Mine (3 page)

They were about to examine the floor when Kayla said, “This is weird.”

All lights turned toward her voice.

“The air’s moving.” She was several feet from the wall that abutted the hill, her hands, palm flat, hovering knee high above the floor. Antonio placed his hand beside hers.

“You’re right.”

Dooley, his upper lip smeared with the remnants of his bloody nose, joined them. “Ha!” he blurted out and began running his hands over the floor.

“What are you doing?” Kayla asked.

“What do you think I’m doing? I’m looking for a trapdoor. That air has to come from somewhere, right?”

Leah glanced at Joel and nodded toward the others. A moment later they were also kneeling next to Kayla, their hands out. The airflow was there, all right. As Joel lowered his hand into the stream, though, he realized Dooley wasn’t going to find any door. The air wasn’t moving up through unseen cracks in the floor, but passing horizontally through the room toward the back wall.

That wasn’t even the oddest part. The stream had…dimension. Joel estimated it to be about six inches wide by four high, like it was a column of air running through a rectangular duct. Only there was no duct.

Joel turned to Leah.

From the confused looked on her face, he knew she’d made the same discovery. By unspoken agreement, they followed the stream away from the wall, hoping to discover the source.

When Joel reached the center of the room, he jumped back.

Dooley glanced over. “What is it?”

“Um, nothing. I, uh, I almost stepped on a nail,” he lied.

Leah discovered what he had found a moment later. Though she didn’t jump, she did jerk her hand back like she’d touched a live wire.

Once more, they shared a look, and then together reached forward again. At the exact center of the room, the air stream took a ninety-degree upward turn, like it had hit an invisible wall.

The ceiling was too high for them to follow the flow all the way up, so Joel pointed toward the back wall. He and Leah circled around their camp mates and followed the stream in the other direction.

About a foot before they reached the wall, the stream angled downward and gradually condensed until it was no more than half an inch thick, just wide enough to pass through a thin opening at the bottom of the baseboard.

“How does it do that?” Leah whispered.

If she expected him to know the answer, she was going to be disappointed.

He pushed on the baseboard but it stayed rock still.

“Try sliding it up,” she suggested.

He pressed his fingers against it and attempted to lift it away from the floor. There was a moment of resistance, and then it began to move upward until the gap was about two inches wide.

“What are you guys doing?” Courtney asked.

Joel moved to the side so the others could see the opening. “The air’s going in here.”

“What are you talking about?” Dooley said, strutting over as if to prove them wrong. “That’s impossible.” When he felt the flow, however, his smug smile disappeared. He followed the stream back to the point in the center of the room where it angled up. “It’s got to be some kind of trick.”

“It’s some kind of something all right,” Leah said.

While Courtney, Kayla, and Antonio felt the strange flow, Dooley returned to the wall and shined his light through the gap along the baseboard. “It’s gotta be another room.” He stood back and examined the wall. “Which means this must be the door.”

He ran his fingers over the surface, pushing inward every few inches to see if he could find the way through.

“Why don’t we just try this?” Leah said.

She cupped her hands around the baseboard opening and pulled. There was a
pop
not unlike that of a house settling, and then another, and finally a groan as a five-foot-wide section of the wall swung out.

Though the door looked heavy, it appeared to move fairly easily, as if it had some kind of counterweight or specialized hinge system.

When it was all the way open, Dooley played his flashlight across the backside of the door. “Whoa.”

The others moved in for a closer look. Not only was the door made of metal, it was at least four inches thick. Like a door in a bank vault, Joel thought.

Antonio looked into the new space. “There’s another door.”

Joel pointed his flashlight into the space. “That kind of looks like an elevator door, doesn’t it?”

Dooley pushed past the others and moved through the doorway, obviously trying to make up for being aced out of entering the cold room first. About twenty feet in, right before the elevator door, the hall took an elbow turn to the left.

Dooley disappeared around the corner and then yelled back, “There’s some stairs here, too.”

Up until the moment Joel had discovered the strange behavior of the airstream, investigating the building had been kind of fun. Not any longer. “Maybe we should head back. We’ve been gone a long time, and Mike’s probably already returned to camp. If a counselor catches him, he’ll give us up in a second.”

Dooley stuck his head around the corner. “Are you kidding? This is getting good.”

“We can always come back tomorrow night,” Joel suggested, though there was no way he’d be joining any repeat expedition. Something was
wrong
about this place.

Dooley snorted and disappeared again.

“I’ll go in if you go,” Courtney said to Kayla.

“Come on,” Antonio said, grabbing Kayla’s hand and pulling her inside. She smiled back at Courtney, who followed.

“Maybe we can just take a quick look,” Leah suggested to Joel. “And then if you want to go back, I’ll go with you.”

Bad idea, bad idea, bad idea
. Though the warning blasted in his mind, Joel’s hormones overrode it. He nodded and stepped over the threshold.

Immediately they both began shivering. It was as if the doorframe was a barrier separating the cold room from the frigid hall. The air—all of it, not just a confined stream—moved down the short corridor like an icy breeze.

With courage he didn’t realize he had, he put his arm around Leah to warm her up. Much to his surprise and pleasure, she leaned into him.

The others had all disappeared around the corner. When Joel and Leah arrived at the turn, they saw that the stairs started only a few feet away and descended into darkness. They could hear their friends working their way down the steps but couldn’t see them.

“I really don’t want to go down,” Leah whispered.

“Good, because I don’t, either.”

Joel gave the hallway a good look. Unlike the rooms they had come through, this space appeared as if it could have been built yesterday. The off-white walls were unmarked. No stains, no cracks, not even any dust. The clear coated concrete floor glistened in the flashlight beam like it had been poured only days before.

