Reamde

Two things would then happen. One, the jihadists would control the road. In order for her to get into town, she’d have to clamber up into the forested hills that rose above the left bank and then bushwhack all the way into town. Two, she would start to get cold and to suffer from the effects of hunger and thirst. For she’d gambled everything on this sprint, leaving behind her warm clothes, not bringing water or food.

The only way she could think of to get attention was to set fire to the building and hope that someone might notice the smoke and flames.

Which might or might not work. But it would take a while. And she couldn’t wait in a burning building. Again, she’d have to run into the woods and stay alive there for a few hours, possibly more.

She had only a few minutes in which to equip herself for a wilderness survival trek of unknown duration.

She couldn’t even see in this place. She had groped her way to the telephone by following dim moonlight-gleams. The only source of light in this room was a red LED, down low on a wall, at the height of her knee.

This brought up a vague memory: the Schloss had emergency flashlights plugged into wall outlets, one in each room, charging all the time, except when the power went off.

Forcing herself to move in slow, careful steps—she didn’t want to trip and sprawl on broken glass—she crossed the room, felt her way down the wall, and found the flashlight. It came on, dazzlingly bright. She clapped her palm over it, not wanting to present an obvious target for someone peering through gunsights into the building, and allowed a blade of light to escape between fingers, illuminating the path out of the office.

She exited into a corridor and headed away from the main entrance. To the right was a row of offices and of storerooms that mostly contained kitchen equipment. To the left was the main food prep area for the tavern. Making a quick pass through there, she risked taking her hand off the light—the kitchen had no windows—and plucked a long sharp-pointed butcher knife and a smaller paring knife from a magnetic strip on the wall. These she dropped into a white plastic pail that was sitting on the floor beneath a sink. Using that as a kind of shopping basket she swiped a few odds and ends that might come in handy—two oven mitts, for example, that might serve to keep her hands warm if she couldn’t find anything better. There was, of course, no perishable food stored in the place, since it had been shut down for Mud Month. From a fridge she collected a bottle of canola oil that had been left there so it wouldn’t go rancid, and scored some twenty-ounce plastic bottles of water. Cabinets yielded some sacks of potato chips and other snacks, as well as rice, raisins, pasta. The bucket was approaching full, and she reckoned she had enough calories in there to keep her alive for days, provided she could find a way to cook the stuff.

Which led her to the idea of camping stoves, and other equipment. Was that too much to hope for, in a ski lodge in the mountains?

Someone was banging on the lodge’s front door in an exploratory way, trying to figure out how much force would be required to break it down.

Why didn’t they just shoot out the locks? They certainly had the means.

Because they were afraid that gunfire might be heard down the valley.

Uncle Richard had guns here. A fine thought. But impossible. They were stored in a safe in his apartment.

She had the general sense that outdoor gear tended to be stored in the building’s basement. An emergency map posted on the wall told her where the stairways were. She found one and descended it.

A window shattered somewhere in the front of the building.

She was almost overcome, for a moment, by the impulse to flee. But that would just end up with her being dead of hypothermia.

Her nose told her that she was right about the camping equipment. It wasn’t a bad smell exactly, but all camping gear smelled the same after a while. She shone the light around and found the stuff she needed, strewn all over the floor.

Of course. If Jones had forced Richard to accompany him, Richard would have needed his own backpack, warm clothes, sleeping bag, tent. They must have come down here and ransacked the place.

So this, at least, was going her way. She nearly tripped over an empty backpack: a big rig with an external aluminum frame. She set the pail down, snatched up the pack, and verified that it was in decent repair. She grabbed a sleeping bag, already jammed into a stuff sack, and lashed it onto the frame with a couple of bungee cords. She dumped the pail into the top compartment indiscriminately and was reminded that there were a couple of knives in the bottom. Storing those would be tricky, so she set them aside for now.