Beneath her feet the floorboards trembled, cracking as they moved. A large bulge rose up near the stairway as if something below were trying to push its way up through the floor.
Until this moment, Jordan had hoped that all of this was some kind of sick joke. But standing here, watching the floor pulse as if alive, she knew that had been wishful thinking. Something was trying to break through.
She grabbed a pair of scissors from behind the counter and sliced through the duct tape in a matter of seconds, praying she wouldn’t regret freeing him.
He ripped the tape from his sleeves, destroying the leather. “Where’s your car?”
“In the back alley.”
“The tiny POS covered in snow?”
“Yeah.”
“Not going to cut it.” His hands were free, and he reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out a set of keys. “I’ll start my truck for you and pull it up close to the door. It’ll get you where you need to go in this snow and do so in a hurry.”
Jordan didn’t want to leave this man behind to die, but she’d do so in a heartbeat if it saved her baby. “Thanks.”
“Good luck, Jordan. You’re going to need it.”
She sprinted for the stairs, leaping over the protruding bulge, yelling for Anne to grab her coat.
The floor near the stairway had settled again, but it wouldn’t stay that way long. Ryder didn’t know how long it would take the Terraphage to break through into this world, but he knew for a fact that he wanted to be armed by the time it did.
His Glock was on the counter, but he didn’t think that 9 mm rounds were going to do anything more than piss the thing off. He needed more firepower—the kind he kept stashed in the back of his truck, just in case.
Only seconds had passed, but the woman already had her daughter in tow, heading down the stairs.
“Stay there,” he ordered them. “You can’t leave until the last second, or it’ll just come in wherever you are.”
“Mama, I don’t want to see it,” said the girl. “I see it when I sleep. I don’t want to see it when I’m awake, too.”
The fear in her voice tore at Ryder’s heart. He’d never once felt sympathy the way he did for the tiny moppet. He wasn’t sure what to do to make her feel better, but he knew he had to try something. “Close your eyes, honey. I won’t let it get you.”
The woman hugged her daughter closer. “How much longer?”
“I don’t know. Never done this before. I need to get some guns out of my truck. I don’t know how much good they’ll do, but it’s the only chance we’ve got.”
“Don’t be long.”
He wasn’t. It took him less than a minute to start the truck, move it close to
the door, and gather his supplies. The metal box was too heavy to lift, so he dragged it over the ground, plowing away the snow as he went. Now the girls had a nice clear path to the truck, at least until the driving snow filled it in again. At the rate it was falling, that wouldn’t be long, but he didn’t think that was going to be a problem. The Terraphage would show up at any moment.
He pushed through the door. Snow billowed into the room, driven by the wind. Ryder shoved the door closed to keep out the chill and to keep Jordan from leaving until it was time. He really didn’t want the Terraphage to eat his truck.
“The highway heading west was a parking lot when I came into town,” he said. “Don’t go that way.”
“South?”
“As good a guess as any.”
“I’ve got family down that way. They’ll take us in.”
The floor trembled, pulsing with a throbbing energy that resonated in time with that coming from the little girl.
Ryder glanced at her, then back at her mother. He lowered his voice, hoping the girl wasn’t listening too closely. “Unless I kill it—which isn’t likely—I don’t know what will happen. I don’t know if it will come for her again tomorrow night.”
“Then you’d better kill it, Ryder. We’re counting on you.”