“If you guys just want to wait up there, I’ll be back in a minute.”

“Hold up,” Lawrence said. “I’ll go with you.”

The older man didn’t make lowering himself look as effortless as the guide had, but he got down safely, and the two men disappeared out the front door of the hotel.

June, Emmett, and Abigail sat down in the corridor.

“I hope everything’s all right,” June said.

Emmett looked over at Abigail. “You got extra batteries for your light?”

“Back at camp. Why?”

“Yours is dying.”

Abigail pulled off her headlamp just in time to watch the bulb fade out.

FIFTEEN

 A

bigail pressed the light feature on her watch: 9:59 P.M.

“They’ve been out there ten minutes,” she whispered.

June and Emmett had turned off their headlamps to conserve the batteries, so all she could see of them were the white pairs of facing crescent moons that framed their irises.

From one of the rooms on the second floor came a sound like a shutter slamming against a window frame.

Emmett said, “Wind.”

They sat awhile longer in the corridor, listening to the shutter squeak on its rusted hinges and bang into the window. Finally, Emmett struggled to his feet.

“Okay. I’m gonna go down and see what’s going on here.”

“No,” Abigail said. “We’ll all go.”

June went first, Emmett and Abigail helping her to ease over the edge, her hands trembling as she cursed quietly to herself while her feet dangled above the lobby. She slid slowly down the rope and whispered “Thank you, God” as her feet touched the staircase.

When Emmett and Abigail had lowered themselves into the lobby, the three worked their way over the staircase debris, past the front desk, to the hotel entrance.

They moved through the threshold and out into the misty street.

The loose shutter had gone quiet, and Abandon stood in perfect silence save for the occasional creak of a teetering building bracing against the wind.

“Where’d you guys go?” Emmett shouted. No answer but that of his own voice resounding in fading refrains through the canyon. He shouted again. Echoes again. Silence.

Abigail felt something soft and cold on her face.

Snowflakes passed through the beam of Emmett’s headlamp.

“Well,” he said finally, “I’ll walk up the street toward camp. June, you and Abigail head the other way. We have whistles in our emergency kits, so I suppose we should blow on those if we find the others.”

“I think splitting up is a horrible idea,” Abigail said.

“All right, then which way do you—” Emmett stopped mid-sentence. “What the hell?”

He looked past them now, his brow deeply furrowed, his mouth dropped open.

Something staggered toward them down the middle of the street, and it occurred to Abigail that the way it moved through the fog, in slow, exaggerated steps, resembled something from a horror movie—a zombie or some demon that had just crawled out of its own grave. It was close now, within ten feet of them, dragging its right foot and clutching its side.

Their guide collapsed in the hotel doorway, Scott’s yellow fleece slicked with blood, and down blowing out of a gaping tear in his vest.

Abigail felt her stomach lurch, something rising up her throat. Her mouth tasted of salt and metal.

Emmett was already on his knees, cradling Scott’s head.

“What happened?” he asked.

Scott moaned, his face so drained of color that it seemed to glow in the dark, his body quaking with the onset of shock. “I wanna see it,” he gasped. “Lift my jacket.”

Emmett unbuttoned Scott’s down vest and unzipped his fleece jacket, Abigail at his ear, whispering to him that everything would be okay. Emmett peeled away the layer of thermal underwear and they all stared at the black hole in his side, blood sheeting down his pale abdomen into a widening pool on the old boards.

“Fuck!” Scott said. “Fuck, it hurts!”

“What do we do?” Abigail asked. “You’re our guide. You know first aid, right? Tell us how to help you.” Scott’s eyes rolled back in his head. She slapped his face.

He came back, his eyes only slits now. “Run,” Scott hissed. “They’re coming.”

“Who?” Abigail asked.

“We aren’t leaving you,” Emmett said, but Scott’s eyes had already closed. “Scott! Scott! June, keep pressure on the wound.” She pressed her palm into Scott’s side, blood leaking between her fingers.

A scream blasted through the canyon.

Abigail whispered, “Turn off your headlamp, Emmett.”

He did, everything still, and, for the moment, quiet.

A snowflake landed on Abigail’s eyelash. She blinked it away and rose to her feet. “We need to get out of here,” she said.

“There,” June said. Abigail saw it, too. Fifty yards ahead, at the north edge of town, something sprinted toward them, arms pumping.

“It’s Jerrod,” Emmett said.

Abigail had begun to backpedal even before she saw the shadows emerge out of the fog behind Jerrod. The one in front slipped something out of its belt. As it reached him, it placed a hand on the back of Jerrod’s head, jammed something into the base of his skull.

Jerrod dropped without a sound.

June released an involuntary whimper.

Emmett said, “Oh my God.”

Abigail thinking, This is not happening. This is not happening. But it was. The shadows had passed Jerrod’s body and were now closing fast on the hotel.

“We need to split up and run,” Abigail said. “Right now.”

SIXTEEN

 T

he ghost town screamed by in a blur of fog. Abigail glanced over her shoulder, saw movement in the mist, though she couldn’t tell if they were still chasing her. She had put a hundred yards between herself and the hotel when she veered off the main street and bent over. Having come from sea level in Manhattan, the thin air of Abandon crippled her lungs. She crawled through a hole in the side of a building, tried to turn on her headlamp, then remembered the bulb had burned out.

It took a moment for the faintest suggestion of shapes to appear—a table, dismembered chairs, tall windows, remnants of a stove. Abigail stood in the dance hall.

At the far end, the ceiling had collapsed and crushed a small stage.

Footsteps approached from outside. With quick, careful strides, Abigail traversed the rotten floorboards. Some creaked under her weight and she couldn’t help but think of the staircase in the hotel, how suddenly it had given way. She stopped where the floor had fallen through, looked back toward the double doors that opened out onto the street. Abigail couldn’t hear the footsteps anymore, only her accelerated breathing. The sound of whispering passed through the broken windows and something ran by on the street.

She dropped down through the hole in the floor, a nail catching on her parka, ripping through the sleeve, her pink fleece jacket, her long johns, all the way to her skin.

With less than three feet of space between the floorboards and the ground, she crawled away from the hole, through puddles of freezing water, until she found a dry spot. Crouched in the darkness, shivering under the floor of the dance hall, she felt a warm trail of blood meandering down her right arm. Her breathing still sounded deafening, but she couldn’t stop herself. The darkness sparked with her own dizziness.

What happened to Lawrence? She wondered what had happened to her father.

The floor creaked above her. Abigail held her breath, her pulse thrumming against the back of her eyes. The floor moved again. She raised her hand to see how near it dipped to the top of her head. Her fingers passed between the boards, touched the tread of a boot.