Exodus (14 page)

Emily had read about a bird called a shrike. It would impale its prey on thorns and wait for it to die, slowly consuming it over time. She glanced back at the tentacles extending from Simon and the row of barbs running along its length. She searched Simon’s pale face for any sign of the man she had met, but all she saw were his lifeless eyes and marionette-like stance.

She made an instant and unemotional decision.

Emily stalked down the corridor and crouched down in front of Rhiannon and the boy. Ben still refused to look at her, hiding his head in his sister’s shoulder, but Rhiannon stared right back at Emily from the dimness of the shadowy corridor. Emily could see that the child understood what was coming next—maybe only on some subconscious level, but she understood.

Emily took a deep breath and spoke, not even sure what words to use. “Your daddy is very sick,” she began. “I know you
can hear him outside and I know you want to go to him, but he’s not feeling very well and I’m afraid that he might”—she paused as she searched again for the right words—“I’m afraid he might make you sick, too. So, we’re going to get out of here and, when your dad’s better, we’ll come back for him, okay?”

Ben’s sobs grew louder. Rhiannon pulled her brother closer. “It’s all okay, Benny,” she whispered. “It’s okay. Daddy’s going to be fine. We have to go with Emily right now, though.”

Ben’s sobs stuttered and finally stalled. Emily’s heart wanted to break for these two kids whose life she was sure had been changed forever this night. She resisted the urge to reach out and stroke the little boy’s hair; that would probably set him off again. His cries had faded to the occasional sniffle, and she was not exactly the flavor of the month with him right now. Instead, Emily smiled at Rhiannon. “All right, kids. We have to be really quiet from now on. Let’s go.”

Emily held her breath and shone the flashlight into the corridor, searching for the hook with the car keys she thought she had seen when she’d first arrived.

There it was. She could see the glint of the keys hanging from a hook plugged into the wall. She plucked the keys from the hook, noting the embossed Dodge logo on the black plastic fob. These had to be the right ones.

Emily turned to the children and moved her forefinger to her lips. Both kids nodded they understood, and Emily was relieved to see that Ben’s tears had dried up, his big hazel eyes, bloodshot and pitted in the beam of the flashlight, gazed back at her with just a hint of trust behind the fear and pain. She pushed the door
to the garage open. The former owner must have been handy with the WD-40 because the creak of dry hinges she had expected never materialized. She ushered the children and Thor past her as she held the door open. When they were all safely inside, she closed the door again as quietly as possible.

The big Dodge SUV was exactly where she had seen it when she’d first arrived at the house.

The handle was locked. Her thumb was hovering over the alarm disable button on the key fob when she stopped herself. If she used the key fob to turn off the alarm, wouldn’t it make that
whoop-whoop
sound she’d heard so many times on the streets of New York? She couldn’t risk any noise alerting the Simon-thing to the fact that they were at the other end of the house.

If she used the key to unlock the door manually, would that have the same effect? She had no idea, but the door had to be opened. She slipped the key into the lock and turned it. The locks unlocking sounded like gunshots in the silence of the garage, and the sudden illumination from the automatic interior lights sent flashing motes zooming across her eyes, but there was no alarm.

She reached back and pulled open the rear passenger door. “Come on, kids. Quickly, jump inside,” she hissed.

Thor didn’t need to be asked twice. Tail wagging frenetically, he leaped into the back row of seats and positioned himself behind the front passenger seat. Rhiannon helped to get Ben up onto the kick plate with a push on his butt. He clambered the rest of the way inside and was met with a barrage of licks from Thor that teased out a giggle from the little boy.

Well, that was a good sign. At least he was not irreparably damaged. Rhiannon pulled herself up into the backseat next to her brother and immediately pulled the seat belt across him, fastening it into the receiver, then clicking her own belt into place.
Sure that the two children were safely locked down, Emily pushed the door closed as quietly as she could.

Climbing into the driver’s seat, she pulled her own door quietly shut behind her. Now came the hard part.

She had no idea what any of these dials, switches, and levers did. She mentally kicked herself in the ass again for not having taken any driving lessons. At least she knew what the steering wheel and gas and brake pedals were supposed to do. She looked down between the driver’s and passenger’s seats—thank God it was an automatic and not a stick shift.

“Okay,” she whispered. “Now what?”

Emily found the ignition on the steering column and slotted the key into the receiver. She turned the key and felt it slip into the first position with a reassuring click. Instantly the interior lights turned off, replaced by a neon-blue glow from the dashboard instruments. Emily breathed a sigh of relief. Part of her had been sure that the battery would be dead.

She took a few seconds to familiarize herself with the layout of the cockpit. The gearshift handle was on her right, a lever jutting from the left of the steering column. It had some kind of a twistable selector at the end of it, covered in white icons. They obviously represented headlight settings, so she turned the selector to the first position. The interior of the garage lit up, pushing back some of the shadows. She twisted the switch to the next setting and was pleased to see the headlights become even brighter, illuminating the entirety of the garage and the flat metal of the retractable garage door in front of her.

The garage doors…Shit!

How was she supposed to open them without any power?

If this were a movie, she would probably just start the car, rev it up, and burst through them before speeding off into the
darkness. This wasn’t a movie, though, and the shuttered metal looked pretty strong to her. There must be some way to manually open them, she reasoned. After all, what would happen if there was a power outage? Were people expected to be locked out of their garages?

“Stay in the car, kids,” she said, turning to face the children. “I’ll be right back.”

