Chapter 47 Nina

Chapter 47

?Nina

She was making good progress back through the rooms until she reached Burial of the Dead.

She hears the noises before she sees the light, the gunshots, blunt and unmistakable from the house above, the sound of something smashing into glass and then, in the room ahead, she sees a flashlight swinging wildly in the darkness.

She slips into the now defunct glass coffin and waits. There is only one flashlight, one person, but there are more upstairs and Nina is not going back down into the rooms. She is not going to die down here. The man who entered has a weapon as well as a flashlight, some kind of long baton.

The plate and cheese knife from the meal she ate hours ago lie in the coffin beside her. She feels for them in the darkness, her hand clenching quietly around the small bone handle. Then she waits until he has passed her and slipped into the next vestibule to rise from her hiding place and follow him into the corridor on silent feet.

She creeps toward his hunched, wary back, his eyes clearly not as adjusted to the darkness as hers.

She has almost made it to him when a call sounds back through the rooms, a woman calling someone. The man turns, his light shining directly into Nina's face, blinding her as he cries out in shock.

Nina braces for an impact. But the impact does not come. So she lunges, she lunges hard and fast for the phone, knocking it to the ground, and then she thrusts the knife harder into the unseen flesh of the figure in front of her.

His cry of pain echoes through the empty rooms as he sinks to the floor, dropping his stick. Nina kicks the phone away from him and moves to grab it.

But before she can swing the light back onto him, she hears a familiar voice come from the injured man: "Nina?"

It takes her addled mind a moment to make sense of it, of what is happening—then… "Joe?" her voice rattles in answer.

"What the hell did you do?" he asks, his voice strained. When he speaks again there is no mistaking the severity of his injury. "Oh Jesus Christ. I'm bleeding. I'm bleeding a lot. Fuck, I need a hospital, I need—"

Nina swings the light at him. He lies prone on the ground, a hand clutched hard to his stomach, his white shirt now dark, and that darkness still spreads across it as she watches.

"Oh fuck, Joe. Oh my God. Okay, don't worry, don't worry. I'll get you out of here. I'll get us both out of here." Nina cannot stop the surge of adrenaline that explodes inside her—and with it a resurgence of her lightheadedness, but she does not have the luxury of indulging it now.

Just before Joe loses consciousness, he feels her arms envelop him and begin to drag him out of the darkness.

The unmistakable sound of smashing glass reverberates from the house above them.