The virus had decimated the city first. And the fires and the fallout wiped it off the planet.
CHAPTER NINE
Ding-Dong.
The group jumped at the interruption.
The intercom clicked on.
In that nanosecond between the end of the tone and the start of Principal Spencer’s slurred voice, each of them raised their head in anticipation. There was a sharp intake of breath, and then he launched, his breath hitting the microphone like a punctuation mark.
“If anyone is out there…if anyone is left…you have five minutes to reveal yourself at the front office. After that time, I am closing the gates. Do you understand? I am closing the gates. You will lose access to an exit, to food, and to protection. And this will be my fortress. And I will not allow or tolerate intruders.”
There was a loud crash. A shuffling. And then he returned to the intercom.
“Am I clear? Five minutes. And if you don’t believe that I’m serious about protecting this place…my health…my building.” A shot rang out.
Grant pointed at the ceiling speaker, “Did he just fire a gun?”
Lucy nodded.
“Please show yourself at the front office…because I am very welcoming with this gun!” Grant mocked, but his eyes were wide with shock and disbelief.
Lucy nodded again.
“A gun.”
“He wants the school all to himself and if he can’t do that then he wants supreme rule over the minions,” Salem said. “Megalomaniac Spencer till the end. I never trusted that moron and I’m not about to deliver myself to him on a platter.”
“I don’t think he’s crazy,” Grant challenged. “I think he’s scared.”
Lucy looked at them and grimaced. “A man who is afraid for his own life is way more dangerous to us than just some power-tripping jerk,” she said.
Despite the warning, they didn’t move.
The metal gates were thick metal garage-like doors that descended from the ceiling and locked into the floor with the help from powerful magnets. They were impenetrable; designed to herd students like cattle away from classrooms and into community areas like the gym or the cafeteria. Once Lucy had attended a football game and wandered into the school during halftime. She didn’t get very far, stymied by the metal walls. Each time she tried to work her away around them, she encountered another and another.
From the East Wing, the gates would lock at the start of the English hall and math halls and end just past the computer labs before the main part of the school. They would be left with a ‘U’ shape of accessibility, and Spencer’s warning rang true: The cafeteria, the teacher’s lounge, the front office—areas with access to food and water—the nurses station and the security office, all would be behind the gates which made it infinitely more difficult for them to sustain themselves for long periods of time.
As the minutes ticked down, none of them made a move until Lucy rose from her crouched position in front of the screen and walked over to the door where a school emergency disaster plan booklet hung in a plastic cover. She took it out and walked back to the journalism teacher’s desk, rummaged for a highlighter, and then slapped the paper down in front of Salem and Grant.
“Look,” she said and took the cap of the highlighter off with her teeth. “The gates will come down here and here.” She drew a line separating the hall to the gym and the auditorium and from the pool to the main office. “And here.” She highlighted the gates’ locations separating the English hall and the computer lab. “We’re locked in.”
“Right,” Grant said. “Clearly.”
“It’s to our benefit,” Lucy replied. “Spencer is keeping himself in the main office. And why not…he walks down the middle hallway and he has cafeteria access and with the exception of the cafeteria courtyard doors and the main entrance, he’s isolated himself from intruders too. But—” Lucy ran the highlighter over the English and math hallway and the East Wing. “He doesn’t have access to us either.”
“That’s fine, but how will we eat?” Grant asked.
“Easy,” said Salem. She pointed at the Boiler Room on the map. “Boiler Room. Next to the cafeteria. The gates going down don’t affect us. We have no reason to let him know we’re here. It’s a big building. We can hide.”
Grant looked up to the ceiling and then down at the girls. “How long before he figures out we have open access to the roof and shuts us down?”
“We’ll have to be careful, of course. And quiet. Figure out the best times to sneak in and back without detection, but it’s entirely possible to hunker down here and fly under the radar,” Lucy added. “I’m a little concerned about the roof though. We’ve created open access for anyone to get inside and people seeking shelter here won’t be deterred easily.”
