The Lost Souls (The Holy Trinity #2.5)(32)

But it was even worse than that. Once the snow had let up and sun began to shine, Mira had wanted out.

A few more days, he’d insisted, just to be sure they wouldn’t get caught in more bad weather. He had no way of knowing for sure how far they were from the warehouse, but as it turned out, they hadn’t been far at all. The storm had just been that bad.

And Mira…she was just that pissed.

Women were complicated creatures. You tried to save them from shame by marrying them, accepting that you’d be raising a child that wasn’t yours, and still they fought you. They literally hit, kicked, and bit you in an attempt to escape your generosity. Then, when you tried to live honest and true, to stand by your promised obligations and your word, and in return, they hated you. Then, when you tried to save them from death by snow and Skins, they still hated you. He didn’t get it.

“Whatever,” Mira said, walking ahead.

“Wait!” he shouted, rushing forward.

“What is wrong with you?” she demanded, glaring up at him. “Don’t you care about them at all?”

“I just wanted to go first,” he mumbled, grabbing hold of the door handle. “In case…”

He didn’t finish his sentence. There were just too many possibilities of what could have gone wrong in their absence.

Opening the door, Hockey stepped quietly and carefully inside the dimly lit office portion of the warehouse, and took a long, hard look around. When he was confident they were alone, he moved out of the way and beckoned Mira inside. She tried to steel her expression, but Hockey could see the fear in her eyes, the one thing they had in common.

Making sure Mira stayed behind him, Hockey ascended the darkened stairwell. They cleared nine flights when a smell so vile nearly knocked him on his ass. Staggering backward, gagging, he covered his mouth with his hand. Hockey knew rotten meat when he smelled it. Foul and putrid didn’t even begin to adequately describe the unholy smell. It was darkness, death in the form of a scent—a smell that should never see the light of day, that belonged only to the earth.

“Oh my God,” Mira choked out.

“We’re leaving,” he said, his voice hoarse and muffled behind his hand.

He grabbed Mira’s arm and was about to drag her down the stairs if he had to, when a large crash startled them both into stillness. Wide-eyed, they glanced at each other.

“They’re alive!” she cried. “Someone is alive!”

Suddenly Mira moved, pushing past him and darting back up the stairs. Hockey shot out his arm, missing her as she flew by him.

“No!” he shouted and took off after her.

He didn’t give a damn who was alive in there. Whoever they were, whatever condition they were in, Hockey was positive he didn’t want to see it and even more certain that Mira shouldn’t see it.

He raced up the stairs, taking two at a time, ignoring the smell, desperate to reach her before she reached that room.

He had just grabbed a fistful of Mira’s shirt when the door at the end of the hall burst open and David staggered out. The stench that wafted into the hallway was so horrific that despite his refusal to breathe through his nose, Hockey could still smell it, and even worse, he could taste it.

Shirtless and covered in both dried and fresh filth, David was hunched over. His skin, the patches that weren’t covered in bloody pustules, was a greenish-grayish hue. His ribs were showing, and his eyes were sunken in, the whites yellowed. He appeared to be both sweating and shivering, clearly starving and riddled with disease.

Hockey yanked Mira off her feet and hauled her backward, quickly shoving her behind him.

“You,” David said, his voice a garbled rasp. “You left us here to f*cking rot.”

Ignoring that, Hockey asked, “Where are the others?” Cutting his eyes to the doorway beside David, he tried to peer inside.

David began to laugh, an awful garbled sound that quickly turned into coughing. Blood gurgled up from inside his throat and exploded past his lips in a spray of red.

“Dead,” David rasped.

Behind Hockey, Mira trembled.

“Mira,” Hockey said. “When I release you, you need to leave.”

“Okay,” she whispered and he let go of her arm.

Hockey waited until he heard the front door of the warehouse slam and then he turned his full attention back to David. “What did you do?” he demanded, but he already knew.

Smiling, David swayed drunkenly. “I did what I had to.”

“You know why you’re sick, right?” Hockey asked flatly. “You didn’t preserve the meat. Humans are no different than animals. The flesh starts rotting the minute the heart stops beating.” Disgusted, Hockey shook his head. “You killed them for nothing,” he spat. “You’re half-dead yourself.”

David’s greasy smile fell away. “It doesn’t matter,” he hissed. “We are all half-dead! You can pretend all you want that your self-righteous morals, praying to a god who isn’t listening, living by rules that don’t exist anymore, actually mean something. But the truth is that we were all dead the moment this began!”

Hockey shrugged. “Maybe you’re right,” he said, “but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t live as an honorable man during the remainder of your life.”

“Why?” David demanded. “What’s the point? Because the pearly gates of heaven won’t be opening for me now?” David let out another hoarse laugh that again ended in a bloody spray.