by Brad Munson
She let the hem of the red sweater fall away from her legs. Knotted gray tendrils of stone, some as thin as soda straws, some as thick as fingers, had crept up through the stadium seats and wrapped around her ankles and calves. They tightened as he watched. They pulled at her.
“Shit!” he said.
Her skin began to turn gray. Muscles began to collapse. Wrinkles opened in the young girl’s forehead and throat. Moisture was being leached from her even as he watched.
Without thinking, Barrymore thrust a hand into the canvas bag and pulled out one of the black boxes. He lunged at Heather, jammed it against the gray-white mass that covered her legs, and pulled the trigger. It made a strange PHUTT! sound – flatulent and disappointing – and the tendrils twitched but didn’t fall away.
He glared at the taser. “Why isn’t this charged?” he said. “For fuck’s sake, why isn’t this charged up?” He reached into the bag at his feet and pulled out another one – one with a bright green meter – and turned back to the girl.
“Got me …” she said. Her lips were cracking. He could see her tongue, dry as ash, flex in her mouth as if searching for water itself. She was gray. Completely gray –
– He shoved the contacts against the rocky little tentacles and pulled the trigger. This time the taser made a satisfying THRUMMM! and spit a shower of sparks. The fingers of stone leaped away and the girl jerked from the current herself, but Barrymore snatched the weapon off her legs and grabbed at her, pulled her up, broke the contact with the thing under the bleachers. Flinders of rock like bits of shale flew in every direction.
He dragged her up the grandstand as fast as he could, two steps at a time, getting as far from the water as possible. He cradled the weeping girl in his arms, and as he reached the topmost level, he set her down with shaky care and looked up at Lisa and Trini on the far side of the Cafetorium. His eyes were huge and white-rimmed. “Well, they work, anyway,” he said in a choking voice. “Kinda …”
There was tremendous rumble of thunder just above them, and a sound more like breaking glass than lightning. The children on the bleachers screamed – stunted, gasping little screams, weak from constant repetition – and hid in the arms of the nearest adult. Those who didn’t have an adult simply curled into balls and hid their faces.
It took a long time for the thunder to fade away, and even when it was gone, the steady basso roar of the rain kept on, more powerful than ever.
Tyler Briggs, halfway up the grandstands on the side opposite Barrymore, wrapped a hand around his daughter’s forearm. “We better get higher up, K,” he said. “It’s not safe—”
“LET HER GO!”
They all turned at the sound of the new voice – shrill, high, more than a little terrified. It was the person – the woman – who had opened the doors in the first place. The one who had let the water in.
It was Allison Briggs, Kerianne’s mother.
“LET HER GO! DON’T TOUCH HER! DON’T!” She put her hand behind her back, digging under her soaking-wet sweater, searching for something. Her curly red hair was matted and filthy. There was a nasty scratch down one cheek, and the other eye was swollen half-shut. What happened to you out there? Lisa asked silently. How did you even survive?
“DON’T YOU TOUCH HER!”
Barrymore threw up his arms. “Allison! Wait, it’s okay, he—”
“Allie!” Ty said. “Allie, I—”
“Mommy!” Kerianne cried. “It’s—”
Kerianne’s mother pulled a pistol out of her belt, brought it around in an instant, and fired it at Tyler Briggs. Three quick shots, strangely small against the crash of the thunder and roar of the storm.
One shot hit him in the stomach. One shot hit him in the chest. The third grazed his cheek and took a large, bloody piece out of his left ear.
He was dead before he hit the water.
The monsters made short work of him.
“Three bullets,” she said, so softly no one heard it. “Only three bullets.”
Thirty-seven
Allison Briggs sat on the top level of the grandstand farthest from everyone else and said nothing. She hugged herself inside a blanket that Elli had given her an hour before, when her shivering was so obvious it hurt to look at. Neither of them had said a word. She hadn’t spoken since the shooting. Her empty pistol was still cradled in her lap.
Kerianne kept looking at her, but didn’t approach. She stayed close to Trini and Barrymore, looking lost and wide-eyed.
