Escape The Dark (Book 3): Into The Ruins

by Fawkes, K. M.

  “What difference does this place make?”

  “It was raided,” she said. “Someone did the raiding. And someone sprayed those awful messages on the walls. That means there’s someone around here doing those things, Adam. And the closest city to here—”

  “Is San Francisco,” he realized. “You think whoever hit this place is based in San Francisco?”

  “I think that makes sense, yeah,” she said. “I think that’s what’s most likely. And if that’s the case, do you really think we should go there?”

  “I don’t know,” he said. “It could be that we’re just talking about one or two people, as opposed to a whole group. We don’t want to cut ourselves off from what could be the only resources for miles just because we got spooked by some graffiti.”

  “I know,” she agreed. “I know we can’t just hide from everything that seems threatening. But the idea of going into a big city right now…I don’t know, Adam. It just doesn’t seem that wise to me.”

  Adam sat down at the solitary desk and stared up at the map. What Ella was saying did make sense. He too had felt some hesitation about the prospect of approaching the city. But where else could they go?

  And if he was honest with himself, he had to admit that he had another motive for wanting to return to San Francisco. One that wasn’t altogether rational. He wanted to return to his home. There was every possibility it had managed to avoid being raided, and he wanted the chance to see some of his old possessions. He hadn’t realized, when he was leaving home for the first time all those weeks ago, which things he would most miss. He longed for his warmest pullover hoodie and a few pairs of clean, dry socks. And he wanted some of his old photos, pictures of his mother and of Cody. Reminders of happier times, before they had been lost forever.

  But those things weren’t reason enough to return to San Francisco. Not if there was danger there. And Ella had a point. Whoever had looted and defaced this warehouse had to be located nearby. This place had clearly been full of ramen at some point not too long ago, and now it was empty. Whoever the raiders were, they had come back again and again.

  “Okay,” he said, looking up at her. “I’m open to other ideas. What have you got?”

  Chapter 5

  Ella approached the map and examined it carefully for a few minutes.

  “What are you looking for?” Adam asked.

  She didn’t answer, just shook her head slightly.

  Adam frowned. He didn’t like not knowing what she was thinking. It made him uneasy, and he couldn’t help wishing she would share her thought process so that he could weigh in. He didn’t like the idea of her getting attached to any plan they hadn’t made together. That could lead to conflict between them, which was the last thing either of them needed.

  Still, maybe he was being too sensitive. It wouldn’t have surprised him if he was. After all, every instance of interpersonal conflict he’d been near or involved in since boarding Cody’s yacht had ended in violence and death. No wonder it was hard for him to face the possibility of a disagreement.

  The last thing in the world he wanted was for his newfound partnership with Ella to go off the rails. If things turned sour between them, if this friendship fell to violence, it would either mean his own death…or her death at his hands.

  He couldn’t let that happen.

  “Look,” Ella said, breaking the silence. She tapped something on the map. “Here.”

  Adam got up from the desk and crossed to her side. “Napa Bay?”

  “It’s only about thirty-five miles from here. It’s closer than San Francisco. We could make that walk in a couple of days.”

  “Okay, but…Napa Bay?”

  “What’s wrong with it?”

  “It’s just a really tiny town, isn’t it?” he asked.

  “Have you been there?”

  “No. But if it’s so small, it’s hard to imagine being able to conceal ourselves. If anyone’s already there, odds are they’re going to find us,” he said. “And you were worried that whoever raided this warehouse might be in San Francisco, because it’s close—but Napa Bay is even closer, so it’s just as likely that the raiders are there.” He squinted at the map. “Besides, there’s nothing in Napa Bay, is there? There definitely isn’t a sporting goods store.”

  “There’s a grocery store.”

  “Okay, but you were the one who said a grocery store wouldn’t be a good place to hole up. You said it would be the first place looters would hit. And we know there are looters somewhere nearby.” He shook his head. She seemed to be changing her tune pretty rapidly about a lot of things she had initially said, and he was surprised. Everything they’d previously agreed on that had made San Francisco a poor choice applied to Napa Bay too. Why did Ella suddenly want to go there? What had changed her mind?

  It’s got to be personal, he thought.

  “What’s in Napa Bay?” he asked her.

  She looked up at him, an expression of guilt on her face. “What?”

  “You didn’t want to go to San Francisco, but now you want to go to Napa Bay,” he said. “Why? What makes it different?”

  “It’s a smaller town,” she said, avoiding his gaze.

  “That doesn’t matter,” he said. “People are dead everywhere. I’m sure San Francisco is a ghost town by now. Overcrowding isn’t going to be an issue.”

  “We don’t know that.”

  “What aren’t you telling me, Ella?” he asked. “I know there’s something.”

  She sighed. “It’s my sister.”

  “What?”

  “My sister lives in Napa Bay.” She tapped the map again. “With her husband and her son.”

  “I didn’t know you had a sister,” Adam said.

  “Yeah,” Ella said. “I guess it never came up.”

  “I told you about my mother and stepfather,” he reminded her. “I told you about the family I had lost to the virus. I would have thought you would have said something then.”

