She did not think she would have much of a problem finding shelter on her trek north; there would be so many empty—
hopefully
empty, she amended—buildings between here and her destination in Alaska that she could use to hole-up for the night. Her biggest problem, the one she had no real idea how to overcome, was how she was going to transport all of this stuff on her bike? So caught up in the minutia of planning her trip as she rode, Emily soon found herself just a block away from the paper having travelled the majority of the distance on autopilot.
She pulled up out-front of the building and set her bike down in her usual spot. She instinctively went to lock it but decided against it; she didn't think it risked getting lifted any time soon. It was also doubtful she was going to need the bergen just yet either, so she swung it off her shoulders and hung it by its straps from the seat of the bike.
The door to the
Tribune’s
offices was unlocked.
Thank God for that
, she thought as she pushed through the set of revolving doors and stepped into the deserted foyer.
The place smelled musty, as though it had been deserted for years; like an old, empty, library. She supposed that was what the place was now. Emily very much doubted there would be any more news coming out of this building ever again. That realization struck a poignant note of discord within her; the paper had been her entire world for so long she hadn't really given any thought to its passing. It was almost as painful for her as the loss of her family and friends, more so really, as the paper represented so much more than any individual could, it was an integral part of civilization as a whole. Without it, who would write this world's epitaph?
Jesus, when had she decided to start waxing so lyrical?
"Hello," Emily called, hoping that she might here Sven or Frank reply. Her voice echoed through the once bustling reception area. There was no answer to her greeting so she began to make her way to the stairs leading up to the second floor and the secure storage area where the paper kept all the expensive gizmos it loaned out to its reporters.
The staircase was one of those circular affairs, winding up to the second floor like a corkscrew. Made from ornate wrought iron, it was easily wide enough to accommodate four people standing abreast of each other and must have cost a small fortune to have built and installed. Emily had always thought it was quite beautiful, but as the metallic echoes of her feet rang around the empty building she began to feel a sense of unease nibble at her mind and a cold rivulet of sweat roll down the small of her back.
Paranoia came as part of the territory for every reporter Emily had known; she'd received enough threats over the years from the targets of her stories to know a little suspicion was actually a healthy thing. How did that old saw go?
Just because you are paranoid doesn't mean they're not out to get you, right
? And after everything she'd witnessed and experienced over the last few days, well, a hefty dose of suspicion might just be what was needed to keep her alive.
The top of the stairs opened out on to the second floor landing and a small waiting area. A row of comfortable looking seats where visitors could look out through the glass windows overlooking the street lined one wall. At least that was the idea, but since Emily had worked for the paper, the windows had always been too grimy to see much of anything. An office lined corridor led away from the landing; this was where the editors had their suite of office and also where the main meeting room and the publisher's office could be found.
The security locker was in the Editor in Chief's office, the last office on the right, almost at the end of the hallway. For the entire time Emily worked at the paper she had only actually been ‘upstairs’—as anyone who wasn't a member of senior staff called the second floor—three times; once for her initial interview and the other times for staff meetings. It wasn’t a place a staff reporter ever felt comfortable visiting. If you found yourself on that floor, it usually meant you’d been summoned by the editors, which in-turn meant you had probably screwed up.
Emily padded her way down the corridor. She found the door she was looking for at the end. A brass plaque fixed to the door had two lines of text embossed on it:
JUSTINE GOLDBLOOM
and below that
EDITOR IN CHIEF
.
Justine was—had been—a great editor and boss. She kept out of the way of her reporters for the most part, giving them just enough freedom to feel like they weren't chained to their desks, but she was always willing to get down in the trenches with the rest of the staff if the need ever arose. Justine had started out as a stringer with the
Tribune
thirty-odd years before Emily had arrived, clawing her way up to the top. Emily regarded her very highly. She had managed to keep her femininity intact while still commanding the respect of both her male and female staff. That hadn't made Justine a pushover by anyone's measure, she was still more than capable of busting your balls if the transgression called for it.
Tough but fair; that was Justine. She would miss her.
Emily pushed down on the door handle and stepped into Justine’s office. A large mahogany desk occupied the center of the room and three matching mahogany bookcases, filled with old copies of the
Tribune
and reference books, sat
off to one side. On the wall behind the desk, Justine had framed and hung some of the awards she had won over the years. A cubby room sat adjacent to the main office area, set back slightly off to the right. This was where Justine kept the security cupboard and where Emily hoped she would find the sat-phones.
The cupboard was far less imposing than she had imagined it was going to be. In fact, it was just a large metal storage cabinet with a tough looking padlock looped through the handles to make sure no one walked off with the cabinet’s contents. Emily gave the padlock an experimental wiggle just to make sure it was locked; it was.
“
Great,” she sighed.
She felt around the top of the cabinet to see if the key was there but found nothing but dust-bunnies. It wasn't pinned to the wall or anywhere else in the cubby that she could see so Emily moved back into the main office and began systematically searching Justine's desktop, and when that turned up nothing, she began rifling through the drawers.
No luck there either which meant she was going to have to resort to other, more primitive methods
She wished she had thought to bring the fire-ax she had used on the door to the apartment with the baby-monster. It would have made short work of the lock, but it was still sitting where she had dropped it outside the apartment that housed the monstrosity. The knife in her jacket pocket would surely snap in an instant if she used it to try to pry the doors apart, of that she was certain, and the cabinet's hinges were securely located behind the doors, safely out of reach of any pry-bar or screwdriver. Her only other option was to find something heavy, and try and bash the lock off.
There was a janitor's closet on the ground floor where the cleaning crew kept their brushes, mops and other equipment. If Emily was going to find anything capable of opening the cupboard it would likely be from there.