“I wouldn’t worry about that,” Salem said sadly. “If what the news guy says is true, then there won’t be many people left wanting to get in. Even by the time I climbed up, the numbers outside were…”
“It’s about resources,” Grant interrupted, “not how many people are still alive. People will know the school has food. Eventually people will want inside.”
“Then we make it hard for them.” Lucy walked over to the gaping hole and pointed at the ladder. “Without the table and the ladder, it’s a what…twenty foot drop? If we move everything away from the skylight and…I don’t know…glass shards?”
At this suggestion, Salem laughed. “Glass shards? You been watching action-adventure movies in your spare time?”
Lucy sat down on an empty chair and plopped herself into it and stared ahead. “It’s not like I’m good at this. It’s not like I woke up this morning and suddenly I’m an expert on how to booby-trap the journalism room. None of us are equipped for this. If we even live until morning, I don’t know how we’ll make it to the next day or the next.” Her tone was sharp, cutting in all the right places. Little daggers of truths wrapped in fear.
It was Grant who approached her, standing next to her knee, waiting for permission to speak or help her up.
The tone sounded again. This time they had expected it and they calmly waited for the announcement.
“Ten…Nine…Eight…Seven…Six…Five…Four…Three…Two…One…Zero.” Spencer counted down in a lazy drawl. “So. If I’m the only one standing…” he trailed off. “Or if those of you still here don’t feel a need to coexist.” He spat the word like a curse. “This is where I leave you.” The intercom did not click off, but Spencer got up from his seat, humming an incoherent melody that trailed away and then came back and then trailed away again—they imagined him pacing along the length of the front office—the microphone for the intercom situated on a box at the front secretary’s desk.
Lucy knew that Spencer couldn’t hear that he was still broadcasting his movements to the school. There was no speaker for the intercom in the office, so there was no way for him to hear himself. It was to their benefit that he could not detect this because it provided them a distinct advantage.
Students at the school were aware that sometimes the intercom system remained on blast when the people around it thought they had turned it off. Their cheerful and grandmotherly school secretary was most famous for forgetting to shut off the intercom. Once she was overheard calling a particularly rude parent a “douche bag” to a fellow teacher while the intercom still broadcast every word.
Grant, Lucy, and Salem heard a distinct click of a door opening and then a slam as it shut. Spencer was leaving the main office.
Then, in the stillness of the school, they heard the rumble. From the security office, Spencer had flipped the gate switch and the metal bars tumbled downward.
Without fear, they sprang up and ran out of the classroom, Lucy remembered at the last second to shove the doorstop beneath the door before it slammed shut and locked them out. Then they rushed to where the East Wing met the English hall and peered into the openness of the hallway. To their left, they could see the gate hit the magnetic metal locks. Then they br
aved exposure and wandered down the hallway to their right, peering around the corner only long enough to see that gate shut them in and lock with a distinctive click. Hearts pounding, they scooted back away into the safety of the English hall. Now, unless the gates lifted, they were sealed off from Spencer.
Lucy looked at the empty floor where the young boy’s body had been that morning. Someone had moved it. Dried blood and vomit remained stained on the tile, but the boy himself was gone. Moved to his final resting place without fanfare.
And then Lucy noticed something shift in the corner of her eye. Subtle at first, a small twitch, and then a longer sweep: The security camera above them was rotating and scanning the hall. Spencer, sitting in the security office, was on the hunt. Unaware of the camera’s range, Lucy grabbed at Salem and pushed her backward into the wall, then pulled Grant’s shirt.
“What?” Salem asked in a whisper and Lucy pointed above them. The red light was pulsating and the purr of the lens rotating around was barely noticeable.
