Rowan Steele - The Dying Light

He picked one up, testing its weight in his hand.

He gave one tentative swing, familiarizing himself with the motion of the pipe.

He hooked a spray bottle of ammonia on his back pocket and then made his way toward the door.

From the corner of his eye, he saw the woman grab a pipe just as he had.

She held it tentatively, like she was more afraid it would hit her than she would hit anyone else.

Jack reached for the knob, and she ran up to him.

He looked back at her.

“What?” he whispered.

“Where we going?” she answered, breathing heavily but appearing calmer than he would have expected.

“ We aren’t going anywhere. I’m getting the hell out of here.

“Now without me you aren’t.”

Even though the woman was afraid, she sounded absolutely certain of that.

That annoyed him.

If she had broken down, pleaded for his help, he would have been able to ignore it, but there was something about her certainty, that underlying strength he saw, that got to him.

He held her gaze with his.

“You get in my way, you slow me down, you’re on your own,” he said.

And though he whispered, he had no doubt that the woman heard him and that she understood.

She confirmed as much when she nodded curtly and dropped her hand, gripping the pipe tighter now and holding it with a little more authority.

Jack again reached for the door, and as he had with the other, he pulled it open slowly.

The sight that greeted him on the other side of the door was almost unimaginable.

The warning lights, powered by a generator he had no doubt, lit the hall—not as brightly as it would have been on a normal day but brightly enough for Jack to see what had happened.

Bright enough for him to see too much.

He stopped counting when he got to the twelfth body, if it could even be called that.

It was more like pieces, shapes that had once been human but were now mangled, and, if Jack thought right, chewed.

It didn’t make any sense.

But whether it made sense or not, his logic couldn’t argue with what his eyes were showing him. And what they showed him was that something awful, ungodly, had happened here.

The woman was so quiet that Jack looked back to check on her.

Her eyes were glued on one particular scene.

A man, or as best as Jack could guess, a man.

His face was unrecognizable. His arms and legs had been pulled from their sockets, and his guts spilled from the jagged hole that had been ripped into his abdomen. Jack guessed his chest had been cracked open, the reddish-white of what he could only assume were rib bones peeking through.

What was left of the man had been smeared along the floor, little bits and pieces creating a trail down the hall.

Jack followed that trail to the place where it ended and then looked in the opposite direction.

He glanced at the woman and nodded toward the closet they had just left.

The closet was barely lit, but Cassandra wished it was darker.

Anything to avoid seeing evidence of what had unfolded there, and there was no doubt in her mind that it had been horrible.

Something she knew she wasn’t supposed to see. Something no one else was either.

Cassandra had thought the closet stifling, far too reminiscent of the elevator, but she’d been happy to retreat to it

It would give her no refuge.

She knew that, but when the man silently closed the door and then propped the broom handle underneath it, she felt something like relief. Crazy, considering how not two minutes ago she been anxious to be out of that room, anxious to put the misshapen mass that had once had a person inside it out of her mind.

Now, Cassandra suspected this place was close to a haven as she would find. It wouldn’t last, but she would take it while she could.

When she looked at the man, she didn’t see any visible signs that he was shaken, at least not at first glance. But that alertness she had seen before had intensified, and had she had any doubt—and she’d had no doubt—she knew this situation was not good.

“What happened out there?” Cassandra asked, using the quietest voice she could muster.

She wasn’t really sure why she’d asked.

The man had been in the elevator with her, so he knew just as much she did, but speaking the words out loud gave her something to focus on, something that wasn’t the dead man on the floor, the others outside that door.

Whatever had done that to them.

“I don’t know. But we have to get out of here,” the man said.

On that point, they were in total agreement.

“Did you drive here?” he asked.

She nodded excitedly then slumped, the thought of going into the court’s basement garage to retrieve her car something her mind wasn’t ready to contemplate.

Even on the best, sunniest days, the place always gave her the creeps. Today, she didn’t know if she could deal with it. But if the alternative was staying here…

She brightened, remembering that the court had been so empty today that she had been able to find one of those coveted spaces right outside the front doors.

“Out front,” she said, her mind envisioning those hours before when everything had been different.

Not normal, but not this.

“Give me the key,” the man said.

His voice pulled Cassandra out of her thoughts, and she looked at him, studying him.

“I think I’ll hold onto them,” she said.

“Why?” he asked.

She thought her answer spoke for itself. He’d already tried to ditch her. If she gave him the keys, she could be in real trouble. And there was no way he was going to leave her here with no transportation, no idea what was going on. She didn’t know what he had planned, but she couldn’t dismiss the thought.

Her uncle had always told her she was too trusting, an odd characteristic for a hardened criminal defense attorney. Before, she might have even agreed with the assessment.

Not today.

“I could just take them from you,” he said.

He tossed the words off nonchalantly, like they were a statement of fact, but Cassandra wasn’t lulled.

He was testing her, and it was a test that she would most assuredly pass.

“You could try,” she replied.

She didn’t feel the need to expand on that statement. Of their own volition, her fingers tightened around the pipe.

She wasn’t sure if she’d have the nerve to use it and was even less sure that if she tried she would be successful. Everything about the man screamed competence, and if he wanted to relieve her of her unwieldy weapon, she was sure he would have no trouble. But she wouldn’t make it easy. The prospect of being here alone, with no car, was scarier than the thought of trying to take him on in hand-to-hand combat.

The man studied her, the dim emergency lights giving his intense expression even more intensity. After moment, he seemed to make a decision.

“If my car wasn’t four blocks away, I’d leave you. As it is, I’m stuck. But you’ll do as I say and move fast. If you slow me down…”

Cassandra didn’t miss the implication, but he wouldn’t have to worry about her slowing him down. She wanted nothing more than to be out of this place, and something told her he was the only way that was going to happen.

“What’s the best way out of here?” he said.

Cassandra was feeling jittery, more than little bit nervous, but she forced her mind to focus. The courthouse was laid out in a square with an annex building on either side, one housing administrative offices and the opposite annex—fourteen stories of it— containing the county jail.

After a series of embarrassing security incidents, the city had installed security checkpoints throughout the main floor. Or, they had started to. Much like many other projects, this one had gone incomplete for three years, if Cassandra could remember correctly. The west side of the building didn’t have the security checkpoints, and though it was farther away than the exit to their immediate left, it was a straight shot that got much less traffic, and Cassandra knew it was their way out.