Exodus (25 page)

Sure that they posed no threat to her, Emily turned her attention back to the deformed alien trees. They looked half-finished. Instead of the geometric keenness of the top edges that had defined the trees she had seen being built, these were irregular. Pieces were missing, and here and there were gaps, long seams that stretched up the tree like cracks. She squeezed two fingers into the gap. Her fingers slipped in all the way to the second knuckle. The gray splotches she had seen were in reality half-formed pieces of the tree; when she touched one, it cracked, sending a large section down into the interior of the trunk.

The red rain had accomplished its mission, killing everyone in the town, but the growth of the trees had been stopped in its tracks. It looked as though they had been completely unable to deal with the cold. Judging by the lack of growth of the trees and the dead aliens scattered around the base of the trees, she would not be surprised if she found thousands of the aliens, or maybe even their precursor pupae stages, scattered throughout the houses in the town. She would have to remember that when they looked for a place to spend the night.

She gave one of the dead spider-aliens a swift kick to the face, breaking off the thing’s frozen tentacles with a satisfying clink that sounded like shattered icicles.

“That’s for everyone in this town,” she said and walked back to the warmth of the SUV.

“What took you so long?” asked Rhiannon as Emily closed the door of the Durango and turned the heater up as high as it would go.

“Nothing. I just needed to check out the trees,” she replied as she felt the heat chase the frigidness from her fingers. Emily didn’t see any point in scaring Rhiannon with the news of the dead aliens.

“So, what are we supposed to do now?”

“How about I take us clothes shopping?” she answered.

The strip mall parking lot still held two cars. Their owners, presumably, had not heeded the warnings about the effects of the red rain and had perished while shopping. I guess there are worse ways to go, Emily thought as she pulled the Dodge to a stop out front of the store Jacob had directed her to.

Large red letters over the entrance to the building read F
RONTIER
O
UTFITTERS
, and below that in smaller letters: H
UNTING
. F
ISHING
. C
AMPING
. A
PPAREL
.

Emily grabbed the shotgun and her flashlight and stepped outside. She left the engine running not just for security, but also because it was so damn cold that the idea of waiting for the car to warm up again was not a pleasant thought.

“Stay here for a second while I check around,” she told Rhiannon. “Thor, come on.” The dog leaped from the backseat to
the driver’s, then down onto the concrete. He stretched and followed Emily as she headed to the store’s entrance.

The door creaked open, and Emily pushed it open farther with the barrel of the Mossberg. She stepped inside and scanned the interior with the flashlight while Thor ran around checking every nook and cranny. There were no windows in the building, so the interior was lit only by the meager light that made it through the panes of the glass double doors.

Thor trotted back to her side after a minute, giving no indication they were anything but alone in the store. Emily leaned around the door and beckoned to Rhiannon to join her.

“Bring your flashlight,” she yelled to the girl as she exited the SUV.

Inside the store, row upon row of shelves were stacked with heavy-duty boots, camping equipment, dry goods, and fishing gear. Clothing racks held cold-weather jackets and trousers, thick wool sweaters, even thicker scarves, gloves, and balaclavas. Everything the modern outdoorsman would ever need to survive in this unforgiving climate and more.

Emily couldn’t see any carts, so, after a quick look around, she found a large gray plastic storage container. She discarded the lid and carried the container over to the racks of clothes.

Rhiannon had already found a parka with a fur-lined hood that she had zipped up so far her face was completely hidden.

“A big improvement,” said Emily, smiling.

They worked their way down each aisle, pulling what they needed from the racks, filling the plastic container to almost overflowing.

Near the camping equipment, Emily found a selection of heavy-duty sleeping bags. The tags attached to them said they
were good down to minus thirty degrees. She added two of them to the container, the electric-pink one for Rhiannon.

Emily double-checked their loot one last time, running over the mental list she had made, making sure they had forgotten nothing.

Sure they had liberated everything on the list, Emily and Rhiannon each took one end of the box and readied themselves to carry it out to the idling SUV.

As they navigated carefully between the racks, Emily’s flashlight glinted off a glass display case that took up most of the right wall of the store.

“Hold on a second,” she said, lowering her end of the box to the ground. She walked over to the display case and played the light over the contents of the case, then along the back wall behind it.

“Excellent,” she called back to Rhiannon. “Guns. Lots of guns.”

The gun cases were all locked. Emily solved that particular problem with the butt of the Mossberg.

“Here, hold this,” she said as she handed Rhiannon her flashlight, the sound of the shattered glass still reverberating in their ears. “Keep it angled like this and be careful of the glass.” She used the butt of the shotgun to clear away the remaining broken shards of glass that still jutted from the surround of the case.

