AllFreeNovel
Share Us
A shovel, rope, highway flares, and toolbox line the dingy black fabric.
“What’s your pleasure?” he says.
Dios. If I told himthat,we’d never leave the car. “Shovel, rope, and flares for sure. What’s in the toolbox?”
He opens it, and before I can tell him to grab the headlamp, he’s pulling out the headlamp and slipping it over his head.
“I think that’ll do,” I say.
His adorable face furrows into uncertainty before clearing when he grabs a screwdriver. “It might not shoot far,” he says holding the screwdriver aloft before shoving it into his back pocket, “but it’ll cause some damage.”
Picking up the shovel, he lays it across one shoulder, and without any more agreement than the sound of the trunk slamming shut, we head across the desert.
I trip over some brush right away, skip-hoping to save myself a fall.
He flicks on his headlamp, guiding us, and we keep going, relying on his light and my cell’s navigation.
Two hours later, we’re at the coordinates, or so says the app Gracie developed for The Guild. That’s one of the best things about The Guild—having access to cutting-edge technologies, both medical and mechanical.
Still, we could use a metal detector, because the markers here aren’t helping our search. Except for the odd shrub and cactus and the faint odor of flowers, the desert hasn’t changed much during our walk. There’s nothing around us to suggest anything is here. I’m starting to worry we’ve wasted precious time in our search for Rosa.
Swallowing panic, I tell Sean, “Let’s split up to search. I’ll use my NVGs. Kick, tap, move even those things that look like they belong to the earth. If there’s something here, it’s well hidden.”
“Got it,” he says.
Though he hasn’t complained once about his leg, I notice his gait has gotten worse during our walk, and he callsmedetermined.
We both get to work, pacing away from each other as we turn our desperate attention to finding something, anything. It’s truly cold out here, cold enough that I lower my knit hat further over my ears.
“Ach-y-fi.” Sean steps on a bit of prickly bush with a cry. He bends down to rub his calf, grumbling, “Thing has daggers.”
Repressing a grin that I’m a bit dismayed to find there, I ask, “You okay?”
“Fine. Watch the bushes.”
I smile again.Watch the bushes? Hmmm… Dropping my bag, I reach in, grab protective gloves, quickly put them on, then begin pulling at the thorniest bushes around me. Ouch, even with gloves that hurts.
I continue pulling on those mean shrubs, feeling foolish but hopeful. Fate often puts obstacles in your path when you’re close to getting what you want. Not because she wants you to lose, but because she needs to know you’re serious.
After about the tenth bush, and having moved a good distance away, Sean calls over, “What’re ya doin’?”
“Fighting fate,” I say, grasping the top of a dead bush and pulling, despite it stabbing me in the wrist. There’s a creak of steel hinges. The brush is attached to a steel lid that looks suspiciously like that found on an underground larder or root cellar. The mechanics are rudimentary.
“You’re bloody brilliant,” Sean says, making his way over.
Heart pounding, I hold up a finger to warn him as I pull the shrub-door the rest of the way.
It opens with a longer creak and a puff of air that smells like science class—formaldehyde. Hugging the inside of the dirt walls is an old wooden ladder.
Kneeling beside me, Sean says, “I’ll go.”
I shake my head. There’s no way I’m letting him go down first, because he doesn’t have a gun or my extensive training. He opens his mouth to argue, and I put a finger to my lips. That creak was likely loud enough to alert anyone down there to our presence, but no need to give information, like the number of people out here, to whoever might be hiding below.
Dropping my backpack, I remove and unravel a long, bendable cord. Inserting one end into my cell, I stretch out flat on the desert ground and feed the scope into the chamber.
An image of the inside of the underground chamber appears on my cell screen. A 360-sweep by the pipe camera reveals details of the five-by-five space tightly packed with boxes and a shelving unit with jars, but no humans.
Storage? With a flick of my fingers, I zoom in on the jars. Fermented foods? Clear liquid, maybe alcohol. What’s that?
