Last Ones Left Read online

  CHAPTER

  11

  “Here we go,” Jolie said. “She’s going to tell her twisted bedtime story again. I wonder if it’ll change with a new crowd.”

  Riley looked from Sara to Jolie and back. “What do you mean?”

  Jolie stepped up and closer to Sara and Riley while the others looked on. Nick grimaced. Bethany prayed, but her eyes slid to them to watch as the conversation progressed. Veronica watched from under lidded eyes with a quiet alertness that made Riley’s skin crawl.

  “I know Nick told her not to mention it at the panel, because she didn’t. But what she has told anyone who asked since then was a ghost, or something, killed her family. She’s nuttier than a Payday bar.”

  “That’s not what she said,” Nick said. He looked from Jolie to Sara. “Right, Sara? You didn’t say a ghost.”

  “No,” Sara said. “As I have said before, a demon killed my family. It took hold of my sister and used her body to attack us all.”

  “What sister?” Jolie asked. She pointed at Sara but looked at the rest of them. “This is why I didn’t want to get anywhere near her.” She glared at Nick. “She says she had a possessed sister who killed her family, but no one believes her. There’s no proof she wasn’t an only child.”

  “Proof?” Riley asked. “Why would she need proof? No one needs to prove anything. We need to get upstairs and start getting ready to ride out this storm.” She smiled and tugged on Sara’s arm, but the smaller woman didn’t budge.

  “I don’t have proof because my parents didn’t like cameras, and we were born at home because my parents didn’t like hospitals. We were homeschooled because my parents wanted to keep us safe. I told you all this before,” Sara said. Her mouth was twisted into a pout like a child, and she stamped her foot with every emphasis. “I don’t have to prove it. It just is.”

  “Yeah, well, there are pictures of my whole family and also everyone I went to school with, because it’s the twenty-first century,” Jolie said. “We’ve had cameras for a minute.”

  Sara scoffed. “Not everyone lives like you do.”

  “I think you killed your family because you were brought up in some back woods hillbilly homeschool cult,” Jolie announced with a scornful smirk.

  She looked Sara up and down. “I don’t know how you did it. You’re this small now, so you must have been really little. I don’t know how you took down two adults. Maybe you got to them in their sleep. It doesn’t matter. All that matters is you killed them. And, bonus points, you never had a sister.”

  “I had a sister, and she got a demon in her, and she killed everyone! She did!” Sara said. She pulled away from Riley and balled her hands into fists. She stomped with both feet. “She did!”

  “Liar,” Jolie hissed. “Killer.”

  “I’m not a killer! I could never kill anyone,” Sara said, and as quickly as she had gotten angry, her eyes filled with tears and she slumped into herself. “I could never have hurt my family. I loved them too much.”

  “You loved them. Boohoo. What about your imaginary sister?”

  “Even her! Especially her,” she said. She looked forlorn and confused. “She’s not imaginary.”

  “You are a liar,” Jolie said. She turned to the others. “And I’m not going to be shut up with her. You can’t make me because I will fight you.”

  “Jolie, please,” Nick said, his hand out to her in a pleading gesture. “The police checked out her story. While no one is sure exactly what happened, Sara was as much a victim as her parents. She was in critical condition for days after the –

  the – after what happened,” he stammered. “Don’t do this. We need to stick together.”

  Riley stepped forward in front of Sara. “That’s right. We need to stick together, or we’re going to have a hard time making it through this.”

  “I’m not being alone with her,” Jolie said. “I won’t.”

  As much as it bothered her, Riley admired how committed she was. She stood her ground. She turned to Nick. “Okay, if we can’t be together, at least we can be close.”

  “We’re not splitting up,” he warned.

  “We are splitting up. Jolie insists. You lead one group and I’ll lead the other.”

  Sara grabbed for Riley’s hand, and Riley squeezed it in hers. Riley gave the younger woman a smile. “I’m going with you. Thank you for believing me.”

  “Anytime. Who else is going with us?” Riley asked.

