by J. Thorn
“Where did you go, little lady?” Gill’s voice called out.
Maya pushed off the wall and ran again. She headed left, down another hallway. She came to yet another door, but this one wasn’t chained shut. The door opened to a stairwell, and she thought of running up the stairs but decided against it. She had a better chance of getting out of the school if she stayed on the ground floor. So, she ran down the next hallway.
Halfway down that hall, Maya slowed to a quick walk. She looked inside each of the classrooms, hoping to find a place to hide or something useful to break a window and get out of the building.
“You don’t want to know what I’m going to do to you when I find you, bitch.”
Gill’s voice sounded closer now. She could hear the other goons laughing, as well, opening and then slamming doors as they methodically checked each unlocked classroom. They’d eventually find her if she hid in one of the classrooms, but Maya needed a few moments to think and she couldn’t do that with Gill getting closer.
Maya’s eyes lit up when she saw the sign above the classroom three doors down from where she stood. She sprinted for it, opened the door, ducked inside, and eased the door closed behind her.
She couldn’t believe her eyes, or that Gill’s hillbillies hadn’t looted it already.
Long ductwork stretched across the top of the room and connected to exhaust hoods hanging over workstations. Massive, industrial machines sat silently in the corners while five tables had been positioned in the middle of the room.
The woodshop still had most of its tools sitting on workbenches, haphazardly left out in the open as the students had evacuated at some point in the recent past. The drill presses and power tools wouldn’t be much help, but Maya saw countless saws, drills, screwdrivers, and other assorted hand tools that could be used for their intended purpose—or as weapons, if necessary.
Maya knew she would be able to find something in here to break out of the school if only she had a few seconds to think. But the loud footsteps grew closer, and so did the voices. She saw a cabinet on the other end of the room and hurried over, opening the door and crawling inside the dark space that smelled of paint thinner and wood stain. The harsh, chemical fumes made her eyes water.
She wiped away the involuntary tears, listening to the heels of the men’s boots slapping on the tile as they proceeded down the hallway. Then the noises stopped just outside of the woodshop.
“Where the fuck did she go?” Gill said.
“Maybe into the shop? I don’t know.” That voice was Rodney’s and he was clearly trying to be funny.
“Don’t be an idiot. What would a woman want with power tools? She probably ran for the Home-Ec classroom.”
Maya bristled, but then realized that their jokes and misogyny might save her life.
“Why the hell would you leave her alone in there?”
“You mean you didn’t want me to come tell you that your pregnant wife was hurt?”
“Oh, to hell with this. Quit talking, Rodney. You’re only making my head hurt more. I wanna find that bitch, you got me? Go get Joey and Mark and head upstairs.”
Maya paused as she heard several men enter the nearby stairwell, this followed by silence as the stairwell door shut. Another sound. She waited.
The door to the woodshop opened. Maya could hear it but not see it. She felt a chill on her neck, and the paint thinner fumes had gotten to her so much that she felt like she might sneeze.
A metal object hit the floor and then an entire shelf that must have been full of woodscrews and hinges crashed to the ground in the woodshop. She shook and closed her eyes as they tore the room apart.
“Stupid, fucking bitch wouldn’t be in here. Wouldn’t know a belt sander from a jigsaw.”
The classroom door opened and then shut again, and even without opening the closet door, Maya knew Gill had left and probably headed into the stairwell to catch up with the others.
After counting to twenty just to be sure, Maya crawled out of the cabinet. Then she looked around the room for something she could use to escape from the school.
She thought of simply breaking one of the windows and making a run for it. But when she looked closer, she saw that the window was made from some kind of safety or security glass. A tight, steel mesh appeared to be sandwiched between the panes. She suspected that, because of the equipment in the room, the school had taken measures to protect their investment. A chair or desk would simply bounce off the glass, and it would bring Gill and his assholes running.
Maya had started to open the door to a supply closet when she stepped on something that felt hard. She looked down, realizing that she had stepped on the curved end of a crowbar.
Years ago, she’d locked herself out of her shed. She’d been married to Gerald at the time, and he’d let one of his friends borrow their bolt cutters. After fussing at him and rolling her eyes, she’d taken a crowbar from the garage and used it to break the padlock.
At least that son of a bitch is still good for something. Like jogging my memory.
She smiled as she bent down and picked up the crowbar. On her way out of the woodshop, she turned and pulled the door shut behind her—just as Gill had left it.
She looked both ways, making sure nobody had stepped into the hallway. She neither saw nor heard anybody.
Maya hurried down the hall to an external door that had been padlocked. She turned to face another door leading into the stairwell.
With the hooked end of the crowbar in her hand and the straight end aimed for the padlock, Maya heard voices coming from the stairwell. She ran beneath the stairs, ducking under them and out of sight.
Sitting with her knees at her chest, Maya held her breath as a stairwell door on the second floor flew open. The footsteps and voices seemed to be going higher in the stairwell instead of coming down.
“She’s on the third or fourth floor, I just know it,” Rodney said.
