Such destruction.
Pointless.
Vi climbed back over the barbed wire fence.
So tired. So cold.
Think, Violet. Think.
She scanned the houses and buildings in the distance.
Nothing moved in the gray, steady rain.
She had Jennifer’s knife hidden up the right sleeve of her tracksuit, the butt of the handle resting in her palm. It had made descending the slippery ladder more difficult, but now she had it, and she prayed he hadn’t noticed.
He was watching her, she was sure of it. Had to figure on surveillance cameras everywhere. Maybe someone helping him.
She could make a run for it, try to reach civilization, but he had her son. Had Andy.
Vi jogged across the road toward a brick building with a fifty-foot chimney on the far end.
Time to get out of this freezing rain.
“Turn left,” Luther said.
Or not.
She veered away from the abandoned factory.
“Now run,” he said.
She accelerated, the shuddering footfalls driving pain through her right ear, where she was beginning to suspect that Luther had stitched the earpiece into her skin.
Otherwise, it felt good to run, the exertion warming her against the chill.
She ran down the street for several minutes before he spoke again, passing ruined automobiles and more rotting houses.
“The housing project. See it?”
“I see it.”
“That’s your destination.”
The building loomed fifty yards away, rising above the oaks whose brown leaves had fallen and become rain-plastered to the pavement.
“What’s in there, Luther?”
Violet crossed the street and stopped out-of-breath where the sidewalk entered the courtyard of a six-story structure that resembled a crumbling L.
“Did I tell you to stop?”
She went on past a collapsed swingset and an overgrown sandbox, its only remnants the two-by-six board frame. A few toys had been left behind—a front-loader, a big-wheel missing its big wheel, plastic green army men scattered in the grass, casualties from some long-forgotten war.
She approached the double-doored entrance which had been leveled years ago, the building’s windows glaring down like a hundred black eyes.
Over the threshold into a darkness that reeked of mildew and decay.
Her wet shoes tracked over the peeling linoleum, and the farther away she moved from the entrance, the darker, more claustrophobic it grew.
Where the lobby intersected with the first-floor corridor, she stopped.
Up and down the hall—pockets of black offset by pockets of dismal light that filtered in from outside.
“Where am I going?” she asked, but no answer came.
She let the hunting bowie slide out of her sleeve and into her hand.
The fear paralyzing, all-consuming.
For a long time, she stood listening.
Water dripped.
The soft moan of wind pushing through one of the upper corridors.
And then...snapping. Cracking.
Woodsmoke.
Violet followed the smell into darkness and then out again.
Daylight passed through the open door of what had been an apartment and struck a wall covered in graffiti.
Clothes and toys and all manner of garbage littered the corridor.
The scent of woodsmoke was getting stronger and now she could see firelight flickering across the wall at the end of the corridor.
“Hello?” she said, and then softer, “Luther, is that you down there?”
Violet came to the end.
In an alcove, she saw the source of the firelight—an oil drum filled with scrap wood burning next to a busted window. Most of the smoke escaped outside, though enough had become trapped to lay down a foggy veil in the room. As she drew near, she could feel the warmth of the fire, and had just noticed the bedroll in the corner under a cardboard box when she heard the crunch of glass directly behind her.
Violet spun around and the first thing she noticed was the smell—rancid body odor laced with booze. She stumbled back, her heart in her throat, couldn’t see anything in the semidark but the shadow of this foul-smelling person advancing toward her.
“I have a knife,” she said.
Her back touched the wall. Nowhere else to go.
Stood there clutching the knife and watching as a filthy man in layer upon layer of tattered clothes stepped into the gray light that filtered in through the window behind her.
He stopped when he saw the knife.
Vi could hear the rain striking the pavement outside and the fire hissing in the oil drum and nothing else.
The man’s face was all but hidden under a wild beard, but his stark blue eyes shone through the tangle, staring her down.
“What are you doing in my house?” he said.
“Your house?”
“My house.”
Vi glanced over at the cardboard box lined with old newspapers, the shopping cart beside it.
“I was just cold, trying to get out of the rain,” she said. “I smelled the smoke, so I came in here.”
“You just want to get warm.”
“That’s all.”
He considered this, said finally, “Put your knife away, and come on over.”
The man walked over to the oil drum. He knelt down and gathered a few scraps of wood and fed them into the fire, then held his hands over the heat.
Violet set her knife on the windowsill and joined him, extending her hands over the flames.
She felt lightheaded, attributed this to thirst, hunger, and the smoke she was breathing in.
“I’m Violet,” she said. “I didn’t mean to intrude.”
The man watched her. His beard was a deep, greasy black, and the few patches of skin that showed through, dirty but unwrinkled. Her first impression of him had been an old man, but now she reconsidered.
“What are you doing out here,” he asked, “in the concrete barrens?”
Violet didn’t know how to answer that question, so she just stared down into the flames and the bed of embers underneath.
“Don’t you know it’s dangerous out here?” he continued. “Nothing but bangers and people like me.”
In his words, Vi discerned an obvious intelligence.
“What do you mean, ‘people like me?’” she asked.
Now he stared into the flames, which had grown brighter.
Out the window, Vi could see the light draining from the sky.
Darkness falling with surprising speed.
“You shouldn’t be here,” he said.
Luther spoke into Violet’s ear, “Tell him you want to stay the night. You have a lot to learn from him.”
She didn’t say anything.
“Tell him or I will rip Jennifer’s baby apart right now.”