  “I don’t usually talk about her,” Ella said.

  “Well, that sounds ominous.”

  “It’s not like that. It’s just…it’s complicated. We haven’t always had the best relationship. I haven’t talked to her in some time.”

  “I didn’t have the best relationship with my mother, either,” Adam pointed out. “But when the virus hit, when I knew she wasn’t going to make it…I don’t know. It was like none of that really mattered anymore.”

  “That’s exactly it,” Ella said. “With everything that’s happened, it’s like the drama between me and my sister just doesn’t matter. I want to know if she’s okay. I want to see her and her family—my brother-in-law and my nephew.”

  “I guess I can understand that,” Adam said slowly.

  “I never knew what happened to my sister, though,” she said. “I don’t know if she and her family survived the virus or not.”

  “So you want to go to Napa Bay to check on them?”

  “Is that so wrong?” she asked. “Wouldn’t you want to do the same thing?”

  Adam hesitated. He couldn’t deny that he would have wanted to race to the side of any family he might have left, if he thought there was a chance they might be alive. And finding themselves only a few days’ journey from Napa Bay must have felt almost like fate to Ella. Of course she would want to travel in that direction. No, he couldn’t blame her.

  And yet…could he trust her impulse? She hadn’t spoken to her sister in years, she’d said. She hadn’t even mentioned her sister’s existence to him before. It wasn’t as though they’d been confidants back on the island, exactly…but they had told each other things. Personal things. Ella had told Adam about how Kathryn Birkin had sabotaged her chances of attending college. That was an intense and personal story. And yet she hadn’t mentioned having a sister?

  What had happened between Ella and her sister that had made Ella so reluctant to talk about her?

  And how could Adam trust that this was a person he wanted to find, t
o get to know?

  He trusted Ella. That trust was invaluable, after what had happened on the island. Inviting two new people—and a child—into their group carried all kinds of risks.

  And it didn’t help matters that Ella wasn’t being very forthcoming about the situation. He had felt almost as though she was trying to avoid telling him the real reason she wanted to go to Napa Bay. That might have been just because she was afraid he would think it was silly or misguided…but it might have been something more.

  “I don’t know if this is a good idea,” he said.

  Now she looked up at him. “What do you mean?”

  “I’m saying…” He took a breath. This would be the first conflict they’d faced, and it made him nervous, but it had to be said. “I’m saying I can’t just follow you to Napa Bay on that tiny bit of information.”

  “Tiny bit? I told you everything. My sister is there. I want to know if she’s okay. What more do you need to know?”

  “That isn’t everything,” he said. “You know it isn’t. Why haven’t you mentioned a sister before now?”

  “I told you, it just never came up,” she said. “We haven’t actually known each other that long, Adam. I’m guessing there are a lot of things you’ve just never happened to discuss with me, too.”

  “I don’t think there are, really,” he said. “You know I was an actor. You know I’m an addict. You know about my family and what happened to them. What else is there?” But as he said it, he felt a pang of dishonesty. He hadn’t actually told her everything. He had never told her the full story of what had happened on the yacht, what had happened to Cody and Artem and Sara.

  Was her story with her sister something like that? Was that why she was reluctant to give him any more information?

  But no. It couldn’t be, could it? Ella had stopped speaking to her sister well before the nanovirus had swept the world. Whatever had happened between them couldn’t have anything to do with the bots.

  “How come you don’t you speak to your sister?” he asked. “What happened between the two of you?”

  “Just, you know,” she muttered. “Family stuff.”

  “Family stuff like what?”

  She looked exceedingly uncomfortable. “I know you know how it is,” she said. “Sometimes you can’t get along with your family.”

  “Yeah, but you know why I couldn’t get along with my family,” he said. “My mother used me in order to achieve her own financial goals. She got rich off my hard work. That’s why we didn’t speak. Why don’t you speak to your sister?”

  “I really don’t like to talk about it,” Ella said.

  “Then you can’t possibly expect me to follow you to her house,” Adam said. “Come on. You have to realize how shady this is.”

  “I thought you trusted me,” Ella said.

  “I do. I trust you. That doesn’t extend to people I don’t even know, and it definitely doesn’t extend to people you have mysterious conflicts with.”

  “Adam, I just…”

  “Look,” he said. “We’re in a survival situation. We haven’t known each other for a long time, it’s true, but we’re supposed to be a team, right? We’re leaning on each other to stay alive here.”

  “That’s true,” she admitted.

  “So I need you to tell me everything. Even if it’s uncomfortable. I need to have all the information.”

  “If I tell you,” she said, “will you come with me to Napa Bay?”

  Adam hesitated. It was difficult to commit to that without hearing her story first. But at the end of the day, he did trust Ella. He had been growing concerned about the lack of communication between them, but here she was agreeing to open up and tell him the story.

  “All right,” he said. “Tell me what happened between you and your sister, and then I’ll come to Napa Bay with you.”

  “I’ll tell you on the way,” she said.

  “No, tell me now.”

  “I don’t think we should hang around here,” Ella said. “Now that we’re rested, I think we should get moving.”

