by Brad Munson
Pratt said, “What the hell–”
– and the world fell in.
The pulpy white tiles burst like rotten fruit and gray, fist-sized balls of wet fur and claws rained down. They writhed as they landed wetly on desks and floor and people in a tattoo of meaty, scrabbling thud-thud-thuds.
The children screamed and covered their heads. Even the teachers reared back, cursing and shouting as the creatures hit the linoleum with a splat, then rolled over and dashed in every direction at once, matted fur spraying water, claws scrabbling, tails lashing in panic.
“Rats!” Drucker shouted. “Fucking A, it’s rats!”
The children were shrieking and climbing on desks and chairs to get away.
“Watch your goddamn language!” Pratt said, and started to kick at the rodents as they passed.
Flaco Delgadillo still didn’t move. He simply stood in the corner and stared, unable to react. Trini snatched the broom out of his hand and slashed at the torrent of vermin as they dropped from the ceiling. She seized three children by their shirts and sweaters as she passed them and dragged them towards the door, opening it wide without looking. “Cafetorium!” she shouted, and shoved them outside. “Go now! The Cafetorium! Go!”
The others got the idea. Barrymore took the broom from her and swatted the rats away, driving them into corners. Drucker and Trini herded the weeping and screaming children out of the room, shouting, “Cafetorium! Cafetorium!” as she pushed.
Douglas Pratt simply stood in the middle of it, watching the chaos in wordless rage.
It took less than five minutes to clear the room. Barrymore, backing up with the broom in front of him, was the last to leave. He slammed the metal door with a boom, made sure it was latched, then joined Trini, Drucker, and Pratt in the covered walkway directly outside. The students had already fled to the Cafetorium as the storm raged around them, blowing sheets of water and muddy mist across the submerged concrete and turf.
Barrymore loomed over the principal like a personal storm cloud. “Okay,” he said, almost growling. “Enough of this shit.” Trini blinked at that. James Barrymore was the coolest head in Dos Hermanos, and he never, ever cursed in public. “Lonni in the office needs to start calling PTA officers and sixth-grade parents for pick-up. Then you, Mr. Pratt, can call the bus drivers on their cells and get them the hell over here.”
Douglas Pratt put his fists on his hips like a cartoon of some pugnacious little Napoleon. “What the hell do you think you are? I distinctly said–”
“Call the busses now, you little prick, or I will put you back in there with the rats.”
Pratt goggled at him. “You – you – what did you say?”
“You call them in the next thirty seconds or I swear to God, I’ll throw you in there myself.”
Pratt glared for ten more seconds, but Barrymore didn’t move. Finally he cursed under his breath and called the office on his cell. “Get me the bus depot, Lonni,” he said. “Yes, right away, goddammit!”
Lightning flashed behind him and thunder broke over his head, as if to remind him how quickly he needed to move.
Barrymore didn’t wait for him to finish. He simply turned and stumped off to the Cafetorium, leaving his boss alone, standing in the rain.
Eighteen
Katie had barely finished setting the trap when she heard the chain snarling in the door. TEACHER was already here. She pulled herself, quick as she could, across the room and back to the desk she’d escaped from just a few hours earlier. It had taken hours to twist the eyebolt out of the floor, but she’d done it, somehow. Then she’d been free to move about the room.
It was all set. She had found the huge monkey wrench, as long as her forearm, leaning up against the wall in one corner. She’d found the ball of twine, black with mildew but still strong, sitting on top of a broken filing cabinet. And she remembered how to put the booby-trap together from some stupid TV show where a bunch of kids were playing a practical joke on their parents, though they had used pillows and buckets of water instead of huge steel tools.
The door would open. The string on the knob would pull. That would drag the wrench off the shelf, the wrench would swing down, and BANG, it would smash right into TEACHER’s head.
Katie didn’t know how much damage that would do. She didn’t care. Maybe it would kill her kidnapper; that would be fine. Maybe it would just give Katie a tiny little moment to jump up and run out the door. She was sure if she just got five seconds – just five seconds –she could get away.
