We start along the front of the motel, because circling around back of it is something I need to work up the nerve to do, even with companions. Ditzy keeps her flashlight on the lookout behind us as Calico J and I scan the building. I've trained us all on what to look for: stuff like water damage and burn marks, as well as broken windows and any recent detritus that might indicate the place is inhabited. We find none of the above around front. Two of the doors stand open. I'm not ready to start looking inside yet, though, so we note those and move closer.
Ditzy is the first to actually step beneath the veranda. My heart is already setting a bass beat to some Horror soundtrack, but as she approaches the motel wall, a familiar crawl of dread burns and ices me simultaneously.
"Back up," I say, without thinking.
Maybe because I've saved her from Redding before, Ditzy skips away from the wall. She turns her flashlight on it instead. Only then do I see it. A long vein of Redding runs along the crevice where the building meets the cracked concrete veranda. It blocks the bottom of the doors, but when I look closer, I can spot the rooms it branches off into. Branches like that lead to Sleepers. Neither of the open doors have them. Three of the eight locked ones do. The rest are either empty, or they house survivors.
"Ditz, no Redding in the open rooms," I say, then pause. I feel like there's no Redding in those rooms, but the presence or absence of branching from this particular vein isn't enough confirmation. Accurate or otherwise, my feelings aren't an adequate basis for safety. "Can you check them?"
She readies her weapon and walks right up to each in turn, punting the doors wide. Both prove empty. The people inside them fled when the world went to hell, then.
I brace myself and move to the first room without a Redding connection, where I knock on the door. "Hey, is there anyone in here? We're survivors."
I should probably say more if I want to reassure anyone that we're safe. After all, if someone had come to my door like this on Red Thursday and the week or so after, I probably wouldn't have answered. I only did it for Calico J because he was hurt and sounded absolutely terrified.
"We won't hurt you," I add. Silence continues to reply, which means I'm probably talking to an empty room. I check the door handle. Locked.
Calico J moves to the other end of the motel and starts the same screening. We meet in the middle. No replies, and all the remaining doors are locked. With nothing left to try here, it's time to check the back. I take a deep breath, then lead the way off the concrete.
The grass around the motel is overgrown and heavy with dew. It only takes a moment for my sneakers to soak through, and the ground makes a sound midway between a swish and a squelch every time I step on it. We've got a few hours yet until the Red Rain starts, but the water table out here is high enough that the soil is saturated. There might be Redding everywhere. I sweep my flashlight around for any sign of bodies, pooling, or wetlands.
"Meg," says Calico J. My heart skips an uncomfortable number of beats as I look back. Calico J has his flashlight trained on one of the motel windows. It's shattered.
I count the rooms. This was one of the locked doors with no Redding-branch—no Sleeper—and the break in the window isn't big enough for a person to climb in through. No smart survivor would stay in a room with a broken window. So it should be empty.
It doesn't feel empty.
"Ditzy, weapon handy over here," I say. "I'm checking this one."
I test that my headlamp is secure enough to survive a fight, then grip my hockey stick and approach the window. My foot crunches on something in the grass. The ground sparkles when I look down: there's shattered glass everywhere. The window was broken from the inside.
A light blinks in the grass. I whip around. Fireflies here aren't green. I force myself to cover my headlamp briefly to confirm what I saw. Sure enough, the light blinks again. I step towards it and uncover my headlamp to find a phone lying face-up in the grass. I turn it over with the butt of my hockey stick, then pick it up. By now, the other two have gathered around me.
"Ditzy, keep watch," I say. "On the window."
I wipe the dew from the phone screen with my sleeve. It turns on when I click the power button, and promptly deals me a low-power warning. When that clears, I'm hit by no fewer than thirty-six new message notifications. A single text preview—the last of the bunch—shows on the screen with a timestamp dating back to yesterday. It's from someone named Oreo.
Vix, if it got you, I swear I'll...
The notification cuts off the rest. I click it, just in case the phone isn't locked, and it presents me with a lock-screen pattern. I try a random combination. It fails, obviously. I turn off the phone and pocket it.
"You're not going to keep trying?" says Calico J.
"It's going to lock us out if we do, and then we'll never get in. I'm going to charge it, then see if Patrick can crack it." Patrick, for some reason none of us know, is exceptionally good at hacking into a phone that's got a passcode on it. He's managed to get into the phones of a few other Sleepers in Chesnet that we deemed worthy of snooping on, and this seems like a phone we want to investigate further. "We need to check out this room."
This stands to be the most dangerous thing in the motel, which could be a dealbreaker on our choice to stay here or not. The glass in the window glitters in a hundred facets when I shine my headlamp on it again. The hole might be big enough for a small person to have crawled through, but not without cutting themself. There's no blood on the glass. Given the general circumstances and where I found the phone, it looks for all the world like someone busted the window, threw their phone out it, and then retreated inside.
