He paused at that, and I spun on him, finished with the games.
“Look, you brought me into the house when you could have left me out there to deal with Sally and Bruce. You then brought me to the kitchen for food—which I know for a fact goes against your orders. You obviously want something, and I want to know what it is. Who are Sally and Bruce? What do they want? Because I’ve already guessed that the story about the CEO is a lie. And I’ve guessed that if there was a CEO, he’s no longer with the living. My guess is that he’s the one buried in the front yard. That doesn’t bode well for me. Give me something I can use here, dude.”
He finally looked up at me, his face firm, his voice low.
“You’re right. About all of it. None of us worked with the guy that owned this house. Hell, we didn’t even know him. But he had a house, and that meant he had a lot of supplies. We were already here when everything went straight to hell. But these aren’t my people. Sally and Bruce—”
He stopped suddenly and his eyes flew to the door behind me, and I froze, my ears on high alert. There was someone there. I could tell from the creaking of the floorboards. And dammit, I had to start remembering to keep my ears on, because there were way too many people sneaking up on me lately.
And they were doing it at the worst possible time. Like when my new ally was finally going to give me the full story of what had happened here—and what I needed to look out for.
“You two are getting awfully cozy in there. I thought Sally said she was to be taken up to her room. This doesn’t look like her room,” a gruff voice said from behind us. “Why aren’t you following orders?”
Chapter 5
My new friend—whose name I still didn’t even know—froze at the sound of the voice, his gaze pinned to whoever was standing behind me.
My mind, meanwhile, was rapidly filling in some very important blanks. There was a doorway behind me, I remembered—but not the doorway into the rest of the house. No, that was to our left. This was a doorway that led toward the back of the house, if my guess was correct—the part of the house that I still hadn’t had a chance to explore.
This guy had come in through the back of the house—which wasn’t where Sally and Bruce had gone. Unless they had for some reason left through the front and come in through the back—insert some sort of crude joke here—that wasn’t them.
Which meant it was either some total stranger who had happened upon our hiding spot—unlikely—or it was the mysterious fourth member of the club. Jameson, according to my friend.
He who followed questions without asking. And the man who my new friend didn’t think much of.
And unfortunately, though this Jameson character might not ask questions about orders he was given, he was evidently completely capable of catching us by surprise. Because I’d been too concerned with asking questions, and had stopped listening to what was happening around me.
I was also willing to bet that Jameson was the sort of person who would tell Sally exactly what had happened—and what he might have heard us discussing. Which made him very, very dangerous.
My impromptu ally paused for a split second before answering, and I could practically see the thoughts rushing across his face as he considered and then discarded a number of plans—none of which, I guess, sounded good enough to get us the hell out of this mess. Because I wasn’t thinking that we could just sort of talk Jameson into failing to tell Sally and Bruce about this. I also wasn’t thinking that we could convince him that we weren’t doing anything wrong.
My co-conspirator had just been caught consorting with… well, if not the enemy, then certainly the very untrusted prisoner. And the tattletale of the group had discovered him. I didn’t think it was a reach to say that he was going to be in big, big trouble when Mom and Dad got home.
But it turned out that my ally had more moves—and a faster brain—than I’d expected.
He grabbed my arm, snarling, and swept his hand quickly across the counter, brushing both sandwiches right into the sink. He used the hand not holding my arm to shove both sandwiches into the garbage disposal, and then rounded on me.
I didn’t miss the fact that shoving the sandwiches into the garbage disposal effectively hid the fact that we’d been eating together. So I sort of already knew what his plan was when he started talking.
“I told you that you could have food when I was good and ready to bring it to you,” he muttered, still snarling, and looking pretty convincingly like he’d suddenly decided that we were arch enemies. The guy who’d been telling me a childhood memory was long gone.
In his place, I found a wild-eyed, shaggy-haired, and definitely very threatening criminal. It was amazing how quickly the change had happened, and a part of my brain filed it away for future use. Because change like that would be incredibly useful—if I could get it down.
But that could come later. Right now, I was too busy trying to figure out whether my new friend was faking it and putting on an act… or not. And that was really, really important.
Because if he was faking it, then he was doing a damn good job and might actually be a worthwhile ally.
If he wasn’t, then he obviously couldn’t be trusted at all.
Unfortunately, at the moment, I didn’t have much choice. Because the maybe-psycho had his fingers buried in my sleeve, pressing so hard into my skin that they would no doubt leave bruises.
His eyes—so dreamy only moments ago, and now looking more like murky, radioactive pond water—bore into the guy standing behind me, his face caught between annoyed and furious.
“Found her in here helping herself to our food,” he snapped. “Bitch thinks she can run around the place like she owns it. I was just giving her a piece of my mind when you got here. ‘Bout to take her up to her room. Unless you want to do it for me?”
Jameson snorted, but seemed to believe every word of it.
