novelraw Chapter 87: Running Out Of Time
Chapter 87: Running Out Of Time
The bear meat went in first. The stuff she had hidden from Alexei.
Wrapped in butcher paper and sealed in plastic, it was still cold enough to keep through the trip. Sera packed it at the bottom of the oversized duffle bag, bracing the weight across her back before shoving in two not-so-emergency blankets, three oversized pillows, and half a crate of chocolate bars.
She zipped it closed and slung it over her shoulder with a grunt.
It had been four days. Four days of watching and waiting for Zubair to come back to the land of the living. Four days of feeling the temperature in the cabin fluctuate like a malfunctioning furnace. Four days of rationing silence like it was something sacred—too fragile to break while everyone held their breath.
Well, Noah had fucked around and was joking around when Alexei put his fist through his face. The man was quiet after that.
Now, Zubair was finally stable. She knew that he must have a thousand and one questions. Ones that she hadn’t answered or didn’t know the answers to. But he was coping with finding out that he was a living Guinea pig better than most grown men she had met in Adam’s labs.
So now it was time, she needed to get a move on before the tsunami hit and the entire city went under water.
The snow was coming down a bit harder, but it still wasn’t enough to slow her down. Like any November, it only seemed to snow at night, and just enough that it was the first thing you saw when you looked out your window in the morning.
And let’s face it. In the morning, everyone looked out their window just to see what the weather had in store.
But Sera didn’t care about the weather anymore. It didn’t impact her nearly as much as it used to.
She moved fast and quiet, cutting through the woods with the duffle bouncing against her spine. By the time she reached the casino’s side entrance, only about 15 minutes had passed.
It was getting easier and easier for her to go long distances when she tapped into the speed, strength, and agility of her creature. She wasn’t even winded by the time she raced up the stairs to the 41st floor.
The moment she walked through the front door and into the living room, she opened the bag, turned it upside down, and then zipped it back up again.
There was no time to put everything away properly. Not right now, not when the creature was demanding that she goes faster, prepares more, gets fluffier things.
The creature stirred under her skin, restless and tense, and Sera didn’t know if it was feeding off her own anxiety, or if the creature knew something that she did not. Either way, she wasn’t about to take the time right now to figure it out.
Turning sharply, she raced down the stairs with the bag on her back, and back to the cabin.
Trip two was easier. The path had already been broken by her first pass. This time, she packed a water purifier, four more thick quilts, the rest of the canned beans, a solar lantern, and half the firewood stack. Her arms didn’t even shake as she hoisted it all onto her back.
By the time she reached the casino again, she didn’t stop at the living room.
She ducked down the hall, kicked open the upstairs suite door with her heel, and dumped the whole load into a corner. Once again, she didn’t arrange it. Didn’t sort or fold. She just turned and left.
On trip three, she brought the last of the protein bars, the remainder of their rice, a gallon of vinegar, a portable gas burner, and a kettle. While she knew that most of the stuff in her cabin had been brought over, that didn’t seem to satisfy her creature.
She could feel it when she stopped for a moment. It was coiled. Alert. Pushing her to do more than what she was.
It wasn’t hostile, not like it had been in the beginning.
Just... bracing.
Sera didn’t speak to it. She never did when it got like this. She just kept moving, teeth clenched tight as her boots cracked through the crust of ice on the top layer of snow.
Trip four was just for comfort: the lavender candles from her shelf, the dried flowers Noah had brought her as a joke, more pillows, a spare phone charger, and the lighter she always kept in her coat.
By the time she slammed the suite door shut again, she really didn’t know what else she could bring. After all, she didn’t want to make it noticeable to the rest of the guys in the cabin. While she trusted them with some things, it was also easier to do when she thought they might be killed long before they could alert anyone to what she truly was.
She stood in the center of the room, surrounded by all the pieces of safety she’d tried to assemble. Warmth. Food. Comfort. Control.
But she didn’t feel safe.
Not at all.
The creature was watching the door.
Without thinking, Sera turned and left again.
Trip five took her into the casino kitchen.
She kicked through broken pantry doors and over fallen tiles, stepping over splattered rot and forgotten spills. The place had been cleaned once. Not anymore. No mold, but it still smelled like time and blood.
She found what she needed: expired oils, giant bags of flour and sugar, a still-sealed crate of salt, old tubs of shortening.
She loaded it all into a beat-up serving cart, kicked the wheels into working order, and rolled it toward the elevator shaft.
The elevator didn’t work. It hadn’t in a while. But the stairs did, and she easily lifted the cart up all those flights of stairs with one hand.
The creature still didn’t speak. But it was listening.
She dumped the cart’s contents into the suite hallway and stood with her back to the wall. It still wasn’t enough.
She headed downstairs again, but not for supplies this time.
For the bodies.
They weren’t fresh, but they weren’t completely decomposed either. The cold had preserved them strangely well—like slabs of meat left too long in a deep freezer and thawed too quickly.
She grabbed one by the wrists and started dragging to where she wanted them to be.
The first zombie went up easily enough. She didn’t bother cleaning it. Just dropped it against the stairwell door at the second floor landing.
The second and third she stacked beside it. Piled. No elegance. Just raw weight.
By the fifth, she was starting to get a better idea of what would serve her best.
She stepped back and looked at her work.
A barricade.
Not a pretty one. Not even an effective one. But the scent alone would deter any human from coming up those stairs.
And if the dead got curious?
She had candles. She had chocolate. And she had time.
Sera stood at the top of the stairs for a long minute, watching the way one of the zombie corpses slowly slumped sideways. The creature inside her flexed once. Still not aggressive. Still not panicked. But it didn’t like this part.
She didn’t either.
By the time she walked back into the suite, the sun was already hinting at the coming day. It was too late to start organizing anything, not if she wanted to be back before anyone noticed that she was gone.
And this was one secret that she wasn’t willing to tell anyone just yet.