Time Bomb

by Joelle Charbonneau

  Diana glanced at her phone, then back at the door. Could she get to the closet? If she did reach it, would she be able to get the door open? Maybe she’d find the bag on the way. If so, she’d—

  “Hello?” a voice called.

  Diana looked up, trying to decide where the sound was coming from. Must be from the part of the third floor that hadn’t relocated to this level.

  “Help!” The voice was closer. And it belonged to a boy. “Hello? Please? Is there anyone there?”

  Diana checked the time, then slid the phone back in her pocket as the voice yelled again from above. “We need help!”

  She looked around and spotted a couple of desks that looked like they were wedged firmly in place enough to climb.

  “Hey!” she yelled as she squeezed sideways though a narrow gap in the broken chemistry tables and reached the desks. “Hello? Are you there? I’m on the second floor. Are you guys okay?”

  “Do you think anyone in this place is okay?” the boy yelled. The voice was vaguely familiar. “Kaitlin is trapped and hurt, and I can’t get her out on my own. She needs help.”

  Diana could use that too.

  No, she told herself. She wasn’t the one who needed help, because she was the one in control. But if she wanted to help someone else, she needed to get back up to the third floor. Diana studied the pile of desks, looking for something stable to climb.

  She reached up for a board and tugged on it to make sure it would hold her weight. Then she put a foot on a chunk of ceiling and began to climb. “I’m coming.”

  She had to try several times before she found a secure place to put her foot, then pulled herself up.

  Ouch. A splinter dug deep into her finger, and she gulped back tears. Compared to the cuts and scrapes on the rest of her, it wasn’t a big deal. She grabbed the beam tight and kept climbing, looking for the next desk leg or metal beam or cabinet that didn’t shift when she took hold.

  Looking up, she saw patches of blue. The sky and the sunshine and the bird that flew by seemed unreal. She could also hear the boy’s voice from above floating down. It sounded fainter than before. He must have moved down the hall—Great. Thanks for the support and help.

  Diana started climbing again, this time faster as she focused on the sound of the sirens that grew louder the higher she climbed through the gaping hole in the ceiling. More first responders must be coming—probably from other towns.

  Diana shoved aside a chunk of ceiling tile and sent it thudding below. She was almost to the top of the chemistry room’s ceiling when she spotted her red backpack in the wreckage beneath her.

  “Hey!”

  She jolted at the loud voice and pitched forward. She grabbed tightly on to a metal bar and yelped as it cut into the palm of her hand.

  “You okay?”

  “Not really.” She automatically checked the angry words she wanted to hurl at him. Not ladylike. Not acceptable. Still they churned and pounded inside her head, fighting to break free. She closed her eyes and took a deep breath—two—three, then said, “But I’ll live, as long as you don’t scare the hell out of me again.”

  “Sorry,” he said. “I thought you could see me, since I can see you.”

  He could?

  Diana glanced around as much as she dared. She was high enough to see the third floor, or the part of it that hadn’t collapsed to the classroom below. But what caught her attention was the smoke beyond the windows and the licks of fire.

  She yanked her eyes away from the flames and craned her neck to look behind her at where the exit had to be. A shadow shifted beyond the doorway.

  “Do you need help?” he yelled.

  “Give me a minute.” She looked down one more time, then stepped onto a metal beam that at one point must have been a part of the second-floor ceiling, gasping when it shimmied under her feet. Her stomach dropped, but the beam held. Most of the floor between here and the door was cracked or had crashed down into the classroom below.

  “I can see the doorway,” she called. “But most of the floor is missing. I am going to try to walk along this beam, only it doesn’t go all the way to the door. I might need a little help when I get closer.”

  Diana inched forward on the beam, using another piece of metal dangling from the ceiling to help her keep her balance. She held her breath and judged the distance between the doorway and where she stood. More than two feet. Probably less than three.

  If she could get a running jump, she’d be able to get a whole lot farther than that. But on this beam, she doubted she could get much power behind a leap. If she didn’t make it or the floor didn’t hold, she would be in trouble. But as her father said, sometimes you had to take a calculated risk in order to earn the payoff. And she was going to need someone to grab her in case she totally screwed this up.

  “Are you ready?”

  Diana saw long, dark hair appear in the doorway. The guy stumbled and grabbed the door frame tightly as the floor beneath his feet began to give way. He jumped back just before a small chunk fell below, leaving Diana with several additional inches to jump. But now she could see the guy’s face.

  Z.

  She stared at him, trying to decide why he was here. In school. Today.

  She’d never talked to him, but she knew the kind of trouble people said he was always getting into. He was the last person who should have been in this building the week before the semester started, and certainly not the person she wanted to count on for help. All the piercings and tattoos didn’t exactly inspire confidence.

  “I need you to catch me on the other side, since the floor is falling apart.” As he had just demonstrated. Oh, God.

  Z looked down the hallway, then back at Diana. “Just tell me what you need me to do.”

  “Stand back one step,” she directed. “I’m going to jump as far as I can. If the floor gives way beneath me, I’m going to need to grab on to you, and you can’t let go.” Please don’t let go. “Got it?”

