by Brad Munson
“All in working order,” he said. “I’m not quite sure how we’re going to use them when we’re soaking wet, but it’s better than nothing.”
“We have got to get out of here,” Lisa said for the hundredth time. “Now.”
Trini nodded tightly. “I’ll get the rest of the grown-ups to the bottom of the stairs, and we’ll decide who rides where,” she said.
They gathered together, weary and soaked and nearly spent. Barrymore put himself in front of them.
“Okay,” he said. “We know this is crazy. But we also know it’s the only idea we’ve come up with to get out of here.” Thunder pounded over their head. Throughout the day, throughout their entire process, the rain had never slacked; the wind had never slowed. “But each of you have a choice,” he said. “You can stay here, and wait for rescue. Or you can go with the caravan and get out.”
Lisa scanned the group, sorting through the dozen adults who were still with them, watching them gather their materials and gently draw the terrified children together.
“I have to tell you,” Barrymore said, his voice filled with anguish. “I’m not going. Not because I don’t believe it can work. It can. Not because I don’t want to. I just … I just can’t.”
There was remarkable little muttering or protest. The grown-ups had seen what had happened to him. They either understood or – at least in the case of Sharon Greenaway – no longer cared.
“As soon as the caravan’s safely on its way,” he said, “I’m going up to the roof. The fire escape outside my office goes all the way up, and I’m hoping we can trust that staircase one more time. It’s still way above the water line. There’s even a janitor’s shack up there for shelter.”
The parents and teachers were looking at each other, then looking away. They had all made their decisions.
“So I’m going to ask each of you,” he said. “Are you ready to go? Or do you want to stay?”
At first Lisa couldn’t see anyone clearly – the ashen light through the skylights was dim, the shadows were like ink – but she tried to focus on each face as Barrymore went down the line, one at a time. Each parent, each teacher. And each one said, “I’m going,” or “I’m set,” or “I’m ready.”
With each of them, she saw the smooth, almost hopeful glow of truth. In every face, every age, she saw bravery and hope, or at least resignation. In every face but two:
“I’m staying,” Sharon Greenaway said. “I’m not leaving without Katie.” Her husband, still standing next to her and holding her hand, said, “I’ll go. I’ll bring back help.”
She took her hand from his and stood alone.
And there was one other. One adult who said, “I’m ready,” with the same conviction as all the others … but whose face rippled with an ugly yellow texture, a mark that twitched across cheeks and chin and seemed to be swallowed whole.
No one saw it but her. Barrymore took everyone at their word and said, “Let’s get packed. The cruise departs in fifteen minutes.”
Lisa watched them all get busy. Even Sharon Greenaway helped the parentless children put on backpacks and cinch on life jackets. Everyone –
– but one. The one whose body was actually glowing for Lisa, with a strange textured light that twisted and writhed across the face, the hands, the hair.
Lisa watched in astonishment as her target crept unnoticed up the swaying staircase to the upper landing and slipped through Barrymore’s office door – to the fire escape, she knew, that led to the roof.
What the hell? she asked herself. Without thinking, she followed: up the unsteady staircase, across the landing, and through the same door.
What the hell?
Thirty-eight
Katie was looking for a weapon. Anything at all. Anything sharp enough to stab with, or heavy enough to hit with. She’d take anything, anything that could fight the monsters so they could get away before TEACHER came –
The door behind her, across the room, flew open. There was no sound of snarling chains, no rattle of locks this time. It just opened, and TEACHER filled the doorway, black coat whipping and lashing in the wind like the wings of a huge bat. Mad eyes darted left and took in the open window. A crazed understanding blossomed there.
“What?” their kidnapper said, astonished. “Trying to escape again?”
Katie didn’t have time to move. TEACHER was on her in an instant, one claw-like hand clamping her arm so hard it made her gasp.
“Come along now,” TEACHER said, sounding very business-like. “It’s time for me to go, and obviously you can’t come with, and you can’t stay here. Who knows, you might actually be rescued if this rain ever stops, and that just wouldn’t do, would it?”
