Cassie Alexander - Deadshifted

“The third deck is where the lifeboats are. Maybe if you get into them and hide inside—” I suggested, the taste of my own lies thick in my mouth.

“Is your man higher or lower?” Hal interrupted.

“Eight twenty-two,” Rory said.

“Then we’ll go there, with you,” Claire said, as though that were a reasonable request.

I started shaking my head. “I’m not sure what we’ll find there. Maybe nothing—or maybe more people with guns.”

Claire snapped her fingers at the young girl. “Emily, grab your clothes, go put them on fast, please,”

“This isn’t what—” I protested.

“We’re going. You’ve already left us behind once. We won’t let that happen again,” Hal said with finality, agreeing with his wife.

“I don’t mean to be horrible,” I said, while knowing fully that I did, “but I have no idea how we’ll manage to take along someone in a wheelchair.”

Claire gave me a dangerous smile. “Who said I’d be going in that?”

We were the most motley crew I had ever been a part of. Me, one elderly man carrying his thin elderly wife piggyback, a freaked-out teenager, and a wisely scared kid. Going where? Up to the room I hoped my boyfriend and baby-daddy was being held hostage in. Yee-fucking-haw.

Before we’d left the room, Hal had commandeered the radio and flipped through all the stations like someone familiar with the task. The medical station was silent now, which made sense since Dr. Haddad and Raluca were gone—and most of the other stations were people shouting in languages we couldn’t understand.

“We should probably hurry,” Hal had said.

“When we get there, I’m going in with you,” Rory told me.

I frowned at him. “Why?” His kind of brave was the kind you got from shooting people on a screen, with a respawn point.

He cast a glance full of aspersions at the others and shrugged one shoulder. “I don’t want to be left out.”

Maybe even video game players had pride. “Fair enough.”

We crept up to the eighth floor quietly, using the freight elevator at the end of the hall. At least it wouldn’t announce to anyone else what floor we were getting off on. I knew if we met anyone with a gun we’d just get mowed down where we stood, torn in two like Raluca. Hal couldn’t run while carrying Claire, and Emily’s legs were little. She was trotting along like Whisper the pony, holding the elastics of the mask I’d given her like reins. Like so much else I’d already been through today, it was too awful to really think about. Like what would happen if we did get up to Nathaniel’s room and Asher was gone. The dead kind of gone.

We walked down the hall as the numbers rose, and when we neared 822 Hal put his hand out for the key. I shook my head. I wasn’t going to let him go in first, especially not with Claire clinging to his back. I waved my hand so that everyone else would press against the wall to one side, and then I crouched down so that I wouldn’t get shot if the person inside the room was shooting at chest height.

The sound of the lock would give whoever was in there the upper hand. I reached out, slid the key through the sensor, saw the green light, and waited for the sound of shouting or shooting. When nothing responded, I reached up and pulled the lever of the door down and quietly opened the door.

I was almost disappointed. If there was no one guarding in here, then there was nothing left to guard. These rooms weren’t all that different from the ones on the ninth floor—the only difference was the ceiling height. I took off a shoe to keep the door from closing behind me, not so that those in the hall could come in and rescue me, but so that I could quickly run out, and then crept in. I crawled like a monkey holding a piece of fruit to my chest, with my two feet and one good hand. Rory followed me, with slightly more grace.

The first bedroom was full of kid things. Diaper bags, diapers, scattered toys—at least I was in the right place. Rory inhaled to say something and I shook my head before he could speak. Even though it looked abandoned, I still didn’t feel safe. I stood, though, and peeked into the attached bathroom. There was a woman’s makeup bag on the countertop, presumably Liz’s, and oddly unlabeled bottles of pills. I picked one up; it was nearly empty. Whatever was in there hadn’t saved her.

I ducked through the living area, empty, Rory silently behind me, and we walked toward the darkened bedroom on the other side.

I caught a whiff of Nathaniel’s aftershave, and it stopped me cold. I flung out my good arm to press Rory back. In the silence that followed, I could hear my own heart.

“I think we’re alone,” he whispered.

I shook my head. I needed to be certain. I was scared. It’d been so long since I’d been scared I’d forgotten that this was how it felt, like something was gnawing a hole in my belly. Like a baby … or a horrible worm.

At that thought, I grit my teeth and took a step in, letting my eyes adjust to the dark.

The walls were covered up, papered over, including the balcony’s windowed door. After ten more seconds of silence, I turned on the light.

The images on the papers resolved after that. All the bizarre sea monsters that any fevered sailor’s imagination had ever thought up were on display, meticulously illustrated. From old “Here There Be Dragons” sketches, complete with tails, to darker and more menacing void-spaced ones, images defined by darkness and absence that hurt to look at until you looked away—and then you were forced to wonder what they were doing without your eyes keeping them pinned.

And so many maps. Scattered on the bed, the desk, the floor, on paper crisped with age, edges drawn by hand with ink that looked frighteningly like blood, and a handful of more recent ones with radiating depths indicated by progressive shades of blue, like pools spread out on the floor.

“Whoa,” Rory said, and I didn’t shush him. It was good to hear his voice here, to not be in this place alone.

“Yeah,” I whispered back, agreeing.

“What the hell is wrong with this guy?”

I shoved a map away with my foot so that I could step on carpeting instead. “I don’t know.” And with all this crazy on display, I might never figure it out.

Rory looked around the room again, then to me. “I’ll check the bathroom.”

I realized what he was doing half a second too late—trying to save me from seeing another corpse. I raised my hand to protest, then stopped. If I’d had any doubts about Nathaniel’s ability to sacrifice his own child, this room quenched it. If this was what the Shadows were afraid of—well, I understood. A little. And it forced me to confront a darker truth.

A man who was insane enough to create a room like this would have no problems with killing Asher and then lying to me.

“Rory?” I called out, my voice a question.

“It’s empty in here.” He reappeared in the doorway.

“For real?” I didn’t want to go in there; it would smell more like Nathaniel—

“Honest. I’m sorry. I think.” He did his one-shoulder-shrug thing again. “I’m not sure if that’s worse or better.”

“Neither am I.” I stepped closer to one of the walls. Not all of this ink was dry. Not all of this ink was even ink. I dabbed a finger though a map on the bed and left a dark red smear behind, taking out the corner of what could have been a continent … or, if I squinted right, a horrible leering face. My stomach turned again as I looked at the stain the blood had left on my hand. I would have put it to my mouth to hold my nausea back, but that would make me more likely to throw up. “I’m sorry—” I rushed into the bathroom where he’d just been.