The Haven Hotel

Themba

I wrestle my body to its knees and then its feet and then it's running out the house and towards the flare. I don't know what getting to Themba will accomplish, but I'm not running on logic right now; I'm running because I know that he just called the hunter.

Maybe he wasn't trying to call our potential murderers. Maybe he thinks we're close enough to the Haven that whichever "good people" happen to be watching the skies will get here before the hunter does. In any case I can't think of a dumber stunt to pull in our situation. While I'm crossing the street another bright red flare blazes into the sky, whistling and burning and leaving a crimson line that can surely be seen across the entire city.

My shoes pounding against the road does nothing to warm my numb feet and the blood rushing through my head leaves my face as cold as it ever was. Yet there's perspiration running from my forehead to my chin and down my neck. My heart is slamming over and over against my ribcage and its pulse reverberates throughout my body, pounding my brain in its cranium and turning my liver to mash. 

"What the fuck are you doing?!" I burst through the gate and into the garden where the bright red smoke plumes came from. The frosty grass shines like drops of red wine in the flare's light. The house is riddled with bullet holes, all its windows are completely shattered and its doors unhinged. Shards of a human skull lie against one of the walls, part of a broken body unceremoniously left to rot. It's fitting that we're in an unintentional graveyard. 

"I thought you were asleep." He stares at me with his face slack and his eyes nearly glazed over. His voice has a stupid calm to it, entirely unlike anything I've heard from him before. Maybe he's had a psychotic break.

"What the fuck are you trying to do?" I yank the flare gun from his hand together with the four remaining rounds and he doesn't resist. He looks up at the beacon and then back down at me, still moving like he's in the middle of a dream. It occurs to me that the wine from last night didn't help him sleep; he hasn't slept since I met him and now he's dead on his feet.

"The floor inside is hollow." He points at the house behind me and starts walking towards the side door.

I grab his shoulder but he refuses to slow down so I follow him into the house. The echoes we make when we walk over the scratched and moldy wood confirms what he said. This house's furniture was left behind by the looters, and it's obvious why; the walls and curtains and chairs and tables are all covered by crusty black stains, which at some point must have been human blood. 

The place smells less like something died than like the house itself is dead and rotting. I picture Jonah inside a beached whale, watching the walls decay around him. I wonder if he would have felt as hopeless as I do, or if God would have sent some miracle to help him out. How sure could he have been that a miracle was coming? If the Heavens decided not to help him, at what point would he have realized that he was going to die?

"Good people have died trying to help me." Themba jolts me from my near death reverie. I let him go when the smell hit us. He's been pacing around the room and staring at the floor.

"What the fuck are you talking about?"

"You're not dying today." He turns towards me and snatches the flare gun from my hand, but leaves the rounds with me. "You can help her. I can't. I've been failing since I met her but you can help her."

"How?" I wonder if Nadia's awake and hope that she isn't; she might be inclined to leave the house while searching for us and then the hunter would see her immediately. The look in Themba's eyes as he contemplates the question confirms that he is going through some sort of mental breakdown, although he looks more lucid now than he did a minute ago. How did I miss this? It occurs to me that this isn't a snap; it was gradual. Maybe his spiral began well before his arrival in the city but I still should have seen it happening.