“What … what are you going to do?” Little Jennifer said, voice trembling.
TEACHER looked at her as if she was the stupidest creature on earth. “What do you think, Little Jennifer?” She gave a pitying shake of the head. Katie got a more understanding gaze – a look what I have to put up with expression. “Really.”
The claw jerked at Katie’s arm even harder. “You first,” TEACHER said, and picked up a length of two-by-four from the corner. “You’ve been nothing but a pain in the ass; I’m sorry I ever recruited you.”
But Katie was ready this time. She was still starving to death and still terrified, but she had thought this through. There were no more chains. She knew where she was. She only had to get away for one second, one second, and TEACHER would never catch her. She was fast and she was smart and she could do it … if she tried.
TEACHER tugged her toward the open door, but as they crossed the threshold Katie twisted violently, darted forward, and bit the hand that held her, right in the soft spot between thumb and forefinger. She bit so hard she could feel her teeth meet right through the flesh.
TEACHER screamed like an animal and threw the little girl away, purely by reflex. Katie stumbled forward, outside, engulfed by the storm. The wind was so strong it almost picked her up. For a moment she felt herself flying through the splattering air, just like a bird, and then she plunged into the swirling waters.
Her knees slammed and scraped along the asphalt sheeting of the rooftop. She scrambled to her feet, intent on getting away before TEACHER could recover … but there wasn’t time. The water was already knee-high, even on the roof. She couldn’t move quickly. She could barely move at all.
The kidnapper staggered out of the open doorway, huge and solid, right in front of her, blocking her way. She hefted the two-by-four high overhead like a baseball player with a Louisville Slugger.
“God,” TEACHER grated, “I wish I had time to do this slowly. You SO desOOF!”
The pea coat billowed wide and TEACHER flew forward, cheeks puffed out in pain and surprise. Katie had to dodge fast to avoid the body as it flew face-first into the water. The splash was huge and frothy.
Little Jennifer was standing in TEACHER’s place, shoulders hunched and heaving. She had given the murderer a massive shove from behind. “B—b—bitch,” she grated … and smiled a smile that was all teeth.
TEACHER flailed in the water, kicking and writhing, growling like an animal. “I’m going … to … fucking … KILL YOU!” The voice barely sounded human at all.
Little Jennifer sneered. “Oooh, tell me something I don’t know.”
Black arms came up. Black hair, wild and kinky, whipped in the gale-force wind. Katie gasped as TEACHER started to lunge for the fat little girl, reaching out her claws to tear her arms off her doughy little body –
– and a skinny woman with short brown hair – a woman Katie had never seen before – came sloshing around the corner of the janitor’s shack. She stopped short when she saw the three of them just a few yards away.
“Elli?” the woman said to TEACHER. “What the hell are you doing?”
***
Lisa couldn’t make any sense of it at all. Trini and Barrymore had told her about the missing children; it had been a terrible story, a frightening story. But it ha
d never occurred to her, not for a moment …
Elli Monaghan was looming over an overweight little girl with awful hair, a fifth- or sixth-grader. Her fingers were curled into talons; her expression was so wild and ugly Lisa didn’t need her odd ability to tell the truth this time: she knew the pretty young teacher was about to kill the little girl.
But the moment Lisa appeared, the instant she called out … Elli changed. Lisa saw her turn away from the child, and suddenly her claws were gone and her face was normal. She was Miss Elli again – the same gentle, weary young woman she had met just a few hours before.
And now she was weeping. Lisa watched, dumbfounded, as the teacher put her hands to her face and said, “Oh my God! My God, Lisa, look!” She waded through the water toward Lisa, sending up plumes of water at knee-height. “Look!”
There was another little girl – slim and anxious, the image of Sharon Greenaway – standing off to one side, her hands in her matted hair. “Watch out, lady!” she shouted. “Watch out!”
