Chapter Three
When the truck drives away, Sarah screams.
She tugs the blackout curtains closed, strips off her mask, and collapses face-down on the nearest bed. She screams and pounds her fists and feet, feeling the satisfying ricochet off the boxspring mattress. Her voice scrapes her windpipe until she realizes she’s laughing. Laughing and crying.
She’s finally alone.
When the squall of elation subsides, she wobbles to the bathroom.
She washes her mask in the sink first, then takes the hoodie into the shower with her.
The little paper-wrapped motel soap is harsh, and she scrubs herself and the hoodie raw.
The blood spatter won’t completely come out of the pink cotton fleece, but it fades enough that she can claim she’d splashed coffee on herself while driving.
After the shower, she puts on pajamas and checks her phone.
No calls or messages, but no one has this number.
The battery’s at 2%. She digs through her backpack for the charging cable and comes up empty.
Her stomach sinks. The last place she saw it was in her car’s glove compartment, where she’d shoved it after plugging in the phone at the rest stop to check the news.
The bedside table holds a notepad and ballpoint pen with the motel’s address printed on them.
Graham’s number is the only one in her contacts, and she scrawls it on the pad before the phone gives up the ghost. It’s a piece of crap, but what can you expect from a cheap burner bought from the grocery store?
She tears off the page and stuffs it and the dead phone into her backpack.
First thing tomorrow morning, she’ll call Graham, and hopefully roads will have been cleared and he can drive down.
She doesn’t care about Officer Isaac’s threats or Caleb’s kind promises.
She has to keep moving. She has to disappear.
Caleb had said there was no wifi, so her laptop is also useless.
It’s a good thing she told her clients she was taking time off.
When she’d gone freelance, she thought she would miss going into an office.
It’s turned out to be a blessing, and not just because of lockdown.
There’s no one to keep track of her. Not even Ben.
Not anymore.
She switches on the TV and finds a local CBC affiliate. The six o’clock news is on, but it’s all stories about the pandemic. Businesses struggling, cases rising, vaccines not available in Canada for months yet. No one’s looking for an Asian woman who fled Toronto earlier that day.
She retrieves the crusty paring knife from the bottom of her backpack and washes that in the sink, too.
There’s no point in staying up. She turns off the TV and the bedside lamp and stretches defiantly in the middle of the bed.
It’s too dark. Too quiet. The hoodie hanging in the shower drip-drip-drips into the tub, each droplet echoing like a gunshot, echoing the percussive beat of her heart. Outside, the wind howls like a living thing, screaming like she had earlier. The wail of someone seeking to disappear.
Sarah tosses and turns on the too-firm mattress.
Her toes strain against the tucked sheets; she struggles to kick them out.
The stale motel air is smothering, as thick as the blankets on the bed.
As thick as the brushstrokes on the painting above her head.
The wind shrieks, or maybe it’s her own voice in her head.
Isn’t this what she wanted? To be alone?
She sits up and turns the TV back on. Voices fill the room, and she drifts into sleep at last.
* * *
Sarah wakes with a start to the growl of an engine outside. Ben’s home. Clammy sweat spreads across her skin like frost.
Then her fists close around flannel, and she remembers in a rush that she’s not at home.
There’s no TV in their bedroom, after all, let alone one broadcasting colored bars.
The engine still grumbles outside, though, in the motel parking lot.
Sarah glances at the clock. It’s one in the morning.
Why would Caleb come back at this time of night?
She switches off the TV, plunging the room into darkness. If it’s not Caleb, they’ll think the motel is deserted. It’s been snowing for hours, enough time to hide their footprints.
Light seeps from under the edge of the blackout curtains, paralyzing Sarah with fear.
How many times has she lain in bed like this, dreading Ben coming home?
The warning drone of the hatchback as it pulled in front of the house, the headlights brightening the front window of their ground-floor apartment.
Not knowing if he’d come in angry or sullen or affectionate.
Not knowing if he’d come in at all, or fall asleep on the sofa texting some mystery woman, claiming the next morning he didn’t want to wake Sarah up.
A car door slams. Raucous laughter breaches the darkness. “Over here!” a man yells. It doesn’t sound like Caleb.
Sarah fumbles for the telephone on the bedside table.
Who is she going to call? Not the police, they won’t come for her.
Not unless she leaves the motel and wanders up to town with the virus she’s supposedly carrying.
Her eyes fall on Caleb’s business card, illuminated by the light leaking into the room.
