Page 28 of The Stranger

So I open the door.

Only, it’s not a closet at all. Cold air hits me in an instant, and I’m staring into an open lot behind the motel. The blood trail stops a few feet into the snow, and I feel relief. Maybe someone had a nosebleed—or several—and they fixed it. There are no bodies here. No proof anyone is hurt. Maybe it truly is something that got spilled.

I’m so tired, and the lights are so weird in there, it’s not impossible, I suppose.

I step out into the snow, looking around, but see no one. I’m about to go back inside when I hear something to my left. From just around the corner of the building.

Someone is over there.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

WALKER

I still can’t sleep, despite how tired I am. I feel this nervous energy inside of me. Jittery. Like I can’t sit still. I can’t stop moving. Adrenaline from everything that’s happened tonight perhaps, but I need it to go away.

I need to breathe easier, but I have no idea how. There’s too much to stress over, too much than can and has gone wrong.

As the motel comes back into view, I pull my hands from my pockets and check my phone again.

Still no service.

This storm has to be one of the worst ones I’ve seen in my life. I remember an ice storm in 2009 when I was in high school that knocked out the power in our town for nearly two weeks, cell service too. The whole town ran on generators, and the government sent in freeze-dried military food for us to eat. At the time, it felt like an adventure. I remember spending nights in our living room in front of the fireplace with blankets covering the doorway to keep the heat in. I remember turning on the generator long enough for one person to shower. As a kid, all that shit feels like an adventure, I guess. You have no real responsibility. It’s all just fun. Maybe a little inconvenient when you can’t charge your phone and talk to your girlfriend, but other than that, it wasn’t a big deal.

Now, it feels major. Now, I understand the repercussions. I’m hoping we’ll be able to get a tow truck out here to get us to town in the morning. If we wake up tomorrow and the roads still aren’t open, I’m going to have to find a way to get Tibby something to eat. We have the cereal and milk Ernest mentioned, if the other guests don’t eat it all first, but it’s not much. And he’ll need it for himself and his wife, too. Especially if things are bad for too long.

Tough times change people in the worst ways.

We have water and coffee in the room, at least, but I’m kicking myself over not grabbing food at the last gas station I stopped at before I found her. If I’d had the foresight to grab a bag of chips or a sandwich—something other than that bag of M&M’s at the rest stop—at least we’d have something small to get us through.

Now, in just a few hours, the sun will be coming up, and with cell towers still down, I don’t have much hope the roads are cleared or even safer to drive on than they were when we arrived.

I stop at my car and check the back seat, hoping I might’ve forgotten about a bag of something to snack on, but there’s nothing.

I yawn as I close the door, knowing I should go back to the room and try to get some sleep, but I can’t. Not with her sleeping next to me. Not while the world is falling apart and my simple plans for this holiday weekend are unraveling at the seams.

Tomorrow is New Year’s Eve—today, actually, I guess—and here I am, stranded in the middle of nowhere with a woman who seems to actively hate me.

I’m pacing around the parking lot when I hear someone moving closer to me. I spin around, not sure what to expect, and my eyes land on a terrified-looking Tibby.

“What are you doing?” I ask.

At the same time, she blurts out, “Where were you?”

“I went for a walk to clear my head,” I tell her, trying to understand the strange expression on her face. “Tibby? What’s wrong?”

She shakes her head, running her trembling fingers over her bottom lip with this sort of faraway expression on her face. “I, um, I… Well, I think something happened. Something’s wrong.”

My body goes even colder, though I don’t know how it’s possible, as a lump forms in my throat. “What do you mean?”

“There’s…” She pauses, rubbing her lips together. “I think there’s blood, um, in the…in the lobby.”

Every muscle in my body seems to tense up. “What?”

Her eyes meet mine finally, so full of fear and uncertainty that it’s painful. “Did you see it when you were in there earlier?”

“No. Of course not. I mean, I don’t think so. I’m sure it’s not blood,” I tell her, not sure of anything at all.

“There’s a trail. It…it leads to the door, but then it just stops. I don’t understand what’s happening here, Walker, but I have a bad feeling. We need to go.”