  “Whoever raided this place isn’t going to come back,” Adam said. “It’s empty now. They’ve gotten everything.”

  “I’m not worried about them,” Ella said. “I just think a warehouse like this is a target for anybody who’s looking for food or supplies. It was for us. And if someone comes along and finds us here, we have both food and supplies and we don’t know what they’ll be willing to do to take them for themselves.”

  Adam nodded. “Good point. All right. Tell me on the road.”

  Ella zipped the duffel bag closed and hefted it up onto her back. “Do you suppose there’s any way we could take some of the water from the water cooler with us?” she asked. “We don’t know when we’ll find a good source of drinking water again.”

  “I checked for closed bottles in the kitchen,” Adam said. “There was nothing save for those cups. We could take a couple of them, I guess, but I don’t think it would make much of a difference.”

  “No, I guess not,” Ella agreed. “Is there anything else?”

  “We should search the office before we go,” Adam said. He opened the bottom drawer of the desk, even though he had already checked it. Better to be sure.

  Ella rummaged through a file cabinet. “Hey!”

  “What is it?”

  “There’s a sports bottle in here.” She held up a plastic water bottle of the sort Adam had seen runners carry. “We can fill this up.”

  “Oh, perfect.”

  They made their way back to the kitchen and filled the bottle. Then Adam and Ella each took a long drink and filled the bottle again.

  “Can I carry the bag for a while?” Adam asked as Ella screwed the top onto the bottle. “It must be heavy with all those cans in there.”

  She handed it over with no argument. Adam was surprised by the weight—it was heavier than he’d thought. Which meant that Ella was stronger than he’d thought, given that she’d been carrying it.

  He really needed to learn to stop underestimating her.

  She led the way out of the warehouse and back to the highway. Adam followed, moving carefully through the long, overgrown grass. Even though the discovery of an animal lurking around his ankles was significantly less frightening than anything that had happened to him in weeks, he wasn’t in the mood to be startled.

  He really hoped Ella knew what she was doing.

  He really hoped he knew what he was doing, following her.

  Was it a mistake? Should he have let her go off on her own? Just because she was determined to go to Napa Bay didn’t mean he had to go there.

  But I told her we were a team. I asked her to be on my team. That goes both ways. If I want her to trust me with the truth about her sister, I have to be worthy of her trust.

  Besides, he didn’t like the idea of Ella off on her own. Did that count as underestimating her? He didn’t think so. He knew that she had a gun, and he knew she was a good shot. She would be able to defend herself if she had to. But it was probably a bad idea for either of them to be out in this new world by themselves. They had no idea what they might be facing. It was important to have someone to watch your back.

  He wouldn’t be able to live with himself if he abandoned Ella. The shame of it would attach itself to his soul, just as Cody’s death had.

  Still, it was hard to turn left instead of right when they came to the highway, to walk back in the direction they had come. It felt like giving up ground. It felt like they were regressing.

  Don’t overthink it, he told himself firmly. You didn’t come that far last night. They would be back to their starting point in no time, and Adam knew he would feel better when they were on fresh ground, no longer backtracking.

  The sun was now high overhead, and Adam suspected it was late afternoon. They would have to try to settle into a regular sleep pattern at some point, he knew, just to maintain their sanity. But that could wait until they found a place they could stay and feel saf
e for a while.

  He just hoped that Napa Bay would turn out to be that place.

  Chapter 6

  The walk was quiet at first. Adam didn’t want to put pressure on Ella to tell her story. He would have to hear it at some point, but she had promised she would tell him, and he knew it was difficult for her to open up about this, for whatever reason. He wanted to respect that.

  Instead he tried to focus on their surroundings. Was there anything edible on the side of the road? He had to admit, as he scanned the vegetation around them, that his knowledge was embarrassingly meager. Here was an oak tree, the ground beneath it littered with acorns. Could you eat acorns? They were seeds, and Adam knew seeds were often edible…but he wasn’t sure.

  He was also alert for the sound of water. If they could find a river, he knew, it would be like finding a gold mine. He wasn’t sure if the water would be clean enough to drink—but they could build a fire, couldn’t they? They could boil it. Wasn’t that what people did?

  It was beginning to occur to him just how sheltered he had been since the nanovirus had taken hold. On Cody’s yacht, they had had a water distiller that had kept them from ever needing to worry. The Santa Joaquina had been equipped with a filtration system that had made the tap water reliably safe to drink. But what were they going to do for water now that they were on their own on the mainland?

  He had no idea.

  Thinking about food and water had been a bad idea, he realized. His stomach was starting to rumble, and his mouth felt dry and tacky despite his earlier drink. They had supplies in the duffel bag, but Adam knew how important it was to ration. He didn’t want to stop and indulge himself when they had only been walking for about twenty minutes.

  He needed a distraction.

  And as little as he liked the idea of putting pressure on Ella to talk about her past, it was something they would have to do.

  “Tell me about your sister,” he said.

  She sighed. “Yeah, I know. Okay. I will. But it’s just…it’s kind of a long story…”

  “We’ve got time,” he pointed out. “We’re just going to be walking all day anyway.”