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

luck showed its face on the last one, though.

We left the staircase and pulled the heavy door open, entering the long hallway with its brightly colored carpet. Midway down we spotted what we hadn’t expected to find—a maid’s cart filled with linens stacked neatly on the top, and cleaning supplies beneath it on the bottom shelf. It stood halfway inside the room, the door blocked from closing because of it. I’d given Peter the gun down on the main floor, and he raised it just slightly as we quietly made our way to the room. As we neared it I caught sight of a white-shoed foot, the remains of a young woman’s body attached to it lying face down inside. Certainly no one could be in the room, unless months ago they’d worn a gas mask. But the open door was a welcome break. We entered cautiously anyway.

“It’s abandoned,” I whispered. Why did I whisper? We were searching for a survivor. Obviously there wouldn’t be one there, living with a rotted corpse as a door stop, but against all odds, if there were, wouldn’t we want to announce our presence, using a normal tone of voice?

The curtains were drawn closed at the far end of the suite. Peter walked quickly across the room and opened them, letting a burst of welcome light from the afternoon sun flood in. A TV on the wall to the left. Beneath it a writing desk, and beside it a mini-refrigerator with the door open. The king-size bed was unmade. Luggage and a few articles of clothing hanging inside the tiny closet on our right.

Peter peered left and right as he returned to my side, the shotgun lowered, now. He put a finger to his lips, raising an eyebrow, and then he pointed to the bathroom door. I took a step backward, my right foot scraping the skull of the maid as I did. My stomach turned a somersault.

He carefully turned the knob and pushed the door inward a little, and then lifted the gun as he used a foot to push it fully open. He stood immobile for a few seconds, and then cautiously entered, using the barrel of the gun to whisk the shower curtain along the chrome bar holding it.

“Nothing,” he said, and then he turned to me. “Hopeless.” He sighed and set the gun aside in the narrow space next to the maid’s cart.

“Go check the frig. Maybe…”

It was nearly imperceptible, the noise that overlapped his voice. A tiny millisecond of a clunk from somewhere out in the hall. A shoe, perhaps, that met a wall? Something dropped? I started, my eyes popping open in surprise. Peter reacted immediately, grabbing the gun and rushing back out into the hallway. He raised it, pointing toward the inland-facing end of the corridor.

“Hello? Anyone here?”

Victims and Monsters

No one answered. Would you?

It couldn’t have been a wayward rat; the noise wasn’t anything like clawing. Whatever caused the sound walked upright, I hoped. Whatever, or whoever, made the nearly imperceptible noise had most certainly, it semed reasonable to me, come to this floor several, or a hundred times, and most importantly was hiding from the intruders right now.

We had the gun. What might him or her or them possess, and before Peter could react—would that person leap out of a room and kill him? And then kill me?

“Come out,” Peter called into the emptiness in front of us. “We won’t hurt you. We’re just looking for survivors. Show yourself.”

Neither of us had noticed it when we’d walked down the hall a few moments ago. The last room near the window. A brick sat against the cracked door, then carelessly shoved outward to allow the door to close, and the lock engage, and the resulting noise that followed the action when Peter and I were inside the room across the hall. Whoever was inside that room was probably scared to death, and I wondered again if that person had a gun. A child? A group of children holed up in the hotel room, frightened by the slightest noise? Armed and ready to shoot anyone over ten that came to…or just one soul wanting to be left alone for the rest of their life?

I eased past Peter, walked to the room, and then knocked.

“Please open the door. We won’t harm you, I promise.”

Trust could get you killed in this new world order, but I prayed that my suspicions were correct. Someone was hiding, and that someone was merely frightened, and that whoever it was would finally break down and show themself. Out of the corner of my eye I could see Peter shaking his head slowly, motioning with the raised gun to get out of the way. Instead, I knocked softly on the door once again. A few seconds passed. The knob turned slowly, and then the door swung inward an inch or two. An eye and a cheek appeared, strands of blonde, stringy hair partially covering the edge of the eye. A woman, though what age she might be I couldn’t tell. She didn’t say anything at first, but her eye moved quickly up and down as she scanned the unwelcome guest standing inches away.

“Hello,” I said as gently as I could. “Please don’t be frightened. I swear we mean you no harm. My friend and I have just come from up north, looking for other survivors.” I saw her eye shift rapidly to my left, but Peter stood out of range of her sight.

“Leave me alone.” The woman began to close the door. I stopped it with my foot.

“Wait! Please.”

