Coffee & Criminals

42. Until The Bitter End

My muscles and bones protested with the movement but I wasn't going to lie down in a pool of my own blood and take my death with open hands. I could feel blood drip down the second bullet wound in my arm, leaving a messy trail behind me. The small hatchway to the vent had a tiny padlock, but it was so rusted and ancient that it was almost falling apart. I raised one foot and slammed it against the padlock, the old metal instantly breaking under the heavy sole of the hiking boot.

The vent door fell open, greeting me with the darkness that was inside. The area was big enough to accommodate my size and weight...hopefully. But first, I needed to get myself untied.

The vent door was thin as paper but metal, the edges like a knife.

It didn't take very long for me to get myself free. I sawed the middle of my binds back and forth on the vent edge, the sharpness easily cutting through the heavy duty rope. Several minutes later, they split down the middle and I pulled the rest of it off with my teeth. I took a moment to rub my sore wrists, which were burning bright red from the binds. Watching the door carefully, I quickly untied my ankles with my good hand and stood up.

The vent passageway was dark, and judging from the decrepit state of the rest of the objects in the basement, I was willing to bet my journey was going to be no less pleasant. I didn't even know where the vents would take me, or if the thin, almost aluminum foil-like walls would hold my weight. I didn't know if I'd even make it, given how much every little movement shot needles of pain through my body. But I'd have to try. It was either that or wait for whatever twisted thing Ade and Elliot planned for me. And there was no way in hell I was going to let the second scenario happen.

Sometimes, a girl can't wait for her knight in shining armor to come rescue her. I'd have to rescue my own damn butt.

With a deep breath, I crawled into the passageway and closed the vent door behind me. I was pretty sure that the trail of blood I left behind from my original space to the vent and the pile of sliced rope at the door of the vent was a dead giveaway to where I was, but I could only hope that I'd be long gone by the time Ade or Elliot stopped by.

The duct was cramped, musty, and filled with many horrors. At one point I had to crawl past a spider web. It wasn't the web that made me almost turn right back around. It was the enormous black spider that nested in the spider web, complete with wrapped carcasses of past creepy-crawlies. A shiver crawled down my spine and I quickly dragged myself past it.

Traveling on all fours was a job all on its own. The duct wasn't as dark as I expected, as each ten feet was interrupted by a window of light from below. The vent floor started on a slope but evened out to a straight line with vent doors on the floor. I was traveling through the tubing I had seen before, somewhere along the ceiling of the rooms beneath me. With each vent window I passed, I glanced down. Most of the rooms were barren and too dark for me to make out anything. Definitely a warehouse, an abandoned one at that.

I crawled along for about five minutes, carefully inspecting each room through the grates of the vent to find a suitable place to jump. Most of the rooms had a dirt floor, way too far for me to make a safe landing as I was traveling along the duct that lined the roof of most of the rooms, although I was willing to jump down into a room if there was an unlocked exit nearby.

And I still left a blood trail behind me. I was surprised I made it this far.

I crept along quietly for another five minutes until I finally heard voices. The words were too faint for me to make out but the deepness of the voice made me assume they were male.

Carefully, I crawled to the nearest vent window, absolutely terrified of making any noise, and peered down. My heart was in my throat and I had to stiffen every muscle in my body so I wouldn't tremble.