Balustrade Read Free Page B

Even as she said it, she felt silly. Riled up by an incredulous dream.
    Jack rolled his eyes and slapped his palm against the steering wheel. “You promised not to—”
    “ I didn’t promise to walk—or ride—blindly into a bad situation. I’m more than willing to work on what’s left of us, Jack, but this is beginning to feel...unsafe. At best, weird.”
    More jaw-clenching on his part.
    Hilary braced herself for the impending argument. She turned to look through the windshield just in time to see the placid sky she’d become used to seeing as flat and vaguely beige begin to roil and billow.
    “ That settles it,” Jack said, pointing at the phenomenon.
    “ What is it?”
    “ Dust storm. It’s about to get really windy out here.”
    The only dust storms Hilary had seen were on internet videos. They lived in Seattle, Washington for Christ’s sake? Who even knew there was a desert in the eastern half of the state? It didn’t seem feasible considering all the rain. But she couldn’t deny the weather was getting nastier by the minute. Dust devils spun across the rocky flat.
    “ We should be nearing the retreat.” Jack squinted into the distance.
    Hilary followed suit, spotting the mysterious Balustrade spring onto the horizon, small and boxy to the point of pixilation. When blinking didn’t clear the square glitch, Hilary rubbed her eyes and when she took a second glance she saw the first of the black cars, similar to the one they drove in, but parked sideways, a tumbleweed tucked under its fender like a drunk driving fatality.
    “ That’s strange,” Jack mumbled. “That’s quite a ways from the building.”
    But apparently it wasn’t all that odd as two more cars sat beyond it, five beyond that.
    Then nine.
    Soon Jack was jogging the car slowly left and right to maneuver through an elephant graveyard of black Mercedes.
    “ It’s like the rapture.” Hilary rubbernecked to look inside the inconceivably open door of one of the cars. A lizard slipped from the black leather seat onto the rocks and slithered into the shadows of its undercarriage. “For drug dealers,” she finished the joke half-heartedly.
    But the distraction of the cars was momentary. A shadow fell across her face and as she glanced up, the black building seemed to loom out of nowhere. A massive black cube of a thing. A windowless monolith. The closer they came to it, the more menacing it appeared.
    “ What the fuck?”
    “ It’s gigantic!” Jack’s voice, all excitement, zero suspicion.
    Hilary stared at the thing. To its right side, more of the haphazardly parked cars studded the landscape and beyond that the ballooning dust of the windstorm. Nothing moved between them, no exhaust drifted. Jack flanked the nearest car and clicked off the ignition.
    “ You ready for an adventure?” he asked.
    Hilary blinked. Stunned that they were actually considering getting out of the car let alone approaching the monstrosity.
    “ What is it?”
    S he broke away from the image towering before her and glowered at her husband, wondering why the hell she'd agreed to come at all. “What?”
    “ You were shaking your head. You're not chickening out. We've come too far.”
    “ Of course not,” she said, tossing off the disquiet that clung to her like a thin bead of sweat.
    “ Well good.” A smile sprang back on Jack's lips and for a second Hilary was glad to see him happy, as though the journey had reignited her last flicker of caring.
    But then he said in that know-it-all tone, “Quite a wonder of architecture don't you think? Bauhaus, perhaps?”
    Hilary stole a glance at the approaching wall of dust and reached for the door handle. “We better go.”
    They stepped out into a blustery warmth. Hilary’s hair whipped around her face and dust snuck past her lips, coating her tongue. She spat as she ran for the trunk.
    They left everything but a small overnight bag in the car. Hilary refused to leave her wallet, or Jack's, though stickler for