The Long Dark by B.J. Farmer (reading women .TXT) 📕

I hadn’t even thought about my own lamp until they began walking. “Dammit,” I said, barely above a whisper. The lamp was small, and the windows were frosted, but I couldn’t help but think they had seen me. I wasn’t even thinking. I was so damn stupid.

I had reached the landing to the second story when I heard reverberations of the entry door closing shut from below. I began bounding the steps by twos until I got to the third floor.

***

“Wake the fuck up, dude! People in the building!” I yelled, way too loudly.

“Whad de hell?” He murmured.

“Just shut up!”

There was only one way out, and that was the lone staircase, which led to the downstairs lobby. There was no means of escape that didn’t potentially cross paths with the two, armed searchers. We had to make the room as unlived-in as possible, and then maybe hide under the bed or something, and hope for the best. “Quick, the food, blankets, and whatever else… put it under the bed.”

Aadesh was up, moving one way and then another, with nothing in his hands. “Grab something, dude. They’re close, bro!” I growled.

That seemed to knock him out of his stupor. He began to help.

After we stashed as much of our gear as we had time for, we squeezed under the bed. Being the bigger of the two, I didn’t fit nearly as well under the bed as Aadesh had. It was dark, I thought. Maybe they wouldn’t notice, but then it dawned on me: the blankets. There was nowhere to hide all of them. There were so many giveaways in that room. I cradled my rifle. We were so fucked.

A rumbling noise could be heard off in the distance. Sounded like heavy equipment of some sort. Sure, that was a bad deal, but I had more significant worries, like the footsteps just down the hall, followed by the crash of a door being kicked in, and then another and another. All the while, the rumbling noise grew in intensity.

“How are we knowing dese people are bad?” Aadesh asked in a barely audible whisper.

Damn, I needed a drink. My brain was refusing to work. I was shaking badly. Either it was from lack of booze and drugs, or I was scared. Probably both. I settled on telling him, “They’re not cops, bro, and they’re kicking in doors.”

Aadesh pulled his rifle in tight.

The woman shouted in a language I didn’t recognize, from just down the hall. There were screams. The kind that was so high-pitched the gender-type was lost in the primalness of it. Aadesh flinched. I think I spoke, but I don’t remember what I said. There were two quick shots followed by a thud. There was a laugh and then more words spoken I didn’t understand.

At the time, I didn’t even think about us missing whoever was hidden in one of the rooms.

Then there was another door kicked in, followed by another. They were close as hell. Vehicles pulled up next to the hotel. The rumble of the large vehicle was also outside by this time. People shouted. That there were now more people outside sucked hope out of the room like we were in space, and someone opened a window. I began sweating a cold, terrible sweat. I readied myself for what was about to happen. I wasn’t, and by the way, Aadesh held his hunting rifle, he agreed, wasn’t going out with a fight.

“If they find us, shoot until you’re out of bullets,” I said, cocking the side-lever-thing on the side of my rifle.

“I am wery much afraid.”

“Me--”

A man’s voice interrupted our final words, spewing angry words. The woman said something, then there was a pause, more words, followed by a raised and seemingly stressed voice, then pounding footsteps that grew inaudible over just a couple seconds, and then they were gone.

I exhaled deeply. “Jesus, dude. What the fuck.”

“I am nod knowing whad do say. I wery much believed we were dead.”

“We ain’t out of the woods, just yet,” I said, as another low rumbling noise became audible somewhere outside.

“Whad do we do?”

I shook my head, letting him know I didn’t have a clue.

We stayed under the bed for what seemed like a very long time, listening to the events taking place below. I had heard enough machinery over the years to know that whatever big piece of equipment was being operated, whether it was a backhoe, loader, or whatever, it was digging the ground.

The sounds of vehicles coming and going mixed in with shouts and lots of gunfire kept me from dwelling too hard on not having any drink or narcotics. A couple times, the barrages lasted several minutes. The constant fear of the gunfire caused me to think about drugs less. I suppose that was a positive.

Finally, I had had enough of hiding. I needed to see for myself what the hell was going on. Aadesh seemed to share my sentiment. We both crept over to the lone window and peeked out the sides to get a view of what was going on. An excavator dumped large buckets of permafrost in a rapidly growing pile. At the same time, twenty or thirty armed men and women huddled in two or three different groups. Scattered all around their perimeter were dead bodies. Sniffers. Lots of them. In some places around the perimeter, piles of them laid sprawled out on the ground.

***

Several hours had passed. Most of the armed men and women were gone. Only three people remained. The operator in the excavator and two people in a running truck that I could see anyway.

“I am feeling like we need to ged de hell oud of dis premises.”

“All those people could come back at any moment, and then what?”

Aadesh shrugged. “I am ready to dake my chances. I am nod liking being drapped in here.”

“Me either, man, but we’re still breathing. A hell of a lot better than,” I pointed in the direction where the person was shot, “whoever got