The snarling stopped.
“This will never work,” Little Jennifer whispered fiercely from the back of the room. “You’re going to get us killed.”
Katie ignored her, just as she’d ignored all the nasty questions Little Jennifer had thrown at her when she had set up the trap.
The huge old-fashioned doorknob turned, and the door CHUNKED forward two inches.
Come on, she said silently.
“Oh,” Megan gasped, and started to cry. Again.
The door swept open.
The twine pulled.
TEACHER’s shadow filled the doorway just as the wrench was pulled off the shelf and started to swing down.
Perfect, Katie thought, her heart racing. PERFECT –
And TEACHER dropped the keys to the door.
The kidnapper dipped down suddenly, trying to catch them before they hit the concrete. But the wrench kept swinging, exactly as it was supposed to, and instead of connecting with a temple or a jaw, it whacked with a meaty thud on the back of TEACHER’s neck. There was a thin, bright spray of blood.
TEACHER yelped and fell off to one side, staggering into the wall, and Katie knew in that instant that it wasn’t enough, it hadn’t worked. But she leaped out of her chair anyway and rushed for the open door, as fast as the shackles on her legs would let her.
She got past TEACHER. She made it through the doorway, and saw the huge, dark room beyond. There was a rickety wooden staircase on the far side that led upward, up to light. She even took a full, rattling, rushing step into the room –
– before TEACHER’S arm snapped out and hooked her around the waist.
Katie screamed, loud as she could, but it came out a choking hoot as TEACHER snapped her back through the doorway and threw her across the room. She rammed into the far wall and slid down into a heap, breathless and dazed.
Her kidnapper was still hunched over and pawing at the bleeding wound. As one foot kicked the door shut, TEACHER made a sound – a strange, low huh-huh-huh.
Katie recognized the sound as she scrambled unsteadily to her feet. It was laughter. TEACHER was laughing.
“Oh,” TEACHER said. “Oh, that was good, Katie. I always admire initiative in my students, you know that, and that was a good job.”
Good job, Katie thought, still backing away, as tight in the corner as she could get. That was what TEACHER used to say in the classroom when one of the students did something extra-good or extra-helpful. She hated those words now. She hated hearing them coming from that sneering mouth. Good job.
Then the smile and giddiness fell from her kidnapper’s face like a mask falling away. “Now,” TEACHER said, “get back in that fucking chair or I will beat you to death right where you stand. In fact, I’ll kill all of you.”
But Katie didn’t move – not right away. She simply stared at TEACHER for the longest time, and TEACHER stared right back.
“Get back in the damn chair,” Little Jennifer hissed. “I don’t wanna die!”
You’re dead already, Katie wanted to say. You’re just too stupid to know it. And of course Megan didn’t do anything. She just covered her head with her shackled hands and wept.
Finally, slowly, hating herself and TEACHER more than ever, Katie shuffled back to her chair. This time TEACHER wrapped the plastic-covered bicycle chain around the metal piping of the desk itself, and did the same with her foot-shackle. She was tangled in the heavy old piece of furniture completely now. There were no loose eye-bolts
to pull loose. She wouldn’t escape again.
It took a long time. By the end of it, they were both covered in sweat and dirt. But TEACHER’S eyes were glittering and that huge, ugly smile of triumph was back in place.
“Well,” TEACHER said, catching a breath, “little Miss Hero’s brilliant escape plan has taken up all our lesson time this morning …”
It’s morning, is it? Katie thought. See, you tell us stuff even when you don’t mean to. It’s MORNING.
“… and I’m afraid I have some other things to attend to now.” Gloved fingers dug into a pocket of TEACHER’s dark, heavy cloak. “But here, let me leave a little gift for the class, all right? Just a little reminder of something that should very obvious by now.”
It was a little resealable plastic bag, the kind that Katie’s mom used to pack her sandwiches for lunch. There was a blob of something inside – a whitish ball, smeared with red. TEACHER opened the bag, fished out the blob, and held it up high, like at Show ‘N Tell.
