The Hole (21 page)

“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.

“Shut that thing up!” Elliot said. He waved his hand behind him until he found here. Grabbing her jacket, he pulled her forward. “Come on!”

“Let go,” she hissed and jerked his hand away. But she followed him, hand on his back so they wouldn’t get separated. Hope, perhaps cued in to the stress between then, barked louder. The crazies started shouting. Elliot didn’t need to understand their language to know what they were saying: the hunt was on and all they had to do now was coordinate it.

If there was any benefit in the situation, it was that the crazies had grabbed all the flashlights from the truck and that meant they were putting out a good amount of illumination. As they closed in on his and Evajean’s position, Elliot was able to make out the shapes of the stacks, and that meant he could run.

We’ve got to get to the wall
, he thought.
Get to the wall and then behind them.
The dog continued to bark and he suddenly hated himself for making them take it in the first place. Callie gone and they both had puppy dog eyes. He hadn’t thought it through and now that impulse to nurture might very well get him killed.

“Elliot!” Evajean screamed. He looked back, slowing somewhat. The crazies were there, behind them, and coming fast. He should have noticed when the lights shifted, should’ve let that warn him, but his mind was overwhelmed and he could feel it shutting down from the trauma of these last days.

If nothing else, though, if he could take any comfort from being found, it was that the flashlights the crazies waved as they chased after them were at their backs and illuminating nicely the path ahead. And so he could see the metal wall coming up in front of them and he knew the office door was just a few yards after the turn. They could make it.

But the four crazies were close. The thing was, as he looked back, unable to stop himself, he lost every impression of them as actually crazy. They didn’t run oddly, and their faces, hidden in shadow, lined only by the faintest backwash from the flashlights, had the hard edges of exertion, not the distorted features of the insane. Again he had the impression of being in a foreign country and not in a world gone dead.

As the wall came, he turned, staying close, his arm swinging back, his hand clasping Evajean’s. They could make it. “Run!” he shouted and the crazies were so close, almost close enough to touch, and if one of them threw a flashlight at his legs…

The office door. He saw it, a blank recess in the reflective metal of the wall. He pulled and Evajean kept up. Then they were through, but with the crazies still outside, the room was completely dark. The door outside was closed, so not even moonlight came in. Knowledge of this was delayed in coming to Elliot, however, and in that delay, his knee hit the corner of a desk.

Elliot fell, the pain wiping everything. Evajean ran past, momentarily unaware of what had happened, and stepped on his hand. His index finger snapped under the heel of her sneaker. And then he could see, because the first of the crazies had come into the office. Still on the floor, his hand and knee driving spikes of anguish through his concentration, he could only manage another imperative directed at Evajean. “Run! The car!” But that wouldn’t work, no, because he had the keys. They were in the pocket of his jeans. She could get away, out into this industrial park, but she wouldn’t get far.

He pulled himself up just as the first crazy came within grabbing distance. Elliot lunged at the door, trying to keep the weight of his leg. He felt the arc of a flashlight’s head graze his upper back. The crazies were calling for him, pleading in their mad language.

Evajean was at the door, the portal outside, and as he got close she pulled it open. He followed her through.

They ran and the lights followed them. At some point Evajean dropped the dog and Elliot heard her curse, but he didn’t stop, willed
her
not to stop, because he knew this time the crazies were after them for keeps. Evajean had pissed them off back in Nahom-whatever she’d done had been significant beyond the obvious corpses, and the crazies didn’t forget. Yet that didn’t make any sense. He’d been most of the night and all of a day behind the wheel of the truck after they’d escaped the caves and, unless the crazies could drive (which he doubted was the case), there wasn’t any way it was the same group.

He ran like it was, though, and Evajean didn’t go back for the dog. They’d find it again or they wouldn’t, but now the thing was to get to that door and outside. Then to the truck-and do it all without being caught.

Behind them, it was close. Over his breathing and Evajean’s, over the slap of their shoes on the dirt, was the chattering-and then, calm and cool and not at all startling, the new pressure of a hand on his back. But Evajean was between him and the crazies and he knew the hand wasn’t hers.

He spun, hands up-and his stomach fell. She was on the ground, the woman and one of the men standing over her. The other two crazies hit Elliot as soon as he stopped, knocking him backwards and onto the floor. He kicked out, tripping one. The other jumped over its companion and reached for him. Elliot pulled away, scrambling to his feet. He’d have to fight. There was no other choice.

