Kelley Armstrong - Broken

He stopped as our eyes traveled in the same direction…and reached the same destination. An exit door, concealed in the back wall.

“Shit.”

Clay jerked his chin at me. Not much of an instruction, but I understood it. Stay and watch while he opened the door.

I did, he did, and we slipped through the doorway and into a narrow service hall. There was no one in sight, so I dropped into an ungainly crouch and took a deep breath.

When I caught the scent, we set out, jogging quietly along the back hall. Patrons weren’t the only ones avoiding the museum that day. Only once did we hear footsteps echoing through the maze of corridors, and they turned off before getting anywhere near us.

At each doorway or branching hall, I stopped, dropped and sniffed. The trail stuck to the main passage. Did Rose know she was being followed? Or had her near-death upstairs spooked her into picking a back exit?

When we hit a flight of service stairs, the trail went down. She hadn’t stopped at the first floor, but had kept going, into the basement. All the better. I pulled out my cell phone and turned it on. Despite its tumble, it still worked. I called Nick and told him to meet us downstairs. As I hung up, I almost missed a step. Clay caught my arm. As he moved, I caught the scent of blood. I grabbed his wrist. He looked down at the dripping “scratch” and snorted, as if it was a cause for annoyance not concern.

“It’s deeper than I thought,” I said.

He shook his head. “Probably nicked a vein or something. No big deal. Jeremy will take care of it-later.”

“Maybe I should check-”

“Keep walking. I’ll fix it.”

He stripped off his T-shirt and tore a few inches from the bottom. I tried to get a better look at the scratch, but then we hit the bottom step and he swung around me to take the lead.

THE TRAIL ENDED AT A DOOR LEADING BACK INTO A SEMI-DARK construction zone. It was an obstacle course of construction materials-piles of drywall and lumber, sawhorses, tarps and rubbish. A room full of places to hide.

Clay cocked his head, nostrils flaring-listening, looking and sniffing.

I squinted to let my eyes adjust, and counted the exits. The farthest, an open doorway, led to what looked like another hall.

A shape passed that distant door, and I tapped Clay’s arm, redirecting his attention. He nodded, and we split up again, heading for that far door.

I made it there first and glanced around the doorway to see a figure obscured behind a sheet of opaque plastic hanging from the ceiling. Clay tensed but, after a deep breath, I shook my head.

“Nick,” I mouthed.

I cleared my throat, so I wouldn’t startle him. Zoe pulled back the plastic and waved us over. Nick was on her other side, hunched down, trying to pick up a scent.

“Don’t bother,” I said. “She went down this hall. I can smell her already.”

“So can I,” he said. “It’s the other one I’m trying to pick up.”

“We were wondering when he’d show up.”

Nick shook his head. “I don’t think it’s a zombie. I didn’t smell the same-”

“That’s because we’ve only killed him once so far. He’s not as ripe as she is.”

Clay waved us to silence. “Let’s concentrate on the one we have-the one that’s getting away as we stand here.”

We followed Rose’s trail to a door that opened into an outdoor construction zone. This site was empty, someone having apparently decided current events were sufficient grounds for a mass personal day.

Tarps flapped in the breeze, against the distant roar of the streets. Clay tapped my arm and gestured to a security van parked off to the side. I nodded as he alerted the others.

Zoe shook her head and whispered, “There’s no one here. I can tell.”

I bent to pick up Rose’s scent, winnowing it out from all the others. Once I found it, I started forward, weaving around piles of building material.

Within ten feet, we hit a spill of some kind, as if someone had dumped building chemicals-hopefully by accident. The trail became indistinct, the smell of rot more apparent on the air than the ground. Clay and I headed around the piles of material in one direction, while Zoe and Nick took the other.

I finally picked up Rose’s scent again, but only got about twenty feet more before I lost it behind trailers stacked with lumber. When I bent, Clay waved me up.

“You shouldn’t be bending so much. Can’t be comfortable. I’ll take a turn.”

As he crouched, I heard the crunch of stones underfoot. I motioned to Clay, but he’d already stopped, head tilted, following the noise. He grabbed the edge of the trailer and swung onto it. I followed…with more heaving and clambering than “swinging.”

By the time I was atop the trailer bed, Clay was on the lumber pile. He looked over the other side, then helped me up. As I scrambled to the top, a fair-haired head bobbed from behind a truck. A man stepped out. Thirties, maybe nearing forty, and small, though that was probably the fault of my vantage point.

The man was dressed in slacks and a dress shirt. An office worker cutting through the empty construction yard. Then I noticed his pants were an inch too short and his shirt was too large in the collar and long in the sleeves. Not as ill-fitting as the bowler-hatted man’s clothes, but enough to make me take a second look. In that look, my gaze slid down the overlong sleeve…to a semiconcealed knife in his hand.

“Zombie?” Clay mouthed.

I took a deep breath, but he was downwind.

“Can’t tell,” I whispered.

He was below us-about a dozen feet away. Decent positioning for a jump. As Clay crouched, neither of us moved or said a word, but the man stiffened, and his gaze swung up and around. He caught Clay before we could backpedal.

The man’s face paled and his eyes widened. I shifted, and the man’s gaze shot my way, as if he hadn’t noticed me there before.

“Oh, thank God,” the man murmured in a soft, British-accented voice. “It’s you.” He lifted a hand to shield his eyes as his gaze turned to Clay. “Yes, yes, of course it is. I should have recognized you as well, but-” His eyes closed and he shuddered. “Dear God, my heart. When I saw you up there, I was certain I’d run straight into a trap, that you were another of those-” He shuddered again. “-those things.”

“Things?” I said.

“That…Those…” He faltered, as if he couldn’t find a word. “The man and the woman. They-” He took a deep quavering breath. “I’m sorry. Just give me a moment.”

He lifted his hand. The knife blade flashed. Clay dropped, ready to leap, and the man nearly fell backward, arms going up to ward Clay off.

“D-don’t-I mean you no harm. Please-”

“Drop the knife,” Clay said, his voice a nearly unintelligible growl.

“The-?” The man’s gaze dropped to his hand. “Oh, oh, yes, of course. I’m sorry.” He stooped and laid the knife down, then gave a small, nervous laugh. “I can’t blame you for being wary. I know they’ve been after your wife, which can’t be very pleasant.” His gaze slid to my stomach. “Particularly considering her delicate condition. But I believe-” He swallowed. “That is to say, I hope I can help you.”

“Not interested.”

As Nick and Zoe approached, I could see that my assessment of the man’s size hadn’t been skewed by our position-he wasn’t much bigger than Zoe, in height or weight.

Zoe stopped and looked at him, head tilting as if puzzled. Nick was downwind, so I motioned for him to sniff the air. He did-twice-then shook his head.

“Hello,” the man said, his head bobbing in greeting. “I was just speaking to your friends. I saw you together earlier. I was following you. That is to say, I was following her, that…thing. The woman. She led me to you, and I continued on here, in hopes of getting an opportunity to speak to you. But before I could go inside, the other one cut me off.”