The man trying to break down the door had scared them both. Even after they had heard him moving away down the hall, saying that he was going to get help, neither of them spoke or moved for a long time. It was finally Kerren's voice from under the bed, sounding both amazed and disturbingly distracted: "Was he asking about someone named Theda?"
It was the tone of her voice that made Sheryl finally, after all that had happened, begin to panic. Even though she was so maddeningly close, for the first time Sheryl thought her wife was going into shock, losing a lot of blood somewhere underneath the bed, or both. She couldn't wait for the cavalry to come breaking through the door. She was going to have to do it herself.
She steeled her nerves and pressed forward, knowing that no avoided injury would make her feel better if greater harm came to her wife. "Kerren," she called, wanting to keep hearing her more than having anything to say, "keep talking so I can follow your voice... How are you doing down there? I know you hurt your leg..."
"It's not so bad now, since I've gotten used to it," Kerren said, her voice not regaining an ounce of vitality. It almost sounded like those times when she would mumble in her sleep, only more articulate. "I should have told that guy it's okay. That the stones are going to be okay."
Sheryl was so intent on finding her way over the edge of the bed that she wasn't paying attention to the content of Kerren's words. That distant tone was just so unnerving...
"Ow, ow ow ow!" Kerren suddenly said from beneath her. "Not so tight!" she said, her voice that of the petulant child she sometimes claimed she used to be. Sheryl realized what was happening, almost immediately. In her progress toward the edge of the bed that Kerren had slid over, she was putting more of her weight on the covers that Kerren was wrapped up in. In doing this, she must have been tightening the fabric, making it close on Kerren's surely-broken leg.
Sheryl backed up, sputtering, "Sorry, sorry sorry. I'm just trying to get to you, honey." Kerren's pained cries tapered off into a low moan, and Sheryl suddenly realized there was another, safer way to get down there. She backed up as far as she could, back to her side of the bed, and lowered one foot down tentatively. Long before it should have touched the floor, her foot dipped into the stabbing cold of piled snow. She winced, yanked it back up, then took a deep breath and plunged in again.
She spent the next fifteen seconds sliding her leg back and forth along the edge of the bed, trying to figure out where the snow was the shallowest. It appeared to have piled up highest near the foot of the bed when it came blasting in through the patio doors, which explained why the foot of the bed had turned the most, and become jammed against the convex corner of the wall. She scooted as far toward the headboard as she could, and then backed off the bed, wincing as she sank ankle-deep into snow.
It felt totally incongruous to have her feet touch down on polished hard wood under three inches of powdery snow, but that thought was soon superseded by the numbing cold that pressed in on them like needles. Sheryl didn't take the time to think about how painful it was, instead just took notice of it. It's just sensory data, she kept telling herself as she bent down to kneel in the snow. Just nerve impulses reporting something that doesn't matter right now. Just get it done.
She bent down and began scraping away snow from her side of the bed, trying to make enough room underneath that she could crawl under and get to Kerren that way. By the time she had cleared enough that her knuckles were starting to scrape against the wooden floorboards, she could barely feel the cold.
A sudden thought made her yank her hand back. This torrent of snow had blasted through the patio door on its way to their bed, so where was all the glass? She didn't know if it had broken into millions of tiny cubes, or if there were huge jagged pieces waiting for her somewhere down there. Now she was afraid to even bring her heels down on the floor. She shook some of the near-freezing water off her hands and slowly felt around behind her.
After a quick, light-fingered sweep and finding nothing, she realized she hadn't heard from Kerren ever since she had gotten down from the bed. "Kerr?" she called, trying hard not to sound terrified. "How are you holding up down there?"
No reply came, and it made Sheryl's fingers, shaking from equal parts cold and fear, widen their search... until the back of one of her hands brushed against something hard. She yanked it back, then realized this might be the very thing she was looking for. She reached for the shape again, and this time her fingers touched something amazingly smooth and rounded among all the rough textures. The object spun a little as she imparted some grasping force into it. She heard it push a few other little somethings aside, and realized that she had found a sizeable chunk of the base of the china lamp that had been on the nightstand.
She felt tenderly for the sharp edges that she knew it must have, and found them. When she found what felt like the least harmful place to take hold, she picked it up. It wasn't exactly in the shape of a blade, but it would work for what she had in mind. The next part was steeling herself to lie flat against the floor and shimmying under the bed.