Lisa still couldn’t take it in. “Elli,” she said as the teacher reached her side. “Are these the—”
Elli slammed her knee into Lisa’s stomach.
The pain exploded like a bomb in her belly, and she doubled over with a horrible, strangling sound. But Elli didn’t let her fall completely. She caught Lisa’s face in her long-fingered hands as her head came down, and her fingers became claws again. She raked them, hard, over Lisa’s eyes, and a thick mist of blood fouled her vision.
The teacher screamed, shrieked, as she moved her hands up and back and wrapped them around Lisa’s head. Lisa didn’t have an instant to take a breath before Elli slammed her face into an up-thrust knee, then shoved her into the filthy water.
Her lungs exploded and rain rushed in.
She was drowning.
***
Katie gasped when the new woman’s head disappeared underwater. As TEACHER held it there, tight, her sopping head swiveled around to face Katie and Little Jennifer. Her teeth were showing again, almost glowing white against her slick and dirty skin. “One down,” she gurgled. “Two to go.”
She held the woman’s head there for the longest time. And then longer still. The woman struggled at first, pawed at TEACHER’S impossibly strong grip, but it was no use. She couldn’t break it. After a moment … two moments … she stopped. Collapsed. And TEACHER let the limp body go. It disappeared into three feet of muck.
TEACHER turned back and shuffled through the water toward the little girls. We should have run, Katie realized too late. We should have run, but … that lady … She scrambled back, searched for any path of escape, but there was trash everywhere, and things were bolted to the roof and blocking her way. She kept tripping and falling into the waist-high water.
Little Jennifer didn’t move at all.
TEACHER didn’t even bother to pick up a weapon. “I don’t need anything now,” she rasped. “I could tear the skin of your body with my bare fucking hands. I am that pissed off.”
She was four steps from Little Jennifer, no more. But Jennifer wasn’t even looking at her; she was looking past her, over her shoulder. And she wasn’t making a sound.
TEACHER stopped. “What,” she said, her voice dripping with sarcasm. “What, you think I won’t do it? You are so fucking stu—”
A dragontongue – ten feet long with a head like a rose made of razors – slammed into Elli Monaghan’s back and drove her deep into the water. But Elli didn’t die. She screamed with rage and turned in the water, threw out her hands. She seized the creature directly behind its swiveling tunnel of concentric teeth and squeezed. The monster writhed in unmistakable alarm.
The two girls stood, frozen, as the two monsters fought.
At first it was just splashing, violent splashing that went on and on, furious and blinding, trimmed in red froth. Katie saw a flash of knobby tail like a giant rattlesnake skeleton, then a slap of black cloth, flinging off drops of blood. Then more, and then nothing but water everywhere, a chaos of blood and froth. It went on forever –
– until, very gradually, the water stopped boiling.
Katie was ready to move – ready to run. She put out a hand to Little Jennifer and said, “Come on—”
And right in the same place, right where TEACHER had disappeared, something humped up out of the water. A single figure, rising up, sludge pouring from its shoulders in rivers.
It was TEACHER. She was scratched and gouged over every inch of skin you could see, and her pea coat was shredded and torn, but it was her.
“This,” she said, “Is. So. Fuh—”
Another form rose out of the water, five feet behind her. TEACHER spun on her heel, eyes narrow, lips skinned back.
It was that other woman again – the one Katie didn’t know. She was back from the dead. And she had a familiar length of two-by-four gripped in one hand.
Elli’s eyes got big. She tried the same stricken look again. “Lisa,” she said, “you don’t understand …”
“Oh, no,” the woman said, spitting water and grit. “I know the truth.”
She swept the two-by-four up in a vicious arc and caught Elli on the tip of her chin. The teacher flew straight back and splashed into the water, head first.
The woman held out her free hand and motioned to Katie. “Come on, girls,” she said. “Let’s get the hell out—”
Elli surged out of the water and tried to tackle the woman, but she side-stepped the teacher and hit her on the back of the head with surprising speed and force, driving her into the water again. Then she backed away, holding her club at the ready.
