FOURTEEN
I SLIPPED OFF INTO SLEEP somewhere between Staunton and Lexington, and woke up just in time to get a perfect view of the towering white warehouse that was Roanoke, Virginia’s former Walmart.
Sure, the blue sign was still clinging desperately to the side of the building, but that was about the only recognizable thing about the Supercenter. A number of stray carts wandered across the parking lot aimlessly, carried this and that way depending on each moody gust of wind. With the exception of a few abandoned cars and green Dumpsters, the enormous blacktop parking lot was empty. Against the tangerine blush of the afternoon sun, it looked like the apocalypse had already touched down in Virginia.
And we were only a stone’s throw away from Salem. A ten-minute drive. My stomach clenched at the thought.
Once again, Liam insisted on going in alone to check it out. I felt Zu’s rubber glove on my arm and didn’t need to look at her face to know what kind of expression I would find there. She didn’t want him charging into what looked like an honest-to-God hellhole alone anymore than I did.
This is why you stayed, I reminded myself. To take care of them. And, in that moment, the person that needed me most was the one walking away.
I jumped out of Betty, my hand gripping the door handle.
“Honk the horn three times for trouble,” I said, and slid the door shut. Liam must have heard, because he waited for me, leaning against one of the rusted shopping cart stalls.
“Any way I could convince you to go back to Betty?”
“Nope,” I said. “Come on.”
He fell in step beside me, fists dug deep in his pockets. I couldn’t see his eyes, but the way he was slouching toward the demolished doors was telling enough.
“You asked me before how I knew about this place.…” he said, when we were nearly to the entrance.
“No—no, it’s okay. I know, none of my business.”
“Green,” Liam said. “It’s okay. I just don’t know where to begin. You know Chubs and I were both in hiding? Well, it wasn’t exactly pleasant for either of us. He at least got to stay at his grandparents’ cabin in Pennsylvania.”
“Ah, but you had the pleasure of holing up in this fine American establishment.”
“Among other places.” Liam said. “I…don’t like to talk about that time in front of Zu. I don’t want her to think that that’s what her life is going to be.”
“But you can’t lie to her,” I said. “I know you don’t want to scare her, but you can’t pretend that her life isn’t going to be hard. It’s not fair.”
“Not fair?” He sucked in a sharp breath, closing his eyes. When he spoke again, his voice had returned to his usual soft tones. “Never mind, forget it.”
“Hey,” I said, taking his arm. “I get it, okay? I’m on your side. But you can’t act like it’s going to be easy. Don’t do that to her—don’t set her up to be crushed. I was in camp with thousands of kids who grew up thinking Mommy and Daddy were always going to be there for them, and they—we—are all coming out of this seriously damaged.”
“Whoa, whoa,” Liam said, all traces of anger gone. “You are not damaged.”
That, I could have protested until I was blue in the face.
Whoever had unhooked Walmart’s glass sliding doors from their tracks hadn’t done a good job of finding a safe place to store them. Shards of glass coated the cement floor, blown out dozens of feet from the black metal frames. We stepped over and through their mangled shapes, entering that small, strange space where the greeter would have been.
Next to me, Liam’s foot slipped against the sallow dust collected on the floor. I shot an arm out to brace him as he grunted in surprise. Even as I helped him right himself, his eyes remained fixed on the ground, where a dozen footprints fanned out in the dust.
Every shape and size, from the jagged pattern of the sole of a man’s hiking boot to the decorative swirly curls left behind by a young child’s tennis shoe, all stamped out there like cookies cut from a fresh spread of dough.
“They could be old,” I whispered.
Liam nodded but didn’t pull away from my side. I hadn’t fooled either of us.
The store’s power had been shut off some time ago, and it was clear it had been open to the wild for too long. There was only a second between when we first heard the rattling in the nearby shelves and when Liam jumped in front of me. “It’s—” I began, but he silenced me with a shake of his head. We watched the shelves, waiting.
And when the deer, a gorgeous, sweet thing with a silky caramel coat and big black eyes, came prancing out from behind the overturned magazine racks, Liam and I looked at each other, dissolving into shaky laughter.
Liam pressed his finger to his lips and waved me forward, his eyes scanning the dark fleet of identical cash registers in front of us. Someone had taken the carts from the store and tried stuffing them in the lanes, as if to create a kind of fortified wall against any unwanted visitors. Carefully, without disturbing the pileup of plastic baskets, we climbed up and over the nearest register’s conveyer belt. Standing on top of it, I could see where more shelves had been lined up in front of the other exit. It looked as though something huge had come slamming through it at one point, bursting through the makeshift barricade.
What did that?
I think there’s some part of everyone, Psi or not, that’s tuned into the memories of a place. Strong feelings, especially terror and desperation, leave an imprint on the air that echo back to whoever’s unlucky enough to walk through that place again. It felt like the darkness was stroking beneath my chin with a beckoning finger, whispering to me to lean forward and know its secrets.
Something terrible happened here, I thought, feeling a cold drip down my spine. The wind whistled through the broken doors, playing us the kind of screeching song that made the hair on the back of my neck stand on end.
I wanted to leave. This was not a safe place. This was not a place to bring Zu or Chubs—so why was Liam still going forward? Overhead, the emergency lights flickered on and off, buzzing like boxes of trapped flies. Everything beneath them was cast in a sickly green light, and as he moved farther and farther down the first aisle, it seemed like the darkness waiting at the end of it would swallow him whole.
I sprung forward into the sea of empty metal shelves, half of which were knocked flat on their backs or leaning against others in slanted lines, their shelves buckling under some invisible weight. My sneakers squeaked as I wove through the sea of lotions, mouthwash, and nail polish on the floor. Things that seemed so necessary in the past, so vital to life, wasted and forgotten.