The footsteps echoed throughout the stairwell until another door opened and shut. Maya waited for several moments until she was certain that they’d gone up the stairwell to look for her and that nobody had snuck back down the way Gill had come into the woodshop after separating from the earlier group. Counting to fifty this time, she finally stood up and went back to the external door.
She pried the crowbar under the padlock, putting it in a position where she had leverage. Then she leaned into the lock and grunted, pushing down until the veins in her arms bulged.
“Come on, dammit.”
She closed her eyes and pushed harder, hoping the lock wouldn’t pop and shoot shards of metal into her eyes.
First came a snap, and then her knuckles smacked off the face of the door. Maya stumbled backwards, thrown off balance by the sudden release of pressure. Pain blossomed in her fingers and arms, but when she looked down, the broken lock lay on the floor at her feet.
She smiled and laughed, pulling the chain off the door and opening it. The fresh air almost made her want to cry, but she realized she had no time to spare. If Gill hadn’t heard the door open, he’d certainly discover the broken padlock when they descended the stairwell again after searching the upper floors of the school.
The sun had turned golden and it felt warm on her face. Maya shook out her arms and looked around. She saw a pickup parked against a curb in the yellow-lined “no parking” area behind the woodshop. No school official or student would have parked it there before everything had happened, so she had to assume it belonged to Gill or one of his crew.
Maya ran to it, pulled open the unlocked door, and jumped inside. The keys had been left in the ignition—the aliens probably hadn’t been all that interested in the stolen car trade, after all.
As she turned the key and the engine fired up, Maya saw movement out of the corner of her eye.
Gill stood in the doorway with a gun pointed at her.
“Shit, come on!” Maya said as she dropped the truck into drive and slammed her foot onto the gas pedal. Three successive crac
ks preceded the concussive sound of the rear window shattering.
She didn’t know how many rounds Gill had in his gun and she didn’t want to find out.
Maya slid down in the driver’s seat, the truck tires squealing as she raced down the access road behind the school with the smell of burning rubber in her nostrils.
Three more gunshots came, each thumping into the steel panels of the truck but none of them hitting the tires or shattering anymore windows.
Maya peeled around the corner and out of Gill’s range before she looked into the rearview mirror. Several of the men had turned the corner behind her, but apparently decided to save their ammo given the growing distance between them and her truck.
Banging on the steering wheel with her palms, Maya laughed as she turned onto the highway and headed north again.
“Home-Ec, my ass.”
10
Maya sped north on I-65 and into the gaping maw of another dark, uncertain night. Her mind wandered as she kept a tight grip on the steering wheel, her hands locked into the 10 and 2 positions. The adrenaline surge from her escape had subsided, but her paranoia had not. In fact, she seemed to be more worried now than she had been while stuffed into the supply closet with Gill stalking around the shop looking for her.
She realized that she’d been glancing into the rearview mirror every few seconds, looking to make sure Gill and his men weren’t following her. She shuddered when she thought of what might have happened if she hadn’t gotten away, and then pictured Alice’s face as she thanked God that she had. Although Maya feared for Alice and her unborn child, she understood that there wasn’t anything that could be done about them now. She could only hope that the woman had been able to outsmart Gill and cover up the fact that she’d helped Maya escape. But then again, outsmarting Gill didn’t seem to require much intellectual heavy lifting. She’d keep her promise to Alice, too, but finding cops out here didn’t seem likely anytime soon. And she had other important concerns.
Laura. Aiden.
How were the kids? What would the situation be like when she arrived at Gerald’s?
Maya wanted her kids back and to take them somewhere safe. That was it. Somewhere away from their bastard of a kidnapping father and the alien invasion—not being sure which one was worse. Maybe the situation at the school had been what she’d needed to get her adrenaline pumping and give her the confidence to know that she wasn’t just as strong as a man, but stronger. Stronger than several from White House, anyway.
A flash of light reflected from her rearview mirror, pulling Maya out of her thoughts. When she looked again, she didn’t see the source on the highway behind her. Rolling down the window, she stuck her head partially out and quickly saw where the light had come from.
It had come from the sky.
From an alien ship.
Her hands shaking, Maya turned off her headlights. She kept her foot on the gas, but decided she needed to hide. If the aliens spotted the vehicle on the road, they might destroy it.
Maya pulled over onto the side of the road, slamming on the brakes. She jumped out of the car, staying low and keeping her eyes to the sky. Hopping over the guardrail, she slid down the hill on her stomach, moving into a ditch and out of sight.
A beam shot light into the trees as the ship slowly descended. She had witnessed smaller crafts monitoring the rural areas and towns in order to find and eliminate the people who they couldn’t trap inside of the domes.
She’d just looked out from around the trunk of a tree when the spotlight blinded her. Maya slid down and out of sight.
“Shit, shit, shit.”
Her heart raced. She lay face down and didn’t move. If they saw her, she was dead.
The sound of the ship’s engines roared and the dirt and leaves swallowed Maya like a surging hail storm. She put her hands over her head, just waiting for the burn of the laser that would incinerate her instantly. But, instead, the gale force subsided, and when she opened her eyes, the area was again encased in darkness. She looked up and saw that the ship had flown higher, its light now shining to the west.
