Page 35 of The Fragile Ones

Her boots pressed the first stair with a creak that continued with each step upward. Intrigued, she found the upper part of the house in much better condition, although cramped. She stood a moment in silence and stillness before moving down the hallway, sweeping the flashlight beam across the walls and around the bedroom doorways.

It wasn’t until she reached the middle of the hallway that she felt the floorboard beneath her shift and give way. A second later, the ground disappeared from underneath her and she fell straight down to the first floor, before immediately crashing through those rotten boards and landing in the basement. Debris from the house consumed her in a putrid dust cloud.

The flashlight she had been carrying miraculously landed near her, with the beam highlighting a stone wall as it slowly rolled back and forth. Katie lay on her back, looking straight up, as everything went black.

Chapter Fifteen

Tuesday 1915 hours

The loud buzzing in Katie’s ears sounded as if someone was trying to fine tune a radio without much luck. Her heartbeat was loud in her ears.

Bump. Ba bump…Bump. Ba bump…

The cacophony of sounds morphed into overhead high-powered aircraft buzzing the skyline. Explosions. Voices yelling. Katie knew they were things that had already happened, but the vibration shook her insides as her memories came and went.

“Katie!”

Her senses slowly came into focus.

It was just a lapse. The fact that she had fallen through two floors, two stories of an old house, and landed on cool dirt, pushed its way into the present. There was almost a relief that she wasn’t on a battlefield somewhere.

“Katie!” yelled a familiar voice.

She let out a groan, turning on her side. She pushed up into a sitting position, catching her breath and taking a moment to see if she had any obvious injuries. There was a rip in her pants and blouse but very little blood. She was bruised, but she’d live.

“Katie!”

McGaven. He must have heard the crash and come looking for her.

“I’m okay,” she said, hoping he could hear her. Her voice sounded tinny and far away. “I’m okay!” she repeated, this time much louder.

With a heave of strength, Katie stood up. She took even breaths to steady the dizziness.

“Where are you?” yelled McGaven. He sounded alarmed.

“I’m in the…” She looked around. “Basement.”

“Okay, I’ll look for an entrance…Don’t move.”

“I’m okay,” she said.

Feeling her senses come back as her head cleared, she picked up her flashlight, amazed that it was still working. She directed it all around her, three hundred sixty degrees. There were no windows except for two vents to the outside. Even with her limited view, she could see that she was below ground level. The weeds and land outside were at eye view. She saw a trapdoor opening beside the hole she fell through.

“Hey,” said McGaven through the hole on the first floor. “You okay?”

“Yeah, I’m going to be sore though…and probably never live this incident down.”

“I’m not going to say anything…at first,” he said, obviously relieved.

“There’s what looks like a trapdoor leading to the outside.”

“Okay, got it,” he said and backtracked carefully.

“Gav,” she said. “Be careful.”

As Katie waited she looked around her again, but the basement was just a dirt floor underneath the house. There were no shelves, cabinets, or anything that would indicate it had been put to use. One entire wall was made of stone. She studied it further and saw something that caught her eye. Was it an engraving?

Shining the flashlight directly on the area, Katie rubbed against the stone until a number appeared. It looked like a 3. Cleaning the area harder, underneath the dirt she uncovered two more numbers to reveal the sequence: 372. It had obviously been there for quite some time.