Page 85 of Talon

Unable to bear it any longer, I push off the wall and head toward the women’s bathroom. I shove the door open. It slams into the wall. The sound echoes off the tile floor. Then silence fills the room.

“Jess?” I call out tentatively, scanning the empty room.

When there’s no response, panic surges through me. I rush from stall to stall, but they’re all empty. I rip open what looks like a storage closet door, but instead of finding cleaning supplies and extra paper products, I discover another door.

“What the fuck?” I rattle the doorknob, but it seems like it’s locked.

Taking a step back, I pull up my foot and kick in the door. The frame shatters, splintering wood all over the floor. A concrete hallway extends into darkness. I reach along the wall and find a light switch. Old lights, the kind they used in the fifties, flicker to life.

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” I groan.

Moving quickly but cautiously, I head down the hall. The passageway appears to be linked to the oldest part of the hospital. Old steam pipes run across the ceiling, while barely insulated electrical wires line the walls.

Suddenly, the lights go out. I freeze.

A heavy silence descends. Distant sounds, possibly from a boiler room or the laundry, filter through the damp air. I didn’t realize how musty it was until now. I’d been too focused on looking for any sign of life to worry about the conditions in the hallway. Without light, it’s claustrophobic as hell.

Reaching out, I use the back of my hand to test for heat. The metal is cool, not hot at all. I gently graze the pipe with my fingers and use it to navigate farther down the passage. Eventually, I’ve got to hit another door. I can’t turn back now. This is the only other possible way out of the bathroom, so Jessica had to have come this way.

When I finally reach another door, the tension in my body coils tighter. I don’t know what I’m going to find on the other side of it, but I’m ready for anything.

Raising one fist, I use my other hand to fumble along the wood until I touch the doorknob. I twist it, expecting it to be locked, but it isn’t.

The door swings open, revealing an actual storage room this time. Old mops and buckets that have seen better days are lined up on shelves. Industrial sized bottles of cleaner, mostly empty, sit like sentinels along the floor.

I quickly walk through the room toward the door on the other side. It opens into yet another older hallway. Doors branch off in every direction. If I had to guess, I’d say this was an older part of the hospital that’s not in use anymore. It’s going to take forever to check every door.

“Fuck!”

Where could she be?

“Damn it!” I curse, racking my brain for ideas.“There has to be a way to speed this up.”

A soft, scampering noise catches my attention. A small rat scurries toward me. When it gets within a few feet of me, it pulls up short. Cocking its head to one side, it studies me, trying to assess whether I’m a predator.

“Hey, buddy,” I say softly, crouching down.“I need your help. Can you find someone for me?”

The rat twitches its whiskers several times as it tries to make sense of me. Instead of speaking to it audibly, because I know that’s useless, I force a telepathic link with its mind.

“I need your help to find a friend. It’s very important. Will you help me?” I ask it.

“Why?” the rat asks.

“I’ll give you …” I search for the thing it would most want.“A nice place to live and as much food as you could possibly want.”

“Food?”

“Yes. I have a lot of it at my house.”

“Big house?”

“Yes. Huge. Bigger than this house,” I say, referring to the hospital.

“I’ll help.”

“Thank God,” I mutter.

“Who friend?” the rat asks.

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