The Gates of Byzantium

CHAPTER 17


BLAINE




WE SHOULD BE dead.

But they weren’t, and the only proof he needed was Sandra sleeping against him, the soft beating of her heart telling him they were still very much alive.

They were inside a room. It was small, designed for less than two people, though you might have been able to squeeze in one more if you didn’t mind the lack of leg room. It was hidden in the back of the pink bedroom’s closet, a six-by-five stainless steel space. It had a lock and a vault-style door handle, and Blaine had felt a rush of disappointment when he thought he might need a key to get in. But Sandra had tried turning the handle and it had spun invitingly, without hesitation.

There was a set of keys inside, resting on a small shelf along one side of the wall. Two wrenches, a small portable LED lamp, and a cordless phone still docked in its station were lined up next to the keys. It was crowded at first, but they had managed to cram inside and swing the door shut, the handle spinning automatically as soon as the latch caught, and Blaine heard at least three locks snapping into place, one after another. The walls were so thick the room barely shook when the ghouls crashed pointlessly against it. The noises from outside came through two air vents—oval-shaped holes with mesh wiring about two inches wide—along the sides.

It was a safe room.

And it was well-hidden, too. It was only after retreating all the way into the back of the closet that they had even stumbled across it. At first he had been perplexed, but that had changed quickly when he realized what he was looking at.

Blaine had never actually seen a safe room in person, but he had seen schematics. This one wasn’t the most expensive or elaborate, but it clearly served its purpose well enough—it kept things out. The wrenches, he concluded, were for the bolts connecting the pieces of the room together.

Blaine turned off the LED lamp sometime during the night. He didn’t need it to hear the ghouls outside, thumping against the door a few feet from him. They couldn’t get to the air vents because the back part of the safe room was embedded within the wall itself. Blaine guessed the homeowners had assembled it piece by piece, another major draw of the simple design.

There was nothing about the pink bedroom to suggest its owner needed a safe room. He wondered if there were other rooms like this installed in the other bedrooms. Will and the others hadn’t seen it when they were here yesterday, but they hadn’t really searched. Blaine had seen their crates—they had enough clothes for a few lifetimes.

The ghouls kept pounding on the door for what seemed like hours, long after Blaine and Sandra had retreated inside. Blaine listened, feeling the slight (very slight) vibrations from every impact. They attacked for hours on end, well into the night and early morning hours.

Then, finally, they just stopped.

By then, Blaine had been forcing himself to stay awake, but his side had begun hurting again, and he felt sore all over. His pills were outside, along with everything else. He closed his eyes, intending to only take a brief nap, but ended up falling asleep with Sandra’s head in his lap.

*

HE OPENED HIS eyes to find Sandra standing in front of him, looking through a peephole in the door. Though he had no way of knowing for sure, he was certain it was daylight outside. It was one of those things his body just knew without actually seeing, an evolution of living in a world where darkness brought death.

The LED lamp was on and Blaine could make out Sandra’s tall frame, which put her just under the vault ceiling.

She looked over her shoulder and smiled, radiant even against the unnaturally bright light. “We made it.”

“We did,” he smiled back.

Jesus, my body feels like it’s on fire.

He managed to suppress the grimace so she wouldn’t see. “See anything out there?”

“Not much. There are clothes over the peephole.”

“Can you open it?”

“I don’t know.” Sandra looked around the polished steel interior of their surroundings. “What is this place, anyway?”

“It’s a safe room.”

“How do you know?”

“I’ve seen one before. Duncan, this guy I used to work with, had catalogs of the stuff. He was going to get into the business of installing safe rooms for rich people across town. Said they all wanted one after 9/11.”

“You think the other rooms have one, too?”

“Probably. Unless the daughter is just a special case.”

“How do you drag something this heavy up here?”

“You don’t have to. You can install them section-by-section. You can even expand it out the back just by buying more sections.”

“I guess that’s convenient.” She walked back and sat down next to him. “Are you okay?”

“Sore.”

“Where?”

“All over.”

“That bad?”

“I forgot my painkillers outside.”

“Oops.”

“Yeah,” he said.

She leaned against him for a moment. “Did Duncan ever get around to starting that business?”


“Nah. He decided to rob rich people instead. Thinking back, maybe he never really planned to install safe rooms for them.”

“Would Duncan know how we get out of here?”

“Turn the lever.”

“That’s it?”

“Pretty much. It’s designed to keep people out, not to keep you in once you’re inside.”

She stood up and walked back to the door. She put her hands tentatively around two of the three handles that jutted out from the center, like a boat’s steering wheel. Sandra looked back at him. “Just turn it?”

“Counter clockwise,” he said, miming it for her.

Sandra took a breath, then turned the handles counter clockwise. They spun, and kept spinning.

“Keep going,” he said.

She kept spinning until the lever stopped and they heard the three locks disengaging one by one.

“Push it,” he said.

She did, but the door didn’t budge. She stopped pushing and looked back at him, hands on her hips. “It pushes open? Are you sure?”

“I’m sure. You can’t pull it, there isn’t enough room.”

