The Dark Remains - Mark Anthony [176]
Incredibly, it seemed to have gone as planned. The three paused behind a broken chunk of a cement culvert just outside a chain-link fence. A hundred yards beyond was a low, long, industrial building. In between was a parking lot, empty except for a few faded, peeling cars.
“It looks like they’ve left,” Grace said.
“Stay low,” Vani whispered. “They will not all have gone, not with what they are holding within.”
Travis slipped his sunglasses over his eyes. Even the gray light of the dreary afternoon was too much for them. “I don’t see anybody.”
“There is no way to approach the building by vehicle from this side,” Vani said. “I do not imagine they will be expecting three people on foot.”
Travis nodded. “Yeah, whoever tried something like that would have to be idiots.”
Vani crept to the fence and drew a small object from a pocket of her jacket. She unfolded it and, in a series of neat motions, clipped through a dozen links. With a tug she opened a gap in the fence.
“You go, Wilder.”
He gazed at the ragged hole. “So, what happened to ladies first?”
“That’s the other planet,” Grace said.
They climbed through the fence, Vani last, then crouched behind the cover of one of the abandoned cars.
“Anything?” Travis whispered.
“No,” Vani said. “Their forces here must be smaller than I guessed. They must be concentrating what security remains on the front of the building.”
Grace leaned against the car’s dented door. “Arrogance and caution don’t exactly mix. They probably think nobody knows about this place. And right now most of them are likely on their way north, thinking they’re going to pick up me and Travis.”
“This way,” Vani said.
They crept from car to car until they were thirty feet from the side of the building. There was no more cover.
“I want you both to make for that door,” Vani said, pointing. “Run as quickly as you can, but stay low. Do not stop until you get there.”
“What about you?” Grace said, her visage tightly drawn.
“I will watch in case someone sees you. Now go.”
Travis swallowed hard as Grace gripped his hand. He drew a deep breath, then they were running.
He felt like a complete idiot, as if everyone in the city could see him at that moment, hunched over, galloping clumsily with Grace. He kept expecting the sound of an alarm to pierce his skull. But there was only the thrum of distant traffic. He pressed himself against the wall next to the door, Grace beside him. There was no sign of Vani. He started to say something to Grace.…
The air folded and blurred in front of the door, then grew smooth again.
Quiet, Vani mouthed.
Travis swallowed his words. Vani tried the doorknob, but it didn’t move. This did not seem to faze her. She cupped the knob with both hands, shut her eyes, and pressed her body against the door.
He never saw exactly what she did. A single ripple seemed to pass over the red-painted surface, as if it were a pond into which a pebble had been tossed. Without a sound, the door swung open. Vani’s hands went up, ready.
Nothing came through the door.
Her hands went down. “This way.”
They stood at the end of a long, featureless corridor. A line of fluorescent lights buzzed overhead, stretching toward the vanishing point. Half of them were dark, casting the hallway into alternating brilliance and shadow. Travis thought of a ball bouncing along the tracks of a roulette wheel. Where would it land? White or black, life or death. Everyone place your bets.
Vani moved down the corridor with barely a whisper of sound. Grace and Travis followed after, trying not to sound like a herd of wild pigs in tap shoes. They passed several doors, all of them open and leading into empty rooms. Dread crept down Travis’s spine. He almost wished they would just show themselves, burst out a door, laugh, and throw nets on them. Actually getting caught couldn’t possibly be as bad as fearing it.
More doors, more empty