TORMENT (27 page)

“What’s the plan?” Garbarino asked Mia.

“Find someplace dark with locks on the doors and sleep.” She led the way into one of the long hallways. She stopped at a thick wooden door. She drew her handgun and motioned for the others to wait. Austin ignored her and joined her at the door.

“You open. I’ll go in first.”

She took hold of the doorknob. He gave her a nod. With a quick twist of the doorknob, Mia opened the door and pushed.

Austin surged into the room, swinging his weapon back and forth. But the space was empty except for several small tables, twenty miniature chairs and boxes of toys. “It’s a nursery.”

“Sunday school,” Mia corrected, following him in. She motioned for the others to follow.

Chang quickly found a stack of nap mats and laid them out on the floor.

Liz, who still remembered the kindergarten routine, wasted no time in claiming hers and lying down. She fell asleep in seconds.

Austin slowly approached the two large windows on the other side of the room. Each four foot by eight foot window offered views of the large parking lot wrapping around the building, the woods beyond, and the shimmering clouds above.

“We’ll see anyone coming,” Garbarino said.

Austin shook his head, no. “We won’t see them and they won’t see us.” He drew the shades. The room would have been
pitch
black if not for the light streaming in on the sides of the shades. Austin moved back to the door, closed it and locked it.

“Who’s keeping watch?” Mia asked.

“Nobody,” Austin said. “I don’t think there is one of us who could stay awake. The doors are locked. If we need a quick exit, we’ll shoot out the windows. No lights. No shouting. No leaving this room without a partner.”

No one responded. No one needed to. Anything that might reveal their location could get them killed. One by one, they staked their claims on the floor mats and lay down to sleep.

Within ten minutes, they were all asleep, totally unaware of the faint shouting voice echoing in the church’s massive sanctuary.

32

Mia woke. The ceiling above her was white.
As was the down comforter covering her body.
She sat up. The old mattress bent beneath her, compressing to half its thickness. She bounced on it twice. The frame squeaked.

She was home—the home of her childhood. She couldn’t remember why she was there, only that it felt right. She stood, already in her slippers.

As she descended the staircase, a loud chopping sound filled the air.

“Hungry?” her mother called out.

“Starving,” she replied as she walked through the dining room. It looked just how she remembered it, red carpet, white lace curtains, and ornate crystals dangling from the shades that created little rainbows around the room when the sun came in at the end of the day.

She entered the kitchen, but it wasn’t her mother standing there, it was Matt. He stood over a cutting board, working a knife up and down on a carrot. “Hungry?” he asked.

“Starving,” she said.

The chopping came louder now, drawing her attention back to the cutting board. Matt’s fingers were now under the blade. He cut through them, making little diced finger bits—red on the outside with a small circle of bone in the middle. There was no blood. He looked back at her and gave her a wink.

“Hungry?” he asked.

“Starving,” she replied. “Feed me, please.”

“Here,” he said, turning around with a platter in his hand. The platter held his heart, resting on a bed of bloody veins. She couldn’t see an opening in his chest, but she knew the heart was his.

“I’m hungry,” she said.

“Eat this,” he replied. He lifted the knife up, pulled it back and threw it straight at her face.

Mia sat up. She breathed deep twice and the dream was gone except for one lingering element that had been rooted in reality: hunger.

“Pssst.”

Mia searched the darkness and found Garbarino sitting in the corner peeking through a slit in the window. She stood slowly and crossed the Sunday school room, careful not to step on Liz or Collins as she stepped over them.

“How long?”
Mia asked. “How long did we sleep?”

“Three hours for me.” He looked at his watch.
“Four and a half for you.
Bad dream?”

“I think so.”

“You were kicking around.”

“I’m hungry.”

He nodded.
“Starving.”

The phrase pulled back parts of her dream.
The knife flying at her face.
She closed her eyes and blocked out the image.

He took an unopened protein bar from his pocket. “We could split it.
My last one.”

Mia looked at the bar. She’d eaten so many of the foul, dry, sugar-filled bars that she couldn’t stand the sight of it. “I’m not
that
hungry yet.”

“How about we go raid the kitchen for some grape juice and Jesus wafers?”

“Jesus wafers?”

“You know. What they eat for communion.”

“That’s Catholics. This is a non-denominational church. I think they use bread.”

“Well, then maybe they have some Wonder Bread. That shit could survive a nuclear war, right?”

Mia nearly laughed. She motioned to Austin. “We can’t leave without telling him.”

Garbarino abandoned his post. He opened a cupboard and took out some paper and crayons. When he did, a piece of paper fell away. Mia picked it up and found a child’s drawing. The crayon sketch featured smiling parents, a little girl, a large house, a dog and what appeared to be a convertible car. The innocence of the image got to her and she found herself staring at it until Garbarino snatched it from her.