On a whim, I crouch to check the spot where the phone was lying. Another chill grips me. The grass is bruised, but not broken, and has already begun to spring back now that the phone is gone. This was recent.
When I look up again, Ditzy has approached the window. I'm glad it's her and not me. I don't want to be the one to initiate an attack if there's a survivor in there.
But nothing lashes out as Ditzy leans on the wall beside the window and shines her light inside. "Sleeping," she announces a moment later. "One person."
Calico J and I lock eyes. There was no Redding-branch to this room. It's possible one came up through the floor instead, but Sleeping doesn't explain the shattered window. Or the phone. Most people who ditch their phones survive, until something else gets them.
"Maybe someone warned them?" says Calico J quietly. "And they ditched the phone before anyone could call?"
"Then why is this recent? If they were alive this long, they know the drill. Ditz, are you sure it's only one person?"
She's still shining her light around the room through the window. "Unless there's another one under the bed. Or right beside her. I can't get a proper view from here."
Calico J and I exchange another look. Then we both look back at the phone. Something feels wrong about this whole situation. Very few circumstances lead someone to fall down Sleeping on their own. One is a phone call, which this person clearly took steps to avoid. Another is a Redding suicide. We've found plenty of those: people who didn't want to deal with the apocalypse, or who tried to reassure themselves and said their own name out loud. The guy who locked the door to the university cafeteria was another, we suspect. Probably decided that Sleeping was better than whatever claimed the rest of the group inside. Other than those circumstances, the only people we've found Sleeping on their own were ones that someone else abandoned.
"This one was locked, wasn't it?" says Calico J. When I nod, he continues, "Someone might have panicked and abandoned them, and locked the door behind them."
"Or someone could have locked them in."
That shuts us both up. We both know what I'm harking back to. And neither of us wants it to be true.
"Let's check the door," I say, like we haven't already done so. What I really mean is check the room, but that feels too decisive right now. I don't want to send anyone into a dangerous situation. Ditzy and Calico J remain silent as we circle back around to the door in question.
"Ditzy?" I say. "Don't attack unless it attacks us."
Ditzy is twirling the ball of her weapon instead of listening.
"Did you hear what I just said?"
"If it attacks us, kill it."
That's close enough. I'd reiterate, but the truth is, I'm more than a little scared of what we might find. If Ditzy's ready to throw hands at the slightest hint of provocation, that might be to our advantage.
She also looks ready to bust down the door with or without a go-ahead, so I stop her on the veranda and move forward myself. When I reach the door, I set aside my hockey stick, pull out my knife, and test the door handle a second time. It's definitely locked. Ditzy, Patrick and I all know how to pick locks, but I know Ditzy is going to just come kick this thing in unless I head her off.
"I'm going to pick it," I say. "Just in case they're right on the other side."
Ditzy bulls right through that excuse. "She's against the wall, not the door. And she's Sleeping. Step aside, sweetheart. We're going in."
I find myself brushed aside. Ditzy lines up, then dips sideways and deals the door a savage kick that would have blown any barricade in an average house clean off its hinges. This one proves to have a strike plate installed. Ditzy kicks it again, and this time, it's the hinges that give first. One more kick, and the whole thing keels sideways in the doorframe and falls to the ground inside with a defeated whumph. Dust billows in the halo of our lights. Nothing else in the room moves. I let Ditzy step inside first, and follow with my knife ready.
The room looks like it's been hit by a hurricane. Curtains brought down, curtain rod ripped from the drywall, bed askew, bedding torn and everywhere. The shoe mat lies in a far corner. There is indeed only one person in the room. It takes all of two seconds for our lights to fall on her, and Calico J makes a choked noise. The woman is slumped against the wall to our left, her head hanging. Her arms lie limp in her lap. She's in short sleeves, and huge, bruise-like patches the colour of Redding pattern her light brown skin.
She's dead, dropped where she sat within the time that it took for her phone to die. Probably less than two days. The body isn't decomposing yet. There's no smell. Either this is as recent as the final text on her phone screen, or she's being preserved, somehow. If it's the latter, that confirms what Calico J and I saw last time we found people like this. The Redding in their system preserves them just like it keeps Sleeping people alive. Like every human body it claims is being held for some greater, nefarious purpose.
Scratch marks leave crusted blood along the woman's forearms, like she tried to scratch off the Redding before it pulled her under. She's also missing a fingernail. She's the one who tore up the room. I crouch and shine my light at her face. Just as I hoped it wouldn't be, it's twisted into the same look of horror that marked the final moments of every person in that locked room in the university cafeteria.
Like this chapter if you want to know what's on that phone...
Comment what you think the Redding is up to