YOUR NORTHERN GETAWAY, it promises. Someone’s getaway.
Not hers. Hands shaking, she dials the number.
She almost sobs with relief when it picks up after the third ring. “Hello?” It’s a male voice, lacking Caleb’s deep resonance.
“Hi,” she croaks. “Is Caleb there? It’s Sarah at the motel.”
“Do you hear them? Do you hear the screaming?”
“What?”
“Elijah!” a muffled voice hisses.
“It’s the girl at the motel,” the unfamiliar voice says.
There’s a rattle and scrape as the receiver changes hands. “Hi, Sarah,” Caleb says. “Is there a problem?”
She wants to cry at how calm and steady his voice is. “Sorry to call so late, but there are people outside and—”
She shrieks at the sudden explosion.
It’s not a big explosion, like a bomb. Just a burst of concentrated violence, followed by a shimmer of sound, incongruous in its delicacy.
“Sarah?”
“They’re breaking the—”
A smash bursts right in her eardrums, punctuated by more laughter and the tinkle of glass. The room suddenly sucks in a gust of freezing air, the blackout curtains lurching.
Sarah drops the receiver and rockets off the bed to the bathroom.
Bare feet slapping the cold tile, she slams the door and locks it.
The shouts and smashing glass suddenly sound far away, although not far enough.
She snatches her knife off the counter, and for the second time in twenty-four hours, she’s glad it’s close.
She slides down to the floor, pressing her shoulder blades into the door to stop herself from shaking. Do you hear them? Elijah had asked. She wonders who they are. Do you hear the screaming? She hears nothing now except the familiar roar of blood rushing in her ears.
She’s not sure how long she’s been sitting in darkness when a thumping echoes in the distance. Someone’s at the motel room door. She squeezes the knife handle, prepared to swipe, her lungs threatening to burst like she’s spent too long underwater.
“Sarah!” a man shouts. “Sarah, are you in there?”
It’s Caleb. She scrambles to her feet and hastily wraps the knife in a motel washcloth.
“Sarah?”
She darts out of the bathroom. A key scrapes in the lock as she stuffs the knife at the bottom of her bag. Her chest tightens, her legs tense. Will he be angry? Will he be sullen? Will he be affectionate?
“Sarah, I’m opening the door, okay? I just want to check if you’re all right.”
Caleb. It’s only Caleb. Not Ben. “Coming!” she calls out.
She turns on the light and picks her way around the broken glass glittering on the carpet, praying she doesn’t cut her feet open.
The door jams on the chain lock. Caleb swears.
“Hang on, I’ll get it,” she says. She slides the lock.
The door bursts open, and winter wind slices through her pajamas to her already goose-bumped skin.
Caleb’s masked figure fills the doorway, backlit by his truck headlights. He’s holding a parka and a pair of lace-up boots. Sarah suddenly realizes she’s not wearing a mask. He’s seen her face now.
“Fuckers squealed out of here as soon as they saw me driving down.” His fists clench in the parka’s faux-fur hood.
“Who were they?”
“Hard to say with their masks on. Jerry or someone at the garage must’ve said something. They broke the windows in every unit. You’re going to have to come up to the house.”
“No, it’s—”
The intensity in his eyes cuts her off. Her heart pounds, telling her to run, either away from or toward him.
“Here.” Caleb thrusts out the parka and boots, and Sarah’s resolve crumbles.
Nice wins, at least tonight. “They’re Elijah’s.
He’s smaller than me.” She pulls on a pair of clean socks while he replaces the phone receiver in its cradle.
Her feet swim in the boots, and the coat smells alarmingly masculine, like cedar and paint thinner.
“Got anything in the bathroom?”
“Wait—” she starts, but he’s already crossing the carpet.
He returns with her damp mask and hoodie.
She lunges for the hoodie, afraid he’ll question the bloodstain, but he doesn’t break his stride.
He sweeps the door key from the dresser, and she has no choice but to stuff the rest of her things in her backpack.
Caleb holds the door open and takes the backpack as she passes. In the parking lot, tire tracks etch the amber-spattered snow. She can’t tell if it’s beer or urine, or both. Caleb locks the door to the unit and says, “Go straight to the truck. No, don’t look back.”
“What?” She looks; she can’t help it.
Someone has spray-painted CHINK VIRUS on the door in fierce red letters.
Caleb exhales. “Fuck. I’m sorry.”