Sara Reinke - Backwoods

Though he didn’t hear anything, he remained rooted in spot another moment or two, trying to make sure. Now without a gun, he wouldn’t stand a chance against one of the screamers even in the best of lighting conditions, let alone in the dark.

I’ve got to find that pistol.

Forcing himself to move, Andrew crept forward on his hands and knees, hands outstretched as patted down the length of the soldier’s body. Near his feet, he felt the cool press of metal, and felt a momentary thrill as he grabbed for it, thinking it was the nine-millimeter. Instead, it was some kind of cylindrical shaft, somewhat heavy despite its slim circumference. A flashlight, he realized. I’ll be damned. This guy had been carrying a flashlight.

Hoping like hell that it hadn’t broken in the fall, Andrew fumbled along the shaft until he felt the on-off button. When he pushed it, a bright beam of golden light speared across the corridor and he uttered a happy little cry. It cut abruptly short when he saw what the flashlight’s beam had pinned in its stark and momentarily dazzling glare—more soldiers lying near the wall, sprawled together, one nearly atop the others, all of them dead and battered.

“Oh, God,” he gasped, recognizing their faces—Maggitti, Reigler and Spaulding, three from Dani’s company.

He realized what had happened to the lights. They’d been shot out, the bulbs splintered by stray bullets. The wall was riddled with automatic gunfire, pock-marked in wildly erratic patterns, as if several armed men had spun in manic circles, shooting all the while.

He’d seen something else near the dead soldiers—their assault rifles. Crawling forward, tucking the flashlight beneath his arm to direct its beam ahead of him, he reached for one of the fallen M16s. When he went to push a leg aside to grab the nearest stock, he realized it was severed from its corresponding torso. He’d been expecting resistance from the deadweight of a corpse. Instead, the leg slid with surprising ease away from him. It made a squishy sort of sound as it moved, like a mop that hadn’t been wrung out well being slopped across the floor, and he jerked his hand back, feeling his stomach roil.

This is crazy, he thought. God, what am I doing? I’m supposed to be in a motel room in Pikeville right now, watching pay-for-view porn and plugging tree counts into my laptop to email back to the office.

Nevertheless, he uttered a triumphant little cry as he wrestled the rifle loose from beneath the tangled heap of dead soldiers. Once he had it free, he scrambled back to the wall. Shrugging the gun strap over his arm, he shouldered it long enough to sweep the flashlight along the corridor in either direction, surveying his surroundings. He saw another one of Dani’s squad mates dead on the floor nearby, Barron, the young man from Anchorage who’d bet Andrew ten bucks the Seawolves would win out in that year’s college hockey face-off against Fairbanks. It had been Barron’s body that Andrew had first tripped over, Barron’s flashlight that he now held in hand. And it was beside Barron’s outstretched and motionless hand that Andrew’s pistol had come to rest when he’d dropped it.

“I’m sorry,” Andrew whispered as he leaned down, retrieving the nine millimeter, shoving it beneath the waistband of his pants. He spoke not just to Barron, but to all of them, because although they hadn’t been close enough for him to consider them friends, per se, they’d been more than mere acquaintances, and they’d made him feel welcome among them, a part of their group.

He tried not to look at them again as he started down the hallway again, carrying both the rifle and flashlight at the same time so he could keep the beam of bright illumination trained ahead of him. He focused his attention on each closed door as he passed, each stainless steel knob glittering coldly in the flashlight’s glow.

One forty-two, one forty, the numbered placards outside the nearest read. Because these were the lowest numerals he’d found so far, he felt a momentary, fledgling hope that it meant he was finally heading in the right direction.

One thirty-eight, one thirty-six, he saw to his right, while on the left, one thirty-seven, one thirty-five.

As he passed by door number one thirty-four, he heard faint but distinct noise seeping through the wood and froze. It sounded like someone crying from inside the room.

A woman crying, he realized, and he whirled, training the flashlight beam directly at the door. Dani!

Moore had told him his office number was one twenty-seven, or so Andrew had thought. Maybe I misheard, he thought. Or maybe I remembered it wrong. Or maybe that son of a bitch just lied to me so I’d wind up lost.

Whatever the case, it didn’t matter. She’s in there. She’s alive.

He tried the knob, but it was locked.

“Shit,” Andrew muttered, because he’d started to punch the pass code in before realizing the power was out; the key pad didn’t work. Turning the knob futilely in his hand, he pressed his ear against the door. “Dani,” he called out. “Open the door.”

After a long moment in which there was nothing but silence, he closed his eyes, chanting over and over in his mind like a mantra, Answer me, Dani. Come on, be alive. Be alright. Answer me.

Then, through the door, he heard, “Andrew?”

He laughed, slapping his hand against the door. “Dani,” he cried. “It’s me. Let me in. I can’t open the door from this side. The power’s out and the key pad doesn’t work. We have to get out of here.”

From the other side, he heard a series of shuffling footsteps, some fervent sniffling, then loud, overlapping crashes and bangs, like someone had stumbled into something in the dark, toppling a pencil cup or cutlery set across the floor.

“Dani?” Concerned, he leaned against the door again. When it opened unexpectedly, swinging inward, he stumbled forward, falling against the woman on the other side.

“Oh, God, Andrew,” she gulped, and all he caught was a glimpse of blonde hair and a pungent whiff of alcohol before she staggered into him, clapping her arms around his neck in a fervent embrace.

“Suzette?”

She’d buried her face against the side of his neck and when she looked up, he saw her make-up streaked down her face, crooked lines of smeared mascara ringing her eyes, bisecting her cheeks. She hiccupped moistly for breath as she choked back tears.

“Suzette,” he said again. “What are you—”

“ Shhhh!” Spraying his face with spittle, she shoved her hand over his mouth, muffling him. Her eyes were round and wild, rolling in their sockets as her gaze darted frantically past him, up and down the corridor. “Don’t let them hear you.”

She staggered back into the room, dragging him with her, slamming the door shut behind him. He panned the light around and saw they were in a small office. She’d shoved the desk against the wall and piled blankets in a tangled heap in the chair nook beneath, making a rudimentary nest for herself. Beside this, he saw a cardboard box heaped with cartons of crackers, canned vegetables, some Spaghetti-O’s, but these were far outnumbered by the dozen or so bottles of gin, tequila, red wine and vodka, the latter of which she’d already been hitting pretty heavily, judging by her condition and the nearly empty bottle that listed on its side, cap removed, well within view.

“I’m so glad you’re here,” Suzette slurred, shambling toward him again, offering a crooked smile. Her hair was wildly askew, her clothes rumpled and blood-stained. Her eyes remained haunted, gleaming in the reflected flashlight’s glow with a manic sort of glaze. As he watched, she dragged her hands across her cheeks, trying to wipe her ruined make up away, then fought to smooth her hair down behind her ears. “I brought some things. Do you see? Everything I could carry. It should be enough to last us a week, maybe more, a little less.”