She left the office and retraced her steps back along the corridor and the stairs, heading down into the main news-desk area. As she opened the door into the newsroom, Emily was struck by a pungent, yet strangely familiar smell: ammonia! She stopped with one hand still holding the door ajar.
“Oh shit,” she hissed.
There was one of those things in there. The urge to turn and run was overwhelming, but the smell, while unmistakable in its cat-piss aroma, was nowhere near as strong as she had encountered in the enclosed space of the apartment, but it was definitely in the air, tickling at her nostrils like week old laundry.
Emily looked around the expanse of the newsroom. Everything was just as she remembered it. In fact, it looked like everyone had just left for the day, which, she supposed, they had;
never ever to return
, her mind sang to her. The rows of L-shaped desks, neatly lined up like soldiers on parade, still held paperwork and notes, there were even a couple of laptops exactly where their owners had left them, their monetary importance trumped by the need of whomever had owned them, to get to the safety of their homes or to be with someone they loved. The TV screens she watched the breaking newscast from Europe on, now showed nothing but gray and black dots of static.
A wild sensation overtook Emily. She was tired or being alone, tired of being afraid and even more tired of not knowing what the fuck was going on. It was time to take charge, to take back some control of her life. She pulled the kitchen knife from her coat pocket and stared at it for a second. If it came down to it, could she really stab whatever was in here with her?
"Fuck yes," she said aloud, and kicked the door closed behind her.
*
*
*
Emily moved over to the right side of the newsroom. Her sneakers squeaked against the vinyl-covered floor with each tentative step she took. She was tempted to slip them off, but the idea of having to make a rapid shoeless exit did not really hold much appeal for her.
The wall on her side of the room was pretty much clear of obstructions, except for a large photocopier and a table used for collating next to it. If she kept her back to the wall, she would have a clear view of each row of cubicles and still give herself some protection.
Emily inched her way along the wall, one hand flat against its cool surface, the other, the one with the knife, extended out in front of her to ward off any swift attacker. With each crab-like sidestep she forced her eyes to scan the dim recesses and shadows of the cubicles, watching for any movement or sudden explosion of motion. She'd seen enough horror movies in her life to know the threat always came when the character least expected it; no way was she going to fall for
that
trick.
She had just passed the midpoint of the room when the dim outline of a shape across the far side of the room caught her attention
.
It was impossible to tell what it was exactly, but Emily was familiar enough with the layout of the room to know that, whatever it was she was looking at, it hadn’t been in the room when she left the day of the red rain. It had been invisible to her while she was in the doorway, attached just out of sight to one of the large silver air-conditioning ducts that ran along the room’s ceiling and down the opposite wall. Emily stood motionless, her eyes locked on the indistinct shape, waiting to see if it would move. It was difficult to get a clear view of what it was exactly because of the deep shadows surrounding it. Just enough of it was visible to have caught her eye. If she had been focusing solely on the cubicles she would probably have walked right past it.
Emily took a tentative step forward. There was no sign of movement from the thing on the wall but she kept her arm extended out in front of her anyway, pointing the steel tip of the blade directly at the shape. If it leapt off the wall at her she was going to make damn sure it hit the knife first.
With each step closer to whatever this thing was Emily was able to make out a little more detail: it was about six-feet long and two-feet wide. The head—if you could call it that—was rounded, almost bullet shaped, while the body tapered off to a flat base at the opposite end. It’s skin glistened a pinkish-red, shot through with brighter red veins that crisscrossed over the entire length of it. As Emily took another step closer, she could see the veins periodically pulsing as some kind of liquid pumped along their length. The skin was translucent and she could make out the shadow of a darker shape inside periodically flexing and rotating. It kind of reminded her of an insect pupa or a chrysalis.
Emily’s feet caught on something lying on the floor. Her attention was so focused on the thing on the wall that she hadn't paid attention to where she was stepping and she went sprawling, her hand instinctively letting go of the knife and grabbing for the nearest desk to steady herself. She missed and instead struck the edge of the desk with her right forearm, sending a lightning bolt of pain shuddering up her arm and into her shoulder. Her mind registered the sharp edge of a desk flashing toward her and she willed her body to roll as she continued down. Her head barely missed the corner of the desk and instead hit something firm yet yielding. She let out a muted
Oomph
! as the rest of her body hit the floor, forcing the air from her lungs and sending another bolt of pain down her arm.
Confused, Emily’s mind tried to reorient itself to her sudden relocation from upright to horizontal. She pulled in a deep breath of air sure that she had cracked a rib when she fell and, knowing her luck, punctured a lung. She was going to drown in her own damn blood, she just knew it.
Goddamn it!
How could she have been so stupid not to look where she was walking?
She lay motionless on the floor for a few moments trying to regulate her breathing and slow her throbbing heart while she listened to the signals from her body. There was none of the telltale pain that she knew would come with a broken rib, no wet rattle of a deflated lung, just a sharp sting in her wrist and an even more painful, but thankfully dull, throb in her shoulder. Emily flexed her fingers a couple of times while she extended her damaged arm in a slow reaching movement; nothing broken either. She had been lucky this time. She raised the arm to eye level and examined the skin, it wasn't cut but already a dull looking patch of blue and brown was spreading from her wrist towards her elbow. It was going to develop into one hell of a bruise she was sure.
Emily craned her neck back over her shoulder trying to get a visual of the thing on the wall. It was still, thankfully, exactly where it had been before her little trip.
Emily used her good left arm to push herself to an upright position, careful to feel for any other signs she had broken something or otherwise hurt herself, but there was only the pain in her shoulder and wrist. Once she was in a sitting position and sure nothing else was damaged, she rolled over onto her knees, that way she would be able to use her left arm and the desk she had almost collided with to help pull herself back to her feet.