We walked along the edge of the strip mall parking lot. Broken glass glittered beneath the coating of sleet, and I could see bent traffic signs. Fenrir found a garbage can to dig through, but nothing edible inside. A sandwich wrapper stuck to his paw, and Alex scraped it off. The traffic lights were out, pulled down in a tangle of wire.
"I take that to mean there won't be any power."
We paused before the window of a Chinese restaurant. I peered inside the glass, to see the rotting remains of a buffet. It was likely that any fresh food that hadn't been taken or eaten by survivors had spoiled in the time that had intervened in this disaster. I felt a pang of regret. I had never had Chinese food before. It was one of the things I had looked forward to on Rumspringa.
"Hey, look at this."
I heard a thick metallic thump. I looked back to see Alex pounding his fist on a sheet of metal. I squinted at it. It was a large turquoise building, bricked like a fortress. A flexible metal gate covered the front, like a garage door.
"What is it?" I asked.
"A department store. And it looks like Fort Knox." He shoved on the metal, but it did not give.
We circled around it, finding a locked man-size door at the back and another one of the large metal gates on a loading dock. A few bits of graffiti covered the brick. It was too stylized to read, but it certainly seemed to be a frustrated scrawl.
"Doesn't look like anybody figured a way in."
"Not yet," I said. I shivered, staring up at the smooth, seemingly impenetrable façade.
Alex turned up the collar of my jacket against my throat. "Don't worry. We'll figure out a way."
I looked up, and our eyes caught on a slatted vent on the side of the building. It was much too high to reach.
"There's our entrance," he said with determination.
After several jumps, slips on ice, and much swearing, we arrived at a solution. Horace was brought to stand below the vent. Alex and I stood, wobbly, in his saddle, leaning up against the wall. Fenrir watched in an amused fashion from a distance, his tongue hanging out of his mouth in what appeared to be good humor.
"Okay," Alex said. "I'm gonna lift you up. See if you can pry open the edge of that vent with the knife." He put his hands on my waist.
I looked at the vent above dubiously. "About the leadership thing . . ."
He waited. "You want to move on?"
I shook my head. "No. I'll try it."
He lifted me up, and I reached for the corner of the vent. I jammed the knife under the fabricated metal edge and worked to loosen it. There were no screws that I could see. Alex had to set me down twice, when his muscles trembled. Horace snuffled in irritation below us.
I finally pried the cover of the vent open.
"All right," I said. "I think I can reach."
Alex hoisted me up and I grasped the lip of the vent with my hands. The edge was sharp, and I could feel it cutting into my palms. I squeezed between the gap in the vent cover and the lip of the vent. Alex shoved as hard as he could, and I scrambled inside the shaft.
And prayed that there were no vampires inside.
I had an immediate panic when I felt dust and silt shaking down on me. I feared the sensation of the spider webs that meant one of their nests was close.
I paused, tried to control my breathing. This was an old duct, and there were likely real spiders here. There had been no sign of assault from the outside, I reasoned. And vampires would have no interest in a closed-up store with no food.
Behind me, I reached for the vent covering. I pulled it closed and flush against the side of the building, drawing the seams close to the edge of the wall. If I made a way in, I did not want it to be an obvious place for others to enter. I pulled it tight, in its original position, tucked the bent pieces of metal around the shaft walls. I was sealed in.
Through the grate, I could see Alex down below with the horse. He nodded at me, and I could see the sleet freezing on his jacket.
I turned around to face the darkness.
On my elbows and knees, I crawled forward. My movements made loud thuds on the sheet metal, surely announcing my presence to any awaiting creatures. I could see nothing but pitch black. But I struggled to quell my fear and forced myself to keep moving.
I crawled for what seemed like a hundred feet before I felt something change beneath me. The shaft had sloped downward, and I felt a different texture than dusty metal under my palms. I explored it with my fingers. It felt like a metal grate, a panel with holes. I backed off and pushed down on it.
Nothing happened. I crammed my legs beneath me and scrunched myself into a sitting position. With all my might, I kicked downward on the pane.
Once.
Twice.
On the third blow, the grate gave away with a ripping sound. I nearly fell into the hole that spilled out from the bottom of the darkness. The air below me was a bit warmer, and it smelled like cinnamon.
But I had no way of knowing for certain how far down the floor was. I could guess, based on what I'd seen outside. The vent had been about twelve feet from the ground. Assuming that it didn't open above a stairwell, that was still a substantial drop. I could break some bones on the descent and die in this place.
I'd be alone. Entirely alone.
I sat for a few moments, cradling my aching hand in my lap. Eventually, the pain and my fear dulled. I turned around, swinging my legs over the edge of the vent. I took a deep breath. I backed out into darkness, lurching into it, keeping my grip firmly on the edge of the vent.
The vent groaned and shrieked under that concentrated weight. I felt my grip slipping, the metal shifting beneath me. The vent collapsed, but I tried to hang on. I heard drywall cracking and felt my arms tangling in metal. I grabbed whatever I could, grappling with the wave of collapsing duct and ceiling until it dumped me out onto a hard floor with a deafening thud that jarred my spine and backside.
I lay still on the floor. Pieces of crumbly drywall rained around me. I felt sore and bruised, but did not feel anything broken. My palms and arms were scraped, but everything seemed intact. I crawled to my feet, wobbly in the cinnamon-scented darkness.
I sucked in a breath.
Something was glowing.
And I was trapped here with it.
This wasn't anything like the glowing of vampire eyes, or even the golden shine of Fenrir's. This was an artificial, dull luminosity. It reminded me of the stars on the ceiling in the boy's bedroom at the Animal Farm.
Cautiously, I stumbled toward it. I jammed my knee against what must have been a display containing glass-it broke and I cried out in startlement. I weaved and bobbed, heading toward that light.