  “We aren’t splitting up,” Nick said again.

  Jolie stepped toward him. “I’m obviously going with him. I don’t want to turn my back on this crazy little bitch.”

  “Please, be civil,” Riley said. “You don’t have to go with us.” She turned to Veronica and Bethany. “What about you two?”

  Veronica looked at her, then Sara, then Jolie. She got up and slouched toward Jolie. “I’m going with her. She’s a bitch but at least she didn’t murder any of her family.”

  “Bethany?” Riley asked.

  Bethany looked at Sara a long time, her mouth opened slightly, then turned and went after Veronica.

  “Really?” Riley asked.

  “I’m sorry,” Bethany whispered. “She scares me. I don’t know what afflicted her family, whether demon or spirit, but I don’t want it near me.”

  She looked back to the ceiling and started to whisper again. “Deliver me from my enemies, my God, protect me from those who rise against me, deliver me from workers of iniquity and save me from men of bloodshed.”

  Riley met Nick’s eyes as the two groups faced each other. Riley was aware their groups were unevenly weighted, but as each had been allowed to make her own choice, she didn’t know any other way it could be. He shrugged and let out a hard breath.

  “Okay, everyone. I guess it’s time to hunker down and wait for it storm to pass.” He looked beside him. “Is there anywhere you three prefer to go?”

  Jolie stepped closer to him and whispered loudly enough for Riley and Sara to hear. “I don’t want to tell the crazy girl where we’re going.” She inclined her head at Sara. “Can we go?”

  Nick turned his eyes at Riley one more time. “I want to say again that I don’t think we need to split up. It isn’t smart.”

  “Agreed,” Riley said.

  Jolie straightened and linked arms with Bethany and Veronica. “I’m getting away from the bad apple and taking these two with me. If you would rather go with your favorite Girl, now is the time to say so.”

  “I don’t have a favorite,” he said lamely, then blew out a long breath. “Come on. We all need to head upstairs. We can go up the elevators on the other side of the lobby.” He looked at Riley. “You two can use these.”

  “Yeah, right. I’m not giving them a chance to head us off,” Jolie said.

  “This way our doors open up on different ends of the floors. The chances of us meeting up again are slim to none. Unless you have a better idea?” he asked Jolie.

  She shook her head. He gave Riley one last supportive look, then turned and walked with the three women toward the other side of the room and the opposite bank of elevators, leaving Riley and Sara alone in the large lobby.

  Sara looked around them. “Maybe we should stay down here. I don’t really want to take a chance at running into them again.”

  “I know what you mean,” Riley said. “But we have to get out of here. We’re too visible. Even if no one is actively trying to hurt us, being down here, we are vulnerable to anyone who might want to break in to loot. You know how people get during these kinds of things.”

  “Not really,” Sara confessed. “I don’t spend a lot of time around other people, and I don’t consume traditional media.”

  “Right,” Riley said. “Then I guess you are going to have to trust me on this one.” She tugged gently on Sara’s hand. “Come on. Hopefully they have gotten to where they’re going by now, and Jolie will be locked up in a room safely ignoring us. We’re better off if we don’t see her again until this all
blows over.” They got into the elevator and the doors closed. “Which floor?”

  Sara looked at the bank of numbers they had to choose from, then pushed one near the middle. “It would be almost impossible for them to choose the same floor. Right?”

  “Right. Sixteenth floor, here we come.”

  When the elevator’s digital display panel dimmed from five to switch to six, the elevator lurched, and the lights went out.

  CHAPTER

  12

  Sara shrieked and threw herself against the back wall. She crumpled to the floor as if she had been struck. “What’s happening? Why did we stop?”

  “It’s okay,” Riley told her, but she felt anything but okay. Her heart thumped and her skin crawled with fear and cold. A tiny light came on near the door, and she moved toward it to investigate. “This light is run on a battery. I guess it’s here in case the power supply fails.”

