Chapter 18

With Junior following the group, Anders led them through a side door marked "Staff" -- a label which Daniel found oddly amusing -- down a short, unlit hallway, and through a heavy, metal door into a longer concrete hall. There were windows high in the walls, letting in enough light for them to see their way amidst the pipes that snaked along the walls, and the boxes and crates that were stowed in every available space. Their footfalls echoed, but it wasn't the resounding echo from the lobby; this echo was hollow and damp.

The hallway twisted and turned a few times, but it must have been almost two blocks long. Daniel wondered about the building, and what had once been here.

About fifty yards before the end of the hallway, Anders led them through a fire door and out into what would have been an alley, except that both ends were closed off. It was, Daniel supposed, more of a courtyard, though the cracked pavement and the handful of broken windows didn't quite give that impression. The walls rose three stories on all sides, and Daniel idly wondered how the weeds growing through the cracks ever got enough sunlight to survive.

There were three men standing in the courtyard, smoking cigarettes and talking. The one facing their way paused when Junior came through the doorway. His companions turned to look too, and fell silent, watching as the group crossed the courtyard and went through another door.

Just before the door closed, Daniel heard a voice float through: "Better them than me..."

The floor in here was linoleum tile, though many of the tiles were bumpy and several were broken. The only light came from a barred window at the far end of the hallway. Anders led them to a steel door labeled "Stan Moritz, Pawnbroker". He peered through the small, barred window in the door, then flipped open the deadbolt, pulled the door open, and with a sweep of his rifle, gestured them inside.

The room certainly did look like it had once been a pawn shop, but it had since been gutted. One freestanding metal shelf, the assemble-it-yourself style from Menard's, was in the center of the floor; otherwise all the movable furniture was gone. The counter running all along the back wall and halfway down one side was filled with glass display cases, though much of the glass was now broken. The heavily-barred picture windows facing the street were so grimy that only a faint amount of light filtered in, except from the corner of window that had been smashed in.

Daniel and Kelly walked slowly inside, looking around.

Anders spoke for the first time, jerking his head toward the back of the shop. "The broker's apartment is back there," he said with a faint Austrian accent. "You won't be the only ones in here by tonight, so I'll leave you to negotiate who gets the bed. There's even a bathroom, and we get decent water pressure in this part of town, so there's no need for you to make any messes."

He moved back, and Junior stepped into the doorway, watching them with a gleam in his eyes. "Enjoy your stay," he said quietly.

Then the door closed, and the deadbolt slid home.


"What kind of deadbolt is on the outside of the door?" muttered Kelly as she tested the bars in the window.

"One that somebody took off and put in backwards," Daniel said, examining the deadbolt. "The keyed side is in here. The screws are on the outside, too, so we can't get it off." He studied the door. "What puzzles me a little is that this door opens outwards. That means the hinges are on the outside. Not a very good design if you used to want to keep people out."

He sighed and joined her at the window. "How's it look?"

"It looks like they're attached pretty firmly to the rest of the wall," she said. "There aren't any bolts we can remove or anything like that. They go right through the frame and into the wall."

Daniel nodded. "If we had a hammer or something, we could probably start chipping away at the wallboard and get through eventually, but it'd make a lot of noise."

He stood for a moment, looking at the window, then turned and started looking around behind the counter. Kelly headed back through the door leading to the apartment.

All but one of the display cases were locked from the back, for all that it mattered, since most of the glass fronts were gone.

There was a spot on the counter that was darker than the surrounding space, and the end of a power cord snaked out of the counter next to it, severed raggedly just above the counter. That was presumably where the cash register had been. Under that was a locked wood-front cabinet that didn't correspond with any of the display cases.

Daniel's experience with pawn shops began and ended with the pawn-shop scene in The Crow, but that was enough to suggest that there might be something interesting in that cabinet. The money box, sure, but the world didn't exactly seem to have a thriving cash economy at the moment.

"There's some blankets back here," Kelly said, leaning back in through the door to the back, "but that's about it. The bed is just a mattress on a shelf, not even anything we could take apart."

"I get the feeling we're not the first ones in here," Daniel said grimly. "And those guys aren't stupid. But I hope they didn't think of anything." He reached into his jeans pocket, then looked up sheepishly. "That's right, they took my keys, didn't they? Come on, help me look for something we can pry these hinges off with."

They found a small metal plaque on the front of one of the counters, proclaiming that returned checks were subject to a $30 service charge, and held on by two small screws. One of the screws was stuck, but Kelly was able to get the other one loose, though not without some damage to her fingernails. Once one screw was out, it was easy to wiggle the other loose.

Daniel crouched down behind the counter and began trying to work the pin out of the top hinge. It was slow going; the hinge was well constructed. He leaned in closer and tried to work the metal plate into the base of the pin, but it didn't want to go. The plate had looked barely more than paper-thin on the front of the counter, but now that he was trying to use it as a wedge, it seemed like a huge slab of metal.

After twenty minutes of trying, his fingers were nearly numb, and the pin still hadn't moved. He sat back, surprised at how exhausted he was.

"Here, let me try," Kelly said, kneeling next to him. He scooted aside to make room, and handed her the plaque. She bent to the task, then stopped to brush the hair out of her face. "Okay, this is a pain," she said. "I should just cut it all off. I've been thinking about it for a while. The end of the world is as good a reason as any."

"I like your hair," Daniel said absently, massaging some of the feeling back into his fingers.

"Yeah, it wasn't your face it was getting in when I was on top," she retorted.

He felt a flush rising into his face, and laughed. "Touché."

She looked a little embarrassed, too, before she turned quickly back and bent down to work at the hinge.

Then the door's deadbolt slid open, and the door swung open. "Right," said a woman's voice. "Want to tell me what you're doing back there, missy?"

"Yes," came Junior's voice from the hallway. "I would be a bit curious to hear that answer myself."


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