But the crazy only stood. It stared at him as the one on the ground got up. Evajean squirmed and then did the same, her terror plain in the flashlight beams.

No one moved. They watched each other. The one in front, the one who had reached for Elliot, slowly shook its head. It leaned toward him and said, “Moroni.”

Elliot had no idea what to make of this, but he remembered the woman in Wal-Mart telling him “more” over and over-before he beat her to death.

“Moroni,” the crazy said again. It turned to Evajean. “Moroni.” And handed her the flashlight.

As they walked back to the truck, their way bright and easy from the lights the crazies had returned to them, Elliot wondered if that was it. Had the crazies chased them all this way just to tell them that one word? And what the hell did it mean?

The crazies had simply walked off, after that one word and the gift of the lights. They’d gone out through the office door and into the night, and he and Evajean had just stood there, not talking, too stunned to discuss anything. A message he didn’t understand, one the crazies had tracked them all the way from Nahom to give. Moroni. He’d never heard it before, had no idea what it could be, but it was another piece in the puzzle of events the plague had brought. Asking Evajean about it would wait until they were back on the road, heading west to Colorado. He needed that: a goal achievable, one that made immediate sense.

Evajean had found the dog, ducking back into the warehouse with the help of a flashlight, and emerging a few minutes later, Hope struggling under one arm. Elliot smiled at this, at the puppy’s desire to dart away yet again, unconcerned with their quest.

And then they were back at the truck and inside, Elliot behind the wheel and Evajean settling Hope on her lap. Elliot knew he should get some sleep-he’d had maybe six hours in the last three days-but that could be put off until there was more road between them and the crazies, wherever they’d wandered off to. He could still manage a few hours of driving, at least. Evajean was a different matter, however. As he backed the truck up and turned it onto the road out of the industrial park and on to the freeway, he saw that she’d fallen asleep, her head resting against the strap of her seatbelt.

He drove west along I-70 and his mind went back to sorting through what it knew of the mystery they’d found themselves in. We need to take the bodies away as a safety measure, the government mailings and television announcements had said. Men had come by to pick them up at first, then the call had gone out to use the curb and the trucks had come. During that time news reports spoke of the disease being limited to the North American continent, hitting rural areas and then spreading into the cities. But it was only a plague and, while the victims spoke in tongues before they died, there was no indication of the crazies he and Evajean had witnessed.

Elliot found that fact difficult to explain. If those people were roaming-especially if they were attacking like they’d done in Nahom-you’d think that would make the evening news at the very least. Why weren’t there any reports? Perhaps the crazies had only arrived at the end, after the television broadcasts went dead, the Internet crashed, and the newspapers stopped arriving. Could they be that recent a development?

Yet even if he could move past that, finding answers to set those questions aside, it remained unknown what he and Evajean had to do with any of it.

Elliot rolled down the window a couple inches, letting the chill of a night breeze into the cab. The crazies had come after
them
. Had the attack on Nahom, and his preceding capture in the cave, been their only contact, he could write it off as horrific coincidence. But the hotel and then the brief message at the warehouse… Those spoke to a deeper connection, one made only more terrible by Evajean’s performance outside the church, and the metal box they’d found just before.

As his mind spun over these questions in the three hours before he pulled of the road to sleep, Elliot had a brief moment of false epiphany, an idea that rang maddeningly true, but which he quickly recognized as nonsense. Couldn’t this all be explained, all the mysterious and seemingly supernatural occurrences, by his own insanity? The crazies might not be crazy after all, but the sane counterparts to Elliot’s psychotic break. But no-no that couldn’t be, because, in the same way you know when you’re dreaming and when you’re awake, Elliot knew this was all happening and his experiences of it accurate. He wasn’t mad, though a part of him wished he were.

“Evajean,” he said, nudging her arm, “I need to quit. I have to sleep.”

She kicked at the touch, but then turned to stare at him, still far from awake, and sighed. “Where are we?”

“I’m going to pull over,” he said, not answering her question. With the street lights out and the truck’s own headlights dim, he hadn’t been able to make out many road signs. He didn’t know where they were. “Are you hungry?” he asked.

She shook her head.

“Okay,” he said. “Go back to sleep.”

She did, and, after a few moments, so did he.