“This complicates things,” Grant mumbled. He watched the camera and took a step. “Wait,” he said. “Wait.” The camera whirred to capture the other end of the hall and they had a second to move—the girl’s bathroom was mere feet away. While the camera could easily capture the bathroom entrance, it was common knowledge that the bathrooms were free from video. Which was why in her four-year tenure as a student, Lucy had witnessed three girl-fights and two drug deals during routine bathroom breaks.
As the lens scrolled over the top of them, in the second after it could no longer see the bathroom, they bolted and scrambled inside and shut the door, leaning against the back of it, holding their breath and waiting.
“How will we know if he saw us?” Salem asked.
“He’d say something,” Lucy whispered. “Call us out on the intercom.”
“Maybe not,” Grant replied. “Maybe he’d just come for us.”
Salem moved away from the door and walked over to the mirror. Someone had scrawled, “You are beautiful to someone” in Sharpie on the expanse of wall between the two mirrors above the sink. Salem put her finger on the writing and traced the words. “We’ll hear the gates go up,” she replied. “Simple. He says he sees us or he puts the gates up and comes to get us.”
“There are three of us and one of him,” Lucy noted. This gave her confidence.
“But he has a gun,” Grant reminded them.
“He has a gun,” Salem repeated.
“But maybe it’s just for show,” Lucy said.
As soon as she said it, they heard a second shot as it echoed down the hallway and rang out over the intercom.
Spencer’s voice yelled and called as he retreated back into the office. “Stop, stop where you are!”
A group of voices called out, distant at first, but then getting closer to the office.
“Get him!” someone shouted.
“Go around! All sides, all sides!”
There was the sound of breaking glass and then a struggle.
A mob had moved in and Spencer was shouting, his tone vacillating between wrath and sheer panic.
“What’s happening?” Salem pushed herself against the bathroom door, as if the fight was bearing down on her, getting closer.
Grant’s eyes landed on a spot on the bathroom wall, and he stared at it as he listened intently. It was just noise raining down from above; and it was the noise of things falling apart. “Students. Has to be. I think other students are on the attack.”
One of the voices, female and young, screamed something indecipherable before someone else yelled, “We’re losing Sarahi. She’s down…oh no, help her…Somto…wait! Wait! Don’t…”
There was another shot and screams. And then they all heard Spencer’s voice clear above them. “Get. Out.” He was breathless and angry. Something scraped along the floor; there was the sound of muffled shouting and doors opening. “Get out!”
Then: Nothing.
Each of them paused and then at once they let out long breaths.
“Why?” was all Salem said, she looked to each of them.
“This is not good for us,” Grant added. “Any kid is now a potential threat to resources and his life. Was it too much to ask for everyone to just hide?”
Lucy walked to one end of the bathroom and back—peering into the stalls, with their graffitied walls and dwindling toilet paper supplies. A deserted binder perched precariously against one of the toilets and the wall. There was a picture of a baby taped to the front that reminded Lucy of her binder, which was still in Ethan’s backpack left abandoned in Mrs. Johnston’s classroom. She made a note to retrieve it when it was safe to go in the hall again.
“There could be others still in the building,” Grant continued.
Salem’s shoulders slumped. “But maybe they don’t have roof access?”
“And maybe they do. What do we know?” Grant kept his back firmly planted against the door. His feet fell outward, his toes pointed up. He stared at his shoes.
“I realize this is neither the time nor the place to announce this, but I have to pee,” Lucy said. She turned to face them and then shrugged.
“Well, I’m not stopping you,” Salem replied as if the act of urinating annoyed her and she motioned for Lucy to head into a stall.
Lucy glanced over at Grant. He smiled, his single-dimple appearing in a flash. “I’m definitely not going outside to wait if that’s what you want. I’m not getting shot over girly privacy issues.”
“I have four brothers. So, I’m not embarrassed to pee in front of you.” Lucy marched into the stall and slammed the door, locking it for good measure. She pulled down her jeans and underwear, careful not to pull them too low so that Grant, if he were so inclined, would notice the bright blue and pink argyle pattern of her undergarments. After a second, Lucy sighed. “Salem…can you turn on the sink water or something?”
