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“I saw a strip of something back that way,” Axel pointed up the embankment and back the way we came. The wind was screaming now, trying to swallow his words. “About a mile, maybe.”
“I saw it too,” I agreed. “A gas station that was closed, and then a few other… I dunno, a garage maybe?”
“Maybe,” he nodded. “Whatever’s there, at least it’ll be shelter. And people can’t be far.”
He extended a hand to help me up the embankment, which was steep and uneven and choked with sleet and ice. Together we managed to make our way up, eventually reaching the road.
The sky was moonless and obscured, making everything so dark it was nearly pitch black. If not for the subdued glow reflecting from the fallen snow, just following the road would be a task in and of itself.
“Don’t let go,” Axel called back, squeezing my hand.
He forged his way forward, step by step, and I huddled against him. Normally I would’ve led, but with the wind roaring along the valley of the roadway, I could’ve easily been blown right over. As it was, Axel had to lean into every step. I was grateful for the relief his hulking body provided me, shielding me from the brunt of the sleet and ice and whatever else the sky was dumping down on us.
We could easily freeze to death.
If we were walking the wrong way, sure. But we were both fairly certain we’d gone off the right side of the road, which meant walking left was the way back. Or so we hoped.
We walked for what felt like a mile, and then another mile after that. It was impossible to tell, because in the darkness, distance lost all meaning. There were only footfalls, our progress measured step by step. My hands and feet had gone numb a thousand footsteps ago. I could barely feel my face.
“There!”
Axel shouted the word into the howling wind, and I could still only barely hear it. But when I looked around him again, I could see lights. Not very many of them, but enough to make out what looked to be a long, low-slung building with many, many doors.
A motel.
~ 26 ~
ARIANA
“Quick, get in here!”
Axel half-yanked, half-shoved me through the doorway, as the freezing wind blew sleet against ours backs. It protested violently as he tried closing the door behind us, and only when he’d applied the full weight of his body was he able to finally get the latch to click.
Warmth, heat, light — these things washed over us as we tumbled into our little motel room. We embraced them with all the happiness of Christmas morning, as I sank backwards onto the rickety bed.
“THANK. GOD.”
We’d been lucky to have found this place, and doubly lucky that it was one of those 24-hour ones. Back in the motel’s office we rang a tiny brass bell that looked like every bell in every motel horror movie I’d ever seen. A full minute and a half later, a sleep-deprived woman in four layers of clothing had emerged from the back room.
We’d considered using her phone to call for help, but the weather made it obvious any help would have to wait until morning. Axel allowed her to extract three colorful bills from his wad of Canadian cash, and we were given the key to room twenty-two… the very last room at the end of the row.
“There’s no one else here,” Axel sighed, tossing the key to our room down. The plastic chit reading ‘22’ rattled onto a worn, beaten up dresser. “Why not give us the key to room one?”
“Because that woman’s a sadist!” I cried, rubbing my hands together. My fingers were bright pink except at the knuckles. “It’s the only explanation.”
Axel crossed the room to where a decades-old heater rested below a tiny window covered by mustard-colored curtains. They looked like they hadn’t been vacuumed since the Vietnam war.
“This place is—“
“The dump of all dumps?” I mused.
“I was going to say perfect,” Axel grinned, as he flipped the switch on the heater. It rattled angrily, stirred, and then finally kicked on. He sighed in relief.
“We have everything we need here,” he declared. “Just you, me, and some…”
Holding his hand out over the vent, he frowned. My heart sank.
“Some what?”