Trini gave her a slightly damp clipboard with a inch-thick pad of paper clamped to it. “Why don’t you draw, honey?” she said gently. “Or color? Just to pass the time.”
“No, thank you,” the little girl said, and folded her hands in her lap. She was still looking at her mom.
“It’s okay, honey. I know you like to draw. I saw you doing it before.”
“I was drawing the monsters before,” she explained, sounding very grown-up and patient. “But I don’t need to anymore.”
“Why not?”
“Because now they’re here.”
***
Lisa Corman watched a knot of the surviving adults – Barrymore, Jeff and Sharon Greenaway, Elli, David Drucker and even Slumpy – as they finished their conversation. They’d been muttering to each other for almost an hour while she and Trini tended the children and counted heads. The water level slowly rose and the rain continued to gush into the Cafetorium through its broken doors.
“It’s insane,” Barrymore said.
“It’s also the only idea we have,” Elli said. “Obviously nobody’s coming to get us – not the cops, not the army – no one.”
Barrymore shrugged and spread his hands. He couldn’t argue with that.
“Besides,” David Drucker said with a crooked, wicked smile, “It’s so crazy … it just might work.”
Elli bowed her head and sighed deeply. “Dave. Please. This is not a bad TV movie. This is us. Drowning. Getting eaten by monsters. Try and focus, please.”
“Okay,” Barrymore said, taking charge like the coach he was. “To be clear: We’re going to scrounge up every inflatable, buoyant, or floatable object that Dos Hermanos Public School has and build ourselves some kind of … raft? So we can try and float out of here?”
Drucker was bobbing his head madly again. “Right, right. The Outdoors Club got all that cool shit in last year’s fundraiser. It’s in the storage bin in the locker room. I saw it there. I put it there, man. I put it there. There are rubber rafts for white water, there are a couple of kayaks, there are life jackets and floats. And then there’s the water polo team’s crap, and all those kids’ toys for the summer swim, and—”
Barrymore put up his hands, surrendering. “Okay. I give. We’ll do it.” A visible current of relief ran through the other adults. That was what they’d been waiting for, Lisa realized: the voice of sanity. Someone to take charge.
“So who’s going to go get the stuff?” Elli said. “The locker room is as flooded as the basketball court, and there are … you know, things in the water.
Barrymore pressed his lips together and looked deeply ashamed. “I can’t do it,” he said.
“You can’t?” Sharon Greenaway said. “Or you won’t?” Whatever affable, friendly exterior the woman had displayed before the disappearance of her child had long since worn away.
Trini, huddled with the children in mid-court, stood up and shouted, “He can’t, Sharon. It’s a condition. It’s a disease.”
“He’s not afraid of water!” Sharon shot back. “We all saw him! He’s been out in the rain since this all began, but now, all of a sudden—”
“I’m not afraid of water,” he said. “Never have been.” He looked away, too embarrassed to meet anyone’s eyes. “I’m afraid of drowning. It’s …”
“It’s a phobia,” Trini said. “He’s been working on it.”
“What are you talking about?” Sharon demanded. “He’s the fucking swimming coach.”
“And have you
ever seen him in the water? Even once? I told you: He’s working on it.”
David Drucker threw out his arms, stuck out his tongue and waggled his head back and forth. “Oh, for fuck’s sake!” he cried. “Blah blah blah blah blah! I’ll go!”
Elli looked appalled. “Dave. No. No, we need to—”
He jumped up and squared his shoulder, ready to go. “Who’s with me? I need at least one other guy.”
Slumpy stood up and swung his arms, loosening up. “I’ll go,” he said. “We gotta get this done.”
“Cool!” Drucker started edging towards the end of the bleachers. The door to the locker room was to the left of the drop-off. The water below them churned and bubbled.
“Okay,” he said, literally rubbing his hands together. “Okay! Slumpy, you take this …” he handed him a five-foot length of pipe he’d acquired as a weapon from before the flood. “… and back me up. I’m gonna jump in here, pull open the door, and go for it.” He looked up expectantly. “Somebody gonna hold it open for me?”
