Chapter 8: The Ruins of Mill Creek
Jack dismounted carefully, his boots sinking two inches into the crusted snow. He reached back and helped Lily down from the footpegs, taking care to ensure she didn't drop the milk or the plastic bag of coins that still remained clutched in her small, stiff fingers. The cold was punishing here beneath the canopy, shielded from the residual heat of the highway asphalt.
"Can you walk, Lily?" Jack whispered, scanning the dense shadows ahead where the rusted skeleton of the Mill Creek sawmill loomed against the gray sky like the ribs of a beached leviathan.
"My feet are numb, but I can walk," she whispered back, her teeth beginning to chatter again despite the warmth of his oversized leather jacket.
Jack drew the tactical flashlight from his belt, keeping the lens covered with his thumb so only a faint crescent of white light escaped around the edges. He took Lily’s small hand in his large, calloused palm, guiding her carefully around rusted cables, discarded logging chains, and frozen puddles hidden beneath a thin layer of wind-blown snow.
They moved like ghosts through the abandoned yard, picking their way toward the back of the main drying shed where the concrete foundation of the old administrative office sloped down toward the root cellar entrance. The root cellar was built into the hillside, reinforced with heavy oak beams and an iron-reinforced wooden door that had been salvaged from an old railcar.
As they approached the cellar doors, Jack smelled woodsmoke—faint, acrid, and mixed with the unmistakable scent of scorched cloth. His hand dropped instantly to the butt of the revolver in his inner vest pocket.
"Toby?" Lily called out softly, breaking protocol in her anxiety. She pulled her hand from Jack's grip and scurried forward down the concrete steps, ignoring the ice.
"Wait, Lily—" Jack hissed, but it was too late.
Lily threw herself against the heavy wooden cellar door, pushing it inward. A plume of white vapor rolled out from the dark interior, carrying the sound of a weak, high-pitched infant cry that cut straight to the bone. But underneath the baby's cry came another sound—a sharp, metallic click that Jack recognized instantly as the safety catch of a firearm being disengaged inside the pitch-black room.
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Jack lunged forward, grabbing the back of the leather jacket and yanking Lily violently backward off the steps just as a deafening roar shattered the silence of the ruined sawmill. A heavy lead slug punched through the rotting wooden door frame at head height, showering them in a cloud of splinters and frozen dust.
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