“I’m not taking on your chores, man. If you’ve got orders, you’d best follow them yourself. God only knows what Sally would do to us if she found us switching jobs. Personally, I don’t want to find out.”
“Then I suggest you stay out of our way,” the guy grabbing me answered.
I stared at him. That was… well, a bit of overkill, if you asked me. Jameson hadn’t actually been threatening him, so threatening him back seemed like an overreaction.
Then again, I’d never been part of a breaking-and-entering-and-shooting sort of gang. Maybe that was how they always talked to each other.
The guy I’d thought was my friend yanked me away from the counter and spun me around, then, and I had a moment to take in Jameson—a classic GI Joe type, buzzed haircut, enormous blue eyes making him look younger than he probably was, muscles bulging out of his shirt—before I was being hustled through the doorway Jameson had come through and toward a staircase I hadn’t even known existed.
“What the fuck?” I snapped, struggling against him and trying to regain control of both my arm and my momentum.
The guy shook me a bit, though, and leaned forward so that he was speaking right into my ear.
“Keep your mouth shut, if you know what’s good for you,” he muttered. “If they think you and I are getting cozy, it’ll be a problem for both of us. And believe me, Jameson will tell Sally every single thing I just said. He’ll tell her if he hears you say anything. And he’ll tell her if he thinks I’m being too easy on you. He might act like he doesn’t like her, but he might as well be trying to get in her pants with how much he caters to her. So keep your mouth shut and play along.”
Right. Well, when he put it that way, I could definitely see the logic. I’d already figured out that Jameson wasn’t to be trusted, and though I’d hoped my friend was just putting on an act, it was definitely reassuring to hear that confirmed.
Instead of saying anything, though, I sealed my mouth and tried to look like I was still intent on fighting him. As long as we were putting on a show, we might as well go all out.
“The safest place for y
ou, for right now, is in your room,” he continued quietly, marching me up the stairs and yanking me around every so often. “At least if you’re in there, they’ll assume that you’re controlled. They might not come looking for you. They might leave you alone for a bit longer.”
He paused in front of a door that had pink unicorns pasted all over it, and I stared at the unicorns—and then at him.
“What do you mean they might leave me alone?” I asked, something in my stomach freezing at the phrase. “What do you mean they won’t come looking for me?”
No, I’d never had people actively trying to kill me before. At least, not that I knew of. Unless you counted that cult from Turkey, who I assumed would have tried to kill me if they’d known about me. But the phrases he was using… sounded a whole lot like something someone would say if someone else was actively trying to kill you.
God, was I in even more trouble than I’d thought? Should I have told them that I knew more than I did, just so they’d have a reason to keep me alive? Should I have been working harder to figure out how the hell to get out of there? Was it too late to start working on it, now?
My ally leaned forward so that his nose was almost touching mine, his gaze intent on my own eyes.
“It means you’re not safe,” he said firmly. “It means that I don’t know why they’ve kept you alive this long, when they’ve killed everyone else they even thought they saw. And it means that I think you might be my ticket out of here. So, don’t worry. I’ll be standing guard right outside this door. I’m not letting you out of my sight until I know what our next step is. And maybe not then, either.”
He opened the door behind me, pushed me through it, and slammed it shut without any further explanation.
Chapter 6
I stared at the back of the door for a moment, too shocked to really take in the fact that I’d just been locked into a room. Instead, a wealth of questions were crowding my head. First off, the guy had evidently been faking the whole tough-guy routine—for Jameson’s benefit, no doubt. And from there, for Sally’s benefit, and maybe even Bruce’s.
And that part wasn’t too hard to figure out. He was obviously part of this gang, for better or for worse, regardless of how he’d come to join them. And as long as Sally was the head of the gang, it meant he had to do what she told him to.
Getting caught in the kitchen making nice with the prisoner? Definitely not a good thing. It would have made its way back to Sally almost immediately, and led to trouble for my friend.
Of course, it still could. Jameson would still tell her that he’d found us in there together, and though he’d have a reasonable explanation for it now, there was really no telling whether she’d buy it… or give my ally trouble over it.
Which led, I supposed, to his comment that I might be his way out of here. Yeah, still no freaking clue what that might mean. Because up to this point, I’d been doing a whole lot of nothing in the Escaping From the House department. Hell, I hadn’t even managed to steal food when I'd found my way to the kitchen.
Because at the end of the day, I was a computer hacker. Not a real-life spy, and certainly not a physical thief. Give me a computer and access to the internet and I could do pretty much anything I pleased. Take that computer away, and I was very close to useless.
Wait. That gave me a very big idea that I hadn’t even thought of before, and I dropped right onto the floor, my brain flying through the start of a plan.
Give me a computer and access to the internet and I could do pretty much anything. Including, I thought, figure out who else was out there—and what they might be doing. Where they might be. How I might get to them.
It could even tell me whether there was anything going on in this house that I could use, in terms of cameras, automatic sensors, alarms…
Screw this guy and the possibility of using him as an ally. If I could find a computer, I could probably get myself out of here before he even knew what was going on.