TEACHER sat up in the water. It danced madly around her shoulders, but she didn’t move. She just smiled.
“Stay there,” the woman said as the children waded madly to hide behind her. “Just stay.”
They backed away, heading towards the fire escape. Elli started to laugh as they retreated. “You’re pathetic,” she said. “Totally pathetic. I’ll just come get you. I’ll come find you before you float away from here, and you don’t have the fucking balls to—”
She stopped talking. All three of them looked back at her in surprise.
The razor-rose head of the dragontongue was rising out of the water right behind her. The knuckled tail of the creature was wrapped tight around Elli’s neck, choking her.
“To—”
The creature swayed back and forth like a charmed cobra as they watched. The twitching, rotating razors near the center of its blossoming head spread wide and pointed down – down at the top of Elli’s head.
“To—”
It lowered itself slowly, very slowly, and caught the ends of the teacher’s curly brown hair in its edges and corners. It twined the strands round its blunted, wrinkled maw.
Elli’s eyes rolled back in her head, trying to see the thing behind her. She could feel it pulling at her hair – nibbling at it, an inch at a time. But she still didn’t move.
Nobody did.
The dragontongue ate a little more. And then a little more. Elli made a tiny squeaking sound when the monster laid its teeth like daggers right against her scalp –
– and said nothing when it rammed down, right over the top of her head, and bit her skull off just above the ears.
Lisa Corman picked up one girl in each hand with a strength she didn’t know she had. “Gotta go,” she said, and sprinted for the staircase.
There wasn’t any screaming behind her – none at all. There was just the sound of rushing water, boiling with blood.
Thirty-nine
“Where’s Elli?” Barrymore asked.
“And where’s Lisa?” Trini said. “They were both here just a few minutes ago.” The Latina looked stricken. “You don’t think …?”
The door to Barrymore’s office, above their heads and across the room, burst open. Lisa Corman barreled through, soaked to the skin. She had one little girl in her arms and the other by the wrist, dragging her.
Sharon Greenaway screamed. Scre
amed. “KATIE!” She ran headlong across the stage, virtually leaped onto the grandstands and was ready to vault onto the staircase to the mezzanine when Lisa called out, her voice ragged with effort. “No! Don’t! We’ll come to you!” She started carefully down the stairs, but the weight of three people was more than it could stand. A hidden bolt finally sheared off; the staircase jerked down three full yards under Lisa’s feet, and she fell forward, legs churning, as the first section of steps plunged into the water behind her. She leaped to the grandstands, slipped but found her balance, as the mezzanine groaned like a beast in pain and sagged, slipped, fell to a forty-five-degree angle … and kept sliding.
Sharon pulled Katie deep into her arms. The little girl buried her face in her mother’s shoulder and did something she hadn’t dared to do for days. She cried. She held her mother so tightly she couldn’t breathe and obviously didn’t care and just cried.
So did Sharon. Their baby had come back to them.
Another section of the mezzanine sheared off and plunged to the floor. A huge gap opened in the wall behind it. The storm was clearly visible beyond it; Lisa could feel the wind coursing through the new hole.
Trini managed to pry Little Jennifer away from Lisa. “I’ll take her,” she said. “I’ll get her ready to go. But where’s Elli? Did you see her?”
Lisa nodded tightly and swiped mud out of her eyes. “Not coming,” she said roughly. “Ask me later.”
David Drucker heard her answer and looked shocked – almost offended. “But – is she all right? Is she alive? Lisa, we have to––”
“Ask Me Later,” she said, very, very clearly. The strange voice performed one more miracle: it actually made David Drucker shut up.
The building was collapsing around them. A final section of the mezzanine tore free; the wind rose and pulled part of the roof away, and the last survivors rushed deeper into the stage as the rain and gale came for them.
Barrymore helped get Little Jennifer into the raft with the Greenaways. Katie was already panting out her story to her parents, doing her best not to cry. They were pale with shock from what she was telling them, and every sentence made it worse.