The elevator door was the only item that seemed old, though not because of any deterioration. Age-wise, it was as new looking as everything else, but its design seemed to come from a different era, very similar to that of the desks in the first room.

Not expecting anything to happen, he pushed the call button. It lit up and a second later the door slid open.

“Son of a…” he muttered.

The car was larger than he expected, room for at least twenty people. It had metal walls and a ceiling of white opaque material that hid interior lights.

“We could take it down,” he said. “Meet them at the bottom.”

“Do you…want to do that?”

He stepped back from the opening. “Not really. Why don’t we wa—”

A scream echoed up the stairwell from far below.

F
IVE

Mike

M
IKE STARED AT
his watch as the second hand moved past the six and started toward the top again. When it finally hit twelve, he lowered his wrist.

That was it. His friends had been gone exactly an hour, three times longer than he’d expected. He’d made a deal with himself that if they weren’t back when the sixty minutes were up, he would do something. Since he’d been sure they’d have returned by now, he’d put no thought into what that something would be.

He knew the smart move was to stay where he was, but the stress of waiting was driving him crazy.

God, you guys are really pissing me off!

Perhaps if he went just a little way beyond the fence, maybe to the point where he’d last seen their lights, he’d be okay. If that was as far as he went, there would be no way for him to miss them in the dark. And if he didn’t see any sign of them there, he could come back and wait.

Yeah, that’s a good plan. I can do that. No problem.

It took a few more words of encouragement to himself before he finally scaled down the debris. When he reached the break in the fence, he paused. Once he’d crossed it, he would be a lawbreaker like the others.

Make it quick and you’ll be back before anyone knows
.

He hesitated a moment longer and then stepped through the gap.

S
IX

Joel

J
OEL’S FIRST INSTINCT
was to get out of the building and not stop running until they reached the camp, where they could get adult help. But if the screamer was hurt, the delay might mean the difference between life and death.

“I’ll-I’ll go check,” he said. “You can stay here.”

Leah slid her hand into his. “No way. We’ll go together.”

He glanced at the elevator and then back at Leah. Her face mirrored his fear of the confined space. “The stairs will be safer.”

She nodded, relieved, and they headed down, flashlights illuminating the way.

The stairwell curved gently to the right. It wasn’t until they’d completed a couple of rotations that Joel realized they were going around the elevator shaft.

“Do you feel that?” Leah asked. “The air?”

He nodded. The cold wind seemed to be picking up speed the farther down they went, as if urging them to move faster. A few more times around and they had to lean back against it to keep from toppling down the steps.

A terrified whimper came from below.

“Hold on, we’re coming!” Leah shouted.

One more turn around the wall and they finally reached the bottom. Their lights could cut only a short path into the darkness, but it appeared they were at the end of a hallway. The air was really racing now, moaning as it crammed itself into the corridor.

For a moment, Joel wondered if the scream hadn’t been a scream at all but the sound of the wind. Then he heard the whimper again.

“Dooley?” he called.

A startled cry, and then, “Oh, God. Oh, God. Help me!”

The voice was most definitely not Dooley’s.

“Courtney?” Leah said.

“Please, help me!” Courtney screamed.

The wind nearly shoved Joel and Leah to the ground as they took a step forward. Joel leaned against the wall in an attempt to stay upright, and his hip knocked against something jutting from the surface. He redirected his light and saw several metal pipes running horizontally down the corridor. He pointed them out to Leah and they both grabbed on.

Stepping carefully, they moved down the hall, Joel in front.

They’d gone no more than a dozen feet when Leah gasped.

Joel spun around, thinking she’d fallen, but she was still behind him. Her gaze was fixed on something in front of her, her face pale.

He turned back the other way and added his flashlight beam to hers. He expected to see Courtney crumpled on the ground, but the walkway was clear. He was about to ask Leah what she’d seen when movement caught his eye.

“Please, help me!” Courtney cried.

She was there all right, but not on the ground. She was clinging to an unlit light fixture attached to the center of the ceiling, her body flapping behind her like a ripped sail in a storm.

Joel staggered backward in surprise and bumped into Leah, dislodging her grip on the pipes. Instantly the wind whipped her around him toward the open hallway.

“Joel!” she yelled.

Without thinking, he dropped his flashlight and threw out a hand, trying to grab her as she slipped past. He thought he’d missed her but then felt her fingers clamp onto his wrist. He did the same with hers and hauled her toward him, not letting go until she was pressed once more against the wall.

His light, however, was gone. He could see the beam twirling around and around as the flashlight was sucked farther down the passageway.

“Turn your light on,” he said.

“I can’t. I dropped it.”

Joel thought he could actually feel the pitch black of the corridor pressing in on them.

“Please!” Courtney’s voice was weakening.

“Can you climb down?” Joel called. Even as he said it, he knew it was a crazy question. There were plenty of pipes on both walls, but except for the fixture that anchored Courtney, the ceiling was smooth.

“Help me!”

“The wind has to stop soon!” Leah said. “When it does, we can get you down. Just hang on!”

“I can’t…hold…”

A bang, and then the sound of flapping fabric growing fainter and fainter.

“Courtney?” Leah asked.

The wind moaned.

“Courtney?”

Nothing.

“Courtney!”

S
EVEN

Mike

M
IKE KNEW HE
was going to die in the forest.

He was lost.

Big surprise.

He’d predicted that would happen, hadn’t he? It didn’t matter that his plan had been sound, it was bound to fail in the execution.

Things had started off fine. He’d headed along the same path he’d seen his friends take. He’d then carefully made his way to what he estimated was the farthest point he’d seen their lights. Of course he found no one. He hung around for a few minutes, hoping to hear them coming his way, but the woods had remained quiet so he’d headed back toward the fence.