Alan broke into a run.
“Go!” he screamed.
She was crouched down and in his way. Alan reached forward and practically lifted her to force her towards the arch. Broken from her trance, she turned and they splashed back through the arch way and up onto the steps.
“Wait,” she said. “I want to…”
“No! Up!”
His scream drove her up the stairs and Alan was right at her back. He didn’t stop when they got to the top. Forgetting about his resolve to not trust the floor, Alan sprinted across the room, panting and passing Amber. She quickly caught up and they ran side by side up the next flight of stairs. This time, they were careful. They edged along the wall, staying away from the stained boards that made up the floor of the ground level. Back through the empty rooms, where not even inebriated teenagers had dared to violate, they saw daylight through the hole in the wall.
Alan knew that they would never make it. Somehow a hand would reach out of the depths of the deserted mill and drag them back down to that water. The colony was down there and the knowledge of it would never leave this place.
His head was swimming—he was barely getting enough oxygen to keep running. Amber grabbed his hand and pulled him forward. They lurched and stumbled towards the exit and the blinding light. When they burst through the hole in the wall, out into the snow, he nearly forgot about the snowshoes until he was up to his waist in wet, half-melted snow.
“Alan,” Amber said. She waved him back to the wall.
Alan returned, hunched over and wheezing.
The interior of the mill was black. His eyes had adjusted already to the light and he couldn’t see much inside that place. The light from his headlamp was swallowed by the void.
Amber handed him a snowshoe and he fumbled at it with numb fingers.
“How…” he started to ask. He spit out sour acid and coughed.
“I don’t know,” Amber said, understanding the question he hadn’t been able to construct.
Once he had his shoes on, Amber helped pull Alan to his feet. She led the way out.
“Wait,” Alan said.
Amber turned back.
He pulled out his phone. It had no signal, but that wasn’t important to him.
“Pictures,” he said.
Eighteen: Ricky
“I wish you hadn’t done that,” Ricky said.
They had the porch of the Grill to themselves. Amber had ordered a side of onion rings as an appetizer and she squirted ketchup onto the plate before moving to the center of the table to share.
“You keep saying that,” Alan said. “You’ve been doing your research and this was ours. Let’s put everything together and figure out how we’re going to move forward.”
“We might have lost the element of surprise,” Ricky said.
“We hear you,” Amber said. “Let’s figure out what to do now. Like he said, let’s move forward.”
Ricky folded his hands and propped up his chin.
George reached towards the plate of onion rings and Amber gave it a little nudge in his direction to verify that he was welcome to them.
“I heard from Romeo Libby,” Ricky said. “It must have been about the same time that you guys went into the mill. He said that they have risen.”
“They?” George asked.
“The graveyard?” Alan asked.
Ricky nodded. “Yes, from the graveyard. He was a little circumspect about it, but he basically said that he monitors the graveyard each spring so he’ll know when they’re coming out of hibernation. He said he has never seen them move around this early in the season. For the past few years, he has been documenting their patterns. I think he hopes to kill the last of them before he dies. He wants to leave a clean slate.”
Alan nodded.
“So we’re all on the same team,” George said. “He has experience and we have information about where they’re hiding. This is perfect.”
“Maybe,” Alan said. “He has also withheld a lot. We can’t be sure that we have the same goals.”
“How many goals could there be?” Amber asked. “They are monsters. We all want them dead.”
George agreed by nodding and pointing to Amber.
“Maybe,” Alan said. “Until we’re sure, we keep what we know and what we’re planning to ourselves. Agreed?”
They all nodded.
“You do have to wonder why he didn’t tell us any of that before,” Alan said.
“I was assuming that he saw our tracks at the graveyard and he confessed because he knew we suspected something,” Ricky said.
Alan nodded. “Maybe.”
Amber wiped her lips with her napkin.
“Back to the subject. We know where the colony is hibernating. There could be more than one colony, but I say we tackle one problem at a time.”
“If there’s another colony like that, then I’m not sure we have a chance,” Alan said.
“Exactly,” Amber said. “As far as disposing of them, that building is alone in the woods. All we have to do is take out that hiding spot and they’ll die in the sun.”
“We’re completely sure about that?” George asked.
“Yes,” Ricky said. “Completely.”
“So some kind of explosive or something? The place is brick and stone—a fire is not going to cut it,” Alan said.
“The mill has stood for hundreds of years. I think an explosion big enough to destroy it is going to draw a lot of attention,” Ricky said. “We’re going to have to be incredibly careful and lucky to not get caught.”
“It’s in the middle of nowhere,” Amber said.
“Not quite,” Ricky said. He pulled out a tablet from his bag and they moved glasses and plates around so he could put it in the center of the table. He opened a map. “There are some houses here, and here. They’re less than ten miles. When that house exploded in Kingston Depot, we heard it and our place is fifteen miles from there, easy.”
“And did you immediately know where the explosion came from?” Alan asked.
Ricky and George both shook their heads.
“Then do we care? They might hear it, but it could still take a week for anyone to notice.
