behind him and walked out into the corridor that lead toward the front of the warehouse. “Wait here,” he said.

“What are you doing?” This was whispered, forced, like she didn’t want to ask, but couldn’t stand not knowing.

“I’m going to go see. It’s— If we have to run, I want to know what our chances are.”

He left her and walked. He could hear her breathing, and then talking to Hope. Elliot couldn’t make out words, but knew Evajean was trying to comfort herself by way of the dog.

What was he doing? Passing boxes, hands sweeping from front to sides, he made his way, between the rows of pallets, toward the office. He knew Evajean was back there, wanting to call out to him and tell him to stop, to not be so stupid, but she was too scared to make the noise.

When he was closer, he could hear them talking to each other. It was that same language and he wished to hell he could understand it. Still, from the tone he could tell they weren’t arguing—they were planning. Elliot crouched low next to the boxes. It was too dark to be sure, but he figured he was twenty feet from the door to the office.

And then lights came on. That door, once just a grey square, burst into yellow light. Elliot flinched away from it, then darted back behind some of the boxes. Where’d they get lights? Then he remembered the ones he’d left in the back of the truck. The crazies had stolen his flashlight.

He didn’t think they’d seen him—he hadn’t seen them—but he held his breath anyway, waiting for the sounds of pursuit. Right, he thought. Okay. There are three of them—unless more have shown up—and two of us. That’s not terrible odds, not in the dark, not with the element of surprise. Except he couldn’t count on Evajean being much of a fighter. And chances were good the damn dog would make noise and give them away long before they were close enough to strike. The crazies had found them, though, and he needed to do something.

He started back to Evajean, this time down a corridor not in line with the office. He didn’t want them to see him from the doorway. They were still talking as he moved away and eventually he was far enough he couldn’t hear the crazies anymore.

Evajean heard him coming. She whispered, scared, “Elliot? Is that you?” He stayed quite until he was a little closer—and a little further from the office—but used her voice as guidance. Then he answered her and Evajean told him how relieved she was, how terrifying it had been not knowing where he’d gone or if the crazies had found him. What she wanted to know, though, what she pressed him on what whether he had a plan for getting out of this.

“Maybe,” he said, leaning close and keeping his voice down. “If we go along this wall and then along the far one, we can come up on the office from the side.”

“What about other ways out?”

He shook his head, but knew she couldn’t see the gesture. “There might be, but they’re gonna be those big cargo doors, the ones the trucks pull up to. Opening those, even if we can figure out how in the dark, is going to tell them exactly where we are.”

“But they’re in the office right now. That’s what you said.”

“They’ll come in here,” he said. “They’ll come to find us. All we have to do is wait for it and then go around them. They have flashlights, but those things won’t light up this whole warehouse. We just have to hide until they’re away from that door.”

“And then go back to the truck.”

“Right,” he said. “It’s just sitting there and I have the keys. I don’t know if they can drive, but I’m pretty damn sure they can’t hotwire the thing.”

“It’s the only way out.”

“That I can think of,” he said.

“That I can think of either,” she said.

“Okay. Okay, follow me. We’re going slow. And keep the dog quiet.”

Elliot would have crawled. Evajean, with the dog in her jacket and one hand needed to keep it there, couldn’t, though, so they opted for the same low, measured pace they’d used when first exploring the warehouse. It was an exhausting process, going all the way around the perimeter of the enormous room instead of cutting straight across. The crazies—still in the office, by the sound of it—would bang around the furniture for a little while and then fall silent. He couldn’t hear them talking, but imagined that what they were doing in those quiet moments. Talking and planning how to track Evajean and him down, how to capture them and take them away. He kept thinking of the woman in the red dress, how she hadn’t been in the crowd outside the hotel, but he knew this was all somehow about her. Evajean hadn’t killed her back in Nahom, not that easily. In the dark of the warehouse, between startled moments of horrendous crashing from that occupied office, Elliot couldn’t avoid images of that crimson woman stalking him. Evajean was behind him and the weight of her presence made the images worse. He was breathing hard. Slow down, he thought. You need to be calm.

He forced the images away and they continued. The crashing stopped again and stayed gone. They reached the corner. Elliot jammed his fingers against the metal wall as it came up in front of him and he had to bite back a curse. Right. Okay. Now we go left.

They’d gone perhaps half way in this new direction when Evajean grabbed his shoulder. He turned, to ask her what was wrong, and he saw the lights. Away from them, toward the center of the warehouse, beams flashed between the stacks of crates.

“They came out,” he whispered.

She squeezed his shoulder. “Let’s go.”

The dog shifted in her jacket and yawned. It rose to a squeaky growl and Evajean hushed it, but then the dog barked and the lights jerked and went out.

“Shit,” Elliot said. “Shit. Move.”

“I’m sorry,” Evajean said, but they were moving and Elliot wasn’t listening to her. He pushed forward as fast as he could but, with the lights gone, the warehouse was once again wholly dark. He had to keep his hands out, not to protect himself from the harm of running into something—because he could take the bump and resulting bruise if it meant getting the hell out of here—but to stave off the noise a collision would make. They had to get to that office and do it without any more unintended signals of their position. The crazies were smart enough, he knew, to latch on to their plan. He just didn’t know how long it would take.

But it didn’t work out that way. Their rapid pace and Evajean’s terrified breathing alerted the puppy that something was amiss. It growled again and then began to bark.

The flashlights came on—and moved. The crazies were running.