Emily took a deep breath to steady her breathing and exited the vehicle, her heart thumping in her chest. She made sure the SUV’s door was ajar, then checked that the door leading from the interior of the house was still closed securely; she didn’t want the Simon-thing creeping up behind them.

A large plastic box was fixed to the ceiling right above the Durango’s roof. A thick chain, much like the chain of her bike, ran from the box along a metal beam to the door. Fixed to the garage door was a curved arm that extended upward, connecting to the pulley system that raised and lowered the door. That was how the door would open normally, but how the hell was she supposed to raise it now? She spotted two aluminum handles at the base of the door, near the floor. She grasped one and gave it a gentle tug. The door rattled, moving up about an inch but then hit resistance and refused to budge any farther. Looking up at the arm attached to the door and the pulley illuminated in the beam of the SUV, she could see there was some kind of hook attachment that meshed into the chain like the spokes of a gear. A nylon cord with a red plastic handle at the end hung from the arm, swinging back and forth gently.

The handle screamed, “Pull me!”

Again, she found herself holding her breath as she grasped the plastic handle in her hand and tugged. There was a very distinct click as something disengaged from the chain, but there was no other indication of anything else happening. Was that it? Only
one way to find out, she told herself. Emily moved back to the door and, ever so gently, pulled the same handle.

This time the door continued to move past the stop, rumbling and rattling along its tracks. When the door was a foot off the ground, she stopped. What if Simon was outside right now? Waiting for her. He could grab her legs and pull her under the door, and that would be it. She let the door drop to the floor with a clang of rattling metal.

There was no doubt in her mind that whatever controlled Simon was going to hear them trying to escape. When it did it would do whatever it could to get to them. What would happen if she opened the garage door and it was waiting outside? She would have a matter of seconds at most to get to the vehicle, figure out how to drive it, and get out of there. And then what? Where would they go? They had no supplies. Everything, including her bike, backpack, and sat-phone was at the other house.

That was the least of her problems.

She needed to figure out whether she should lift the garage door first and then hope the car started before Simon found them. Or did she start the car first and hope the garage door would open?

“Jesus,” Emily hissed. Despite the cool night air, she felt sweat trickle down the insides of her arms.

It made no sense to raise the barrier between them, she reasoned, only to find that the Dodge would not start. That would leave them completely exposed. Car first. Then worry about the garage doors. She climbed back into the driver’s seat and looked at the kids. “Okay, you two, here we go.” Reaching for the ignition keys, she twisted them all the way forward.

Nothing happened.

“Shit,” she cried and thumped the steering wheel. The engine was dead. They had been through all this only for the fucking SUV to not start? You had to be kidding.

“You have to step on the brake,” said a voice from the backseat. Emily flashed around to face Rhiannon, trying to keep the anger and disappointment from her voice.

“What?”

“You have to step on the brake to start the car,” Rhiannon repeated. “It’s a safety feature,” she added proudly, probably repeating some tidbit of information she had learned from her dad.

Emily looked down at her feet. Which pedal was the brake? It had to be the larger of the two, she reasoned and pressed her left foot down and twisted the ignition key again.

The big V-8 engine of the Dodge Durango exploded into life. It was incredibly loud in the enclosed space of the garage. Emily flipped around and shot a huge smile at Rhiannon, all anger dissipating with the deep roar of the engine. She could already smell the acrid stench of the vehicle’s exhaust seeping through the open driver’s door and gave a little cough. It wouldn’t do to breathe this crap in for very long, but she needed to leave the door open, every second would count. Sorry, kids, she thought as she leaped from the driver’s seat and ran over to the garage door.

She grasped the metal handle again and began pulling with all the strength she had. If there had been any doubt that Simon would not be alerted to their escape attempt, it was quickly dispelled as the door rattled along the tracks, even louder, it seemed to Emily, than the rumble of the SUV’s engine. With the door halfway up, Emily dipped her head under the gap and scanned the area beyond the garage. The light from the SUV illuminated the ground directly in front of the garage, pushing the darkness away. There was no sign of anything waiting outside to grab her. Thank God.

Flipping her grip on the handle she began pushing the door up rather than pulling it. The door was almost at its zenith when
Emily heard the clattering of dislodged roof tiles as something huge scrambled over the roof toward her.

“Oh, shit! Oh, shit!”

What was she supposed to do now? The door was still only three-quarters of the way up. She let go of it for a second and watched as it began to slowly slide back toward the ground. She grabbed the handle again and began pushing. There was no way she was going to get back into the car in time to figure out the controls and get out of the garage before the door closed on them again or the thing scrambling across the roof reached her.

Run, her frightened mind screamed. Just leave the kids and run.

No way! There was not a chance in hell that she was going to do that. She would rather just—

She felt the metal garage door click into place. Looking up, she could see the hook had engaged itself again onto the stud on the pulley. She let go of the handle and the door settled back slightly but stayed exactly where it should be, suspended above her head.

“Thank you,” she sighed and sprinted back to the SUV. She was about to clamber into the driver’s seat when a cascade of adobe-colored roof tiles fell to the concrete just outside the entrance of the garage, shattering like broken plates across the drive. Before the last broken piece had skittered across the concrete, a shape dropped from the roof, landing low to the ground just on the other side of the door, red eyes staring unblinking into the lights of the SUV.

“Simon,” she whimpered as she leaped into the driver’s seat, slamming the door behind her.