"Kerren? Honey? I'm coming to get you. Hold on." She had realized mid-thought that she didn't want to leave a question hanging, because then she would be wondering if Kerren's lack of answer was by choice, or because she couldn't anymore. So Sheryl issued her pair of declarative, proactive statements and dropped on her stomach.
What was left of the snow on the floor immediately melted under the body heat she had suspected she no longer had any of, and it actually aided her slide underneath the heavy wooden board of the bed frame. She was so cold, and working her way inch by inch across to where Kerren was lying encased in a cotton cocoon, unable to move... the thought of how similar their situations were getting made Sheryl's throat clench in fear, but she choked down the imaginary blockage and continued.
Her non-weapon-wielding hand found the taut pouch of blanket that held her wife. She had hoped to get a reaction from Kerren when she touched it, but aside from the weight and warmth she could feel through it, there was no response. Sheryl tried to work as quickly as she could in the confined space. She slid alongside the bundle, as closely as possible, and then used both hands to guide the sharpest edge of the broken lamp along the slats on the underside of the bed. She wanted to cut through the blanket and sheet as high off the ground as she could, taking the least risk in cutting Kerren as she set her free.
She began working the lamp piece back and forth, hoping she was making some progress. At first, it didn't seem like she was, and the longer she slashed at it, the more convinced she became that this was a mistake. Either the improvised blade wasn't sharp enough, or it was going to punch through and lacerate Kerren's arms, which for all Sheryl knew were raised up over her head, right on the other side of the cloth Sheryl was trying to cut. If Kerren were unconscious, Sheryl might cut halfway through her wife's arm before she even knew what she was doing.
But she had to get her out of there. The best thing to do now was to get Kerren out and then re-evaluate the situation. Nothing was going to improve as long as she was in there. Sheryl's arm, beginning to tire, kept dragging the sharpness across the blanket -- which had felt so comforting and warm when they were lying together under it -- and willed it to split.
In her desperation, the anger she felt at the material flew off in unexpected directions, hating the snow, the lamp piece, her own foolishness for finding this forsaken place to celebrate their anniversary, even... Kerren. As much as Sheryl tried to push it aside, none of this would have happened if Kerren had kept her vow. Suddenly, she was faced with the inescapable facts she had been pushing aside all weekend. Kerren had lied to her, multiple times, with full intent of doing so, in order to sleep with someone else.
Was she foolish, she wondered, for staying? Maybe. There were friends that had told her yes, some that had told her no. That was the trouble with coming together as a couple from a vast pool of mutual friends; a split between them would have sent awkward ripples and backbiting all through their shared community. The fact that she didn't want to be the cause of such upheaval was initially the reason she hadn't packed and moved out the very day she found out. And that, after all else that had happened, was what troubled her the most.
She had always put more importance on other's thoughts and feelings than her own. She had been like that since childhood, when her classmates had always known they could cut in front of her at the lunch line or waiting for the swings and Sheryl wouldn't say anything. She eventually learned to feel retroactively magnanimous, as if giving up her spot had been her idea in the first place. But it was just the way she dealt with being unable to stand up for herself. She had made strides in the meantime, but all she had to do was recall the contended, peaceful smile on Kerren's face as she slept next to her, and couldn't entirely convince herself that much had changed at all.
But at this point, what would leaving prove? The same chaos would result, she'd be just as alone, and she would be left with the thought that she had only left as an exercise in self-assertion. There would be an equal measure of regret either way.
Could she keep this up, though? To look into those green eyes and, from now on, pretend that she didn't wonder if Kerren was looking at her the same way she had looked at that other woman? After all this time, she didn't even know her real name. The texts were labeled only "ScarletHarlot", a porn name if there ever was one. And she had only caught a glimpse of her that one time, the day after the conflagration of Sheryl's discovery of the evidence. She had waited while Kerren had met the woman in the nuetral territory of a coffee shop, watching their break-up with less glee than she had hoped for. Kerren had always maintained that what Sheryl had seen from afar was their final communication, but Sheryl had never been entirely sure about that.
Somewhere, a seam began to rip. Sheryl's arm, growing more and more forceful the longer she thought about her wife's infidelity, was starting to find less taut resistance in the blanket, and Kerren's weight was starting to aid in pulling the torn fabric apart.
