get away from Adam’s corpse before her brain broke into a thousand pieces along with her heart.
“Where are you going?”
“I’m looking for another exit,” Red said.
She carefully stepped around Adam, looking without actually looking. There was nothing she needed to see again.
Sirois didn’t say anything. After a moment he followed her, catching up in a few strides.
Long legs, Red thought. Then she said, without breaking her stride, “What do you want now?”
She had to crane her neck up to see his face. Now that he was beside her the comical difference in their heights was much more apparent. He had a good foot and a half on her, maybe more.
“I’m going to see you safely away,” Sirois said grimly. “I feel responsible for you. I know you said it was dumb, and it’s pretty clear you’ve got brains and know-how or else you wouldn’t have gotten this far. But you’re right. It was our fault—mine and Regan’s—that your brother got killed. So I am at least going to help you get out of town.”
“You’re going to be my deus ex machina?” Red said. “I don’t think so. Look at the size of you. You’re going to attract attention when I’m trying to be sneaky.”
“You don’t think a lone girl in a red hood wandering through a battle zone is going to attract attention?”
Red sighed. There really wasn’t anything she could do to stop him from following her like an abandoned puppy. She should probably be grateful that he wasn’t trying to drag her away to quarantine, but she wasn’t. Mostly she just wanted to be left alone so she could think. How could she think with this annoying person looming over her?
She followed the perimeter of the store until she reached the back.
“Ah,” Red said. “That’s what I was looking for.”
There was a large warehouse door, the metal type that pulled down from the ceiling and was large enough to drive a truck through if necessary. Next to it was what Red thought of as a human-sized door. There was a light-up EXIT sign above it, though of course the light was out.
Red went to the smaller door, Sirois trailing behind her. She pressed her ear up against the door and listened. There was rifle fire, shouting, the revving of engines—but it all seemed far away. There was a good chance that all the action was centered on the main road.
If that was the case she could slip away while no one was looking. Of course, “slipping away” was a relative term—in order to slip away she would have to climb the hill that surrounded the town and then go west (and out of her way) in order to escape any watching eyes. She hated climbing hills. It was better than going down, but it was always too easy for her to lose her balance. Once she was away from the town and out of the valley she could circle back to the main road that would lead to the woods.
She pulled a map out of her pack to confirm her route.
“What are you doing?” Sirois asked.
Red gave him a dirty look, not dignifying such a stupid question with an answer.
“Okay, that was dumb,” he acknowledged. Then he said, “Do you really think the lieutenant is in that room?”
“I do,” Red said, folding up the map again. “Are you going to tell me what’s in there with him?”
Sirois looked as if his tongue were rolling up behind his lips.
“Fine, keep your classified information in your mouth,” Red said. “And don’t follow me.”
She grabbed the door handle and pushed down, easing the door open a crack so she could peek outside.
All she could see was the back of the building. The chemical smoke smell returned with a vengeance, even though the source was on the main road. She pushed the door open a little farther, so that she could get a better look in both directions.
To the right there was only the back end of the town, and a couple of abandoned cars. To the left—south,