“What is that?” Kara asked, still behind him.
“I don’t know, but if we open the door, it’ll trip a wire.” He looked up. “Holy shit, I feel like the Road Runner.”
Kara followed his gaze and saw a net sagging with more than a dozen bowling balls.
“These people are crazy,” she said.
“Stay away from the wire,” he warned. He went back to thepile of trash and found a heavy metal gear that he could easily grip. He returned to the window next to the door. “Turn around, shield your eyes,” he said.
He put his arm up to shield his own eyes, then with all his strength threw the gear into the window.
Glass shattered. The window was paned, but the metal was weak. He worked on bending it enough for them to get through. “Okay,” he said.
Kara turned around. “Are you sure?”
“Yeah. Step over the wire, careful... okay. You go first.”
Kara did; Matt followed.
They were out. Free. He greedily breathed in the fresh, humid Georgia air.
The sun felt amazing on his bare back, but he didn’t take the time to enjoy their escape. Watching where they were going, he navigated away from the building, then turned back and looked at the structure.
Four stories tall. Painted on the front in large, faded black letters: Sweetwater Cannery, Clinch County, GA.
“Where the hell is Clinch County?” Kara said.
“Southern Georgia, borders Florida. There’s not much here. A lot of creeks, swampland, farmland, a couple small towns. I’d be surprised if there were more than six thousand people.”
“How do you know that?”
He smiled. “Just smart that way,” he said. “So, good news, bad news.”
“We’re out of there. That’s all good news.”
“Based on the state of the factory, how long I think it’s been abandoned, I suspect this was taken out of commission during Hurricane Helene, about a year ago. Remember that?”
“Vaguely. I think we were in Los Angeles at the time.”
“Being born and raised in Florida, anytime I hear about a hurricane, I need to know where it is and who is affected. It hit southern Georgia pretty hard, and based on the damage and thefact that the building is still pretty sound, it fits. It’s not cost effective to get it up and running again—these places operate on a thin margin. And this has been here for over a hundred years.”
“How can you tell?”
He pointed to a stone on the corner of the building. Kara squinted. “1923. Wow. It’s historic. So that’s the bad news?”
“No, the bad news is we’re going to be doing a lot of walking to find a house. Maybe miles. Are you okay to walk?”
“I’ll make it.”
“Your leg.”
“We’re both beat up, Matt. We don’t have a choice. We can’t stay here because neither of us is in a condition to fight and we don’t have any weapons. But neither of us is going to make it two miles without water. Can we eat that fruit?”
“What fruit?” He shielded his eyes from the sun and looked to where Kara pointed to a thick gaggle of bushes. “Blackberries. Yeah, we can eat those. They grow all over southern Georgia, both wild and in crops. Blackberries, blueberries, strawberries.”
“I thought Georgia was the Peach State or something.”
“Peaches, too, but not this far south.”