  Like the generator, she thought. The generator died. THE GENERATOR IS DEAD, AND THE POWER IS DEAD! her brain screamed, but she tried to ignore it. They couldn’t both panic and Sara had already claimed the right.

  “What are we going to do? We’re going to die here! We’ll starve!” Sara yelled.

  Riley lurched toward her and covered her mouth with a hand. Sara screamed against it for another few moments, then stopped struggling and went limp in Riley’s arms. Riley pulled her hand away.

  “Can you stop now?”

  “What are we going to do?” Sara repeated, this time in a whisper. “I don’t want to die. I can’t die. I haven’t even lived my life yet!”

  “We aren’t going to die,” Riley said. “All we have to do is figure out how to get out of this elevator.” She looked around for a moment, then fished in her pocket and pulled out her phone. No bars. She sighed. “It was worth a shot.”

  “How can we get out?”

  Riley shook her head. She put her phone away to check later, then started walking around the room feeling the walls for something, a lever or a mechanical button that might help them out of their predicament.

  “Riley, what are you doing? Can you find a way out?”

  “It’s okay, Sara. Breathe. We can figure this out.”

  Sara backed up against the wall, her arms and hands spread out to grope at the mechanical box that had become their prison. A whimper came out of her like a small, wounded animal. Riley opened a panel with an old-fashioned phone icon on it and pulled out the receiver.

  “Hello?” she said into the mouthpiece.

  Nothing. Not even static met her ears. She put the phone back into its cradle and closed the panel. Behind her, Sara wept openly. Riley went to her and crouched down in front of the distraught young woman.

  “We’re going to figure this out,” Riley told her. “You have to trust me.”

  “How will we figure it out?” Sara asked.

  Riley didn’t know, but she knew better than to tell Sara that. She racked her brain for answers. She thought of all the movies and television shows she had ever seen in which someone was stuck in an elevator, then grimaced when she remembered what she had seen with Isaac months before he killed her family.

  In the movie, the guy had somehow gotten onto the roof of the elevator, but as soon as he had, the cable holding the metal box had snapped. He had died in a gruesome free-fall.

  “Hey, Sara?”

  Sara met her eyes.

  “I know you pride yourself on not being like other people, and I know homeschoolers are usually smarter than traditionally schooled kids.” She thought she had read a study about it, but even if she hadn’t, flattery never hurt. “Can you think of any ideas?”

  Sara stopped crying long enough to look around them. Her shrewd little eyes took in every detail, then landed on the doors. “How hard do you think it would be to open the doors?”

  Riley turned around to face them. Between the two of them, she thought they might be able to pry them open enough for one of them – Sara, because she was so small and thin – to get out and go for help.

  The idea occurred to her that they might be between floors and would face a brick wall when they got them open, but she wouldn’t let the possibility stop her.

  “Good idea, Sara. I think we can do it. Come on,” she said. She helped Sara up and the two of them walked over to the doors. “How do we want to start?”

  “You’re taller. That means you can take the middle. I’ll work on the bottom at the same time,” Sara said.

  Riley agreed. Sara got on one side, low to the ground, and Riley took the other side at a point above her. Riley concentrated, eyes closed, as the doors moved slowly. Together they pulled at the doors until they had them apart about six inches. Then Sara stopped and groaned.

  “What is it?” Riley asked. She dropped into a crouch to look for injuries on Sara, but Sara pointed up at what they had uncovered. “Oh, no.”

  They had stopped between floors, and as far as even Riley could reach was solid concrete. At the top of the doors, there was a small space where she could see a black patch that she assumed must be the sixth floor. She looked at Sara, then looked back at the space.

  “Are you afraid of heights?” Riley asked.

  “No, why?”

  Riley looked back up. “If I give you a boost, do you think you can get through that hole?”

  Sara stood up and studied the empty space. “I don’t know...”

  “I probably can’t fit through there. My butt’s too big. And besides, I’m heavier than you. You’re lighter and smaller, so it would need to be you for it to work.” She smiled at Sara. “I don’t want to tell you you’re our only hope, but you sort of are.”

