‘Hey, take it easy. It’s me. Nick!’
Jill recognised his voice and stepped out. ‘That was a fucking stupid thing to do. Don’t you realize I could have killed you just now?’ she yelled.
‘Yes,’ he said, pulling a Polaroid picture from the front of his camera. ‘And if I’d been stood on the table, you might have even hit me,’ he added, snapping another photograph.
‘Will you stop doing that? And I thought we said not to go back to your van?’
‘Look, Lady, this is a once in a lifetime opportunity. There’s no way I’m not going to get some kind of record of it.’
Jill scowled at him as she started reloading the gun. ‘My name is Jill, call me lady again, and I won’t miss. Got that?’
‘Okay, I’m sorry,’ he said, allowing his camera to dangle from his neck. ‘But like I said, this is a once in a lifetime thing, I gotta get photographs.’ He paused. ‘So … did you find anyone? Or anything of interest?’ he said, putting the two used Polaroids into a small polythene bag, then putting the bag in his jacket pocket.
Jill knew, “Anything of interest”, meant worth photographing. So she pointed to the empty blood-bag lying on the floor.
Nick bent at the waist. ‘So … it’s a plastic bag, don’t mean much!’
‘Look closer, Nick,’ she told him.
Nick squinted and did look closer, and that’s when he saw how the contents of the bag had actually been extracted. ‘Are these…?’ he trailed off.
Jill nodded. ‘Yes, teeth marks. ‘Take a look in the dog’s feeding bowl on the table, I’m only guessing here, but I think that’s how they might dispose of their human empties.’
Nick took the bag from the floor, placing it next to the bowl, then he snapped another photograph. ‘Oh boy, this is really gonna get me noticed with the organizers of the convention.’
Jill finished reloading the gun and slipped it in the back of her jeans. ‘And if you keep flashing away with that thing, they won’t be the only ones noticing you. Know what I mean?’
Nick looked at Jill, then at his camera. ‘Yeah, gotcha!’
‘Come on,’ she said, pushing past, ‘we have another store to search, this one’s empty.’
Nick took a quick snapshot of the front room, and after putting the new photographs with the others, he followed Jill outside.
On reaching the last of the stores, Jill was stunned by the size of the padlock before her. Hitting it with a rock, would do as much damage as hitting it with a stick of cotton-candy. The padlock was the size of a grapefruit. Obviously protecting what ever lay within. Holding the gun only inches from the lock, she turned her face away and fired two rapid shots; the huge padlock fell to the ground with an audible thud.
‘What the hell is that thing, a hand-held cannon?’
‘Well it sure as hell *kicks* like one,’ she said, as her foot hit the door.
This room was similar in size to that of the rear of the store they’d just left; only it felt colder. The door now standing before them was a shiny steel one, with a small glass viewing panel near the top, and a thermal gauge attached to the wall beside the door. The gauge read two degrees Celsius, not quite freezing, but close enough. Jill tried to look through the glass panel, but insufficient light prevented her from seeing anything the room might be holding.
But the padlock on the outside had been chosen for a specific reason, and she wanted to know what that reason was. There didn’t seem to be a lock of any kind on the steel door itself. So she tugged on the hefty handle positioned half way up. There was a short audible hiss as colder air escaped the room through the inch gap she’d made.
‘Before you open that any further,’ said Nick. ‘What might we find inside?’
‘I don’t know, but of what I’ve witnessed these past six hours, whatever’s in here, can’t be any worse.’
At that, Jill leant back pulling harder on the door handle, and the door swung wide open. The interior was dark, too dark for them to see anything, and the colder air now flooded from the open door pooling around their feet. Jill felt an instant shiver from it. Or was it the thought of what she might find dangling inside?
‘Pass me your camera, Nick.’
‘What?’
‘Your camera, pass it to me.’