Lisa surprised herself by standing up. “I’ll do it,” she said. She was tired of feeling impotent and incidental.
Trini put a restraining hand on her arm. “Lisa, you don’t have to do this. They—”
“I’m good,” she said and gently detached herself. “I won’t even get in the water, I promise.”
She climbed over the rows and put herself close behind Drucker. He was literally hopping up and down with anticipation. As the others muttered and moved to cover groups of children, she took a moment to whisper in his ear. “David,” she said, “I know you’re feeling … really powerful right now.” She kept herself from saying manic, though she knew that was exactly what he was. “But try and think things through, okay? Try and take it easy.”
He nodded without looking back. “I’m cool,” he said. “I’m cool. I’m sure I can do this.”
There was no wave of pebbled skin, no strangely colored texture on his face or hands. He believes that, she realized. He’s telling himself the truth.
“Ready?” he said. “One! Two!” And without a three he vaulted into the water. Slumpy, a huge dark projectile, was a beat behind him. They both made tremendous, distinct splashes as they hit the water.
Slumpy, hair dripping and flying, turned his back on Drucker and faced the basketball court, scouring the water for suspicious movement. Drucker lunged forward, got his hands around the edge of the door, and hauled with all his might. The water resisted, roiled against the thick wood, but finally relented.
“SHIT!” Slumpy said and swung the steel pipe down into the water as hard as he could. It connected with something just under the surface with a brittle, shattering crack. He pulled the pipe up, spraying water in every direction, and brought it down again, harder.
Lisa reached out as far as she dared and snagged the edge of the locker room door. It was slick and cold under her hand, but she got a good grip and added her other hand. Suddenly she felt hands – big hands – on her waist, holding her tight. She risked a look over the shoulder and saw James Barrymore holding onto her so she wouldn’t slip and fall into the water.
“Thanks,” she said breathlessly.
“Least I can do,” he said gruffly. “Literally.”
Slumpy slashed at the water again, then brought the pipe up, reversed his grip, and drove it down like a spear. When he pulled it up and out a beat later, something gray and rocky and covered with spikes came with it. He flung it off, halfway across the gym. Before it hit the water he was back in place, waiting for the next one.
Drucker was through the door. Lisa could see his progress in the mirrors mounted on both sides of the long, narrow room – a fun-house, multi-level representation of him, slogging through water that was past his waist, pushing his way back to a set of huge metal cabinets at the rear of the room.
Slumpy took two steps back, into the doorway itself. He had a look of grim intensity on his blunt features. He wasn’t going to let a damn thing through. Drucker was all the way to the cabinets and hauling them open – she could hear him crowing, “Made it! Made it!” when a raddled line of bone and gristle lowered itself from the ceiling – no, grew down from the ceiling – directly above the teenager’s head.
“Steven!” Lisa shouted. “Above you!”
He reacted immediately. He looked up, swung the pipe in a vicious arc to break the biter vine’s limb, then batted it out into the open water of the gym like a misshapen softball.
“Thanks,” he said, tossing his long, sopping hair out of his eyes. “Seen those fuckers before.”
“I’ve got it!” Drucker called from the cabinets. “GOT IT!” Lisa could see him through the mirror maze as he dragged out a bright orange bundle, dumped it in the water, and pulled on a thick black rope. They could all hear the POP! as the raft explosively inflated. Drucker whooped with joy.
He was literally cackling as he climbed inside and started pulling down everything he could find from the Outdoors Club’s cabinet, then the cabinet next to it.
Slumpy slammed his pipe into the water again. “No way, asshole!” he said, and split a thick-bodied ash-gray creature down the center. “No fuckin’ way!”
“Got it all!” Drucker called. “Comin’ back!” Lisa could see it: the raft was piled with every imaginable kind of debris. He’d even tied a bright blue rope to a loop at the front end. “Slumpy! Dude! Catch!”