“No time to go soft,” he said, and then held up his quickly scribbled note. It read, “Went to raid the pantry. Be back soon.
G and M.”

They slid into the hallway a moment later. Garbarino locked the door from the inside before closing it.

“We won’t be able to get back in,” Mia said.

“We’ll knock.”

“Austin’s liable to shoot us.”

“We’ll knock gently.” He drew his weapon and motioned for her to follow him and they searched further down the hallway.

They found two more classrooms, identical to the first, but with slightly larger furniture. At the end of the hall were a set of bathrooms, men’s and women’s. “Gotta go?” he asked.

She did. “We should check the bathroom together. Take turns.”

“After you,” he said.

They entered together and after finding the bathroom empty, and very clean, they took turns using two different stalls, Garbarino first, Mia second. When she exited, Garbarino was standing in an open door leading to a stairwell on the other side of the hallway. He entered the stairwell and held the door open for her. For some reason, she wanted to explore every inch of this building.
Maybe because it looked so pristine, so untouched by the events outside.
Maybe because she wanted to be sure there were no killers lurking in the darkness. She wasn’t sure. So she followed him down the stairs.

Garbarino opened a door at the bottom of the stairwell. The smell of oil and metal spilled over them. “It’s a garage,” he said.

Two small windows provided enough light to see by. The three car garage held two bright green riding mowers and a red car. Garbarino moved past the mowers and looked at the car. “It’s a Porsche. What kind of a church has a Porsche in the garage?”

Mia shrugged, looking around the rest of the space. Giant peg boards at the back of the garage held an assortment of gardening tools. Shelving along the side wall held fertilizer, pots and six large red tanks of gasoline. “We could take the car,” she said.

“Uh-uh,” he replied. “EMP would have killed the starter.”

“Damn.” She looked around one last time and returned to the stairwell. “C’mon. I’m still hungry.”

They returned to the hallway and headed toward the oversized foyer. On the way, they paused at the Sunday school door, listening for voices or any sign of someone else being awake. Hearing nothing, they continued on. Multicolored heat lightning continued to flash through stained glass windows. The sight was beautiful, but the silence made it eerie.

They continued through, heading down the hallway on the opposite side of the building. Boxes of orange light flickered on the hallway floor, cast down through skylights in the ceiling. They found two more classrooms, a large nursery, a storage closet and finally a kitchen. Garbarino stood in the doorway. “Shit. Have you ever seen a nicer kitchen?”

Mia shook her head. The kitchen was gourmet, complete with three ovens, and an island covered in burners and a grill. An array of shiny, stainless steel pots hung above it all. Mia approached the two massive, stainless steel refrigerators.

“Don’t even bother with those,” Garbarino said.

“Right,” she replied, moving to the cupboards, which were surprisingly barren. “They must stock up only for events.”

“Found the bread,” Garbarino said. He stood aside revealing a tall cupboard filled with blackened, rotting loaves of bread.

The crusty black rot reminded her of Mark’s face. She turned away quickly and leaned her head down on the counter. When she did, she saw two small bags of Cheez-It crackers. She took both bags and tossed one to Garbarino. “Bingo.”

“He opened his and dug in. “So good,” he said, but stopped chewing when he saw she wasn’t eating. “You don’t think they’re radioactive or something?”

“Saving mine for Liz.”

He shook his bag at her. “Take some of mine, then.”

They quickly ate the bag of Cheez-Its, did one more pass of the kitchen and found a package of one-hundred calorie cookies, which they saved for the others. As they walked back down the hall toward the foyer, Garbarino took a pamphlet from one of many dispensers attached to the walls. He read through it quickly.

“Well this explains a lot,” he said, handing the green, tri-fold pamphlet to her.

“Get right with God, give to His Church,” she read aloud. She opened it and read from the inside. “God’s grace is bestowed upon those who have faith. Faith is expressed through tithing. Those who tithe the minimum ten percent will experience God’s grace as promised, but those who give more, who express their faith in miraculous
ways
will inherit the Kingdom of Heaven.” She turned to Garbarino. “I’ve been to church on Christmas and Easter for most of my life and even I know this is bullshit.”

Garbarino motioned to the massive stained glass windows as they entered the foyer again. “God will bless you if you give him your money. Looks like people were buying it.”

Mia looked at the back of the pamphlet. There was a picture of a middle-aged man in a suit coat. His teeth sparkled. His hair had been slicked back. His eyes were such a pale hazel they looked almost yellow. And the hands clasped on his raised knee were covered in large rings. Beneath the photo was the name: Pastor Billy Jackson M.D. Beneath the pastor was an image of a small vial of yellow oil attached to a cheap looking chain. She read the text beneath the vial and scoffed. “Blessed oil,” she said. “With your gracious donation, one hundred dollars minimum, Pastor Billy will send you one ounce of oil anointed by the Holy Spirit.”