“Good point.” She turned back to the door and put her weight on it this time, and the door slowly began sliding outward an inch at a time. She grunted. “There is definitely something blocking the door.”

“Probably shelves. Or lots and lots of clothes.”

“I’m going with the former,” she said between gasps. “Clothes aren’t this heavy.”

Sandra was finally able to open the door wide enough to slip outside. Blaine didn’t remember the door being that heavy, but then again, he was probably filled with adrenaline last night and everything seemed easier.

He heard heavy grunting and what sounded like metal and furniture being dragged around the room.

“It’s most of the shelves,” Sandra shouted. “And a shoe rack, I think. They brought most of the clothes down, too. Too bad everything’s for a teenage girl. It looks pretty expensive. I wonder where you buy brand-name stuff like this out here in the boondocks?”

Blaine smiled. Women and clothes…

Sandra removed enough of the closet’s obstruction that she was able to push the safe door all the way open, letting just a small sliver of sunlight inside. Immediately, Blaine knew they had overslept.

He glanced down at his watch: 12:25 P.M.

They had slept through the entire morning.

It was the vault. Being inside something that impenetrable was like being in a cocoon. Their bodies had taken full advantage of it, allowing them to catch up on sleep they had missed out on in the last few days.

Sandra stuck her head back into the opening and said, “I’ll be back,” in her best impression of Arnold Schwarzenegger from The Terminator.

He grinned, and got a smile back from her.

Sandra reached into the vault and picked up the shotgun. She turned left and disappeared from his field of vision. With nothing to do, Blaine sat back and waited. He heard her walking along the second floor, then going down the steps.

It might have been a few minutes later, or possibly a few seconds later, when she finally came back and crouched in front of him. He wasn’t even sure how she had gotten from the first floor all the way up here and back into the vault again without him hearing or seeing her coming until she was suddenly just there.

She held a water bottle in one hand and his pill bottle in the other. She shook out a couple of pills and he opened his mouth like a drowning man and swallowed. She tilted his head back to help him drink. He hadn’t realized how weak he was, how racked with pain, until he found the simple act of slurping down water such a monumental task he wanted to give up on it about halfway through. Thankfully, Sandra was persistent, and he chased the pills down with warm water and sighed with relief.

“You should see the other side of the safe door,” Sandra said. “There’s black blood and slabs of flesh and…other things all over it. They must have been smashing into it long after I dozed off.”

“They were.”

“I wonder why they stopped.”

“Losing battle. They’re not stupid.”

“I guess not. There are bones everywhere outside.”

“A lot?”

She nodded. “How’s the pain?” she asked, watching his face closely.

“Managing. The pills help.”

“Don’t take too many of them. You’ll get addicted.”

“It’s either addiction or death, babe.”

“Not while I’m around.” She took the painkillers from him before he could protest and put them away in her pocket. “From now on, you’ll only take what you need, not what you think you need.”

“You’re no fun.”

She grunted. “I already lost you once. I’ll be damned if I’m going to lose you again to some damn pills.”

*

SANDRA DROVE THE Toyota while Blaine rested in the passenger seat. They had a quarter tank of gas left, more than enough to get to Lancing and either find a new vehicle or siphon gas from another car. Blaine knew from experience that eventually the gasoline left behind in vehicles and stored underneath the gas stations would either evaporate or become unusable, but that was still a few years off. If they were still driving around Texas looking for sanctuary in a few years, gas was probably going to be the least of their worries.

Sandra turned left off the driveway and put them back onto US 287 heading south toward Lancing. “You still think they’ll still be there?” she asked.

“Unless they left for some reason,” he said.

Blaine glanced at his watch: 1:17 P.M.

“What time is it?” she asked.

He told her, adding, “We slept through half the day.”

“God, no wonder I feel so good. I haven’t slept that well since all of this began. Did you guys ever find out whose house that was?”

“I don’t think we ever looked, no.”

“Too bad. It would have been nice to know who to thank. I saw some of the pictures. They looked like a nice family.”

He nodded. All the family portraits he had seen in the past eight months had looked like nice families. But wasn’t that the point of a family portrait? Everyone dresses up in their best clothes and makes believe for the camera?

Blaine found that if he thought about other things besides the rippling pain coursing through his body, he was able to endure it. Or at least, that’s what he told himself as he turned toward the window, pretending to look out at the passing scenery, when he was really hiding his grimace from Sandra.

*

BY THE TIME they reached Lancing, there were no signs of Will and the others. They went to the municipal area and checked the courthouse first. He couldn’t find signs anyone had spent the night, which meant they had either left the city yesterday—which was unlikely, given how cautious Will was with the others’ lives—or they had found another place.

It was either one or the other, but it wasn’t like Blaine could track them. Lancing was a town of 12,000 people, with enough businesses and residential subdivisions that it would take weeks to search every house and building. He was also well aware they had, at most, five hours before it was time to look for shelter.

They spent the first hour driving around town, sticking mostly to the main roads, because that’s what they guessed the others would have done. Sandra drove slowly, taking her time. After a while, they had to stop for gas, but instead of siphoning from another vehicle, they traded up to a four-door Chevrolet Silverado instead. The fact that the key was sticking out of the driver’s side floor and the tank was still three-quarters full made picking the Silverado a no-brainer.