“See?” TEACHER said, turning it this way and that so everybody got a good look.
It was a human eyeball, slathered in drying blood. Stringy bits of meat trailed off the back of it and stuck wetly to TEACHER’s wrist.
TEACHER set it down carefully right in the middle of the scarred and broken desk at the front of the classroom, positioning it very carefully so the dark brown iris and the tiny shrunken pupil pointed towards the children.
It was looking right at Katie.
“I brought one of my colleagues along to keep an eye on you while I’m gone,” TEACHER said, obviously very proud of the pun. “Just so you know that someone is always watching.”
Katie thought she recognized the color. Is that Ms. Johnson? she thought, and suddenly felt very dizzy. Oh my God, is that Ms. Johnson??
“Now, you be good,” TEACHER said, and gave a special, hard, utterly insane look to Katie, eye-to-eye. “You all be very good. I’ll be back soon for a proper lesson.”
Katie would never forget that smile. Never ever. So full of hate and madness and triumph and joy.
Two minutes later the door was securely locked and the little girls were alone again. But the eye stayed on the desk, staring at them.
Just staring.
Nineteen
Tyler Briggs heard the squad car approaching long before he saw it roll out of the storm. As much as he wanted to get out of the rain, as cold and miserable as he had become since walking away from the wreckage of the M2 Bradley, he had even less interest in messing with the local cops.
He had been walking south on Highway 121 for what seemed like hours, but he knew that time could do weird things when you had no points of reference: no sun in the sky, no clock on your wrist, and nothing but the constant drone of the wind and chatter of the rain on every inch of your body. The body armor that Diaz had given him just before he and all his buddies died had proven to be very helpful; Ty had lost count of the number of impacts from debris and wind-driven creatures that had caromed off him since he’d started his walk. But the outfit had a tendency to soak up moisture and hold it, and he was cold now, cold, way colder than the air around him or the rain itself.
The cruiser was trying to talk. At first all he’d heard was the “wow wow wow” of its loudspeaker but no real English words, like Charlie Brown’s parents in the old cartoons. Now the noise was slowly starting to resolve itself into words.
“…inal eva uation of all citize will ake place at the Convention enter tonight at even pee em. epeat, final vacuation of ll citizens at the Con ention Center onight a seven pee…”
He scowled inside the hood of his parka. So the whole city was giving up. Maybe somebody knew more than he did; maybe they didn’t think it was ever going to stop, or at least not soon enough to save the town.
It didn’t matter. It just meant he only had a few hours to get done what he’d come here to do. And the cops sure weren’t going to help with that.
He’d been walking down the right-hand edge of the asphalt most of the afternoon. Over the hours of pushing through the wind, he’d seen a few cars or trucks – some loaded with luggage and furniture, others simply crammed with people – lumber past him, always heading north. He wondered what they would encounter when they hit the Notch and the desert beyond. Clear weather? The army? Gunfire? They had all been hugging the center line or the far lane, driving to the right as always. He hadn’t seen a single vehicle pass him going south.
He had learned one important thing along the way, though. There were creatures in the storm – that was undeniable. In fact, there were hundreds of creatures in the storm, no two of them alike. The shape and number of them changed every few hundred feet, just like the storm itself. There were long patches of 121 where the rain fell straight down in an endless cataract, like water spilling out of a broken dam, but there were no weird monsters in evidence, not even a hint of the strange. Then a thousand feet forward the wind would slam into Tyler like the fist of God Himself, and there were be things, indescribable things humping and sliding and rolling across the road, as if Tyler had stepped onto the surface of another planet. A thousand feet beyond that … boiling mists, splatters of drops as big your thumb, and landscaping that had grown to five feet or more, wriggling and grasping like a field of hungry tongues. Mad, evil vegetation of a sort … but no creatures.
The world had gone completely crazy. Only one thing remain constant: the rain. Everywhere. Always. No break in the clouds, no glitter of sunlight, not even clear air. Nowhere. The variations of flora and fauna might be infinite, but the rain itself was constant, unending, inevitable.
