Part 2 (2/2)

”Not in there,” I said, backing away. ”No f.u.c.king way.”

”Okay. Fine. We've got other options.” She led the way to a small one-story building on the other side of the street. It was practically a shack, a run-down shanty, dwarfed by the buildings on either side.

As soon as we got through the door, I dropped my bags to the floor and leaned back against the wall. It was a huge effort to stay on my feet. The pull of gravity seemed absolutely immense.

”You look pale,” the young woman said.

I nodded.

She pulled a bottle of Pepsi from the pocket of her sweats.h.i.+rt and offered it to me. ”Sugar should help. It'll keep you from pa.s.sing out.” I took a deep swig. The liquid went down the wrong way, and I coughed up a thin drizzle of spit.

After I finished coughing, the young woman offered me a sly smile. ”My name's Taylor. Taylor Stray-Gupta-Stray, actually. And you,” she said, pointing a finger at me, ”you're new here.”

”What ...” I began, but I couldn't finish the question. I didn't even know what I wanted to ask. I stopped talking and closed my eyes. ”My name's Dean Walker,” I finally said, keeping my eyes shut.

”And you're a photographer?” she asked. I opened my eyes in time to catch a shallow shrug. ”I looked in your bag. After I took it from Weasel.”

”Yeah. I take pictures.”

”That's good. There's a lot to see here. I don't know what pictures and stories have made it out to the real world, but we've certainly got a lot to photograph.” She made an idle clucking sound at the back of her throat. ”Not quite sure it's smart to seek it out, but it's certainly there.”

I pushed myself off the wall and peered out the shack's front window. The hotel loomed across the street-just a building, really, but suddenly malignant, hard to look at. ”What is that place?” I asked. I ran my hand across the back of my skull but couldn't find any wounds. No b.u.mps or gashes. No concussion. Nothing to explain the things I had seen.

”The hotel?” Taylor asked. She shrugged. ”Just a hotel. Nothing special.”

I picked up my backpack and fished out the camera. As soon as it was in my hands, I started to feel stronger. My fingers were still shaking as I took off the lens cap, but that wasn't just fear and shock, not anymore. I was starting to get excited. I had seen something inexplicable. It had been overwhelming and terrifying, yes, but that was what I'd come here to find. That was why I ditched out on my final semester and broke a government quarantine. To capture those images, to capture Spokane.

And now I'd become a part of it-whatever was happening here, inside this city. I'd become experienced.

I took some pictures of the hotel's face, moving from the windows to the doorway, trying to catch some of the foreboding I felt. But the foreboding wasn't there. It was nothing visual, just a wound inside my head.

”Feeling better?” Taylor asked. ”If you're ready, I can show you around, help you find a place for the night.” I turned with the camera still raised to my face, viewing the room through its lens.

And that was when I noticed her eyes. They were beautiful. She was beautiful.

Outside, the rain was starting to let up, and the setting sun put in a final, last-minute appearance. A beam shot through a hole in the shack's ceiling, highlighting Taylor's face. And in that light, those strong, clear eyes practically shone. She was holding out my backpack, trying to get me moving. I took a couple of photographs, hoping to catch the intense look on her face.

”Just take the f.u.c.king bag,” she growled, finally tossing it at my feet.

”Jesus Christ!” I said. ”Watch the f.u.c.king gla.s.s!”

”Yeah.” A wide smile spread across her face. ”You're feeling better.”

With my camera giving me strength, I took Taylor across the street to the hotel.

There was nothing there. The copulating couple, the child in the closet, the girl in the white dress with that abomination looming overhead-they were all gone.

There was a vaguely human-shaped stain on the ceiling of that one room, but it might have just been a trace of leaking water, a souvenir from a burst pipe sometime in the hotel's past.

And that was it. Nothing more.

And when Taylor asked me what I was expecting to find, why I insisted on scouring the hotel room by empty, abandoned room, I just shook my head. I honestly couldn't say.

