Chapter 1 #2
There were no signs of life out here, no people and no cars.
I walked under the lights shining from a few of the buildings, the ones that looked like they could have been in use during daytime hours.
It was all run-down but honestly, I wasn’t noticing too much.
I felt sick, either from whatever I’d taken or whatever I’d drunk, or maybe because I hadn’t eaten in a little bit.
I’d had something in Damian’s suite this morning, when he’d ordered room service—would that have been yesterday morning?
It had been a while but I wouldn’t find any food around here.
I only stopped briefly to lean against one of the warehouse-y buildings and take off my shoes, which hurt a lot because they weren’t made for walking.
I looped the straps over my arm and carried them.
The landscape gradually started to change.
First there was one house, then a vacant lot, then another house.
I was moving out of the industrial area and into a neighborhood that felt more residential but still didn’t seem very populated.
The first few homes looked abandoned, with broken windows and doors that gaped open.
Then I saw one with a basketball hoop in front, but a dog started barking as I got closer so I crossed the street.
Maybe I would walk until I got near something that was more familiar, I decided.
I tried to recall what our hotel had looked like, but the memory of it blurred together with thoughts of other hotels in other cities. We had been on the road for a while.
There were tall buildings in the distance, all lit up. I could see them now that my view wasn’t blocked by the warehouses. That must have been the downtown, I reasoned. That was where I needed to go.
Another dog barked and I glanced over my shoulder.
The first one had been in a yard, behind a chain link fence.
But now I saw a large animal standing in the street, its ears erect.
It seemed to be staring at me. I looked back again and noticed that it had started to move, walking in the same direction that I was going.
I went faster, and so did the dog. Then it broke into a run.
I ran, too, as fast as I could. I heard my breath panting and I heard the animal’s nails scraping against the rutted asphalt.
How could I get away? There was nothing to climb, no door to swing shut in its face.
It was still too dark to see much but then I spotted a car—there was a car in that driveway, so someone lived in that house!
I ran toward it as the clicking got closer.
There was a man there, too. He had opened his liftgate and the illumination from that showed total shock on his face when he spotted me racing toward him. “What the hell?” he asked, and by that point, I was close enough to hear him.
He pushed me into the back of his car and my situation might have just gotten a lot worse, because he slammed the door. Then I heard him yell and the dog yelped.
It got quiet.
I lay on my back for a moment, breathing hard, before I scrambled into a squat. The door swung open and I saw the man again. He was a huge, dark shape, just beyond the range of the weak interior lights of his car.
“What the hell?” he asked again. “Why are you out here? What are you doing?”
“I’m trying to go to the hotel,” I told him.
“The hotel?” He bent down to look at me. “You’re bleeding.”
I was, I realized. My foot was bleeding hard and red gore had smeared around his car. “Sorry,” I said. I stared past him into the darkness, but the dog seemed to be gone. I wasn’t sure if my blood would draw the animal back, like how sharks could smell it in the water.
“Come out of there.” He reached for me and another instinct drove me to skitter away, like a crab.
But there was never much use in postponing the inevitable.
I let him grab my arm and pull me forward.
His grip didn’t hurt but it did force me out of the car.
Then he moved me backwards, so that I sat down on the bumper.
He was gentler than when Millie had shoved me onto the banquette…
Millie. I could contact her and she would know what to do. “Do you have a phone?” I wondered.
“Yeah. Can someone come get you?”
I nodded and he took something out of his pocket. It wasn’t a real phone, though. It flipped open and had a tiny screen.
“What’s the number?” he asked.
I shoved back my hair as I tried to think. Millie was easy to reach, usually. I just went to her name and tapped it.
“I don’t know her number,” I admitted.
“Give me someone else, then,” he directed. He stared at me, waiting, but it was no use.
“I don’t have anyone to contact. I don’t know anyone here,” I said. “Where are we?”
The man pushed the phone back into his pocket and passed his hand over his face. “I’m going to have to call the cops. Hell.”
“No, don’t,” I said immediately. Damian would have gotten so mad about that. “I’ll go.”
I stood and scooted around him, but as soon as I moved, I felt the injury to my foot.
It must have happened as I ran from that dog…
I looked around the street because I bet that it hadn’t gone far.
I took another step and stopped, since putting weight on it hurt enough that I had to pause for a moment to breathe through the pain.
“You should come inside to wash that out,” he said. “I’ll give you a bandage.” I saw him beckon to me. “Come on.” He slammed shut the liftgate and walked toward the building.
It wasn’t very long before the lights in the car went out, leaving me in darkness again. I looked back at the street and I thought I heard clicking, so I limped toward the house.
The man waited until I joined him. Then he went around the side and I followed him to a door that led into his garage.
“Watch yourself,” he directed as he opened it.
I could see the outlines of shapes inside, dark hulks of machines, and I avoided all of those.
I stepped in something that squished between my toes but I kept following him.
He stopped when he got to the next door, the one that went inside. “Wait here,” he told me. He held up a hand and I quickly moved back, slipping a little. But he was only signaling me to stop. “Wait here,” he repeated slowly. “I’ll come to you.”
He flicked on the light in what looked like a kitchen, and then he sized me up.
He rubbed his face again and shook his head, and I looked down at myself, too.
I was barefoot and I had lost my shoes as I’d run, so there was no hope of fixing that problem.
But I was still wearing the rest of my outfit for the club: a gold dress that went just under my butt in length, with two strips for a top that covered my breasts and tied at the nape of my neck.
It left most of my front bare and all of my back.
As I had escaped from the dog, the dress had shifted around. The skirt part had hiked up to my waist and the pieces over my chest had pulled to the sides, so now one of my boobs had popped free. I pushed it back under the gold fabric and tugged the skirt down.
“Sorry,” I said again. I felt like I should tell him that because I’d noticed the way he was looking at me, like he was kind of disgusted.
Funny, because a lot of guys would have been happy to get an eyeful of my tit and crotch, even with the thin strip of my thong covering the actual porno bits down there. But not him.
He went inside and I stayed in the garage, waiting.
With the yellow glow that streamed in from the kitchen, I could see that I was surrounded by little cars.
No, what was the name? These were ATVs, or something similar.
Many of them were partially deconstructed, with pieces lying on the cement floor, and that must have led to the greasy puddle that I’d stepped in.
I didn’t look at the mess on my foot because that was also the one I had cut.
I didn’t want to know if the liquid I was feeling was oil or blood, or a really gross mix of both.
The man came back. He had a bucket in one hand and some cloths in the other.
“Sit on the step and put your foot in here,” he told me, and I did, submerging the injury in the soapy water.
It stung pretty badly, and I could feel that there was something wedged under my skin.
Maybe glass, I decided. I kept my expression neutral.
He was watching me. “Is it bothering you?” he asked, and I nodded.
“Let me see.” When I picked up my leg, he poured clean water over the wound and studied it to confirm that there was crap buried in there.
“I’ll get something to help you. Wait here,” he told me again.
I did, since he was acting nice. So far.
When he returned the second time, he had on doctor-type gloves and he carried a pair of tweezers.
“It looks like there’s glass in your foot.
I’m going to pull it out,” he said. He knelt in front of me and grasped my ankle.
I let him rest my heel on his knee and start probing around with those tweezers.
“Doesn’t this hurt?” he asked.
I nodded.
“You’re not saying anything,” he pointed out.
“What difference would it make?” I wondered. He didn’t have an answer but he did respond to my next question. “What’s your name?”
“Callum.”
I had never heard of that name before. “I’m Rox—I’m Rainey,” I told him and he nodded. But he was focused on my foot.