Dreams of Shadows - Patrick Sean Lee (ebook reader browser .TXT) 📗

of the Ladies Room inward, halting for a second, momentarily confused by the darkness. Black rooms always frightened me, this one no less than any other. I used the butt of the shotgun to smash the door closer, banging on it half a dozen times before it clattered free of its mooring. It sounded like World War III, and before I’d gotten two steps in, Peter came bursting around the corner.

“You okay?” Echo, echo.

“I couldn’t see.”

“Oh.” He stayed planted just inside, a few feet behind me as I walked to each stall, pushing the doors open. Each was empty, thank goodness, or bad fortune. It was Alien, wasn’t it? The little girl hiding in terror in an air duct? The sole survivor. Hiding this time in one of the stalls.

Not today.

I glanced over my shoulder at the dim image of Peter standing behind me. “You can go now. I’m fine.”

“If you don’t mind, I’ll stay. I can use one of these stalls down here.”

I wondered if he was joking.

“Peter! That’s gross! Go use the Men’s.” But he wasn’t joking, he was already in the first stall. I laid the shotgun against the modesty panel, closed the door, and quickly grabbed a handful of tissue and stuffed it in my ears. Funny. A simple, universal biological necessity clouded by convention.

Peter was long gone when I finished. I left to join him back in the lobby. Dining room first, and then off to the kitchen.

 

Hello?

 

I didn’t mention my embarrassment, but Peter was grinning when I rounded the corner.

“You look ten pounds lighter.”

“Ha ha. Just remember who’s holding the shotgun. Don’t get any funny ideas. Now, where’s the dining room?”

Here we were in an elegant hotel, looking for signs of life. A one-in-a-million shot at finding anyone, even if we searched every room on every floor—every door locked anyway. The idea was absurd, it hit me as I followed him through the lobby, unless we could access the public address system for the hotel and shout out, “Anyone home?” Dead system, out of the question. We might as well try building a rocket ship.

A modern hotel. An emergency city power failure. Sort of what happened…could this place have a generator the size of my old house in case of such an emergency? Even if it did, we’d still have to figure out how to start it up. It probably started on its own after the calamity anyway, and ran out of fuel long ago. Scratch that idea.

We wandered through the dining room—a sterile looking place if you discounted the presence of dead bodies and dried up food on the tables. Into a corridor leading to the kitchen.

I’m some kid or waiter or chef or wandering soul. Would I hang out here? Maybe, at least in the short term. After I’d raided the food lockers, would I find a room that I could get into to sleep off the meal of canned beans and fruit cocktail, or would I wander back out onto the street to search for some kindred spirit elsewhere? I flew in from Chicago or New York; landed just before the rest of the airliners came crashing to the earth in balls of flame. Somehow I found this place, absolutely confused and in despair. How long would I stay? Would I? Probably not. But then, where would I go?

Snake eyes. Seven-eleven. Give us a decent shot at finding the little girl in that air duct.

The massive kitchen was pretty much like the rest of the hotel; dark, with a dank odor that struck me the second Peter shoved the door inward. I don’t like darkness. Peter reached for a trash container just inside and shoved it against the open door, and then stepped farther in. I followed.

At first, the sound of skittering tiny claws on the concrete floor. Then a chorus of high-pitched screeches. Movement in the near darkness emanating from a spot on the floor ten feet in. Peter struck a match.

COCKROACHES! RATS! At our appearance the remainder scattered in every direction, a dozen of the rats abandoning the piles of bones they’d picked clean over the months, and were now gnawing on.

Why didn’t you kill THEM, invaders!

Instinctively, I raised the gun and pulled the trigger, aiming badly, but well enough to blow the carcass of some worker farther into kingdom come, along with the few creatures on it that hadn’t scurried away when we came in. The noise was deafening, and the force of the blast sent me flying backward onto my back.

The whole scene there was beyond disgusting, and the second I gained my senses, and Peter had rushed back to my side, I screamed.

“Get me out of here!”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah, I’m with you there! Get up. Give me your hand.”

He helped me to my feet, and we both darted out.

“Jesus,” I wailed, “I’m going to throw up!”

“Okay, okay. Give me the gun. God, you missed me by an inch! Pull it together, Amelia. Try to shake it off. We’re alive…they were just rats. We’re fine. Settle down.”

I let him pull the shotgun from my shaking hands, and then stumbled to a chair far away from any of the other grisly-looking bodies. Peter returned to the kitchen entrance and kicked the trashcan. The double acting door swung closed. He retraced his steps to my side.

“I hate this place, Peter. It’s cold and sterile, and if I’d been here when it happened, the first thing I’d have done would be to leave! Oh God, the rats!”

“Maybe you would have. On the other hand, at least here you would have had a room to go back to.”

“And how would I have gotten in? Blow the lock open with that gun? God, my shoulder aches!”