Sheryl threw aside the lamp shard and thrust her hands into the breach, working them in opposite directions, hearing the satisfying sound of frayed, strained material splitting. A wash of hot air that had been breathed in and out repeatedly hit her, instantly melting bits of snow that had lingered in her hair during the struggle. The upper half of Kerren's body slid out into Sheryl's arms, and suddenly the wetness on her face wasn't all melted snow. Sheryl cradled her wife as best she could and thanked whoever needed to be thanked that they were together again.
-4.2-
Bruce was heading for the dancing light at the far end of the hall when he heard another scream. This one wasn't urgent, but more like a startled scream from the back of a darkened movie theater than a cry of real human pain. It happened almost in perfect synchronicity with a big, muffled thud, the largest sound since... well, whatever the hell it was that had happened to this building and all the souls inside it.
He moved along in a crouch now, compromising between the belly-crawl from before and the heedless sprinting run that he wanted to adopt, now that he had a clear goal in mind. He had to get help for Theda, as quickly as possible. The ice bucket had been forgotten, but still rattled its fractured parts in his grip, sounding much like the rest of the building felt. Now that he had grown used to it, he felt more sure of the way every angle was canted, every smooth surface churned and buckled away from the way it had intended to be. Corners, both convex and concave, had popped from mechanical stress, and were now full of thick, long splinters.
He kept his focus on the light. It was moving, playing around some far corner of the hall -- he wasn't sure if it was his own self-involvement or structural damage that made it impossible for him to recall the lodge's floor plan, and where the rest of it was in relation to his room -- and the pattern in the way it swung around told Bruce that it likely belonged to someone who used it professionally. In a hotel, that meant staff.
The beam seemed to narrow the closer he got to the corner, and he hoped that meant that the flashlight's wielder was headed in his direction. "Hey," he called, not wanting to pop out on anyone in this already heightened atmosphere.
The beam paused. "Are you the one who called for help?" a voice deeper than his own called back. "Who is it?"
Bruce nodded, then remembered he couldn't be seen by this person yet. "Bruce Casey," he replied, then winced when he remembered that he had signed in under another name. He heard a brief, quiet chuckle from around the corner, and then silence. It was no wonder; his real name was well known. It was much the same reaction as if he had called out that his name was "Stephen King" or "Benjamin Franklin".
The deep voice replied, having full regained full composure, "Stay where you are, Mr. Casey. I'm in the process of making sure this corridor is secure before we try to extract anyone. Is it you that needs help?"
The man holding the flashlight came around the corner as he asked this. It was a sturdily built security guard, his wide shoulders and bald head conveying a sense of assuredness that Bruce hoped the man actually had.
Before Bruce could tell him about the trapped women, the man said, "Holy shit. You really are Bruce Casey." Bruce responded with an apologetic shrug. "Now, who's in trouble?"
Thankful that the recognition phase of their relationship had passed quickly, Bruce pointed back down the twisted hall. "There are women trapped in one of the rooms. I tried to open the door, but everything's tilted and I couldn't open it." He held up the cracked ice bucket, as if that explained anything about the situation.
"Which room?" the security man asked.
Bruce replied, "Back here. I... I didn't see the room number. It's dark back there."
The security guard nodded, swung the flashlight past Bruce to illuminate the hall the writer had just come down. Bruce's breath caught when he saw the gauntlet he had unwittingly passed through. Beyond a certain point, fractured beams chaotically cris-crossed the space that could no longer be defined as a hallway. The only space that appeared even close to being unaffected was the area closer than the door with the broken doorknob. Past that was mostly destruction. Bruce couldn't figure out how he had crawled so far down the hallway without being stopped by wreckage.
"I broke the doorknob," Bruce indicated, pointing. The security guard played his flashlight across it, sizing it up, while Bruce continued to marvel at how he had come through the mess that his part of the hotel had turned into. Wouldn't he have noticed if--
"Stand back, Mr. Casey," the guard was saying, guiding him back toward the less-broken wing of the lodge with an arm as thick as a tree limb. He played the light around the perimeter of the door, as if sizing it up, leaning down a little to peer into the mechanism, nakedly visible now that the knob was gone. "You say there are people in there?"