Maya sighed as she climbed to her feet and crawled to the top of the hill.
She jogged over to the truck and started the engine. Then she hit the gas, spitting gravel into the air as the tires squealed when they grabbed the asphalt of I-65.
Within minutes, she had crossed the Tennessee-Kentucky border, making it one mile closer to her kids.
When Maya arrived in Bowling Green, Kentucky, she took the second exit, pulling up to a gas station and parking the truck at the edge of the lot.
Bowling Green felt like a ghost town. Even though it was the middle of the night, there should have been more people out, especially at a rest stop gas station. She didn’t see any fires, and none of the nearby buildings looked damaged, leading her to believe that the aliens hadn’t swarmed and destroyed the city or domed it the way they had Nashville. Perhaps most of Bowling Green’s citizens had fled town, or else they hid from the aliens.
Maya pressed her hands against her temples with her arms resting on the steering wheel. Not only did her head throb from everything she had been through over the past several days, but she couldn’t remember where Gerald lived.
She had refused to bring the kids to his house for his court-appointed times with them, instead forcing him to drive to Nashville. He’d moved several times over the past couple of years for different reasons, usually because he was running from the back rent, let alone the front rent. That had come as no surprise to Maya. She would wait at the mailbox on the third Monday of each month, mentally taking odds on whether his child support check would be in there. He pretended to have the best intentions for his children at heart, but what he said with his wallet showed what really mattered in Gerald’s life.
The mere thought of having to drive up to this shithole town and get her kids only made the veins in her head pulse more.
She punched the roof of the cab with her right hand and then leaned back against the headrest, closing her eyes. She took two deep breaths.
“Where is his damn house?”
She opened her eyes and looked around. Parked on the other side of the lot sat a slick-looking, brand new Mustang.
I swear that car is better looking than any man my age. Even the new ‘Stangs.
Her mind drifted as she thought about the cherry red Mustang she’d been saving money to buy, although this one looked really good in midnight black.
Then it hit her.
“Midnight Avenue.”
That was the name of Gerald’s street. Now she had remembered the name, but she still couldn’t remember how to get there and there was nobody around to ask. And even if there had been, the chance that they would be able to give her directions to one specific street in this town would be slim. People couldn’t navigate on their own anymore even without the threat of an alien invasion.
Her eyes drifted to the convenience store, then down to the crowbar in the passenger seat, and the idea hit her. She grabbed the crowbar and jumped out of the truck.
Maya looked around as she jogged to the front door. She pulled on the handle, but the locked door didn’t open. She reared back, then swung the heavy end of the crowbar into the glass door, shattering it. No alarm went off in the store, which didn’t surprise her. She reached in and unlocked it, then pushed the door open.
The item she needed sat in a cradle on the front counter. She took the Kentucky map from the display, and grabbed a bottle of water from a nearby cooler and a package of beef jerky from a rack.
A small flashlight sat on the counter next to the maps, and she grabbed it also before spreading the map flat. She shined the light on what she thought was Gerald’s neighborhood, finally seeing Midnight Avenue. She circled it with a pen she found on the counter. Maya dropped a twenty dollar bill on the counter and then headed back out to the truck.
Maya stopped in front of the house and stared at the front door. The place sat cloaked in darkness, and th
e blinds on the windows had been drawn. Gerald’s pickup truck sat in the driveway.
He was home.
Maya took a deep breath, closing her eyes and leaning back against the headrest. She made sure her ponytail was tight, then grabbed the crowbar and stepped out of the vehicle.
Her heartbeat sped up as she walked up the driveway, around a primered Chevy Nova on cinderblocks, and past a garbage can overflowing with fast food wrappers and beer bottles. She scoffed, shook her head, and then continued to the back of the house.
Maya thought Gerald’s bedroom was on the front side of the house, so she figured she’d have a better chance of breaking in without waking him if she used the back door.
As Maya stepped over white plastic buckets and painted garden gnomes, she approached the screen door on his back porch. Her hands trembled. She still didn’t know what she was going to do when she saw him, though she was confident it involved the crowbar, which was itching for action in her sweaty hands.
She’d wedged the crowbar’s edge into the doorjamb when the back-porch light came on and the interior door rattled. Maya froze as the door opened and she found herself staring into a one-eyed beast—the barrel of a shotgun aimed at her face.
The person holding the gun lowered it and stepped forward into the light.
“Cameron?” Maya asked.
The young woman snorted, rolling her eyes and shaking her head.
“You can come on in. But he’s not here.”
11
Maya put her hands on her hips and stared at Cameron. The 29-year-old looked every bit of the hooch Maya remembered her to be. Her long, red hair cascaded around her face like she’d just jumped off a pole and she wore one of Gerald’s camo t-shirts, cut in half to expose her midriff with nothing but a pair of yoga pants below it. It was the middle of the night with aliens blowing up cities, and yet she was wearing makeup.