Summer's End, page 11
She looked left, right, and behind, but she didn’t see anyone. If someone was with her, she couldn’t see them, reinforcing the notion that the someone was gone.
Whether they were still around or not, it didn’t change the facts. Whoever it was had just helped her climb out by placing the broom handle above the hole.
Her mind went into analysis mode, working through the scene.
She’d been buried deep and unless someone had been tracking her and stayed close, they would not have known where she was under all that debris. Not unless they heard her scratching at the snow with the can opener or had seen the light from the crayon torch just beneath the surface. Either way, that’s when they took action with the broom.
Given the sudden halt to the tracks, a rope must have been used from above. It was the only explanation, other than some kind of ghost had walked to this spot and then flown away.
A rope would allow a quick descent to place the broom, then a fast retreat. If she was right, then this person was a friend, not a foe, only helping for a moment.
They weren’t looking to take her into custody or do her harm. Therefore, it wasn’t any of Frost’s men, that was for sure. Nor was it the Scabs. They would have stuck around for dinner.
Summer put her foot inside her helper’s prints in the snow. They were at least six inches longer. They belonged to a man. A big man.
“The Nomad,” she mumbled, wondering if he might still be around, hiding in the shadows somewhere, watching her.
She craned her neck up and cupped her hands around her mouth before adding volume to her words. “If you’re still here, mister, thank you!”
She waited for an answer, but none came.
He must have taken off. That’s why nobody knew who The Nomad was. He never stuck around after helping those in need.
She thought about it for a moment and realized his tactics made sense, assuming he wanted to remain anonymous. If that were true, he would never remain to chat with those he saved.
Too bad he didn’t leave her his rope; then she could climb out in a snap. He must have figured she could do it on her own. Or perhaps he was needed elsewhere, heading out in a hurry to go help someone else.
Either way, she had to figure this part out on her own.
Summer went back to her pack. After a quick check of its contents, she slung it over her shoulders, then looked up.
The floor above was a good twenty feet away. Even if she scaled the highest point of the debris that had almost crushed her to death, she still wouldn’t be able to reach it.
It was too bad, too, because there was a section of conveyor just beyond the edge of the missing floor. If she could get close, there would be plenty to grab, allowing her to pull herself out.
Her eyes went in search mode, but she didn’t see anything she could use as a ladder. There was plenty of twisted metal and of course, snow and ice, plus some broken lumber, exposed wires, and other odds and ends. But nothing she could use to build a pyramid of boxes and climb out.
She opened her pack and took out the bundle of paracord. It measured roughly a hundred feet in length, but without being tied to something sturdy on the next floor up, it was basically useless without a grappling hook.
Some of the metal wreckage in front of her would work, but only if she had a blow torch or hacksaw. She’d need to cut off a section of conduit and bend it, or do the same with one of the metal support struts lying about.
The crayon torch she’d made might have helped, but she’d left it behind without thinking. And since there was no chance in hell she was going to push her luck and climb back down into that hole, she’d need to figure out a different plan.
That’s when she remembered the caster wheel.
She snatched it from her pack and held it up for inspection. The weight was good and she could tie the paracord to its axle fork, just below the ball-bearing swivel. So that’s what she did, using a few extra knots to make sure it would not come loose.
Now that the wheel was attached, she swung the rope in a series of vertical circles, like a cowboy preparing a rope trick. After the fifth revolution, she let the wheel fly, sending it straight up.
It clanked hard against one of the legs of a conveyor, making a horrible pinging sound, then bounced off. Gravity took over, sending it straight back at her, making her duck out of the way.
Summer picked up the wheel. “Come on, girl. You can do this.”
She prepped the paracord again, swinging it the same as before. This time when she let it go, she aimed higher, setting the lariat free from her hand a split second sooner and with more force.
The wheel took flight, soaring above the edge of the conveyor with the paracord trailing behind it. A second later, it disappeared from view, clanking again when it hit something beyond her view.
Summer yanked on the rope.
It didn’t budge.
That was the good news. The problem was, she didn’t know how secure it was on the other end. She’d thrown it too far, landing out of sight. Now it was stuck and she couldn’t bring it back for a better shot.
There was only one way out—straight up.
It was now or never.
She wrapped her hands around the cord and began to climb, praying the makeshift grappling hook would hold.
* * *
Franklin Horton gave his newly-acquired patrol the hand signal to move ahead, working in four sets of pairs along the south side of a partially demolished store called the Liquor Barn.
He could see inside the smashed windows from his position. Several snow drifts remained in pristine condition, protected from the sun’s reach by the shadows. No obvious footprints.
The plan was to sweep each building, checking every inch for signs of their intended target. Unlike his predecessor, the late Slayer, Horton believed in caution before advancing.
Slow is steady and steady is fast.
Simon Frost had given Horton a clear set of objectives—take command of Slayer’s unit and find the girl named Summer. Bring her back to him alive.
Horton didn’t need Frost to lay out the penalty for failure, either. He already knew the answer, thanks to what he witnessed in Frost’s office at the time of his promotion to team commander.