But I kept my camera ready.

Photograph. October 17, 08:15 P.M. Dinner by candlelight:

The shot is off center, canted a few degrees to the right: a group of young men and women gathered around a long dining-room table. All of them are dirty. Bundled in thick clothing. Ragged and disheveled. There are bowls of food set before each seat, but n.o.body seems to be paying much attention to their meal. They're lost in conversation-broad smiles all around as a man in a backward baseball cap holds up his hands, ill.u.s.trating some grand point.

Another man is looking directly at the camera, a dazed, contented smile on his dirty face.

There's a cl.u.s.ter of candles burning in the middle of the table-all different heights, sporting blurred fingers of flame. The picture was taken without a flash, and the whole frame is bathed in this orange candlelight, all other colors washed away. In this respect, it is not a full-color shot, but not black and white, either. Instead, black and orange.

The photograph is blurred, the scene too dark for any reasonable shutter speed. Filled with trails of movement and bright, unsteady auras. But still, the warmth of the scene comes through. The cozy happiness.

A dinner by candlelight.

It was twilight by the time we made it back out onto the street. Purple-tinted clouds were barely visible in the darkening sky, and there was thunder rumbling to the east. The thought of hunting out a place to stay, looking for a hidey-hole in the encroaching dark, was seriously daunting, and I was grateful when Taylor invited me to stay at her house. If I had to trust anyone in this place, I figured, she seemed like a safe bet. Safer than someone like Wendell, at least.

She pulled a flashlight from her pocket and led the way north, back across the river. Once on the other side, she began cutting back and forth through upscale residential neighborhoods. It was extremely dark out here on the streets. Without electricity, the street lamps stood like dead trees on the side of the road. There were a few candlelit windows, but they were rare, and the weak light seemed somehow ominous, like hooded, distrustful eyes blinking in the night.

Back in California, I'd wandered through neighborhoods like this during rolling blackouts, deep in the heart of energy-crunch summers. The feeling here was similar, only deeper, more intense. During the rolling blackouts, there had been people all around, out walking the dark streets of the neighborhoods, lounging on their front porches-or, if not visible, there had at least been the sense of people around, the knowledge that they were out there, safely holed up behind their windows. And there had been the conviction that the lights were just about to return, the belief that this silence-so eerily complete-occupied that brief moment just before the click and hum of air conditioners powering back up, just before the epileptic stutter of streetlights flickering back on. Here, there was none of that.

Just darkness and silence. An extended promise.

Taylor pointed out Gonzaga University, waving her finger into the void. She might as well have been pointing toward China in the distance. I couldn't see a thing.

With a loud crack of thunder, the clouds opened up and sheets of water came cras.h.i.+ng down on our heads. My jacket was soaked through in a matter of seconds. Taylor grabbed my hand and started sprinting through the downpour, leading me the last block to her house. During the rush to get inside, I didn't get a good look at the house's exterior, but it seemed big-a multistory Victorian, painted yellow. There was a red and blue pinwheel in the flower bed at the base of the porch; it was spinning wildly, caught in a stream of water falling from the roof.

Taylor pushed through the front door, into a brightly lit entryway. ”Wipe your feet,” she said, nodding toward the doormat. She shrugged out of her wet hoodie and hung it on a mirror-backed coatrack. Underneath, she was wearing a bloodred turtleneck.

This was the first time I'd seen her without the hood. There was a propane lantern burning on a nearby table, but its brilliant white light couldn't touch her pitch-black hair; it was so dark, it sucked in light like a black hole, refusing to give back even the slightest glimmer. Strands hung in wet rivulets around her face, dripping water onto her s.h.i.+rt. She glanced into the mirror and pushed the stray hair back behind her head, smoothing it into an elegant wave.

Again, I was struck by her beauty. Her features were angular and sharp; her beauty was strong and intimidating.

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