The Lair

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

Lily

Once they got in the car, time seemed weirdly disjointed. Lily didn’t pay any attention to Ely’s driving but focused solely on McKenna, who had abandoned the passenger seat and was stretched out in the back. Lily could tell every time a contraction hit. She could see it clearly in the rippling muscles of McKenna’s stomach.

Sure, she had learned about involuntary muscles in biology, but this was just freaky. This baby inside, this thing, it wanted out.

Soon.

They were long past Albuquerque when Lily leaned across the console and whispered to Ely, “We gotta get her out of here.”

He glanced at her and then over his shoulder at McKenna. “Great idea. I’ll just pull a hospital out of my ass.”

“Well, regardless of what you have up your ass, she’s having this baby. Soon. We’ve got to find somewhere that’s not a car to do it.”

Ely seemed to be gritting his teeth, but thankfully he swallowed whatever comment he wanted to make. He kept his gaze straight ahead. She pretended he wasn’t looking at the clock, but he probably was. They were four, maybe five hours from sunset.

“Pulling over now isn’t a great idea.”

“It doesn’t matter. As nice as this Cayenne is, there’s not enough room in the back to deliver a baby. Besides, we can’t drive through the night. Even with what we got from the airport, we don’t have the gas for it. Not to drive straight through the night.”

Because as panic-inducing as looking at the clock was, looking at the gas gauge was that much worse.

“Fine. Where do you want to pull over?”

She scanned the horizon, looking for anything that might be suitable. The next mile marker said the town of Emmet was three miles off. “There,” she pointed to the sign. “They’ll have a Wal-Mart. A grocery store. Something.”

Except Emmet was a one-stop town, without even a stoplight. They passed the cotton gin and the Tractor Supply, but no Wal-Mart.

“You got any other bright ideas?” he asked.

Three minutes after turning on to Main Street, they left town. Lily counted the passing time by McKenna’s contractions.

“I got nothing,” she muttered. Ely was about to turn the car around when she spotted a white shape looming on the horizon. “Wait. What’s that?”

Ely squinted in the direction she was pointing. “The set of a horror movie?” he asked dryly.

“No, it’s a house.”

At my direction Ely slowed the car and turned off into the driveway. A minute later, we stopped, maybe a hundred yards from the house. Okay, so it did have a sort of gothic-creepy vibe. It was a classic American farmhouse. Two stories, wide, wrap-around porches. Waist-high weeds in the yard. No vehicles except for a beat-up old truck, which looked like it hadn’t run even in the Before.

Ely looked at her. “Seriously, you want to stop here? ’Cause there was a Gas-n-Sip back in town. There’s at least a beer cooler.”

“And that would be better?”

“Wouldn’t be worse.”

“Look, it’s two stories. There’s nothing else around it. That means anything comes at us, we’ll see it first.”

“Oh, yay. Because that’s what makes the Ticks so damn hard to kill: my bad vision.”

“Come on, in this case the isolation is a tactical advantage. Plus, there’s a fireplace.”

“What? Did you want to roast marshmallows?”

She gritted her teeth at his comment. “Actually, I was thinking we could at least start a fire and boil water.”

“Boil water?” Ely inched the car farther up the weed-strewn gravel drive.

“That’s what people always do in the movies, right? Maybe they do it to . . . I don’t know, sterilize stuff.”

“Well, this isn’t a movie.” But despite his tone, he pulled to a stop behind the abandoned truck.

The house looked less creepy up close. Clearly, no one had lived here since the Before, but it had been cared for and it had fared pretty well since then. The windows were intact. The door was still on the hinges.

Ely stopped close to the steps and drummed his thumbs on the steering wheel for a few seconds before blowing out a loud breath. “Damn, I wish I still had my dog.”

Lily nodded, unsure what else to say. Because, yeah, in circumstances like this, she could see how a dog could make the difference between life and death.

Finally, Ely reached for the door handle. “Okay, I’ll go check it out.”

“Just don’t red shirt yourself, okay?”

He slanted her a grin. “Don’t worry. I’m still in the game.”

“No, it’s a—” Then she broke off. It probably wasn’t the time to explain the allusion to Star Trek. “Just be safe.”

There weren’t enough humans left that anyone was expendable.

“Try to get in without breaking a window. Might as well make it hard for them to smell us in case we need to stay the night.”

He nodded, but said, “Let’s not count on staying the night.”

McKenna’s eyes flickered open. “Where’s he going?”

“He’ll be right back. We found a place for you to have the baby.”

“We’re in Mexico already?” She looked out the window, her brow furrowing even though her gaze was unfocused.

“No, we found a house. Someplace safe.” Lily’s heart fluttered anxiously at the lie, but McKenna didn’t need anything else to worry about.

Lily kept talking, murmuring more lies, making more promises she couldn’t keep. Until Ely rapped the glass with his knuckle to get her attention. She thrust the door open and clambered out. “Did you find a way in?”

He smirked. “Yeah. No broken windows, either. Help McKenna in. All the way up to the second floor, if she can make it. I’m going out to the barn to see if I can find something to barricade the windows.”

Ely had left the front door ajar. The foyer opened to living areas on either side and a massive staircase straight ahead. The house smelled musty from being closed up so long. The furniture was worn and aging, though well preserved. They took it slow, pausing every four or five steps when McKenna was hit with a contraction. By the time they made it all the way up, Lily was as out of breath and as sweaty as McKenna. Lily’s shoulder—which had been feeling pretty good—was aching from supporting her friend’s weight.

Lily guided her into the first bedroom they found. It was pink and frilly with a four-poster bed. She tried not to think about whoever had lived here in the Before, but she sent up a silent hope that wherever they were, they would understand that McKenna needed this bed more than they did. Lily could only guess that this was going to get messy.