"Yes," Bruce said. "Women."
"Don't hear anyone," the security guard mused, although it didn't sound like he was doubting, only stating a fact. He further stated, "I haven't knocked down one of these doors before... haven't had to. They're built pretty sturdy."
Bruce felt he should just let the man figure this out. He'd done all he could.
After a few minutes of checking around the door, the security stepped forward and rapped on it, as if there were nothing wrong. "Excuse me?" he called into the room. "If you're near the door, you might want to stand back."
As the guard took two steps back and prepared to rush at the door, Bruce realized that he really had no idea what was on the other side. If the hall he had somehow traveled down was as impassable as this one was, how did he even know there was anything at all beyond this particular door? It might be anything, even a thirty-foot drop to the mountain below--
"Wait!" Bruce said, but the guard was already in motion, rounding his shoulder and barreling for the hinge side of the door. He hit it hard, high on the outside, and the resounding thump and sharp crack filled the narrow hall like a double-barrel gunshot.
When the guard's body fell away from the door, it was clear what kind of damage had been done; the upper left corner of the door had bent inward, the hinge behind that section presumably having shot into the room like a rocket, and the rest of the door had cracked down the middle, but other than that it hadn't moved much. The guard went down on a knee, hunching over and grabbing his battering shoulder. Bruce ran over to him and put a hand on what was clearly now his good shoulder. "You all right, Mister...?"
"Dale," the guard said, not looking up. "I'll be fine, but there are some things that just don't want to get broken, huh?"
Bruce chuckled a little, and looking up, saw that there was now a two-inch gap between the bent upper corner of the door and the jamb. He stepped up to it, went up on his tiptoes, and called in. "Sheryl? Are you still there?"
The voice that came back was forced but half-whispered, as if she were trying to yell, but also not trying to wake someone. "We're still here. We need a doctor, though."
"I know," Bruce called. "We're working on that. I think--" he tested the rest of the door by pushing on it with his slippered foot, and found that the crack down the middle allowed the wood to give quite a bit, with just a little pressure. He indicated this to Dale by saying, "I think you did more damage than you thought."
"Hope so," came the pained voice. Dale took one long, deep breath as he knelt there, posed somewhat like Atlas, before slowly standing up again. He strode over to Bruce, who ceded his place at the door. Dale slid his fingers up into the gap near the bent top of the door, tensed his arms enough to make his muscles stretch the arms of his uniform, and pushed it in. With a satisfying rip, the top corner or the door split easily along the crease his shoulder had created, and tipped even further into the room beyond. "Anyone in there?" he called.
A woman's voice -- the one that wasn't Theda, Bruce noted with a pang -- called back, as if she had just noticed that the door was in the process of being broken down. "Yes! We're here! I can see some light!"
Dale took this moment to lift his booted foot and plant three hard kicks right in the center of the increasingly-splintered door, which completely gave way on the last. The two halves split as if they had been designed to be bat-wing doors to a saloon. The one not still propped up by hinges fell to the floor with a loud clatter.
Dale immediately swung his flashlight into the dark space that had opened beyond. Bruce stepped up behind him to benefit from the angle of illumination. With the amount of glittering snow that had piled up in the room, it was almost as if another flashlight was being turned back upon them, but it was just a frigid reflection of the LED. All that was visible was the short hall leading into the room, something resembling a bed jammed into the mouth of the hallway, and an immense heap of snow beyond. Air rushed past them into the slightly warmer hallway, cold and forbidding.
"Where are you?" Dale asked, because there were no women to be seen.
"Under here!" not-Theda's voice came again. "My wife's hurt! Please help us!"
The tangle of sheet and blanket that hung over the leading edge of the sideways bed twitched and shifted.
"Dear Jesus," Dale breathed. His beam played across the broken flooring that filled the distance between the doorway and the bed. Boards had been pressed so hard they had sprung out of place, exposing the cobwebby subflooring in multiple places.
"Hold this," Dale said, handing his flashlight to Bruce. "I think I can see a clear path across--"
The flashlight fell to the floor, Bruce's fingers refusing to take it. Instead, the writer jumped through the now-open doorway, like a racehorse bolting from the gate. The light turned away as the flashlight rolled on the floor, once again dropping the room beyond the door into utter blackness. He was yelling out a name that belonged to no one present.
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