There was a selection of about twenty handguns to choose from. Each one had a small plaque beneath it that displayed the make and model. When Nathan had taught Emily how to shoot, she had used several handguns, but her favorite had been the
Glock 19. It was light enough for her to handle easily and held fifteen rounds of nine-millimeter ammunition.

She searched the glass-strewn case until she spotted the model she was looking for. Emily carefully picked up the pistol, shook off a couple of pieces of broken glass, and gave it a quick once-over. The magazine was missing, but she’d probably find that in the plastic case that came with the weapon.

She was about to start looking for the Glock’s case when another pistol caught her eye. She picked up the little revolver and placed it next to the Glock on the counter behind the gun case.

She found both pistols’ protective cases in a drawer beneath the gun display. She added gun oil and a couple of cleaning kits and a shoulder rig for the Glock along with a leather belt holster for the little revolver. Adjacent to the display case were shelves of ammunition. She pulled several boxes of ammo for each of the guns and added them to the clothing and pistols, then went back and grabbed four boxes of shells for the shotgun.

It took two trips to carry their new “purchases” to the waiting vehicle. They hefted the overflowing container up into the cargo space of the Durango, sliding it in between the remainder of their food and Emily’s bike.

“Brrrrrrr!” Both girls were shivering as they climbed back into their seats, glad to be out of the biting cold. Emily cranked the heater back up.

In the thirty minutes or so their shopping trip had taken to complete, a layer of white fluffy snow had covered almost everything, completely transforming the image of the town from empty frontier to classic Christmas card. Emily was surprised at how comforting it was. With the layer of white covering everything, it was easy to think of each of these businesses and homes
as containing families huddled around the fire, talking and laughing, safe and warm.

Emily glanced at the digital clock on the dashboard; it read 3:18. Still a couple of hours of light left but with the snow reducing visibility, it was probably better if they tried to find the university as quickly as possible.

Jacob had told Emily that it would be a mistake to try to make the final leg of the trip in the Durango. “It just won’t be capable of making it,” he had explained. “The engine isn’t designed to take the kind of gasoline you’ll need, and if it gets cold enough, it’ll freeze in the lines and you along with it.”

He had told her she needed to find his department at the university. “Look for the Geophysical Institute building. We have a couple of Sno-Cats that will be better suited to the terrain.”

When she had expressed her concern about how she was supposed to drive this new vehicle, Jacob had told her not to worry. “If you figured out how to drive the Durango, you shouldn’t have a problem.”

Emily wasn’t sure she agreed with him, but he had been right about most things so far.

“Okay, young lady, buckle up,” she said and carefully edged the SUV out onto the snow-covered road.

They spent the night on the second floor of the Geophysical Institute building, serenaded by a storm that, come morning, had added a fresh layer of snow several inches deep, completely covering the SUV they had left parked on the narrow road outside the building.

Jacob had told Emily that she would find the Sno-Cat in a storage facility on the north side of the Geo-Phys building, so,
after breakfast—soup they found in the second-floor lounge—they threw on their cold-weather gear and headed out, descending down to ground level. Rhiannon found a fire escape that led them out to the rear of the building, but when Emily pushed down on the bar to open it, the door would not budge. She tried again, this time leaning her shoulder into it, and she felt the door give a little, then a little more as she bumped her shoulder hard against it.

Sunlight streamed in through the gap along with a large clump of snow that fell with a splat onto the floor.

Well, that explained the problem with opening the door. A drift of snow, at least four feet high, had piled against the outer door. She thumped the flat of her arm against the door, each time she hit it, the door budged a little bit more until there was just enough room for them to kick the snow away and squeeze through.

The early morning sun bounced painfully off the top layer of snow, blinding them both momentarily as they stepped from the darkness of the corridor into the open daylight.

Thor was off in a heartbeat, leaping like a fox through the snow that came up to his belly.

Emily, her hand pressed against her forehead to shade her eyes, scanned the field of white for any indication of the building that Jacob had talked about.

At the top of an embankment about three hundred feet or so away, past several mounds of snow that were probably buried cars, Emily saw a large building, its roof heavy with snow and its white sides blending almost seamlessly into the surrounding scenery.

Parked outside the entrance were several large dump trucks.

“I think that’s where we need to go,” she said to Rhiannon. The girl looked like an Eskimo bundled up in her thermal trousers
and parka, her warm breath condensing in the frigid air like smoke from a baby dragon.

“’Kay.” Another puff of white filled the air.

The pair, flanked by Thor, trudged their way toward the building, the fresh powder crackling and crunching beneath their boots.