Page 63 of Survive the Night
She wasn’t sure if she could even get Bean into the underground passage, but she wanted to try. If she could get them away from the house before going outside, she felt like they would have a greater chance of escaping without being spotted. She didn’t really have a plan beyond getting all the animals to town and finding Otto. That was enough for the moment.
It took her a while to find the latch on the doors. They’d been camouflaged to blend into the rest of the wall. If she hadn’t just emerged from them a short time before, Sarah wouldn’t have even known they were there. She ran her fingers over the rough wood surface for what felt like hours, although she knew it was only minutes. Finally, frustrated, she yanked her gloves off and felt around again.
There! Her fingers touched a square of smoother wood, and that pulled down to reveal a latch. Relief poured over her, and her knees sagged a little, but she stiffened them. It was nowhere near time to collapse in a heap. Sarah still had to get all the animals out and make it to town. As she glanced over her ragtag, scared group around her—except for Hortense, who was nibbling some spilled grain on the ground, as content as she could be—Sarah felt a wave of panic pressing against her. She pushed back, damming up the fear into a tiny box labeled “open later.” She needed to be the adult—well, the human—in the room. They were counting on her to keep them safe, so keep them safe she would. Sarah had a moment of thankfulness that she didn’t have the puppies with her as well. Bob would’ve had to share his pack, and Sarah was pretty sure he wouldn’t have been happy about that.
Unlatching the door, she pulled both open as wide as they’d go and turned on the light. The opening to the tunnel was wider than most two-horse trailers, so she was hopeful that Bean would be okay walking through it. It was as if Otto and the previous homeowner had seen the future and known that someone was going to have to sneak horses out of the barn at some point, because there weren’t any steps. A fairly steep ramp led down into the tunnel. Once she got Bean down that, the rest was easy. It was simply walking.
“Ready, everyone?” Feigning confidence, Sarah started walking down the ramp into the tunnel. Xena and Mort followed immediately. It took a moment for Bean to follow. First, he stretched his neck toward the tunnel entrance and blew one of his scared snorts. “Don’t be silly. It’s just a tunnel. It’s like loading in a very, very long trailer.”
Sarah swore that Bean gave her the side eye.
“Fine, it’s a little scarier than that, but not much. There’s nothing in there to hurt you, though. I can promise you that.” She started forward again, and he followed, shooting through the opening like a ball out of a cannon. Sarah jumped out of the way, nearly tripping over Xena, and braced herself for the massive jerk on the lead line. Once Bean was in the tunnel, though, he stopped abruptly, spinning around to face the entrance he’d just plowed through.
“That’s one way to do it, I guess,” Sarah said under her breath. Hortense walked in with no drama or worry, and Sarah wished that all the animals had her calm smarts. She pulled the doors closed, loving the solid click of the latch fastening, before heading down the tunnel. Mort trotted ahead, as if scouting the way, and Bean walked willingly enough next to her.
When he reached the T-intersection, Mort turned toward the house, and Sarah called him back. A pang went through her. The house was gone. They could hole up in the bunker, but it didn’t feel safe anymore. What if the fire spread downward, and they were trapped in a smoky hole in the ground? The idea made her shiver and her spine prickle with cold sweat. No, they’d go to town, like she’d originally planned. Sure, there were scary guys out to kill her, but they’d figure it out.
Somehow.
* * *
By the time Otto reached the police station, he was half-frozen and nearly crazy with worry about Sarah and Theo and Hugh and…well, pretty much the entire town. The only thing keeping him warm and sane was distracting himself by coming up with creative revenge plots to get back at Hugh for stealing his squad-car shovel.
The station was small, but it seemed oddly abandoned. The sound of Otto’s boots hitting the floor echoed. Although he told himself it was nothing to worry about, that everyone was at the training in the Springs, the silence still made him uneasy. He jogged toward the communications room, holding his key card to the reader and yanking open the door.
No one was there.
The screens were dark and the chairs were empty, and his stomach gave a painful twist. Pivoting, he headed toward the lieutenant’s office. It was abandoned as well. The lights were still on, and Blessard’s favorite travel mug was sitting next to his battered keyboard. All Otto’s instincts—which had been muttering at him that something was very, very wrong—turned up the volume, shouting at him to get out of the building.
First, though, he strode to the lieutenant’s desk and picked up his landline phone. Otto wasn’t even shocked at the silence when he put the phone to his ear. He’d expected it to be dead, like all their other communications. Otto left the LT’s office and jogged for the stairs, taking several steps in each stride, not slowing down as he hit the release bar on the door at the bottom. Part of him was braced for the garage to be empty, for all the vehicles to be missing, but his SUV was still there where he’d left it that afternoon—what felt like weeks ago, rather than mere hours.