  “Yeah, I got it,” Z said as he took a step back and transferred his weight to the front of his feet like athletes did when they needed to be ready to move fast. Good. If his reflexes were faster than his intellect, she might have a chance. He glanced down the hall, then back at Diana. “I’m ready when you are.”

  “Great. Give me a second.” She could do this. She wasn’t the type to fail. It wasn’t allowed.

  Taking a deep breath, she slowly inched back so she would have a little room to get some momentum before jumping. Then, before she could think too hard about how stupid this was or why she was doing it at all, she looked down at the beam to make sure she was putting her feet in the right place, then hurled herself forward.

  She locked eyes with the angry but solid-looking Z. Everything inside her tensed as she flew over the space between the beam and the doorway. She let out a whoosh of air as her right foot hit the floor on the other side just as her left shoulder collided with the door frame.

  “No. Oh, God.” Diana stumbled. The floor cracked beneath her feet. Frantic, she reached out for the door frame and screamed as she pitched backwards. A hand clamped around her wrist like a vise and yanked her through the doorway with such force that she lost her balance. She collided with Z, sending them both tumbling to the ground. Z on the floor. Diana sprawled on top of him—all the air knocked out of her.

  Diana wheezed in a painful breath, trying not to panic at how hard it was to fill her lungs.

  “Can you get off of me?” he groaned. “You’re heavy.”

  Heavy? She’d just risked her life because the idiot asked her to, and he was calling her heavy? Seriously?

  Taking in a slightly less strained breath, Diana put her hands on Z’s black T-shirt. He grunted as she pushed hard against him and climbed to her feet. While he struggled to get upright, Diana checked the urge to kick him and instead felt her side pocket for her phone. There was no service. She had no way to reach beyond the walls for advice on what to do next.

  “What are you doing?”
Z asked, leaning over to look at the display.

  She shut the screen down and said, “I want to call for help, but there’s no signal.”

  “There might be one down here. Come on.” He grabbed her arm and yanked her down the hall, almost pulling her off her feet.

  12:30 p.m.

  Z

  — Chapter 28 —

  COME ON. COME ON.

  Z ducked low to get under a fallen beam and hurried down the hall, glancing over his shoulder to make sure the homecoming queen was following. Of all the people he could have found, it just figured it was her. People like Homecoming Girl, who thought they were better than he was, were the reason he had come to school today.

  “Kaitlin, I found help!” he called, hurrying toward the caved-in section of the room where she’d been standing when the first bomb went off. Now her legs were pinned under a gray-and-black steel air-conditioning unit that had fallen through the ceiling.

  Because of him.

  He shook off the churning panic as he knelt down next to Kaitlin and took her hand in his. It was small. Cold. Weak. So like his mother’s.

  “Kaitlin, I brought help. We’re going to get you free and out of this place. Right?”

  “I told you to leave,” Kaitlin said tightly. “You have to get out.”

  “You told me to find help.” Z looked back at Diana with a look that he hoped would make her understand that she might think it was okay to kick him around, but she couldn’t do that to Kaitlin. She needed help.

  Homecoming Princess stepped forward. The floor creaked beneath her feet, and she came to a dead stop.

  “The floor held my weight. You’ll be fine.” If not, he didn’t care. The only person who mattered was Kaitlin.

  To prove his point, he stood up and walked toward the side of the air conditioner that had smashed onto a desk. The broken wood beneath held that side a foot or two off the ground. The floor around it was cracked—but it still held his weight. “See. It’s fine. I’m going to wedge a board under here and lift the air conditioner enough for you to pull Kaitlin out.”

  Homecoming Girl didn’t move.

  “Don’t be stupid, Z,” Kaitlin said quietly. “It’s not going to work. You need to get out of here.”

  Her eyes were glassy. The freckles on her face looked darker than ever against her pale skin. For someone so small, she had a huge voice and a stubborn streak a mile wide. She believed anything was possible. For her to say this wasn’t . . .

  He wasn’t going to accept that.

  “We can do this, Kaitlin,” he said, yanking a two-by-four out of a pile of debris. “Right?”

  He looked over at Miss Princess, waiting for her to agree. But she was just standing there staring at Kaitlin. Her eyes wide. Her mouth slightly open.

  “Right?” he asked again.

  Slowly, the blonde shook her head and took a step back. “No. Listen to Kaitlin. You can’t move her.”

  “We have to,” he insisted. She had to be okay. She just had to be.

  “I get that you want to, but if we move her right now, she’ll die.”

  The words slapped his heart.

  “Look,” the girl said. “At best, her bones are simply broken, but if it’s more than that . . .” She took a deep breath and once again glanced down at Kaitlin before quickly looking away. “If she has other injuries, she could lose a lot of blood the minute we move her. We don’t have anything to stop the bleeding. This is bad, but that would be far worse. And she’s probably in shock.” There had to be other options other than having her legs crushed or bleeding out. There had to.

  “Z,” Kaitlin whispered.

  He squelched the panic and forced himself to give an encouraging smile as he walked back and knelt at her side. “I’m here. And I’m going to get you out of this. You’re going to be okay.”