“What? Need inspiration?” Salem asked and soon the sound of the sink filling with water echoed in the small bathroom and Lucy allowed herself to go to the bathroom—she realized as her bladder released, how much better she would feel and she rested her elbows on the exposed flesh of her thighs and closed her eyes. After she was done, she just sat for a long second. It was a second that belonged only to her.
Then she felt wetness hit her exposed flesh; a gush of lukewarm water bubbled up, pouring over the sides, spilling at her feet.
Lucy shrieked and scrambled off the toilet, pulling up her pants and underwear in a quick motion and clawing at the door, yanking it with force. The water had pooled below her feet and Lucy slipped, sliding forward into the side of the bathroom wall; she turned to look as the toilet overflowed—the water was clear at first, and then it turned a murky brown, and it began to spew like a geyser, sending a spray of water and sewage into the stall, drenching the wall and the floor—creating a stream that ran down into the drain in the floor.
Then the other toilets followed suit by gurgling and belching up waste and water. Salem and Grant sprang up and huddled together on a tile near the door while the water crept slowly toward them. But every time Lucy tried to move, she would slip and tumble back down into the wetness. When the water calmed down to a mere trickle, the explosion subsiding, Lucy regained her footing and stood sopping wet in the middle of the bathroom. Her jeans clung to every inch of her skin, scraping along the inside of her thigh like a razor as she took a step forward. She lifted her arms up and watched the water drip with a repetitive plop-plop-plop to the floor.
Salem cried out, “Oh no, Lula!”
She wanted to laugh—her instinct encouraged her to let out a giggle. Embarrassment usually garnered this type of response; she wanted to laugh and blush while she wished for reprieve. Her pants were still unbuttoned and she reached to fasten them, but as she looked up she saw Grant and Salem huddled in the bathroom corner, close together, pushing themselves as far away from the water as physically possible. Lucy stifled her smile when saw the fear in their faces.
/> Lucy took a step toward them, her shoes swishing.
“No, Lucy, wait,” Grant said and put up his hand. “Just wait.”
The water was contaminated.
The water was poison.
They stared at her as if she were already dead.
CHAPTER TEN
They stood there for a long moment and then Lucy lowered her arms a bit, feeling the weight of her clothes pull her body toward the floor. The intercom right above her broadcast the banal sounds of an empty office. Then they heard a door click and Spencer started to hum again. Not happy, jaunty humming, but a focused and intense hum. There was an edge to his musical interludes, a hardness to the melody that seemed entirely for show.
It unsettled her.
Lucy opened her mouth to speak to Grant and Salem, but as she opened her mouth, she saw Salem flinch and draw back and place her hand immediately on Grant’s arm with her long fingers wrapped around his biceps. Grant regarded Salem’s grip for just a second and Lucy saw his eyes flit to his arm and then back up at her, as though even among the tragedies of the day, he was still aware of being touched by the opposite sex.
“No,” Lucy replied to a question that hadn’t been asked. “No. This is not the way it’s going to happen.”
Grant took a tentative step forward, “How do you know it’s not contaminated?”
“I don’t!” Lucy answered him and her eyes locked in on his. “But we’ve been around the dead all day. All day! All of us, all day, and we’re still here.”
“We’re allowed to be worried,” Salem said in a small voice.
Lucy’s eyes flashed to her friend; she swallowed hard and blinked back tears. “Worried for me?” Her eyes flashed. “Or worried for you?”
When Salem didn’t answer, Lucy bit her lip and nodded. “Right. So, we’re all just still alive because we haven’t been exposed yet? The bioterrorists polluted our water, our food supply, our air and we just lucked out?”
“I don’t know how it works,” Salem’s hand still held on to Grant. Lucy took a giant step forward, her legs stiff. “We just don’t know.”
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