AllFreeNovel
Share Us
We picked up sandwiches and took them to a downtown park, where we could be assured of privacy. With the exception of the occasional late-working office employee cutting through to the subway station, privacy is what we had...until a change in the wind brought a now-familiar stink.
"Son of a bitch," Clay muttered under his breath.
"Guess Rose was right," I said. "They can find me. Saves us the bother of looking for this one." I inhaled deeper and nearly gagged. "I can barely pick up a scent under that stench. I think it's male..."
"You'd be right," Clay said.
He nudged my leg to the left. On the pretext of taking another napkin from the bag, I glanced over and saw a figure almost hidden behind a metal sculpture.
"Shall we try to find a convenient alley?" Jeremy murmured behind his sandwich.
"I know something better." I wiped imaginary sweat from my forehead, made a face and raised my voice above normal. "God, I have to get out of this heat. Can we eat someplace else? With air-conditioning...and tables?"
Clay nodded and we gathered up our stuff. I led them to the street corner and across to a looming business tower. We went inside. I smiled at the security guard and waved to a "down" escalator a hundred feet away. He nodded and returned to his reading.
Seeing where I was taking them, Clay stopped. "Is that--?"
"The gateway to hell. Sorry." I took his arm and continued walking, then glanced over at Jeremy. "It's part of PATH, Toronto's underground walkway system. Clay had a bad experience with it last winter."
"Traumatic," Clay muttered. "Still recovering."
"Clay had an early morning department meeting, and I needed to buy him a new shirt," I told Jeremy. "He'd ripped another one."
"I ripped--?"
"So I told him to meet me at the Second Cup near the store. Only, he didn't come in that entrance."
"Probably because it was cold enough out there to freeze--"
"It was cold," I continued as we stepped onto the escalator. "So he takes the nearest entrance, not knowing the tunnels stretch for over six miles. The first Second Cup he sees, he thinks, 'This must be it' and sits down. When I don't show, he realizes there might be another one down here."
"Or twenty," Clay muttered.
"Be glad I didn't say Starbucks. Upshot is, if you don't know your way, it all starts to look the same. Of course, the logical solution is to stop and ask for directions."
Clay snorted.
"So what happened next was entirely his own fault."
"Dare I ask?" Jeremy said as we stepped off the escalator.
"Lunch hour. For thousands of office workers. With sub-subzero temperatures outside."
"One minute I was just wandering around, the place practically empty, and then--" Clay shuddered.
"Traumatic, I know," I said, patting him on the back. "But--" I swept a hand around "--much different now."
We stood at the end of a hall stretching a few hundred feet, flanked with coffee shops, bookstores, drugstores and everything else an office worker might need between nine and five. But it was summertime, when no one cared to work later than necessary. The stores had been closed for hours. The walkways were left open only as a convenience for pedestrians.
"Not bad," Clay said as he looked around.
"If our zombie pal wants to make his move, he'll have plenty of opportunities. We just need to watch out for security guards and cameras. There's an even quieter place a block over. We'll head that way."
Before we'd passed three storefronts, hesitant footsteps sounded behind us. Bait taken.
We made sure to turn lots of corners and avoid long straightaways, letting our pursuer stay close but hidden, watching us from behind the last corner until we turned the next. As we walked, I counted the number of attack opportunities we'd given him. When I reached five, I paused at a storefront and pointed to a display of baby sundresses.
"What's he waiting for?" I whispered.