The blood and guts being cleaned up on the floor were all he needed to see. Well, that and the mangy dog chewing on a spiral of intestines, working a gory hunk of Slayer through its teeth and down its gullet.
“Team One, left flank. Two, you got right. Three, cover our six. Four, you’re with me,” Horton said in a whisper a few minutes later, after they had cleared the accessible parts of the liquor store. He waited for the members of his team to respond with a head nod, then advance outside.
They moved in concert and with purpose, turning a corner onto the next street with rifles, packs, climbing gear, and attitudes in tow. Just ahead was the old LaDean Cannery—the last place they’d found signs of the girl.
Even though Horton knew Summer had a head start, the cannery needed to be searched from top to bottom. All he needed to find was a footprint or a blood trail. Something to indicate which way she went.
Then they’d have her, assuming she was injured like the evidence had suggested on their previous mission.
CHAPTER 14
“Almost there,” Summer told herself in a grunt, feeling the sting in her hands from the paracord. Her arms felt like limp noodles, almost ready to quit. But her heart wouldn’t let them, convincing them to press on.
Two more yanks and a final leg push brought her to the opening in the bottom of the production floor. She took a deep breath, then grabbed hold of a bent angle bracket hanging from a floor-mounted support strut.
She assumed it used to secure some kind of equipment—equipment that was now buried in the mound of wreckage below. The bracket was the closest item within reach, allowing her to pull herself up and scoot out of the hole on her backside.
Summer pushed to her feet, then brought her eyes around and followed the paracord in search of the caster wheel. When she found it, she took a step back in a gasp, realizing it had caught itself on the very edge of a red-colored push knob on the front of a control station, somehow remaining there under the weight of her climb.
It only took a slight amount of sideways force to release the wheel, verifying that she’d gotten beyond lucky with the way that thing had held on.
A part of her half-expected to find the wheel wrapped around a sturdy machine and tied in a wrap-around knot—a parting gift from the Nomad. Since the wheel wasn’t hanging on by much, that obviously wasn’t the case.
Summer shook her head, realizing she just escaped certain death—again. Had she known how weakly the wheel was attached, she might have chickened out with the climb.
“Ignorance is the fuel for cowards,” she said, channeling something that Security Chief Krista had once said. Summer didn’t understand what that phrase meant until now. You’ll never chicken out if you think you’re safe.
Summer brushed off her clothes—not because she was covered in dirt or snow. It was more out of habit, allowing her mind to formulate the next step in her plan as she arched her back, taking a few moments to peer up through the open ceiling in the cannery.
The moonlight showering the room gave her a sense of awe as it washed over her face and caressed her body. Maybe it was because she was still alive, despite all that had happened today. Most who ventured into the Frozen World alone and encountered deadly scenarios failed to return. Yet here she was, still alive and breathing.
Technically, she didn’t believe in the almighty. However, if she did, she would have been certain at that moment that he was there, watching over her. Just as the Nomad had done.
“Time to rock and roll, Summer,” she muttered, pulling her focus from the night sky.
First up, stow the grappling hook she’d made, then figure out where to head to next.
She wound the cord around her arm, wrapping the entire length in a tight circle until the caster wheel landed in her palm.
Then she brought her pack around and fished out her Seeker Map before stuffing the wheel and cord inside.
Twenty steps later, she was on the far side of the room, standing in front of a stainless steel table at one end of the conveyor system. It was in front of a massive piece of equipment with a control arm and some kind of spring apparatus attached to a belt-driven pulley.
The flat surface may have been an infeed table. Or a sorting table. There was no way to know for sure. Not that it mattered. It looked to be large enough to hold her grid map, so she unfolded the paper and spread it out for a quick survey.
It took a minute to find the bridge she’d used to cross the No-Go Zone on her way to the bookstore. She figured she’d run about a mile into the territory owned by Simon Frost.
Granted, she was in a panic at the time, but she was certain it wasn’t any farther than that. She’d passed a string of warehouses and an old skateboard park, which the map indicated was near a street named Valencia.
Summer figured Krista had probably sent out a search team by now, deploying them to her assigned grid, not far from the No-Go Zone. It was standard operating procedure when a Seeker was late for debriefing after a mission.
And she was late—very late. There’d be hell to pay when she got back, especially if the search team spotted her in or leaving Frost’s territory. It was one thing to get lost on Edison’s side of the No-Go Zone, but it was an entirely different problem to trespass into Frost’s section of town.
Summer needed to take a wide route across the No-Go Zone, just in case one of Krista’s search teams was nearby. If she kept to the shadows where the moonlight couldn’t reach, she’d see them before they saw her. At least, that was the theory.
If she was able to make it back to the silo before the others, she could sneak into the complex using the emergency air shaft, then hide in her bed in the storage closet. Nobody ever went in there, knowing it was her space and off limits to everyone but her.
