Her trek continued with a steady increase in speed, her chest pumping air. The loaded backpack smacked at her shoulder blades, but she ignored the discomfort. Speed and distance were her focus; getting back to the silo in one piece was her goal.
Thirteen more strides brought her to the back of another building. This one was intact and huge, stretching for what seemed like a city block. It was a warehouse, featuring a string of rollup style doors standing side by side, with cement ramps leading up to them.
A huge white sign with faded black lettering said LaDean Co-Packing and Cannery. The word cannery caught her eye—maybe there was food and other supplies inside. If nothing else, the immense building and all of its ancient equipment would have plenty of hiding places.
Summer tore up the first ramp and tried to lift the towering metal door. It wouldn’t budge. It must have been locked, or it was too heavy for her arms to maneuver.
Back down the ramp she went, running past the remaining loading docks to see what might be around the next corner.
That’s when it happened—she ran into a smear of wooden pallets. They were everywhere along the side of the building, tossed about in the wind like landmines.
Her feet tangled with the slats and down she went—hard and out of balance. Her elbow landed first, cracking a pallet in front of her and smashing into the dirt underneath. Her cheek hit the same location next, catching a nasty splinter of wood that tore open a chunk of skin next to her nose. The splinter missed her eye by only a couple of inches.
“Eeeeeooooww,” she cried out before slamming her mouth shut. The stars in her vision multiplied, as did the blood pouring out from her face.
Summer ignored another round of pain as she pulled herself free from the impalement, then slapped a hand on the gaping wound. It took a few seconds for the blobs and specks to vanish from her eyes, but her vision finally cleared.
She rolled over and worked her feet loose, then stood up and took off running in an awkward stumble, this time avoiding the rest of the pallets.
The next corner wasn’t as dangerous as the last, bringing her to a neatly-stacked collection of propane cylinders, some wider than tall, while others were round and almost symmetrical. There was also a side door to the cannery not far away. The combination of the two gave her an idea.
Summer put her free hand on one of the smaller tanks and tried to pick it up. It was heavier than expected and wouldn’t move. She took her other hand from her facial wound and latched onto the cylinder with both sets of fingers.
Blood dripped from her cheek as she grunted to pick the tank up and haul it to the door. After a deep breath to charge her lungs, she took a roundhouse swing at the doorknob.
CLANG!
The reverberation from the impact stunned her hands, making her drop the tank. It rolled downhill, coming to rest several yards away against an electrical transformer box.
When Summer brought her eyes to the door, a shriek almost shot out from her lips. The door was sitting open about an inch and moving back and forth under the control of the wind. She’d done it, and on the first try. Maybe her luck was turning.
She pressed her palm to her cheek to stem the flow of blood as she ran to the entrance, pulling the door open. A second later she was inside, standing in a modest work area with walls stretching from floor to ceiling.
The room was cold but it wasn’t completely dark like she expected. There was a swatch of light emanating from somewhere off in the distance—around the wall running parallel to her right.
She figured the light originated from a window in the next room. The light itself wasn’t a surprise, but the air movement landing on her face was. The same window must have been smashed, she figured, allowing an offshoot of the wind to find its way through the cannery and to her.
Since the doorknob had been bent out of position, the door behind her wouldn’t stay closed on its own. Slayer and his men would notice. They’d come inside, seeing it as a roadmap to follow. Something else was needed. Something to use as a weight or as leverage. Or both.
Three feet away was the answer—a red handled dolly sitting by a ten-foot long stainless steel worktable that was covered by pieces of industrial equipment. This was clearly a maintenance room, where some ancient grease monkey used to stand all day and repair whatever was broken.
The hand truck was vertical in design, much like the one she’d seen Edison use in the silo to move a stack of boxes, only this one was twice the size of the Professor’s and had a pair of flat rubber tires.
Summer drug it to the door, figuring the beast weighed over a hundred pounds. Next, she took off her backpack and fished around inside of it for one of the scarves.
The first to come out was yellow in color, with a mosaic pattern. She twisted it lengthwise into a rope design, then used a square knot to secure the handle of the dolly to the broken doorknob. There wasn’t enough length to make a second knot, so she pulled the two ends as tight as she could, hoping it would hold.
A quick review of the makeshift anchor told her it wouldn’t keep the door closed, even with its massive weight and flat tires. The door was acting as a sail, moving as the wind pounded the area. She needed to secure the other end of the dolly somehow.
Her eyes made their way to a leg on the workstation. It was made of steel, the heavy-duty type, and was bolted to the wall behind it.
Perfect!
Summer’s hand went back into her pack and found another scarf, a solid red color, then bent down and used the cloth to tie the axle of the dolly to the leg.
“That should hold,” she mumbled, pushing on the door. Nothing moved. “For a while at least.”
When she took one last look at her solution, she noticed the yellow scarf on the handle had a red stain on it from the blood on her hand transferring from the wound in her cheek.
The red cloth tied to the other end didn’t show the blood. A better choice. Color mattered.
She checked her backpack again, looking for more red scarves. There weren’t any. They were all light colors. Shit. Nothing she could do.
A quick turn of her heels allowed her to scamper deeper into the warehouse, her hand once again covering the gash on her cheek. It was time to dress the wound, assuming she had a few extra minutes.
The source of the light drew her forward, taking her around the corner and to the right. An open space greeted her. It contained a sea of equipment, wires, overhead pipes, and curved conveyor tracks that snaked from one end of the warehouse to the other.
Everywhere she looked, she saw a nameplate or placard that carried the name of the business: LaDean. Probably a family name, she figured, or it carried some sentimental value. Maybe it was the name of their pet wildebeest, she scoffed, letting her imagination loose for a second. Either way, someone was obsessed, needing the constant reminder.
The facility was massive, but like the rest of the planet, its life had run out. She imagined what the production line looked like before The Event, its tracks humming along with glass jars clicking against each other as they moved from one station to the next.
Her mind filled with visions of the food being sealed into the jars—everything from mama’s homemade hot sauce to a sugary treat of canned peaches. Too bad the place was empty; otherwise, this would have been the score of a lifetime for any of the Seekers.
Light streamed in from above, finding its way through a hefty crack in the ceiling. There weren’t any windows like she thought—only an overhead hole in the roof. A steady trickle of water dripped down through it, making a pattering sound when it hit the floor.
Summer made her way to the center of the room, taking a measured path around the equipment in her way. The floor started to creak as she neared the center where the sunlight touched bottom.