Nick lifted the camera’s cord over his head and passed it to her. She held it at arms length over the threshold of the door taking one photograph. The initial flash provided a nano-second of vision into the room, but all they saw from this were a number of brown cardboard boxes. Jill pulled the Polaroid film from the front, passing the camera back to Nick. She tore off the chemical strip and began to waft it to and fro. She also blew over it, in an attempt to make it self-develop that little bit quicker.
‘That’s a common mistake,’ offered Nick.
‘Sorry?’
‘Wafting it like that. It’s a common mistake, well, not a mistake as such, you see-’
‘Boxes,’ she said, cutting him off, ‘about a dozen of them.’
Nick looked. ‘What does “B.P.L.” mean? And who are “PuriCell?”’
‘No idea, just be thankful there’s nothing swinging from the ceiling, Nick. I certainly am.’ Jill walked into the refrigerated room and began dragging out one of the washing machine sized boxes. ‘Come on, Nick, help me with this.’
Once the box was in the light coming from the door, Jill ripped open the lid and they both looked inside.
Nick took another snapshot before reaching in and retrieving part of its contents. ‘Well,’ he said, twisting the bag around in his hand. ‘It looks like they have their own personal supply here,’ he added, holding out a blood filled bag.
‘Okay, so why feed on the young girls? It doesn’t make sense.’
Nick shrugged, placing the bag on the table with the other items. ‘Perhaps they prefer warm food, fresh food,’ he said, snapping another shot. ‘I hate frozen food myself.’
What Nick said could have made sense, if he hadn’t have said it that was. ‘Come on,’ said Jill. ‘There’s nothing of use here. Let’s get back; I think we can take it there are no more of them out here.’
As Nick turned heading into the rain, she picked up the blood bag from off the table and slipped it under her poncho and then down the neck of her T-shirt. ‘Fuck, that’s cold.’
‘Sorry?’ Nick said, turning.
‘I said its cold, in here; let’s get back to that heater.’
Nick led the way back to the garage, but this time, at a rather more brisk pace than he used leaving it. Jill realised then, he was acting up earlier when claiming to be breathless. It was obviously a ploy to get to his camera.
After they’d ducked under the shutter, Gregg stood to greet them. ‘Why was there gunfire? Who’d you shoot at? Was it one of them? Did you find one?’ he asked, in rapid succession before hitting the down button.
Jill sensed a change in Gregg’s behaviour, and the way he’d just blurted out those questions took her aback. ‘I had to shoot some locks off, that’s all,’ she said, not mentioning she’d shot at, and almost killed Nick.
‘I thought you’d come across one of them.’
‘No. One of the stores was empty, another we had no chance of gaining access to. In the third we found …’ she looked closer at Gregg, he seemed distracted, edgy, and although it was only slight, his skin tone looked paler than it did twenty minutes before. Breaking from her train of thought, she asked him quietly. ‘How are you feeling?’
Gregg frowned. ‘Fine, why?’
‘Nothing, it’s just that you-’
‘Here, look at these,’ said Nick, pushing himself between them. ‘See those boxes, they’re full of blood.’ His eyes were wide with excitement.
Gregg turned back to look at Jill, who, knowing it would answer his question, lifted one eyebrow.
‘I thought we said not to go back to your van, Nick?’
‘I had to go back to get my camera. I couldn’t leave this place without some proof of what’s going on here. Surely you of all people can understand that?’
Jill looked at him and said, ‘What makes you think you’ll leave this place at all, Nick?’
Gregg pushed the photographs back into Nick’s hand. ‘And that’s all you found?’
‘Yes,’ said Jill. ‘What about the cinema?’
‘Empty, which probably means the rest of them are up at the town hall. All we need now is a feasible enough plan to get those girls out, which means, I’m open to any and all suggestions!’
Gregg seemed to have calmed since they first got back, Jill wondered now that he knew she had it, if it was because of what she’d fetched back for him. Like a crack addict who knows his next fix is only seconds away.
