She didn’t know why, but her eyes started stinging, and a painful lump grew in her throat. She put the photos back in the case and latched it shut.
She found a relatively dry corner and curled up against the wall, pulling her knees under her chin. She shivered in the damp, listening to the incessant beating of the rain outside, the wind howling through the jagged walls and empty spaces.
* * * *
She awoke to light filtering in through the missing walls. The sun was up, but once again, thick clouds filled the sky. She shivered on the floor. Sitting up, she stretched. The scalp wound from the Repurposer’s tool still hurt, but it was starting to heal. While she used her tooth cleaner, she laid out her headlamp and PRD beneath a hole in the ceiling, letting the UV recharge them. When her tooth cleaner beeped, her PRD and headlamp also emitted a tone, letting her know that they were fully charged. She scooped them up, placed them in the bag, then studied the map on the PRD. She had to head west and a little south. Reluctantly, she left her shelter.
Throughout the day, she walked along countless streets, from town to ruined town. A few times she walked on crumbled roads that stretched between ancient cities. Huge signs, long since bereft of their messages, rose on both sides. Above her the sky churned gray, and a steady drizzle rained down on her.
The sun faded into the west, and she pulled out her headlamp and switched it on. The wind intensified, the cold rain falling in bigger drops, slashing across her face as she tried to see into the dark. She had to find shelter and rest.
She came to a huge building that still had three of its walls. Many windows lined its sides, but all had lost their glass long ago. Rusted rebar stuck out of old brick. It looked industrial and roomy. She hurried to it, finding a corroded dock door that was partially up. Squatting down, she ducked under it. She moved farther inside, crouching under debris that had collapsed from the walls and roof. Huge steel girders, tarnished and smelling strongly of iron, sprawled across the floor. Pink, fibrous insulation, soaked from the rain, lay tufted beneath piles of moldy plaster and ancient wiring. The far corner of the building still had a partial roof over it, and she headed for it in the darkness.
With the cloud cover so thick, she could barely pick her way through the shadows, and more than once she tripped on strange shapes that gave off metallic clangs. Thick mud from years of accumulation covered the ground. Finally she reached the corner. She dragged a rusted metal box over and propped it up to sit on.
The rain beat on the roof. An ear-splitting peal cracked throughout the sky until it rumbled away in the distance. Again the wind moaned through the missing walls, and out in the street she could hear the water gurgling down the antique gutters choked with debris.
She rubbed a shoulder pensively, then pulled out an MRE and chewed half of it, not bothering to switch on her headlamp. In her pod back in the city, she never knew darkness. Outside lights burned twenty-four hours a day. Even in the pod where she slept, her walls glowed with dozens of switches for lights, fan, food and laundry delivery, and, of course, the corpse cleanup light that accompanied the message beeping on her PRD when a job came in.
She’d never known darkness like this, and it enveloped her completely. She found it oddly comforting, so quiet, so little stimulus getting in. Just the rain and the wind and the dark.
She finished her half of the MRE and wrapped up the rest, saving it for tomorrow.
Leaning her head against the wall, she let her lids fall shut. If she could just get out of this flooded area, she could cover more ground. Would it be raining like this every day? Would the wind always howl like this?
She had just dozed off when she jerked awake. She’d heard something.
Something was moving out there in the dark.
Chapter 11
She listened, trying to separate distinct sounds from the pouring of rain and lashing of the wind. Had she dreamed it? What had awoken her? Every muscle tensed, some primal part of her flowing with fear. Minutes passed, and still she heard nothing out of the ordinary.
She closed her eyes again, figuring it must have been a dream.
Then she heard it again: a kind of hissing sound, coming from outside. It sounded like a long exhale. Something slid debris aside at the other end of the building, where she’d entered. She heard that long sigh again, then more debris overturned and clanged.
She strained her eyes in the dark. She couldn’t see anything and didn’t dare switch on her headlamp. The sigh was almost human, but something about it was distorted, as if it came from a misshapen mouth. Another piece of metal screeched. She could barely make out the shape of something dark pressing through the broken field of rusted clutter.
The primal fear washed up her back, sending the hairs on her scalp pricking. Pressing her back against the wall, she regretted having cornered herself. But she hadn’t seen another living thing since Rowan had left, and hadn’t expected to.
Clang. Screeeech. It was moving closer, that exhale through the ruined mouth. Peering into the gloom, she tried to figure out how far along the wall she’d have to move before she reached another ragged hole that led outside.
As the screeching and lifting of debris grew closer, she left her perch on the metal box and moved to her right at a crawl. Shadows clustered so thickly on this part of the floor that she winced with each step, constantly banging her shin or stepping down wrong on shards of trash.
Then a higher, more plaintive breathing met her ears. This second