The pressure on the door eased, and long seconds passed until the door swung inward a tiny bit. I pushed it in, and nearly gasped when I saw her. She had stepped backward three or four steps, brandishing a knife that would have made Munster swoon with envy.

“That’s far enough,” she uttered in a cracked and nervous voice. “I’ll use it.” She raised the knife straight out. I extended my hands toward her, trying to calm her.

“It’s okay. We’re as confused about all of this as you are. My friend and I are glad we found you.”

As I spoke I took her in. An inch or two shorter than me. Mottled hair, that from the looks of it, hadn’t been washed since the world stopped. Her shoulders were narrow, barely supporting a light green shift that was spotted, and was torn at the hem above her knees. Her frame was thin to the point that it looked emaciated. She wore no shoes, and her feet showed that she had obviously left the safety of her prison to walk many miles, many times over the course of months that had dragged by. Altogether, she had the look of a beaten animal that hadn’t had a decent meal—and certainly not a bath—since it was abandoned and left to die by its heartless owner. In full view, now, I gauged her age to be late twenties. Left alone, she would soon enough look like a sixty year-old hag.

Peter by then had shown himself in the hall, just outside the door, the shotgun raised somewhat, not high enough, though, to threaten. She reacted immediately by raising the knife straight out and going into a crouch. Useless if Peter decided to raise the gun and pull the trigger. I turned to him.

“Put it down! Can’t you see she’s frightened out of her wits?”

He hesitated as he sized her up, but finally lowered the gun. He must have seen that even if she’d wanted to, she probably didn’t possess the strength to defend herself, let alone attack. Still, she remained crouched, the knife extended, her hand shaking. I turned back to face her, stepping between her and Peter, raising my hands in a friendly gesture.

“You’re safe. Peter won’t harm you. We’re a little frightened too, that’s all.”

She seemed to consider this, but remained in her defense mode for several more seconds. I tried to smile, to reassure her that I’d spoken the truth. She shook ever more violently nonetheless, but suddenly dropped her face, and then let the knife fall to the carpet. She took a step backward, leaned against the wall, and then slid onto her rear, covering her eyes, crying in gulps.

I rushed to her. I could only imagine the terrors she had endured being all alone. What had this woman seen these past months? I placed my hands on hers and squeezed gently.

“You’re with friends. You’re safe. Can you tell me your name?”

“Denise.”

Good. She heaved a breath, but appeared to calm herself a little.

“Hi Denise. My name is Amelia, and this is my friend Peter. Like I said, we came from Marysville up north to see if anyone other than us had survived. It’s so horrifying what happened. Are you from San Diego? Have you seen others who made it? How did you come to this hotel?”

Denise’s face went blank for a second as she tried to put the questions I posed in some order and context, I supposed. Her shaking settled, and then pushing strands of unkempt hair away from her face, she took in a huge breath, and began her tragic narrative.

“I was here with my boyfriend when it happened…Oh God, what was it? Everyone just dropped! The lights flickered, and then died for a few seconds, and then came back on. But they were all dead. Mason, too. We were in the cafeteria. It was near dinnertime. He stiffened as though he’d been hit by a lightning bolt, and then tumbled out of his chair!”

Denise broke down into deep sobs at that point. I could almost see the scene she had been describing. The shock of it. Peter laid the gun aside, and knelt on one knee beside us.

“Let’s get her onto that chair. Try to stand, Denise. That’s it.”

We situated her as carefully as we could into the chair beneath the window, Peter gazing down into her plaintive face, me on my knees in front of her.

“Go back and close the door!” she suddenly blurted.

“Why? Everyone’s dead,” I replied.

“No they’re not! They showed up here not long after it happened, and they return every now and then. Sometimes two or three times a week! I can hear them when they come!”

“The clouds?”

“No. Yes, them too. They haven't returned for a long time, though. I locked the door. I was so scared, but when the electricity finally went out a few days after the bomb dropped, I had to put the brick by it. I had to go find food and water. I was so thirsty, and nothing was left in the refrigerator. I had to leave, and I knew that if I didn’t leave a crack in the door I’d never get back in!”

“We don’t think it was a bomb,” Peter said.

“Then what was it?”

“We don’t know for certain, but if it had been a nuclear bomb, none of us would have survived. We saw the invaders weeks ago. It was something they did selectively is all we can figure out. They spoke to one or two of our group back home, but they didn’t say why they’d come, or why they did what they did. You’ve seen them, right?”

“Yes. Oh