The Killing Days by Ronald Williams

Author:Ronald Williams [Williams, Ronald]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2018-11-18T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 9

Harrison didn't know what time he finally drifted off to sleep, and when he woke up he experienced a moment of disorientation. The hard floor under his back. The dim, cluttered shop interior. The tiny shafts of dusty sunlight sneaking around the boxes by the front door and through small cracks in the large wooden sign. As the last remnants of sleep fled his tired brain, though, he remembered everything. The power outage, the terrifying plane crash, and worst of all, the intruder the night before.

Harrison groaned and dropped back to his pillow, then rolled over to look at Jason. Jason's sleeping bag was empty, and Harrison felt a brief surge of panic.

“Jason?” he shouted, jerking up to a sitting position. God, what if that man had come back in the night? Or more likely, what if Jason had woken up thirsty, gone rummaging for a bottle of water, and had a seizure?

“Jason!” Harrison leaped to his feet, his foggy morning tiredness completely gone, and began moving through the shop in a crouch, kicking away debris and searching the shadowy lumps of goods for something that resembled his brother's prone body.

Something heavy thumped against the great wooden sign blocking the front window, followed by a whooping shout that seemed to drift away into the distance.

Harrison reached the rear of the store without finding Jason. He wheeled and ran toward the swinging door that led into the back room...and bumped headlong into his brother.

“What are you yelling about?” Jason asked, steadying himself. “You scared the hell out of me.”

“I couldn't find...” Harrison started. “You weren't...” he gestured toward the sleeping bags, already feeling like an idiot. What had he been worried about, exactly? Jason could take care of himself. He had his medication. Truth be told, as soon as he'd seen that empty sleeping bag he'd emotionally flashed back in time to when they were kids, when Jason couldn't take care of himself, because he was too sick.

But that was twenty-five years in the past. Jason didn't need him like that anymore. And yet...looking at Jason's face now, Harrison realized something was wrong.

“Come back here. You better look at this.” Jason turned back through the swinging door and walked into the storage bay. Harrison followed, blinking as his eyes adjusted. The square ceiling hatch that led to the roof was wide open, letting sunlight pour into the dark room. Jason had also spread several fat candles around on the cement floor.

The storage bay was filled mostly with stacks of boxes on pallets just like the one they'd wedged against the front door. Mostly shop inventory, nondescript corrugated boxes mummified in shrink wrap.

That was all normal. What wasn't normal was the body lying on the chipped gray cement just inside the aluminum roll-up loading door.

“What the hell is that?” Harrison breathed. He rushed over and dropped beside the body. It was a young woman with tangled blonde hair and a dark green haltertop, lying on her side. Her face, chest, and forearms were covered in shallow scratches, and her left arm was draped over her midsection.

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