After walking in it for what seemed a lifetime, Tyler Briggs knew the truth: this town was drowning. In a hundred different ways, maybe … but it was drowning.
He glared at the downslope off to his right. At least the grass looked like grass along this patch of road: no crazy, clutching ice plant; no churning gray sand that would eat at you like acid. He took a careful step onto the turf and tested it with his boot as the sound of the cop car grew closer. It felt normal – or as normal as the earth could feel when soaked with so much water it was about to liquefy.
He decided to take the chance. As the droning police cruiser rolled out of the rain, he stepped quickly downhill, five feet, then ten. Blue-white lights flashed; headlamps glowed; the message from the PA system droned on.
All minors may be dropped at Dos Hermanos School. Adults only must attend the organizational meeting. The final caravan leaves the Convention Center at seven p.m. Repeat: the final caravan will depart the Convention Center at seven p.m., this evening ….
Only the top of his hood would have been visible to the driver – nothing more than a shadow with a hat on as the car crawled down the highway. The cop’s head, barely visible inside the cruiser, didn’t turn; the car didn’t slow. It was almost as if he – and it – was on automatic.
But one thing was sure, Ty knew: it was time to finally get off 121. Too much chance of being noticed by the wrong people. Or things.
He turned to look into the storm that was churning along the west side of Dos Hermanos. There had been nothing to see for the longest time – just more clouds and mist. But now, for the first time, there was something more, a bit to the south and well away from the highway.
A glow. A large, diffuse, blue-white glow of electric light, as big as a football stadium or a small airport or …
… a shopping mall.
Gotta be it, he thought. Good place to pick up a ride, maybe resupply? At least get out of the fucking rain for a while.
He climbed carefully back up the slope, onto the very edge of the tarmac. The storm hit him with a new wave of wetness, flat in the face, but he knew how to use the hood for cover now. He stumped forward, one foot at a time, until the off-ramp peeled away and he saw the sign:
DOS HERMANOS EMPORIUM
NEXT RIGHT
It wasn’t far from the on-ramp. Shopping malls rarely were. It took him less than ten minutes to push thr
ough the storm to the edge of the Emporium. As he turned into the parking lot, he paused by the fake-broken pile of red bricks that held up the sign marking the edge of the property and regarded his target.
It was huge, and it was already falling apart. He could see cracked windows and a shattered skylight along one wing already, and he was sure the roof on the big department store at one end of the complex, a G.W. Monty’s, wasn’t square with the walls anymore. He’d put down money that it had already fallen in.
All that in less than twenty-four hours? he thought. Man, that place was a real piece of shit even before the storm.
The parking lot was a wide, flat lake now, entirely flooded. He was trying to assess just how deep it was – and whether his boots could handle the crossing – when he heard a blunt male voice behind him.
“Nice gun you got.”
He turned, surprised, and peered through the rain. It was falling at a forty-five degree angle at the moment, though the wind was relatively calm at ground-level.
The voice came from a man – more of a boy, really – in a canvas jacket so wet it was soaked through and clung to him like cellophane. He had on an equally soggy stocking cap and held a shiny-wet carbine low in one hand, pretending to be casual and gangsta with it.
But it was a gun. And it was pointed at Ty’s center of mass.
“Yeah, it is,” Ty called across the fifteen feet of rain between them. “Gift from a friend.”
The kid gestured with his pistol – the sign of a real amateur, Ty thought. “Give it here,” he said. He didn’t sound nervous. Almost bored.
“Can’t do that.”
The boy sighed, clearly annoyed. “Give it here,” he said, “or I’ll fucking shoot you. Get it?”
The kid was only a few feet from the thick copse of plants and trees that grew alongside the red brick installation for the sign: an untrimmed hedge, a few birds of paradise, a spreading oak with twining ivy. It had been meant to supply a pleasant, woodsy ambiance to the otherwise barren mall entrance, as if the visitor had encountered a lovely little ruin just beyond the castle walls. All it had actually done was create a convenient bit of cover for would-be marauders.