Page 60 of Backwoods
“They never run out of supplies,” Raven said. “The building restocks itself every night.”
He stared at her. “Restocks itself?”
“If you were to take out that bag of flour right next to you”—she pointed—“when you came back in here tomorrow, it would be there again, like you’d never touched it.”
“You’ve seen this happen?”
She nodded. “Miss Lula would send me in here all the time to get different things for the kitchen. You need matches, right?”
“Yeah.” He couldn’t wrap his mind around what she had shared with him, but he decided that it didn’t matter. The only way he could operate in this fantastical new reality was to roll with the punches as they came. “Matches. Paper. Candles. Glue. I highly doubt we’ll find flash powder in here so we’ll have to sacrifice a couple of shotgun shells for their gunpowder.”
“I’ve never seen anyone make homemade firecrackers,” she said.
“When I was working on my doctorate, some of us students did it for fun,” he said. “Our summer project was to create a Fourth of July fireworks show using products we created ourselves.”
“That sounds kinda dangerous.”
“It was. Dangerous and stupid—it’s amazing no one got hurt. But I learned quite a bit.” He had to smile. “I never thought any of it would turn out actually to be useful.”
Raven scurried from one aisle to the next, collecting items like a squirrel gathering nuts, Nick following close behind. Once she had located matches and a box of white taper candles, Nick lit one of them and used its flickering light to guide their search, holding it aloft like a tomb raider bearing a torch.
They took all the ingredients to a small oak desk at the back of the warehouse. A leather-bound ledger lay on the desktop. Nick cracked open the book and saw barely legible, handwritten entries on the crisp white pages.
“This is where they tracked inventory,” he said. “This place is like a living museum.”
“It’s the same inside the house,” Raven said. “They spend all day cleaning and washing and stuff, but then everything’s back to how it was before the next morning. Like that old Greek myth guy, Sisyphus, pushing the boulder up the hill only to see it roll back down.”
“You’re a reader, huh?” he said, impressed.
“It’s not like we got TV and Wi-Fi here.” She cleared space on the desk and sorted out the items they had collected. “Okay, Mr. Science Wiz, do your thing.”
A sudden booming noise made Nick flinch. Raven’s eyes flashed with alarm. She looked over her shoulder, then spun back to Nick, her face pinched with fear.
“Sounds like Tank isn’t as dumb as we thought,” Nick said.
40
Nick blew out his candle, shadows rising to surround them like a gathering of old friends. Raven went to grab her rifle, but Nick put his hand on her arm and shook his head.
“We shoot at him in here and the gunshot will echo and alert every helper at Westbrook.” He had dropped his voice to a whisper. “We’d be trapped.”
She grimaced as the realization settled over her, lowered the weapon. She whispered: “What you wanna do?”
“Get out of here before he finds us.” He motioned behind her. “We can empty one of those sacks of rice over there and store our things in it. I’ll have to put together our toys somewhere else.”
They heard heavy footsteps shuffling across the sawdust-covered floor. It sounded as if the helper was methodically searching the warehouse, square foot by square foot.
Nope, he’s not dumb by a long shot, Nick thought. Circles of cold sweat had formed in his armpits.
Raven helped him pick up a sack of rice; it must have weighed at least fifty pounds. He tore open the tough material with the utility tool Grandpa Lee had given him. Together, theydumped the rice in a spot on the corner of the floor, letting the grains quietly pool into a pile.
“All right, let’s hurry.” He swept everything off the table and into the empty sack. He didn’t have anything to tie it closed, so he used his leather belt.
Near the middle of the warehouse, something clanged to the floor. The big man muttered under his breath.
He had gotten much closer to them.
Nick picked up the shotgun off the desk. Pulling the trigger in there would be suicide but he felt safer with the steel in his hands. Raven hefted the rifle, too.
