Free Fire - C. J. Box [44]
Joe stood and surveyed his room. There was a two-foot space between the bed and the curtained window. He stared at the space, thinking it must have been larger once, since that was where he’d spent his time when he was here last. His parents had put down blankets and he slept there on the floor. But it had seemed so much bigger at the time, just like the room had seemed bigger, the hallways longer, the ceilings higher, the lightbulbs brighter. He could recall the musty smell of the carpetand the detergent odor of the bedspread. He remembered pretending to sleep while his father drank and raged and his mother sobbed. It was the first time in his life he’d been without his brother, and his brother was the reason they were in Yellowstonethen. But most of all, he could remember the feeling of loss in the room, and what he thought at the time was the dawningof his own doom, as if his life as he knew it was over after only eighteen years. And not so great years either.
Long after his family had stayed at the Mammoth Hotel, Joe saw the movie The Shining. In one scene the camera lingers on an impossibly long, impossibly still hallway when a wave of blood crashes down from a stairwell and floods the length of it. At the time he had thought of the hallway of the Mammoth Hotel.He thought of it now. He needed a drink.
Joe dug through one of his duffel bags for a plastic bottle—a “traveler”—of Jim Beam and poured some into a thin plastic cup. He remembered the hum of an ice machine in the hall and grabbed the bucket.
He opened the door cautiously, half expecting the wave of blood he’d imagined to slosh across the floor. It didn’t, and he felt foolish for letting his mind wander. As he stepped out there was a bustle of clothing and a sharp cry from the end of the hallway where the stairs were. He turned in time to see two men scrambling out of sight from the landing down the stairs. He glimpsed them for only a second; they were older, bundled in heavy clothes, not graceful in their sudden retreat. He hadn’t seen their faces, only their backs.
Puzzled, he considered following them but decided against it. Their heavy footsteps on the stairs pounded into silence and they were no doubt crossing the lobby. Had he frightened them? He wondered. What had they been doing that they felt it necessaryto flee like that when he emerged into the hallway?
Joe filled his bucket and went back to his room. Although he generally liked solitude, it was the quiet of being outside, where he could see, hear, and feel the landscape around him, that drew him. It was different in a huge, virtually unoccupied hotel, where he longed for the hum of conversation behind doors he passed, and the assurance that he wasn’t totally alone on his floor. He paused at his door and shot a suspicious glance back where he’d seen the men. There was no one there now, although the empty hotel seemed clogged with ghosts.
The mammoth dining room was the only restaurant still open in the village and it was a short walk from the hotel. AlthoughJoe disliked eating alone, he had no choice so he grabbed his jacket and the Zone of Death file to read over, yet again, while he ate. Simon and James were still at the desk when he descended the stairs.
Joe asked Simon, “About a half hour ago, did two old men come running across the lobby from the stairs?”
Simon and James exchanged glances. Simon said, “I rememberthat, yes. But they weren’t running when I saw them. They were walking briskly toward the front doors.”
“Do you know them?”
Simon shook his head.
“Were they Zephyr employees?”
James laughed. “Who knows? It’s the time of year when the nutters really come out, you know? We don’t pay any attention to them unless they bother the guests. Were they bothering you?”
“Not really,” Joe said.
As joe crossed the street to the restaurant he noticed a park ranger cruiser at the curb. The door opened and Judy Demming got out.
“Del Ashby