“My body temperature is naturally much lower than yours. I don’t require blankets for my comfort.” He ducked his head to see around a crack, an unhappy expression on his taut face. “I didn’t anticipate ferrying a human passenger, so my emergency supplies are inadequate for your needs.”
There was an unspoken apology in there somewhere, and she appreciated it, but her teeth were actually chattering. Like shewas a freaking cartoon character, tinted blue with cold, a layer of frost slowly spreading over her clothing.
“It’s f-fine.” Because she hoped satisfying her curiosity would distract her from frozen misery, she asked, “Is it e-even p-possible for you to die of c-cold? Like, if y-you got s-stuck in an industrial f-freezer and b-became a vampsicle?”
“A stake through my heart will kill me. So will removing my head or”—his throat bobbed—“burning me alive. In theory, I can drown as well, but it would take a very, very long time, and I could be revived for hours afterward. Nothing else will suffice. We vampires are notoriously tough to dispatch.” He directed a scowl her way, then drove onto the cracked asphalt of the mall’s large, empty parking lot. “As opposed to humans, who can die far more easily in countless ways. Which is why, as noted previously, you should never,ever—”
“Yeah, y-yeah.” She waved a shaking hand. “So f-freezing solid w-wouldn’t do y-you any h-harm at all? Really?”
After circling around the side of the vast, abandoned shopping center, he wedged the SUV into yet another hiding spot between two dumpsters and put the car in Park.
His shoulder lifted. “Some temporary skin damage, perhaps. Once I got warmer, I’d simply—”
“D-defrost?” she offered innocently. “Like a chicken b-breast with freezer b-burn?”
Slowly, he turned his head to stare at her. “Do youdeliberatelychoose the most insulting comparisons possible?”
“Me?” She blinked over at him, arms wrapped around her middle for warmth, and continued perfecting her imitation of him. “I w-would n-never.”
“Mmmm.” Shaking his head, he gathered her duffel and cross-body bag and slung them both over his shoulder, then unearthed his first aid kit. “We need to be quick and quiet, Edie. I’ve heard rumors about this place. If it weren’t an emergency…” She swung her legs out from the SUV and slid down onto half-numb feet, and his mouth thinned as he watched the clumsiness of her movements. “But it is.”
He didn’t need to elaborate. Normally, she’d never enter an abandoned building in the Containment Zone, and neither would any other Zone resident without a death wish. Over the years, members of criminal gangs had forged identification documents and gotten accepted as residents in the Zone, where the relative lack of government oversight and media attention worked to their advantage. They’d discreetly looted where they could, then set up clandestine drug labs and stash houses in empty, derelict structures exactly like this one.
Generally, the gangs kept to themselves, as long as no one invaded their dilapidated fiefdoms. Which was precisely what she and Max were about to do, unless the mall had somehow remained entirely vacant over the past twenty years.
Highly unlikely. She might not be a cynic, but she wasn’t a fool either.
Keeping his right arm free, Max wrapped his left around her shoulders and tugged her tight against his side. Not to provide warmth, because he had none to offer, but to support her and help her keep up with his rapid pace.
All possible entrances to the four-story mall had likely been smashed open by looters soon after the First Breach, including the unremarkable dented gray door near the dumpsters. A staffentrance, she guessed, now propped wide open with a concrete block, its lock disabled.
Max nudged her behind him as he entered the dim interior. The light filtering through the open door illuminated empty shelves and filthy mud-tracked linoleum, with shoeboxes scattered everywhere, their contents long gone. A stock area for a footwear store, evidently.
She kept her voice to a faint whisper. “We c-can’t stay h-here.”
“Agreed. We need a place zombies can’t access so easily,” he murmured into her ear.
Her tooth-punctured bottom lip stung when she licked it. “Yes, b-but the upper f-floors put us t-too far away from an escape r-route. We n-need to pick a s-spot on this level.”
He shot her a long-suffering look. “Obviously.”
In silent accord, they crept from the store’s back room and emerged onto the selling floor, where they immediately ducked behind empty shoe racks and waited.
Nothing. No visible movement, no noise. No indication they weren’t alone.
After a minute, they cautiously kept moving. The closer they came to the store’s entrance, the brighter their surroundings got. This mall had an atrium, she suddenly remembered. A dome of glass high above the open center of the building, allowing natural light to filter into all the stores lining the edges of the structure. That sunlight, along with the lack of wind, was probably why the mall didn’t feel nearly as cold as she’d feared.
Roughly twenty-two years had passed since her last visit here, but if she recalled the layout correctly…“There’s a Pottery Barn n-nearby. Let’s g-go there.”
Maybe it hadn’t been entirely stripped of merchandise, and they could find a chair or some bedding to dry off with. Maybe it even had some of the furniture she remembered so clearly from all her family’s visits there.
His shoulder lifted a fraction. “It’s as good a place as any. Which way?”
She pointed to the right. It shouldn’t be far. Three storefronts away at most. But as soon as they left the shoe store, they would become easily visible to people on their level and anyone facing them on the levels above, even if they pressed right up next to the stores they were passing. And, of course, the stores themselves might not be empty.
The damp trail they left in their wake would make hiding from pursuers challenging at best, impossible at worst. They needed to make sure they weren’t spotted.
Once they’d both scanned their visible surroundings a final time and listened for telltale sounds of human, zombie, or Supernatural activity nearby, they turned to each other again.