As he drove out of the garage, he plowed through a drift of snow that had piled up against the door. There was a thick layer on the ground now, and it was still falling heavily. The wind was sweeping it into tall drifts, and Otto knew that, if it continued this way for another few hours, the roads would soon be impassible.
Otto barked out a laugh that sounded too loud in the silence of his SUV. What did it matter if the town roads were impassible? No one could get out anyway.
He automatically reached for his radio, intending to try to reach the lieutenant. As his hand touched his portable unit, Otto remembered that it was useless. He was completely cut off from everyone else—city, county, and state.
It was a strange and uncomfortable feeling. Otto was used to the constant chatter of his radio, and nearly constant texts and calls from other officers and his supervisors. The silence now felt wrong—very wrong.
He turned out of the department surface lot onto the street, trying to think what he should do next. His rear tires couldn’t find purchase in a snowdrift blocking the exit, and his four-wheel drive kicked in, shooting him forward. Otto kept his speed up as he headed down the street, even though he didn’t know where he was going. His instinct was to go find Sarah, but without excavation equipment and dynamite, there was no way Otto was getting out of town. She’s safe, he reminded himself. She and Grace are probably enjoying their night at a fancy resort. His mind knew it, but his gut still wanted to go to Dresden to find her, even if that meant tearing through the obstruction on the pass with his bare hands.
The street was strangely quiet. He glanced down at the dashboard clock and saw that it was barely nine. It wasn’t that late. Where was everyone? Despite the accumulating snow, he slowed as he looked around. A number of residents had moved to warmer climes for the winter, but even the houses he knew were occupied—by the Romas family and Sean Bilks and the Chenykes—were dark. The only illumination came from the occasional streetlamp and the security lights around the police station behind him. It was strange and eerie.
He was starting to turn on Main Street, when the night lit up behind him. The deafening blast sent his foot instinctively down on the brake, and the SUV juddered to a halt. He hunched forward, his body folding over the wheel, his arms coming up to cover his head. There was a roar of fire, and he slowly straightened, his arms lowering as the truth sank in. There’d been another explosion.
Slamming his SUV into Park, he jerked open the driver’s door and jumped out into the snow. He stared for a moment before jerking himself out of his shock and running toward the station—or what used to be the station. The white light of the immediate explosion had already muted to yellows and oranges as fire engulfed the jagged remains. Flames covered everything, consuming the police department completely. Otto stopped abruptly when blazing heat scorched his face. There was nothing he could do. There was nothing left for him to save. He’d worked in that building, for the Monroe Police Department, for eight years, ever since he received his law enforcement degree. Now, in a single second, it was gone.
As the immediate shock subsided and reality kicked in again, Otto peered into the snow-clogged sky and spotted the white lights of the helicopter. It was headed east, toward the center of town. Otto rushed back to the SUV and climbed in. As he shifted into Drive, he debated his options. He could chase the helicopter and try to bring it down, but his resources were limited. He had his duty weapon, a Taser, a knife, and a multipurpose tool, none of which would be much use against a helicopter. All of his other guns were at his house, which wasn’t accessible right now.
Chasing the helicopter was out. That would be a good way to get himself blown up. So what was his next step? What he needed, Otto decided, was to track down the others. He knew they were still in town. The streets were abandoned, even more than usual during a snowstorm. The explosion should’ve brought everyone running to help or gawk, but there were no lights on in any of the houses. Despite the mass exodus of Monroe every fall, there were still townspeople who stuck around. Their homes were just as dark as the houses that had been abandoned for the winter.
Where were they? Otto flexed his hands, squeezing the steering wheel and then releasing it as he tried to think logically. Aaron’s flunkies had just bombed both mountain passes and the police station. Who knew where they would strike next, but Jules’s house was a real possibility. Otto’s heart rate sped up at the thought, but he forced himself to think it through. Logan Jovanovic had recognized Grace when he and Aaron had tried to grab Sarah in the viner bathroom. It made sense that the Jovanovics were in on it, as well. It was no secret in town where Jules lived, and everyone knew that Jules and Grace lived together. Only a few people knew that Grace was out of town. That house was a likely target. Theo would know that, and he’d get everyone out.
Tipping his head back against the backrest, Otto squeezed the wheel so hard his hands cramped. “So where did they go?” he asked out loud.
If Sarah had still been living at Jules’s when this happened, where would Otto have brought her? He frowned so hard at the idea that his face ached. He’d want her somewhere safe, but they couldn’t leave town. Since any building could be the next target, they’d need to go somewhere that couldn’t be hit—or wouldn’t be. The bunker, his brain immediately supplied, but he shook away the idea. If they couldn’t leave town, they couldn’t get to the bunker.
Otto’s bunker, at least.
