Read Online Left With the Dead by Stephen Knight - Free Book Online Page B

the same position we are.” Gartrell drank more water, then looked over his shoulder at the closet at the foot of the bed. He scooted over and pulled it open. A few boxes were inside, stacked against the wall. Gartrell pulled them out and tossed them on the bed, then knocked on the wall.
    “So you’re sure the apartment next door is empty?” he asked.
    “Yeah. The Skinners, they’re gone, like I said.”
    “Fantastic.” Gartrell rose and pushed past her. He walked into the living room and picked up the backpack with the tools inside, then headed back to the bedroom. Jolie followed him, a puzzled expression on her face.
    “What are you going to do, Dave?”
    Gartrell dumped the tools on the bed and picked out a small sledgehammer and several chisels. He then emptied the closet completely, tossing old men’s clothes on the floor.
    “I’m going to make us a place to fall back to in case the shit hits the fan.” He knocked on the wall several times, in different places. It felt solid to him, and he imagined he was faced with plaster over brick, or maybe cinderblock. That didn’t make things any easier, but he hadn’t expected it to be sheetrock. He picked up the sledgehammer and tapped it against the wall, and plaster fractured and fell away. Sure enough, there was red brick behind it. He looked over at Jolie.
    “You’re going to knock a hole through the wall?”
    “Like I said, we might need a place to fall back to. It won’t be much, but it’ll buy us some time. I’ll try to be as quiet as I can, but you might want to close the door behind you. Try and make sure Jaden doesn’t get too upset if he wakes up. All right?”
    “All right.” She stepped out of the small bedroom and slowly closed the door behind her.
    ###
    It took well over two hours since he had to keep the noise to a minimum, but Gartrell finally cut through the back of the closet and into the apartment next door. Jolie checked on him from time to time, and even Jaden showed up, watching Gartrell hack away at the wall with hammers and chisels. The plaster was gone within minutes; it took almost two hours to chisel through the mortar holding the bricks together, and then he had to pull those out one by one. He took a break to call Falcon on the hour, but there was still no news. Gartrell figured the public affairs officer on the other end of the radio really wasn’t plugged in to anything much at all, but there was nothing he could do about that other than continually plead his case and beg for information.
    Of course, the only thing that mattered were the helicopters, and they either hadn’t arrived or the 10th Mountain Division had more pressing priorities for them to attend to.
    Finally, Gartrell punched through the plaster on the other side of the wall, and he peered through the small hole he had made. Half the view was blocked by a table leg, but room beyond was sunlit. He surmised the apartment on the other side of the wall was a mirror image of Jolie’s, and that he had cut through to another small bedroom. He pulled more bricks away, sneezing from the dust, until the hole was big enough for him to squeeze through. Jaden was delighted by the sudden change in the back bedroom, and he pranced about on his toes, hooting a bit. Gartrell shushed him, but he still had to smile. There was something so innocent about the boy’s delight that Gartrell couldn’t help himself. Jolie picked Jaden up and hugged him tight as Gartrell unholstered his sidearm and pushed himself through the hole in the closet wall.
    The apartment was empty, as Jolie had said it would be. Gartrell walked through it and checked every room. He found evidence the occupants had left in a hurry—a carton of milk sat spoiling on the counter, magazines and books had been knocked from some shelves, and clothes lay scattered about on the floor in front of the closets. There was no luggage to speak of; the family had obviously taken that with them. He found a bowl of