All she’d have to do is claim that she’d gotten back hours earlier and gone to sleep, forgetting to check in upon her return. It wouldn’t be the first time she’d used that excuse, nor the last. Besides, admitting to a small goof is better than getting caught making a large one. Small mistakes never got anyone tossed out of Nirvana, not with Edison’s tendency to forgive most errors.
“Should work,” she decided after running her little white lie through her head again. Her plan was sound, assuming she was careful on her way back to the silo.
Summer reached inside her sweatshirt to pull out the Infinity Chain and kiss it for luck, but her hand came up empty. Nothing but air inside.
“No! No! No!” she cried out as her hand went back in and swept left to right in a fury, searching the skin around her neck without success.
The chain wasn’t there. She’d lost it. Somewhere.
A heavy pressure slammed into her chest. Edison would be pissed. He’d never forgive her. The breath in her lungs evaporated as she spun on her heels and scanned the area beneath her feet. No sign of the trinket.
Her mind flashed a series of events, each one a possible location where the chain had fallen off.
First, the trip over the pallets and painful face-plant that tore a hole into her cheek. Then the sudden fall through the floor when the roof collapsed, leaving her buried under the snow. The vision finished with her crawl under the debris and her dig out through the snow.
The keepsake could be anywhere.
She turned and stared at the hole in the cannery’s floor, debating if she should retrace her steps to find it, starting with her crawl out from under the ice.
“Hold it right there!” a man’s voice yelled from her left.
Summer flinched after turning a step.
“Don’t you move, missy! Hands up where we can see them!” the same voice said.
Summer froze in her tracks, her eyes moving toward the voice as her arms went up.
The beat in her chest ran wild, seeing nine men with rifles pointed at her. They were Frost’s men, none of them wearing sleeves, about twenty yards away, near the same entrance where she’d tied the dolly to the worktable.
An instant later, they began to spread out in pairs, working themselves around the equipment with their rifle sights trained on her. There were a few sections of the conveyor system standing between her and them, most on the other side of the gaping hole in the floor, giving her a few seconds to think.
A voice inside her mind yelled RUN!
Summer ducked for cover and took off, heading away from the patrol using a hunched-over running style, zigzagging her course.
She expected the Neanderthals to open fire, but they didn’t. There were no commands from their leader, either, almost as if this encounter was planned in some way. All she heard was the clatter of their boots hitting the floor.
Her mind couldn’t let go of the fact that Frost’s men hadn’t started shooting. Maybe they were out of ammo and couldn’t shoot, or possibly they weren’t allowed to shoot.
If either was true, she had the advantage. The threat of force only works when the risk is credible. If they weren’t going to shoot, then she had nothing to fear, other than getting caught.
The wall section dead ahead didn’t have a door—at least not that she could see. She turned right and kept low with her feet moving, searching the area ahead for an exit.
The equipment in this section of the cannery was different from the paraphernalia she’d been buried under from the main production floor. This section had huge machines with handles and doors along the farthest wall, stacked next to each other with almost no space in between.
Each one had an overhead vent, probably for some kind of heat-related finishing work, she guessed. Two of them reminded her of exhaust hoods over a stove; tapered at the highest point, but fat and wide near the bottom. The rest were thin with a curved end that fed into long stretches of rectangular sheet metal, much like the ductwork she’d seen in the silo.
Before her next step, her mind flashed a sudden thought, showing her a snapshot of her Seeker Map lying on the flat infeed table.
Damn it!
She’d left it behind.
Summer stopped her feet, turning her head in the direction she’d just come from. Maybe she could sneak past the men and snatch it, assuming they hadn’t found it already.
It took another second to realize her idea was not only a mistake, it was most likely impossible. Even though Krista would be super pissed at her for losing the map, it wasn’t worth getting herself killed in the process.
Summer resumed her trek, wondering if the Nomad might still be around and watching. If so, would he step in and help her? Something inside told her the answer was no. She’d never get that lucky twice.
Deep down she knew he was gone, off to save someone else. Or else he didn’t want to tangle with Frost or his men. The Nomad carried a pair of swords, but they were useless against the range and power of assault rifles, according to Krista and constant preaching about weapons and ballistics.
Right then, another phrase came tearing into her mind—one that Krista had had drilled into her. The only way to stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun.
Summer passed a yellow plastic tub with roller wheels. It was about three feet tall and twice the size of a bathtub in length and width. She could see inside as she moved past the container.
It was filled with gloves, most of them blue and torn in at least one spot. Finger holes were the most dominant defect. Plus there was also a smattering of masks mixed in—the same type she’d seen Liz Blackwell use in the infirmary.
There was a door ahead, just beyond a stack of empty storage units. Well, almost empty. The scattered remains of shredded boxes and torn paperwork sat on some of the shelves, almost like someone had detonated a grenade inside a box of old reports.
Three fifty-gallon drums hugged the wall between the door and the shelves. They were blue, like the gloves, and made of plastic. She wondered what was inside but didn’t have the time to stop and pop their lids. If she ever got back this way, she needed to check them out. Perhaps they contained something worth scavenging.