Yeah, there was a part of me that would feel bad about leaving him behind, with his dreamy eyes and his tousled hair and his intense expression. But that part was very, very small. I mean, he was still the guy who had just locked me into a room and was currently standing guard outside, making sure I didn’t get away.
So no, I wasn’t going to feel that bad about it if I could manage to get the hell out of here and he didn’t get to come.
I closed my eyes and frowned, trying to go through the house in my mind again, cataloging everything I knew about the place. Trying to figure out where the home office might be. Because whoever had owned this house was rich as hell and had apparently been the CEO of a major company. And that meant that the house almost definitely had a home office.
And in that office, I would definitely find a computer. Maybe even a big, nice desktop one that had enough memory to run something like a full home camera system. Something that could tell me not only who was in the house, but also where they were—and how I could get around them.
God, if this house had something like that set up in it, then I would be absolutely golden.
The only problem was breaking out of this room and getting to sneak around the house for long enough to find that room. Then having enough time there to do what I needed to do.
I got up and walked toward the window, letting my mind roam through the possibilities, and when I looked through the glass, I realized that the day had nearly gotten away from me. Dusk was falling already, the light fading as the sun itself dipped down to the horizon on its way to its nighttime resting place.
Which was perfect. Because there was no better time for escape than night. No better disguise than darkness.
But then, I realized something else. Darkness was getting ready to fall, and though it wasn’t dark yet, the shadows were growing long enough that people would have naturally started turning on their lights. Warding off the creeping blackness that was coming. People were creatures of habit, and they didn’t like the dark, and that held true everywhere.
And I didn’t see a single light on in any of these houses—or the buildings beyond them.
But then again, I hadn't really seen many non-dead people. Were there any alive people in those houses to turn the lights on?
But a wiser voice—one that had been paying better attention—told me that it wasn’t only about the lack of people around. A wiser voice reminded me that I hadn’t actually seen any lights since I’d returned to the city, and that I hadn’t seen anything that required electricity running. That voice even reminded me now that when I’d been in front of the refrigerator earlier, in the kitchen, it hadn’t even been cold.
It had, however, smelled terrible. Something that I’d blown right past in my utter need for food, of which I still hadn’t had any.
“Shit,” I muttered under my breath.
I turned, looked desperately for the light switch, and darted toward it.
When I reached it and flipped it up and down, though, there was nothing. Not even a glimmer. Not even that shattering sound it makes when you turn on a light and the bulb burns out.
There was no reaction at all.
And at that moment, I realized that of course there wasn’t any electricity. Society itself had been shut down for quite some time, now, and though the grid would have run on its own for a little while, it was never designed to be fully self-sufficient. Without people there to run them, the computers that handled such things would have turned themselves off. Probably gone into some sort of energy-saver mode.
Which was a laugh, considering.
There wouldn’t be any energy anymore. No more electricity. Probably no running water, either. Definitely no internet.
And definitely no access to a house-wide camera system hooked up to a magical computer in the CEO’s home office.
I sat down on the carpet, my heart thundering in my chest as that particular plan went right out the window. And then I noticed the room itself. I noticed the pink-and-yellow striped wallpaper and the matching qu
ilt on the bed. I noticed the posters that featured everything from sparkly bears to mermaids and fairies.
I noticed the white furniture. The miniature desk on one side of the room, balanced by the miniature dresser on the other. I noticed the stuffed animals on the bed… and the half-open closet, which gave me a peek of rather a lot of clothing, most of it pink or purple.
All of it about the right size to fit a ten-year-old kid.
And in that moment, I knew. This bedroom had belonged to the dead CEO’s daughter. He hadn’t lived here alone. He’d had a family. At least one kid, probably a wife, and who knew what else. A dog? A cat? A pony that they’d kept out back for the kid?
Had the gang downstairs killed them all? Were they all buried out there in the front yard? Or had the guy been the only one at home? Had his family died with the rest of society out there in the wide world, when the attack happened?
I gasped at the thought of a little girl spasming to death like the people I’d seen and heard on TV and on the radio in my uncle’s bunker—and that brought on another gasp.
Oh, God. My uncle. Simone. All the violence that had happened in that tiny room at the bottom of the staircase.
All the confusion. The shouting. The desperate need to get out.
I hadn’t really thought about it since it happened—mostly because I’d either been doing my damnedest to get out of there and to Ashland, or to get out of this damn house—but now it all came roaring back, the images too vivid for words.
Me holding Simone, trying desperately not to look at what was left of her face. Trying not to record what her head looked like—and knowing that it had been seared into my memory, and that I’d never be able to forget it.
My uncle charging me. Me throwing him against the wall. His head flying back against the hard surface, and that juicy clunk it had made. Was he even still alive? Would he ever recover from that? If he did, would he ever forgive me for needing to get the hell out of there?
Survival of The Fittest | Book 2 | Shallow Graves Page 3