Slumpy spun around and Drucker threw him the rest of the coiled rope. The teen snatched it out of the air and surged forward, moving so fast he generated a standing wave of his own. He thrust the rope into one of Lisa’s hands as he scrambled out of the water. She held tight to the door with the other as she passed the rope back.
Barrymore took it as Drucker yelled, “Pull! PULL!”
“That I can do,” Barrymore muttered. He braced his feet on the rubber tread of the grandstands and hauled for all he was worth. And harder. And more.
Lisa caught one final glimpse of Drucker as he shot across the locker room, hanging onto the raft with one white-knuckled hand and batting at things in the water with a fluorescent orange oar he’d found in the kit. Water flew everywhere. He screamed with joy. Barrymore bellowed with effort –
– and the six-man inflatable barged through the open locker room doors as if it had a motor up its ass.
Everyone cheered – children, parents, teachers, everyone! Barrymore closed up a loop of rope and pulled it in tight, close to the grandstands. Drucker clambered out, flush with excitement. “Nothin’ to it!” he said. “I could do it again!”
“No need,” Barrymore said. “Thank God.”
He cast a look down the length of the Cafetorium, to the platform at the far end. “Let’s set up on the stage,” he said. “It’ll be easier. And there’s the loading dock behind it.”
“Perfect,” Drucker said. “On it!”
Which is exactly what he said when he left the doors unlocked, Lisa thought, wiping soggy hair out of her eyes with the back of one hand.
It didn’t matter. He’d come through. They were going to do this thing.
***
The DHPS Outdoors Club had staged a fundraiser the year before – Trini explained it to Lisa as they worked. They had used the proceeds to purchase two six-person rubber rafts for their annual white-water trek. Now those vessels were the flagships of their bizarre little fleet – a slightly mad collection of inner tubes and air mattresses, the water polo team’s floats, paddle-boards kept for swimming lessons, and even a few inflatable animals left over from the last Senior Class Ditch Day that had made it all the way to Manhattan Beach.
Lisa’s mouth throbbed and her lungs ached from blowing into a dozen different items, preparing them for use. She actually had to sit down for a second to keep from falling over.
Time was running out. The cheap, flimsy building had been horribly damaged by the wind and water. Now it was literally falling to pieces around them. They had lost five more rows of seats to the rising water just since the a
ssembly had begun. The stage apron was submerged now; there were two inches of standing water all across the performance space where they worked on the rafts. Children were huddled as high up on the bleachers as they could get, wrapped in blankets and plastic sheets and trying not to shiver or cry.
Lisa looked up as Trini Garcia crept by. The teacher was digging in a black plastic trash bag Lisa hadn’t seen before.
“There’s nothing left,” Trini said shakily.
Lisa raised a questioning eyebrow.
“No more food. Two bottles of water. I just gave the last of the Cup O’ Soups to the youngest ones, because I thought there was another case in the back, but it’s ruined. Water got into it. It’s mush, and now there’s … there’s …” She covered her face with one hand and stopped herself. Her bright red fingernails trembled with tension.
Lisa made herself stand up. “It’s okay,” she said. “We’re leaving soon. It’ll be fine. Really.”
Trini had listened to her story as they had searched the drowning campus: all about her ex-husband the computer genius and her troubled daughter and the car accident. She had told her about her time at the hospital, the attack of the creatures, the arrival of the girl named Jennifer, and through it all, Trini had been so quiet, so accepting, Lisa doubted if she believed a single word of it. I wouldn’t have, she thought. It’s insane, all of it. But it had built some kind of bond between them.
Now Trini looked up, her eyes brimming with tears, and tried to smile. “I’m just tired,” she said. She swallowed hard and straightened up. “Can I help you with anything?”
Lisa looked down at the last inflatable – a silly-ass bright green dragon with an inner-tube hole in its middle. “Nah,” she said. “I think we’re done here.” She called to the P.E. coach who had saved her. “All set up here, James!”
Barrymore was just below them, near the children and right at the water’s edge, examining the tasers. As she watched, he pulled out one of the stubby black boxes and hit the TEST button on the side. It spit a tiny blue arc of flame and BUZZED at him.
“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.”