They Walk

Chapter Seventy Five

Not caring that I can’t see Gabe as he goes into the darkness of the City Hall, I literally follow him blindly. I can sense my parents following behind and I only walk a couple steps inside, when my dad shuts the door closed after him which plunges us into complete darkness. It’s silent in here except for the shuffling of what I hope is Gabe’s feet and not some unexpected visitor. The shuffling stops and it turns into a ruffling and then the sound of a match being lit. That is pretty accurate assumption because the room is filled with a bright flickering light, and I see Gabe in front of me holding onto a flare.

Huh, I totally forgot we had those, good thing he didn’t.

With the light, I can see where we are now and I notice that it’s a wide room that resembles that of a lobby. There is a large desk at the back wall, and a staircase to the left. To the right are a closed door and a long hallway right next to one another. I’m just thinking where we should go from here, when Gabe pulls something out of his jeans pocket. It’s a folded manila envelope, and I realize it’s the letter we got from Randy. Sure enough, Gabe opens it up and pulls out the map. He holds it up so my parents and I can check it out too. My dad I lean over him to get a better look, and my mom closes her eyes, just happy to not be moving yet. The map shows the layout of the City Hall and it has arrows indicating where to go from here. It tells us to go down the hall and take the second door on the left.

This should lead us to the basement stairs.

“It’s quiet in here so I don’t think the dead have breached it, but don’t put away the weapons just in case.” Gabe tells us as he puts the map back in his pocket with the envelope.

Gabe leads the way then, and we all stick close to one another as we make our way to the hallway entrance. I am so close to him, that I reach out and latch onto his arm and he doesn’t make me let him go. My parents shuffle along behind us, and I’m grateful that my mom is still awake. Gabe approaches it cautiously with me in tow and lifts the flare high. I have the feeling of being stuck in The Shinning again and I really expect to see those creepy twins coming towards us in the never ending hallway.

But in reality, it’s just a long empty hallway filled with closed and open doors.

Together, we all start down the hall and before we know it we are right in front of door number two on the left. Gabe reaches the door with his free hand not in my grasp, and twists the knob. It rattles like it might be locked and I hold my breath, and pray that it’s not. Thankfully, the door pushes open with a great skin crawling squeak. We peer into the darkness, and even though he lifts up the flare again, we don’t see that far down the steps that are there. Not seeing anything malicious like movement as we peer down into the darkness, I know we can’t stand here forever for the light to move by itself so that we won’t be surprised.

With nothing else to do, Gabe guides me down the steps and each one creaks under the pressure of our feet. The steps are the old style, where the back is completely open so that you can see behind the stairs and down below. When I have the flash of hands grabbing me, I know I’ve seen to many scary movies, but it doesn’t stop me from tightening my hold onto Gabe. Above us, dad is taking his time so that mom isn’t jostled too much, but I can see the wear it’s taking on her no matter how slow they go. We reach the bottom finally, and with the light of the flare expanding to give us a better view I see what the basement looks like in the most import building in our city.

And you know what?

It kind of looks like a dustier version of the one we have at home, so much for our tax dollars being put to good use. The only difference between my own is that this one’s walls are completely surrounded with cement. There are also some file boxes littering around everywhere and some things that I think might have been clothes at some point, but now just resemble torn rags.

We huddle together in the middle of the basement, and Gabe spins in a circle waving the flare around the room, so that we can find where to go next. He goes almost in a complete circle, when I stop his movements. Besides being dizzy, I point towards the back of the room where a door is slowly opening as we all just stand there is shock staring at it.

I swear my heart stops for half a beat, and I refrain myself from jumping into Gabe’s arms.

I do however, I raise the ax up in my hand in preparation for whatever is about to come through. Gabe pulls away from me then, and I’m about to yell at him, but I don’t, because he is pulling the shotgun around and aims it at the door. He steps in front of me and I back up so that my mom is between my dad and me. It feels like forever while we wait for the door to fully open, and I want in the worst way to just run over and slam it shut. I don’t think I could handle any more of the crazy today. I’m so mentally and physically tired, that it’s not even funny, not that it ever was of course.

But you know what I mean.

When the door finally opens all we can see is darkness from within at first, and then a light shines and blinds us. Or it does me anyway. The light lowers from our eyes, and when it does, whoever is holding it steps forward. Now my heart really does skip a beat.

Because it’s the guy Randy we met from the apartments.

Looks like there really IS underground tunnels, and they really ARE all hiding in them. Go figure. Randy still looks about the same as I remember him being, with his light eyes and shaggy brown hair. Though I don’t remember him being so large, meaning he seems very intimidating standing in a small doorway. It doesn’t help that he is still pointing a wicked looking gun at us.

Gabe lowers the shotgun, and turns to me with a wide grin, but my eyes are all for Randy and his gun. Does he not remember us? I guess he didn’t really know us all that well, and Noah isn’t even with us now. But he smirks suddenly, and lowers his gun to his side.

“It’s about f*cking time you guys got here. And with different company I see.” His posture relaxes visibly, even though I can tell it must bother him that we’re not with Noah or even Claire and Sam anymore.

Looks like we all need to have a nice little pow-wow and catch up?