Chapter 7
Lana woke up with the dawn. She was stiff and cold after a night in the car, and desperate for the bathroom. Cracking her neck she begrudgingly moved the blanket off of her and threw it into the back seat. This was going to be cold.
She reached into the glove box and grabbed hand gel and the toilet roll that was always stored there. Bracing herself she opened the door and found it had iced over in the night. "Fuck. Fuck fuck FUCK". On the final fuck her frantic pushing forced the door open, her breath immediately fogging in contact with the cold air. Nearly falling out the car she hurried over to a nearby tree and hastily undid her jeans.
"Brace for impact crew" she muttered to herself and pulled down her jeans. The cold air hit her bare skin and she squealed. She hastily thought of waterfalls, sinks overflowing and dripping taps in order to make herself ignore the cold and pee faster. She started walking back to her car before she bothered buttoning the jeans, frost crunching under her boots, desperate for the relative warmth of her car.
Pulling open her door she slid into the seat, shivering. With now numb hands she opened the glove box she put the hand gel and loo roll back and closed it. She needed to get to the check in spot in order to let her grandma know she needed to prepare to leave. Her hand twitched with indecision. She was close to the house; she could go and clear out the tunnel to ease her grandmother's arrival and turn on the old generator or she could go to the check point first.
Both had their risks. She chewed her lip thoughtfully, weighing up her options. If she went to the house first that meant she would have to go to that location twice in a short space of time; it meant disturbing her cars hiding place and possibly risking revealing its location. But it did mean that her grandma wouldn't have to worry about anything but getting safely to the house and settling in, her way easier through the passageway with a warm room waiting for her at the end. The image of her grandma having to make her way through the frigid forest and sweeping cobwebs out of the way, coughing on the musty air in the passage and leaning against the dirty wall filled Lana's mind. She tasted blood. She'd bitten down too hard at the thought of her grandma suffering in such a way. No she thought. The risk may be higher but the pay off was worth it if it ensured the comfort of the old lady. She reached and got the half empty bottle of water to her lips, trying to wash the coppery taste of her blood from her mouth.
Swirling it around before swallowing, she dabbed her lip with the back of her hand. A small speck of blood marked the skin of her knuckles. Lana sighed, just what she wanted when she'd be working in the cold: a healing scab that would most likely crack further in the frosty air. She turned on the engine on before putting on her seatbelt, petting the dashboard softly as if it were an old trusty dog when the engine spluttered at the cold. "Same Sal, same. Just a few more trips then you'll be covered up under a nice warm tarp for a while, how does that sound?". Her cars engine stopped making its groaning disagreements and Lana smiled at the timing, fancying that the car really did like the idea of having a rest. She put the car in reverse and turned around in the small clearing, heading back down the way she had come towards the abandoned logging trail. She knew she needed to head to a small warehouse that used to belong to one of the old logging companies that had been commandeered by her grandfather and his brother for use. Whilst the tunnel to Ralphs house was well built, she didn't want to risk arriving to find a collapse and then have to again leave the spot. As her Grandfather said, it was better to be well prepared and late in this life, than ill prepared and early in the next.
The journey down to the warehouse should of taken about half an hour, but it took Lana slightly longer as she'd got distracted in her own thoughts and missed the turning. She parked as close as she could to the old building, noting that it hadn't appeared to be disturbed in the years since she'd last been there, except by nature itself. She flipped the latch to open the boot of her car before stepping out into the still chilly air. Breathing in she took a deep steadying breath, willing the images of the past to not distract her from the task at hand. She walked to the door and lifted up the heavy latch, the rusty metal digging into already cold fingertips. It shifted a little then shuddered to a stop. Lana groaned in frustration and jiggled it furiously. The metal scraped against itself making a screeching moan of protest but moved a little more and stopped again. "You bastard I do NOT have time for this!" she grasped the latch in both hands and pulled with all her strength. Another grating sound and she stumbled backwards as the latch opened and the door swung towards her. "Ha! Victory!" Lana grinned. It felt nice having something go her way, even if it was just a power struggle with an inanimate object.