  How many times had he told his mother it would all be okay?

  “I know you want to help, Z.” Kaitlin closed her eyes tight. Her voice sounded thin. The pain was wearing her down. “But you have to listen to her.”

  Kaitlin’s face looked even paler. Ghostlike.

  “I’m not going to give up,” he said. “You can’t either. You have to keep fighting.”

  “Z . . .”

  “Promise me you’ll keep fighting, and so will I.”

  He smoothed her hair, stood up, and stalked over the cracked floor toward the shattered windows, wanting to smash something. To smash it all. But that would scare Kaitlin. He had to—

  “Z?” Homecoming Chick’s voice made him jump. He hadn’t heard her sneak up behind him. “I’m sorry about your friend.”

  People liked saying that crap. As if they really thought someone would believe them.

  “My name’s Diana, by the way. Diana Sanford.”

  Of course it was. He should have known that’s who she was. Senator Sanford’s sainted daughter. No wonder she thought she was the authority on all things. “I’m getting Kaitlin out of here.”

  “Kaitlin needs paramedics or the fire department or people more skilled than we are if she’s going to get through this.”

  “Well, where the hell are they?” he yelled while Diana looked down at the phone in her hand as if it were magically going to give her the answer. “I don’t know about you, but I’m not seeing any firefighters bursting through the doors.” He grabbed an overturned chair by the legs and swung it toward the window.

  The chair and the glass shattered. Z leaned his head out and yelled, “Hey! We’re up here. There’s a girl who needs help right now!”

  Dozens of emergency vehicles were in the parking lots, as were people in uniform. They were all looking in the direction of the school.

  No one was rushing toward the building. A couple of firefighters took a step or two toward the edge of the asphalt, but no one came any farther.

  “Hello?” he screamed. “What the hell are you waiting for? You need to move! A girl is going to die!”

  “Z, you’re not helping,” Diana said as he pulled his head back into the room.

  “Like you are?”

  “I’m trying to. There’s a reason no one is coming in.”

  “Like what?” he yelled.

  “Like they think there’s another bomb!”

  Kaitlin moaned, and Z’s heart tightened.

  Quietly, Diana said, “Fire responders must have been ordered to stay out of the building until the bomb squad or robots or whatever determine if there’s another bomb. If there is, they won’t come in. They can’t; otherwise they’ll put us in even greater danger than we are now.”

  Which meant they were on their own.

  If that’s the way they wanted it—fine. Screw them. Screw them all.

  Frankie

  — Chapter 29 —

  “HERE’S THE PLAN. We’re going to get out of this room. Then we’ll look at those bandages, and after we make sure you’ve staved off the vampires, we’ll get out of Dodge. Deal?” Frankie asked.

  “I think we have more to worry about when it comes to the smoke, but if you want to focus on vampires, sure thing,” Cas said. She took a deep breath, then nodded. “I’m ready when you are.”

  Still holding her hand, he got to his feet and said, “Okay. One. Two. Three.”

  He pulled. She stumbled, and he snaked an arm around her back to make sure she didn’t go down for the count. The back of her shirt was wet with sweat.

  He adjusted his grip and guided her until she was standing all the way upright in the middle of the chaos around them. She leaned forward, and he lunged to grab her because he thought she was going to hit the deck again. Then he realized she was reaching for a blue bag that was on the ground.

  “Let me get that,” he said, picking it up before she had the chance. “I can carry it for you.”

  “I’ll carry it,” Cas snapped as she grabbed the bag and tugged. She almost stumbled as he let go. For a flash of a second, Frankie wondered what was in it and why Cas didn’t want him to carry it. Then Cas starte
d coughing from the smoke, and he went back to the most important thing on the agenda.

  Run.

  “Let’s go.”

  He put his left hand behind her back to help guide her out of the room. She flinched when he touched her and tried to pull away, but Frankie held tight. The far wall looked almost ghostly through the haze of smoke. The heat was stronger still. And in the missing corner of the room, there were licks of red amid the swirling puffs of gray and black.

  He and Cas stumbled around the broken desks and shelves and other crap. The girl choked back whimpers of pain, but she never complained. Although she probably wanted to when they reached the doorway and he all but shoved her through.

  Frankie slammed the door of the art-room-from-hell shut behind them. The hall that led to the front of the school had collapsed. The hall going to the back of the school where he had originally come from had gotten hit in the second explosion—not to mention it was the same direction the smoke was coming from. It looked like the path was clearer that way, but . . .

  “This way,” Cas said, pushing away from the lockers with her good arm and taking a step in the direction that led to the front of the school and the biggest of their roadblocks. “The art office has a door—”

  “That leads to the storage room,” he finished the sentence for her, understanding exactly what she was going for. “If we’re lucky, we’ll be able to go around the cave-in through the office and the storage room and come back into the hallway on the other side.”

  “How do you know about the storage room and the art office?”

  “I take it you don’t think a football player can like art?” he asked, shoving a piece of metal to the side before turning back to see if Cas needed help.

  She was holding her bag tight against her with her good arm and looking down at the ground, ignoring his hand as he reached out to help steady her.