She swept her beam of light at each archway.
“Jerrod?” she called out. A shadow moved down the corridor toward her. “Scott?”
“Yeah.”
“Jerrod left.”
Scott came and stood beside her, flipped on his headlamp, moved his light across the lobby. “Jerrod!” he yelled, then cupped his mouth, shouted again, “Jerrod! Where’d you go?” Abigail heard the others emerge from the suite.
“What’s wrong?” June asked as they approached.
“Jerrod’s gone.”
The five remaining members of the party peered down into the lobby, listening.
Lawrence finally said, “You think something happened?”
Scott knelt down, unzipped his backpack, and dug out a climbing rope.
“I’ll see what’s going on.” Standing there, watching Scott unspool the rope, Abigail realized the soberness in his voice unnerved her. He jogged into the nearest suite, wrapped the rope three times around a heavy chest of drawers, and tied a knot. Then he came back out into the corridor and kicked the pile of rope. It dropped fifteen feet into the lobby. He got onto his knees, worked himself over the edge, his gloved hands gripping the rope. He slid carefully down onto the wrecked staircase.
“If you guys just want to wait up there, I’ll be back in a minute.”
“Hold up,” Lawrence said. “I’ll go with you.”
The older man didn’t make lowering himself look as effortless as the guide had, but he got down safely, and the two men disappeared out the front door of the hotel.
June, Emmett, and Abigail sat down in the corridor.
“I hope everything’s all right,” June said.
Emmett looked over at Abigail. “You got extra batteries for your light?”
“Back at camp. Why?”
“Yours is dying.”
Abigail pulled off her headlamp just in time to watch the bulb fade out.
FIFTEEN
Abigail pressed the light feature on her watch: 9:59 P.M.
“They’ve been out there ten minutes,” she whispered.
June and Emmett had turned off their headlamps to conserve the batteries, so all she could see of them were the white pairs of facing crescent moons that framed their irises.
From one of the rooms on the second floor came a sound like a shutter slamming against a window frame.
Emmett said, “Wind.”
They sat awhile longer in the corridor, listening to the shutter squeak on its rusted hinges and bang into the window. Finally, Emmett struggled to his feet.
“Okay. I’m gonna go down and see what’s going on here.”
“No,” Abigail said. “We’ll all go.”
June went first, Emmett and Abigail helping her to ease over the edge, her hands trembling as she cursed quietly to herself while her feet dangled above the lobby. She slid slowly down the rope and whispered “Thank you, God” as her feet touched the staircase.
When Emmett and Abigail had lowered themselves into the lobby, the three worked their way over the staircase debris, past the front desk, to the hotel entrance.
They moved through the threshold and out into the misty street.
The loose shutter had gone quiet, and Abandon stood in perfect silence save for the occasional creak of a teetering building bracing against the wind.
“Where’d you guys go?” Emmett shouted. No answer but that of his own voice resounding in fading refrains through the canyon. He shouted again. Echoes again. Silence.
Abigail felt something soft and cold on her face.
Snowflakes passed through the beam of Emmett’s headlamp.
“Well,” he said finally, “I’ll walk up the street toward camp. June, you and Abigail head the other way. We have whistles in our emergency kits, so I suppose we should blow on those if we find the others.”
“I think splitting up is a horrible idea,” Abigail said.
“All right, then which way do you—” Emmett stopped mid-sentence. “What the hell?”
He looked past them now, his brow deeply furrowed, his mouth dropped open.
Something staggered toward them down the middle of the street, and it occurred to Abigail that the way it moved through the fog, in slow, exaggerated steps, resembled something from a horror movie—a zombie or some demon that had just crawled out of its own grave. It was close now, within ten feet of them, dragging its right foot and clutching its side.
Their guide collapsed in the hotel doorway, Scott’s yellow fleece slicked with blood, and down blowing out of a gaping tear in his vest.
Abigail felt her stomach lurch, something rising up her throat. Her mouth tasted of salt and metal.
Emmett was already on his knees, cradling Scott’s head.
“What happened?” he asked.
Scott moaned, his face so drained of color that it seemed to glow in the dark, his body quaking with the onset of shock. “I wanna see it,” he gasped. “Lift my jacket.”
Emmett unbuttoned Scott’s down vest and unzipped his fleece jacket, Abigail at his ear, whispering to him that everything would be okay. Emmett peeled away the layer of thermal underwear and they all stared at the black hole in his side, blood sheeting down his pale abdomen into a widening pool on the old boards.
“Fuck!” Scott said. “Fuck, it hurts!”
“What do we do?” Abigail asked. “You’re our guide. You know first aid, right? Tell us how to help you.” Scott’s eyes rolled back in his head. She slapped his face.
He came back, his eyes only slits now. “Run,” Scott hissed. “They’re coming.”
“Who?” Abigail asked.
“We aren’t leaving you,” Emmett said, but Scott’s eyes had already closed. “Scott! Scott! June, keep pressure on the wound.” She pressed her palm into Scott’s side, blood leaking between her fingers.
A scream blasted through the canyon.
Abigail whispered, “Turn off your headlamp, Emmett.”
He did, everything still, and, for the moment, quiet.
A snowflake landed on Abigail’s eyelash. She blinked it away and rose to her feet. “We need to get out of here,” she said.
“There,” June said. Abigail saw it, too. Fifty yards ahead, at the north edge of town, something sprinted toward them, arms pumping.
“It’s Jerrod,” Emmett said.
Abigail had begun to backpedal even before she saw the shadows emerge out of the fog behind Jerrod. The one in front slipped something out of its belt. As it reached him, it placed a hand on the back of Jerrod’s head, jammed something into the base of his skull.