Abandon

“But he can’t reach us from those steps.”

She heard a noise, glanced back. It sounded like quiet microexplosions shredding the floor and the ceiling. “What is that?” she asked. “Is this wing about to collapse?” The little explosions moved closer: one here, two there. When Lawrence flicked on his headlamp and shone it on the floor, they both saw it pockmarked with tiny holes.

“Shit,” he whispered. “He’s underneath us, shooting up through the floor.”

They ran, surrounded by the muffled thunk of rounds passing through the floor and ceiling, decayed wood raining down, the jingle of shell casings dropping on the second floor like handfuls of pocket change, then a pause, followed by an intense thirty-round burst just ahead. Lawrence pulled Abigail through a doorless doorway, pushed her against the wall, the room small, part of the servants’ quarters, boasting only a ruined bed and a wardrobe.

“There’s a stairwell at the end of this wing,” Lawrence said. “We’re gonna take it—”

“But they’re right underneath us.”

“And getting ready to find out that the end of the second floor’s west wing is rotted out. They’ll have to go back to the main stairwell. That’s the only way down for them.”

After another fury of machine-pistol fire, Lawrence said, “He’s reloading. Let’s go.” Abigail followed him back into the corridor, their footfalls noisy on the old wood. She heard someone yell “Fuck!” and wondered if Isaiah had reached the caved-in portion of the second floor. Up ahead, the wing terminated into a sitting area—crumbling furniture and overturned bookshelves grouped around a hearth. Above it all, a chandelier drooped from the ceiling, and through the broken windows, snow streamed in sideways.

Four strides from the sitting area, Abigail’s right foot went through.

“Lawrence!” she screamed, up to her elbows, both legs sticking out of the second-floor ceiling. He sprinted back as the wood under her elbows broke. She dropped, but he had a solid grip around her wrists. Abigail looked down past her dangling feet, her headlamp jolted on, shining through a giant hole. The floor cracked under Lawrence’s knees.

“I’m about to go through,” he grunted, straining to lift her, the machine pistol at work again, ripping through the wood behind Abigail.

“Hurry,” she whispered. During a brief reloading silence, Lawrence pulled her up, and they rolled into the sitting area as a slew of bullets eviscerated the spot where Abigail had punched through. They scrambled to their feet, tracking through blown-in snow.

“It’s over here,” Lawrence whispered, leading her to the northeast corner of the sitting area. “I don’t think he can get a clear shot at us in the stairwell.”

“Is it safe?”

“Don’t know.” Lawrence took the stairs two at a time. They descended through the second floor, finally emerging onto the ground level, their head-lamps blazing through a kitchen replete with giant washbasins, two fire-places, a brick oven, a clay oven, and numerous cabinets, all surrounding a long butcher-block island. The windows had held their glass, so there was no snow or wind, only silence.

“Kill your headlamp,” Lawrence whispered. They both went dark. Without the aid of light, Abigail couldn’t even see her father standing a foot in front of her.

“This is good,” he said, leading Abigail forward. “We’d see their light if they were coming down the main staircase.” She heard a doorknob turn, hinges grinding.

“It’s pitch-black. How can you see anything at all?”

“I know this mansion very—” Lawrence stopped.

“What is it?”

“I heard something up ahead.”

“What?”

“Wood cracking under a footstep.”

A long moment of silence elapsed, and then Abigail saw the sole point of light in all that smothering darkness. She said, “Oh God,” and Lawrence looked down at his chest, touched the red dot moving in tiny circles around the North Face logo on his parka.

They lunged back into the kitchen as glass fell out of the French doors and rear window. Abigail never heard the shot. Lawrence’s headlamp lighted up. He pulled Abigail toward the washbasins between the ovens, helped her climb onto the counter, footsteps pounding toward them.

“What do I do?” she asked. He pushed her through. Abigail fell outside into the snow. As Lawrence climbed through the windowsill, the French doors burst open, headlamp beams sweeping in a frenzy of movement over the walls of the kitchen.

“Come on!” she screamed, but they dragged her father back into Emerald House.

THIRTY-SIX

 A

bigail felt hands seize her, pull her back into the kitchen, jags of glass on the windowsill slicing through Gore- Tex, fleece, thermal underwear, skin, blood running down her left leg as she slammed into the rotting floor. Her headlamp passed over Jerrod and Isaiah, each man holding night-vision goggles, the barrels of their machine pistols steaming in the cold. Isaiah’s foot swung through the dark and she heard the breath rush out of Lawrence as he doubled over on the floor. Isaiah knelt before Abigail, slid the knife out of his ankle sheath.

“No,” Lawrence hissed, still struggling to breathe.

Abigail tried to get up. Then she lay on her back, the left side of her jaw throbbing and burning, Isaiah sitting on top of her, pinning her shoulders down with the heels of his boots. He unzipped her fleece jacket and pulled her thermal underwear out of her waistband, exposing her bare stomach—ridged like a washboard and heaving in the