He scrunched his eyes and mouth in agreement. “Well, we’re here, and every other hotel or bar or restaurant will probably be the same.

“I’m hungry. Did you pack anything, or do I have to go back into the kitchen and find something canned? We’ll eat first, and then decide whether to leave, or search the floors one by one.”

“Just a bag of chips and some candy bars. I’m sorry. Don’t go back in there, we can eat the chips.”

“Chips aren’t food.” He stopped. “I’m going back in to find something that’ll fill our stomachs with nutrition. Wait here…and don’t shoot when I come back out.,” he said, laying the weapon against my thigh.

“Hurry. I don’t like being alone in this graveyard.”

He leaned over, placed his hands on my cheeks, and kissed me softly.

“I’ll be right back.” With that, he dashed out to the lobby, returning a few seconds later with a pen light, smiling. “Should have thought of finding this when we first came in.” He continued on without hesitation, back into the kitchen and the rats and cockroaches and decayed bodies, shoving the trashcan back into place as he entered.

I cringed watching his figure disappear, the feeble light bouncing left and right with each of his footsteps. I glanced around at the nothingness, regretting my Cupid idea once more. Maybe Charles didn’t want a mate. At least with Lashawna he’d indicated that. Certainly he’d never cast his eyes longingly at Cynthia. Or me. And as for Lashawna; just a serious case of puppylove?

I wondered what was going on back at the farm right then? Were Cyn and Charles and Munster weeding the garden, talking about Peter and I off on a dangerous adventure, all alone? Wondering what we were doing together? Conjecturing about our coming night together? Could Munster and Cynthia, maybe, have followed in his flashy sportscar, far enough behind so that we wouldn’t spot them tagging along? Or maybe they'd left after we did, smiling and laughing, and heading north?

I gazed out the long bank of windows at the gray-blue sky. What were the aliens up to? Had they seen us leave the farm? Did they care, even? They were out there somewhere, and Mari was with them. Perhaps. Or dead somewhere.

Mom and Daddy. The Horvats. Mrs. Ryan, my math teacher. Again and again images of all of them smiling and talking in the good days. The gone days.

Back to Lashawna. My head spun.

Hurry, Peter.

Five minutes that seemed like five hours passed. I trained my ears toward the opening, thoughts of Peter collapsed on the floor somewhere deep inside the room, bleeding. Ambushed by men like the ones Mari had blown away. But no, the shotgun blast would have scared them out of their wits. If anyone had been in that kitchen—so, so unlikely—they would have hightailed it out the back door in the confused seconds when we rocketed out the front.

Too long.

I rose and began to creep toward the open door, the gun raised, my finger pressing lightly on the trigger.

Easy, easy. Don’t freak and…

At the threshold, the comforting bounce of light, the absence of shouting or screaming announced the return of Peter. A few seconds later the outline of his body appeared, and then his face with the look of resignation and defeat.

“Empty. Nothing at all in the larders except a can of sauerkraut they must have missed. Or him, or her.”

“Larders? Like in plural?”

“Yes. Like in two. Perishables from the looks of the first one—refrigerated long ago. No rats inside, by the way. It was sealed tight as a drum. The other next door to it,” he said pointing back, “was for the imperishables and canned foods. Huge! The guests must have been served like kings and queens.”

“So some one or ones survived, like us,” I mused out loud.

“Looks that way, or else the rats packed it all out.”

“With a can opener or two.” I looked behind Peter as I said that. A tiny squeal and the reappearance of one of the disgusting rodents. Another right behind it, searching for what remained of the carcass.

“Let’s get out of here. This whole hotel,” I said turning away from the revolting scene behind him. I heard Peter’s footsteps behind me.

“Wait a second, Amelia. Someone raided the pantry here. Maybe whoever it was is still in the building. We should at least check the floors for…”

For what? A hundred more dead bodies, and a thousand locked rooms with ocean views?

“Maybe go to the roof,” he added after a pause.

I walked hurriedly to the front doors, not letting my eyes dwell on the dead lying around us, and there I stopped, considering his plan of action. I looked upward, past the open mezzanine to the industrial ceiling of stark silver, and then turned to Peter.

“Okay. We’re here. Lead the way.”

In truth, Peter was right, I knew. If we left this hotel and went to another, the scene would be the same. Just different dead bodies in different putrid clothes, and hoards of rats and cockroaches wherever foodstuffs had been kept. We’d investigate every floor, go to the roof if we could get there, and later find something unspoiled somewhere to eat. Our odds of finding someone alive were slim; worse, finding a woman closer to Charles’ age. A younger boy for Lashawna. Both being at least half-sane. I followed Peter in silence to the staircase and the floors above us.

Each floor was a carbon copy of the one beneath it, except for the numbers and positions of the fallen. Our