Blaine swapped the car batteries, and they were rolling down the windows and continuing along Main Street a few minutes later. The Silverado had a dozen country music CDs stuffed into the driver’s sun visor, and Blaine slipped George Strait’s Greatest Hits into the CD player, then cranked up the volume in hopes of attracting attention.

After a while, Sandra slowed down and stopped the Silverado in the middle of the street.

Blaine reached over and turned the volume down on George. “What are you thinking?”

“I’m thinking we’re not going to find them,” she said with a slight frown. “At least, not like this. Not just driving around.”

“How did you find me?”

“I told you, I heard gunshots.”

“Maybe we should try that.”

“Gunshots?”

He shrugged. “What do we have to lose?”

“What if there are other people in the city besides them?”

He thought about that for a moment, then lifted the AR-15 from the floor. “It’s either that or keep driving around aimlessly until we reach the highway. Then what, drive back again?”

“Yeah, okay.”

Sandra turned off the Silverado’s engine and they climbed outside. Blaine blinked under the sun and wasn’t sure if the heat or the pain was more annoying. He called it a tie and fought the urge to beg Sandra for his bottle of pills.

Sandra had the shotgun, and she climbed up into the back of the Silverado’s flat bed and fired off three rounds into the air. She waited, then fired the remaining four shells. As the final thunderous blast echoed across the cloudless sky, she was already—urgently, he saw—reloading.

She climbed down the Silverado and stood in the street next to him. They didn’t hear anything in response to the shotgun blasts except the sound of the wind and the fluttering of birds’ wings in the air. Blaine thought he might have heard a car engine in the distance, but after listening, realized it was just one of the metallic flagpole latches banging away.

Blaine drew his Glock and fired three shots into the air. He stopped, waited ten seconds, then fired three more shots. This time he waited a full minute before firing the rest of the magazine, spacing each shot off at ten-second intervals.

He quickly reloaded. “If they’re still here, they would have heard those shots from the other side of town. Sound travels these days.”

“Let’s give it some time,” she said. “It’s not like we have any other place to be.”

Sandra leaned against the Silverado. Her hair was already sweaty and matted to her face. He reached over and flicked the strands away, and she smiled at him. He smiled back.

They drank warm water and waited five minutes. Then five became ten, then twenty.

“No one’s coming,” he said, after thirty minutes.

“Let’s wait a little longer,” she said.

Thirty minutes became an hour.

“No one’s coming,” she said. “What now? If they’ve left the city, where would they go?”

“South,” Blaine said, looking down Main Street. “They’re headed to Beaufont Lake in Louisiana. The easiest path there would be along US 287, then switch over to the I-10 and Highway 90 in Beaumont. From there, they’d probably take one of the smaller roads farther south to Beaufont Lake.”

“They told you that?”

“Will showed me a map, and that’s the quickest way to Song Island. If we keep going south on US 287 to Beaumont and they’re still on the I-10, we should be able to catch up to them before they take one of the smaller roads off the interstate.”

“All that from a map you saw?”

“You sound impressed.”

“I thought guys were bad with directions.”

“That’s a filthy stereotype.”

She laughed. “Okay.”

“One more thing,” he said.

“Yeah?”

“I need my pills.”

“In an hour.”

He groaned. “I don’t think I’m going to make it to an hour.”

“Don’t be such a baby,” she said, and walked around the Silverado’s hood back to the driver’s side.

“I’m really hurting here, babe,” he said after her.

“You’ll live.”

“Babe, please,” he said, trying his best not to beg, though it was pretty damn close. “I need more pills.”

She rolled her eyes. “God, if I knew getting shot would turn you into such a drama queen, I’d never have gone back for you.”

“Wow,” he said, feigning hurt. “Just wow, babe. That’s harsh.”

She laughed. “Get in, Meryl Streep.”

*

THEY DROVE DOWN Lancing’s Main Street for a few more minutes before the road became Highway 96 and, about a mile later, joined up with US 287/Route 69. Eventually, the businesses began to thin out and they were back in the countryside, passing thick patches of overgrown grass swaying in the hot sun on both sides of a series of never-ending rickety fences.

“No cows,” Blaine said quietly, almost to himself.

“What?” Sandra said.

“No cows,” he repeated. “What happened to all the cows?”

Sandra peered at the land around them. “You’re right. When did the cows start disappearing?”

Blaine remembered seeing cows as recently as a few weeks ago, when they were entering Grime. There had been cows and horses grazing on the abundant grass. Once, he had seen a couple of riderless horses roaming the streets, the clack-clack of their hooves like loud gunshots moving up and down the roads. He had wondered where they were going. Were they looking for their owners?

There were no cows or horses anymore. At least, none that he could see. There were no carcasses of the animals, either, which was even more disturbing.

Where the hell are the animals?

He hadn’t seen a dog or a cat in months, now that he really thought about it.

Where have all the animals gone?

They drove past a sign along the side of the road: “Beaumont, Texas 15 Miles.”

Maybe Beaumont has the answers…