  Sara looked from Riley to the space and back. She chewed her lip. “Do you promise you won’t drop me?”

  “I won’t drop you.”

  “Do you think I’ll get stuck?”

  “I don’t, but if you feel like it’s too tight a squeeze, I’ll let you back down, and we can figure something else out.” She didn’t know what other options they had, but she didn’t want to tell Sara that.

  Sara nodded. “Okay. Alright, let’s do this.”

  Riley held up a hand for a high five, but Sara gave her a quizzical look. She dropped her hand down and held it out to shake. Sara took it, they shook hands, and before she could pull away, Sara had pulled her in and wrapped her in a tight hug. Riley tensed up at first, but the feeling of Sara’s arms around her was more comforting than she thought. She hugged her back until Sara pulled away.

  “I’m sorry I wasn’t as nice to you as I should have been,” Sara said.

  “It’s okay. I get it.”

  “No, it isn’t okay. I judged you before I even knew you. People judge me all the time before they know anything about me, and I should have known better than to do it to you. I was raised better.”

  Riley smiled at her, unsure of what to say. Then Sara turned back to the door.

  “Okay, how do we do this?”

  “We get close to the door, and you climb up on my hands. I will raise you up as far as I can get you, and from there, you will have to pull yourself up and into the opening.”

  Riley laced her hands together and bent down so that Sara could step into them. When Sara was standing in her hand with one foot and had one hand on her shoulder, Riley started to lift her. She was thankful that Sara was as light as she looked as Sara grabbed for the opening and missed.

  “I won’t let you fall. It’s okay,” Riley said as Sara clutched her shoulder for security.

  “I can’t quite reach it.”

  Riley helped Sara up farther until she was standing on Riley’s shoulders. Sara grabbed the opening with both hands, lifted herself up, and started to slide through the opening.

  “You’re doing great,” Riley said. Sara’s sensible shoes hurt Riley’s shoulders, but all she could concentrate on was how close Sara was to getting through the opening and onto the sixth floor. “Keep pushing until you’re there. You’re so close.”

  Sara wigg
led further, then her weight was off Riley and her feet were scrabbling against the concrete. Riley grabbed at her feet and pushed her up as hard as she could until, finally, one of Sara’s legs breached the opening. Then, all of a sudden, she was up and out of the elevator, and Riley was alone.

  Panic clenched in her stomach.

  “Sara?” Riley asked. Her voice echoed in the small space. “Sara, are you there? Say something!”

  The silence was unnerving. She searched the dark opening for any sign of her, but it was too hard to see much of anything. Her heart thrummed in her chest and her pulse raced like ants through her veins. Her skin screamed with icy prickles. The walls felt like they were closing in on her.

  “Riley?” Sara said. She popped her head through the opening. “Are you okay?”

  “Oh my God, Sara, I thought you –” She didn’t finish. She didn’t know what she had thought. It had been less thought than unadulterated emotion.

  “I’m sorry. I guess I got a little dizzy when I got out here.” She reached a hand down through the opening to Riley. “Give me your hand. Maybe I can help you up now that I’m above you.”

  Riley shook her head. “I’m too far down, and I might not fit through that hole. You need to go for help. See if you can get Nick to come.”

  “How am I supposed to find Nick? They are all trying to hide from me because they think I’m a murderer,” she said. Riley could hear the bitterness in her voice, and she couldn’t say she blamed her. “How can I help you get out of there if I’m unable to find them?”

  Riley didn’t have any answers for her. “I don’t know. Try to find them, and if you can’t, come back and we can figure something out.”

  “Are you sure you want me to leave you down there?”

  Riley was not sure. She had never been so unsure in her life. “I’m sure.”

  Sara looked down at her a long time. Riley dropped her eyes to stare at the concrete wall, then looked back at Sara. She was still staring at Riley like she was a bug in a cage, and suddenly, Riley felt cold all over again.

  “Sara?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Thank you for going for help.”