Kent Kelly - Archangel

No.

Patrice cackled deep inside her. Oh yes, Sophie love. That’s how it goes, goes, goes. First he’ll shoot you in the shoulder, keep the meat fresh. And then you’ll fall, and then your back will go snap-crackle-pop, and oh! Then he will be on top of you! And you’ve left him a knife, taped to your suit’s boot. So good of you! He’ll use that instead of the gun. He’ll slice the suit open to get at you, and snag you a little and gouge out some flesh from your belly because he’ll be very eager you see, and…

“Shut up.”

She kept climbing. Somehow, the careful-yet-frantic climb up the shaft was timed by her suit readout at eighty-seven seconds. In reality, however, it lasted an eternity.

As Sophie climbed through the last half of her isolate ascent, painted all over by the glo-lite reflections, shivering, she quelled her terror by listening to the jingle of the car keys taped inside her suit.

If the H4 was still there, if no one had managed to hotwire it or push it or tow it out (And how could they, Soph, how could they?) , then she might well be able to start the car.

Maybe.

She had recovered the ring of keys only a few days before, when at last the final pieces of her plan to leave the Shelter with Silas’s guidance were falling into place. At some point she had tacked the ring up on the salvaged bulletin board, and the poster map of southern Wyoming and northeastern Colorado — of Kersey — had engulfed the keys and left them dangling there, hidden and forgotten.

No more. She had them. This was actually happening, she was making her escape.

This had all been planned with Silas, all of it and so many times. How many vehicles were up above? If Silas’s observations still held true, then at least three: the H4 jammed near to the cave wall (although it had rebounded slightly, if he recalled), the police car filled with dead bodies, and Silas’s own vehicle. Another car in the canyon, or two? He didn’t think so. He could not remember. But if there were more cars, it would mean…

Keep climbing.

Which vehicle would work, if any? Silas had said the older the better, yes. All the way up to Black Hawk, tested newer cars had failed him. All of their circuitry had been burned out by the pulse. But old clunkers? A few of them worked fine.

She would prefer the H4 for its familiarity, for its four-wheel drive and strong suspension. For its toolbox if it was still there, and for its power enough to ram or push things off the road whenever she had to. Yes, if the H4 would work — and there was reason to hope, after all despite its newness the Hummer had been sheltered in the cave and was probably better shielded than just about any other surviving vehicle they could ever hope to find — then it would be ideal.

And if it did not, well… perhaps the police car. Could she bear to pull out all of the bodies piled up inside it that Silas had described? What about the trunk? Was the shotgun there? Where was it? And there was one body at least that he refused to talk about. What of that? Would Pete’s patrol car even start again if it was mired in the pool beneath the waterfall? What if she had to walk out along the canyon to Silas’s car to test its ignition, or to siphon gas?

Stop thinking about all that. Just go.

And she did. Something would work, anything. If there was a way to drive to Kersey and find her Lacie, she would make it work. Or die in the trying …

Her grip began to slip and she swayed there, a horror of doubt rushing over her all at once: Oh God oh you’re hanging from a ladder with only a dying man to hear you scream if you fall he can’t save you he’s stuck in bed in the shelter if you break your legs if you break your legs if you —

And the slurring, delicious giggling of Patrice began again deep down inside her, riding that wave of hysteria up through her and lilting into her mind.

Oh, don’t worry, Soph. You have your gun with you, you’ll fall and there will be broken bones and agony but don’t you worry, Sophie love. You think you’ve loaded the gun to use on others? Oh no, no. See, I’m waiting for you to realize this so that you can join me here in dancing, dancing, dancing: sister love, that loaded gun is just for you. No need to suffer long. Just fall and get it over with, get it over with and come to me!

“Leave me alone,” Sophie hissed. Her voice grated with surprising force inside her suit.

Grimacing, she clutched at the ladder rungs and kept on climbing.

She came to the top of the ladder, with both hands still on the top rung. She knew there were handholds out there, which she could feel about for and clutch and haul herself over the brim. But she could not see them, she would need to pad her gloved fingers about blindly and anyone out there could grab her clumsy hands and haul her up and pin her there before she could ever raise her gun, and that is the thought that froze her there.

She had both hands on the top rung and was in the process of bunching her body up beneath her, her legs still moving but her hands and arms refusing to obey.

“Help me,” Sophie whispered. She closed her eyes and tried with all her strength to envision not Tom, not Lacie, not even Silas or Patrice, but only her father.

And there he was. Poorly shaven, after he had broken his right hand on a hunting trip he had never quite trusted that hand with the razor any longer, and not even his wife could touch his throat with any trusted blade. He was like that. Silver-scruffed and poorly shaven, strong and red-jowled and smiling down at his second-favorite daughter of two.

“Now remember, love,” he was saying. “All you need, fire inside you and any hollow man he’ll burn up just from the fire inside you oh heart of a lioness oh there you are, remember. Remember you see anyone up there, you grab the sides of that ladder and you slide all the way down. Get your back to the vault door, be ready to shoot at anyone fool enough to show himself. Counting on you now.” One of his bushy eyebrows arched, a loving patriarchal mixture of favor and disfavor. “Counting on you,” he said to her. “Stay strong for me when I’m gone. Keep your sister safe.”

Oh, how that had been. Safe, oh Patrice…

“Now open your eyes,” he said. “Goodbye.”

She did so. There was nobody up there. She reached about, felt the aluminum-gridded handhold up over the shaft’s edge, and hauled herself upward while her father’s image melted away inside of her.

She peered over the edge as she rose. Her breath misted out and pulsed against her faceplate. Reflections of mist played on the faceplate’s farther side, puffs of shifting air and dewdrops caught in the endless wave of humidity pouring in from the waterfall. Strange crimson reflections shifted over the walls above her, turning the black stone to ever-shifting patterns that writhed like images of flesh.

She could not feel whether her surroundings were hot or cold, but there were unsettling clots of moist ash dolloped all about her and across the cave floor, smashed dough-balls of congealed dust and burnt matter bound up by some greasy substance. The mud-balls had been sculpted into piles where they had been scuffed aside by booted feet, and smeared footprints showed in hardened craters all along the floor.

They came in. They died. The last one left. There’s no one here.

A catch in Sophie’s breathing told her otherwise.

Feeling all at once how precarious her position was, she heaved off from the rungs, got a knee over the rim and belly-crawled away from the shaft. Mud greased her suit and spattered her fingers. Her left foot kicked off of the last rung with a sickly tilt, and a surge of vertigo swept through her as she twisted along the cave floor and spun onto her back. The gun jumbled up under her gut, still hinged to her utility belt, and nearly got stuck beneath her.