Through Glass: Episode Four by Rebecca Ethington Page B

us in
the same layers of dust that we walked on.
    I tried to swallow, to loosen the
tight pit that seemed to have worked its way into me, but it wasn’t
working. My blood only seemed to undulate with a fearful awareness
as I looked down the staircase.
    I wanted to leave, to find someplace
new, but I knew that we couldn’t. We had been walking for fourteen
hours straight; we needed to find a place to sleep, and after
searching this neighborhood for the past few hours, this seemed to
be our only viable option.
    I would just have to suck it
up.
    “ There is a step missing
here,” Travis said, his voice low and rumbly in an attempt to be
quiet.
    “ I think a missing step is
the least of my worries.” My voice was a growl, but I didn’t try to
restrain it.
    I could barely see through the curtain
of cobwebs that now covered me anyway. I continually pulled them
off, but I would remove some only to have twice as many fall over
me again. I stepped down as I wiped the screen of filth from me,
only to have my foot fall through the same gaping hole I had just
been warned of.
    My heart fell through my stomach as I
plunged through air, a gasp of surprise escaping my lips. I fought
the scream as I futilely reached for something to hold onto only to
have Travis’s arm wrap around me, the cold metal of his gun
pressing against my cheek as he tried to stifle the noise that was
building in my chest. I winced at the cold, my muscles knitting
together tighter as I watched his thumb lift, pulling back the
hammer of the gun with a soft click as he armed it.
    His wide eyes met mine as he held me
against him, his ear trained for the same thing mine
were.
    A scream, a noise, anything that would
signify that they had heard us.
    We had first seen the signs of the
black team Bridget had warned us of about mid day, a path of dusty
footprints that had cut through a store we had been scavenging
through. At first, I just thought they were signs of other
survivors, of perhaps people that could help us, but something in
the perfectly arranged dust set Travis on guard.
    Our only saving grace had been that
they seemed to be heading in the opposite direction from us. We
could use that to our advantage, or so Travis had said. But only if
we stayed undetected, which meant remaining silent and virtually
invisible in the darkness.
    I didn’t dare breathe as Travis held
me against him, his eyes continually darting as he searched for a
shadow in the dark. I could only look straight ahead, my eyes
piercing through the black we had just come from, the filthy
cobwebs that swayed through the pitch.
    My ears were filled with the deep
thunder of my heart as we waited for noise, a noise that never came
through the void. Travis released me as he took one last glance
through the dark, only stopping to give me a stern look that should
be unacceptable to receive from a brother that was technically
younger than you.
    “ You need to be careful,”
Travis grumbled as he un-cocked his gun, his movement quick as the
green metal flashed in the light.
    “ I am careful, when not draped in a
wedding veil of dead spiders and their webs.”
    Travis only smiled in an attempt to
restrain his laugh before moving down the last of the stairs and
into the large family room, his steps careful as we began to move
past the wooden shards of what used to be a pool table. It seemed
darker down here. Perhaps it was the fact that the ceiling was so
much lower than upstairs, but I felt like the whole house was going
to come down on us at any minute.
    I gripped the gun tighter, fully aware
that, if the house did cave in, it wouldn’t make any difference how
many light-based bullets I had. I walked to where Travis was, his
body mostly hidden behind a large, white door.
    “ This will work,” he
announced before he moved back into the room, his pace quick as he
progressed from window to window, pulling the heavy curtains closed
in an attempt to keep the light we would create hidden from