Walking inside she was greeted with slightly stale air which had that old musty smell that old wooden structures often had. Slivers of light streaked across the floor from the gaps in the wooden walls, highlighting the dust motes that her movement had caused to dance through the previously still air. She stood in the centre of the room for a moment, head tilted up looking at the rafters with its abandoned chains where some form of pully system had once hung. She closed her eyes, squeezing them tightly shut, before opening them and walking to the left towards a small half walled off area, touching one of the hanging chains absent mindedly as she passed its hanging length. She vaguely remembered her Grandfather explaining what it for was all those years ago and wished she'd paid better attention to him. Entering the smaller storage area she spotted what she was looking for.
A thin layer of dust had formed over the tarp in the centre of the room. It was unobtrusive, identical to the other dust covered tarps covering abandoned equipment around the room. Unlike the other tarps only this one had the tools she needed. Pulling it off with a flourish Lana revealed 2 wooden crates underneath, the dust rising through the air like an insubstantial wall. She placed the tarp on top of one of the other odd covered shapes in the room and bent down to lift up one of the boxes. She didn't need to open it just yet, there was no point checking inside. She already knew it contained everything she'd need to make the tunnel safe if it was needed, including small pit props and shoring materials. It was a large box and heavy, and Lana suddenly felt very small, very alone and the closest she'd felt to powerless since the day her Grandfather was killed. It was going to take all her strength to move the crates and then shore up any tunnel damages. She breathed in a shuddering breath, willing back the tears that pricked in her eyes, and regretted it immediately. The dust she had disturbed made her cough, the tears she had tried to hold now streaming down her face as she struggled to breathe. Lana fell over from her crouch onto her ass on the dusty floor next to the crate and struggled to get her breathing back under control.
Wiping her eyes she pushed herself up, cursing at her stupidity of forgetting how much dust she'd disturbed. Arms stretched wide she held both corners of the crate, the feeling of the wood indenting into her skin taking her mind off of her still uneven breathing. Lana struggled to her feet, shoulders burning under the weight of the crate and stumbled to the car thanking her foresight of leaving the boot open. The crate landed with a dull thunk and she apologised to her car "Sorry Sal, didn't mean to drop it, its just bloody heavy!". Straightening up Lana sighed. One more crate to go. She walked back inside quickly, wanting to get the move done quickly before letting her muscles rest. As she bent down to pick up the next crate a drop of blood fell onto the floor in front of her, soaking into the dust covered ground. She licked her lip and the copper tang hit her tongue for the second time that day. As she'd predicted the bite from earlier had reopened from the strain of first the accidental coughing fit and then lifting the first crate. She rolled her eyes and picked up the second crate, sucking her lower lip into her mouth to prevent any more blood from falling.
This time Lana managed to not drop the crate into the boot of her car with as much force as the first. Standing straight she stretched her back out, feeling her muscles twinge at the movement. "Note to self, don't sleep in car and then move heavy items around. It will result in ouchies and a longing for a hot bubble bath" she groaned at her own words as the stepped into the warehouse one last time, past the still gently swaying chains in order to retrieve the abandoned tarp. "Oh Lana you temptress, why would you think of a bath when you're here and don't even know if the house has a bath tub?" she angrily snatched the tarp, dust from where it had rested again swirling in the meagre rays of sunlight. She turned round half way back to her car to give the smaller room a once over. Thankfully the dust layer on the tarps hadn't been so thick on the floor and therefore showed no sign of the two crates having originally been there, nor was there any indication of her being there either – no footprints left in the dust. She hurried out, closing the rusty metal latch on the door. As it squeaked Lana responded "Goodbye to you too". As she sat in her car Lana then thought to herself that she really needed to stop talking aloud to inanimate objects. Lana snorted at how ridiculous her musings would seem if anybody was around to hear her and smiled to herself as she drove off, thinking how her Grandma would chuckle to herself if she could see and hear her. Lana made her way back up the dirt track towards the main road and put on the radio. Soon she'd be able to see her Grandmother smile again, and the quicker she dealt with the tunnel and house, the sooner they would be reunited.
