“Stay back, okay?” I motioned for her to press her back to the wall.
“Right,” she whispered, sliding into place behind me. “Staying back.”
“On three,” I said, taking a deep breath. “One…two…three!”
I threw the door open so hard it banged against the wall on the other side. A gust of hot air burst into the stairwell taking my breath away, my reflexes forcing my spine flush to the concrete wall. The back of my head throbbed in response, having a little flashback of its own. I smashed my eyes closed, half expecting to burst into flames.
“I think we’re good,” Falisha said, nudging me. “Sarge?”
I peeled my eyes open and tentatively looked down at my body to assess the damage. I was in one piece and, thankfully, not on fire.
Soooo…yeah, I’d say we were good.
“Let’s go,” I said.
After the pulse, we had somehow fallen into a sort of collective ownership situation based on the needs of the group. It no longer mattered who owned what. Jake had given me this particular phone, because it was the brightest; it was that simple. I turned on the cell phone and illuminated the path ahead. We inched forward, peering around the corner into the locker room through the wedge of white light the phone provided.
I am not sure what I expected to see— maybe zombies, or demons? Perhaps the Four Horsemen?
I mean this was the apocalypse, or whatever, and I had seen pretty much every end-of-days, Armageddon, dystopian society, zombies-invade-the-world type movie ever made. In fact, had spent many sleepless hours huddled beneath my blankets with my tablet, absorbed in the genre. From the classics like Night of the Living Dead to more recent interpretations, I had loved them all, and had been grateful for the distraction those films provided after I lost my parents.
Still, I found myself desperately hoping that Hollywood had gotten the whole apocalypse thing completely wrong. I waved my partner forward and we passed through the dank chasm of the boys’ locker room in near silence. We snuck through the room like a couple of spies in a cheesy movie and neither of us spoke until we had safely reached the door at the far side.
“How you wanna play this?” Falisha whispered.
“We need to get as close to the front doors as we can if we want see what the hell is going on out there,” I said, grabbing her by the wrist.
“Right behind you,” she said, saluting.
“Listen to me,” I said, holding the light so she could see my face. “Don’t do anything stupid, okay, and if it gets too hot we bail, understood?”
“Like I said, right behind you,” she smiled, her dark skin illuminated by our makeshift flashlight. “Sarge.”
“Ugh,” I shook my head at her and took a deep breath trying to calm my frayed nerves.
I was scared, but not for myself or even for Falisha, necessarily. We had a plan if things got dicey and I was fairly confident we would be fine. No, what had my stomach in knots was the unknown. I was terrified of what we would see beyond the doors. It had been hours since all hell had broken loose. In the confines of the basement, we had very little indication of what was going on in the world around us. The only thing I knew for certain was that Zander may very well die if we just sat down there waiting to be rescued. I was not prepared to accept that as a possibility if there was anything I could do about it.
Fear is powerful, Liv. Dad used to say. But it is not all powerful.
“Let’s go,” I said, using the towel to grip the door handle.
Inch by inch, I pressed the door open, letting the heat and the blaring light creep in gradually. After being in the dark for the last few hours, my eyes instantly began to water from the shock. The air was not just hot. It was desert-hot and it crackled with electric energy that stole the air from your lungs. I tugged the loose the end of my wet gym towel up over my mouth and tucked it in on the other side of my face, then elbowed Falisha and motioned for her to do the same. The moisture in the fabric made it a bit easier to breathe the staunch air around us, but I didn’t know for how long. I braced myself and crept forward at a faster clip and Falisha was on my heels.
We slithered through the back half of the lobby, tiptoed carefully around the wreckage of the snack machine massacre, and made our way towards the main entrance. There were huge shards of broken plexiglass all over the floor and a few soda bottles that had exploded and long since dried to a crusty brown stain on the tile. A few feet later, we made it around the corner of the concession stand booth. It was getting harder to breathe with each step, but we pressed on.
As grateful as I was for her company, I wished Falisha had stayed behind. After all she had lost in the last twenty-four hours, I did not want to expose her to the likes of what I had seen on that rooftop yesterday. I braced myself against the concrete wall, my mind flooding with images of burning bodies and festering wounds. I may not have been friends with Sara and Blake, but I still felt a hollow place in the pit of my stomach for their suffering and I knew that image would haunt me for the rest of my life. An experience like that was not something most people came back from.
“Stay,” I said, bracing my arm across her chest as we stood against the wall. “I’ll just run over, take a quick look, and be right back.”
“Uh-uh,” Falisha spat, shoving my hand away from her. “I promised Riley I would have your back, and that’s exactly what I’m gonna do.”
“Falisha,” I hissed at her.
“Sorry, no way in hell, girl.” She stepped away from the wall, spun out of my grasp, and took off. As soon as she cleared the corner, she yelled back over her shoulder. “Try to keep up!”
“Damn it,” I spat, diving after her retreating form.
My eyes tightened against onslaught of the bright sun so I kept them focused on the floor, trying to relieve the sting as I raced after her. Unfortunately, that meant I didn’t notice when Falisha stopped dead in her tracks. My face collided painfully with the back of her head.
“Jesus Christ, Falisha,” I said, my hand pressing the towel into my fattening bottom lip. I blinked away the moisture flooding my eyes and looked past her toward the row of glass doors. “Whoa.”
“What the hell?” Falisha said, rubbing the back of her head as she stared through the doors. “Is that what I think it is?”
“I’m not sure. It looks like a—” I said, no longer concerned by my shiny new fat lip. “But what the hell would that be doing here? That doesn’t make any sense.”
“Really?” Falisha crossed her arms over her chest. “I am pretty sure we are a bucket load of shit past anything making sense at this point, don’t you think?”
We stood there, stunned to silence, staring at what appeared to be bright orange parachute plastered across the glass doors of the foyer. The cords had tangled themselves into the hinges and handles on the outside, and the vinyl material seemed to have welded itself to the doors, all but sealing us in. One of the four glass doors remained partially unobstructed, so we made our way to it and peered out into the parking lot.
“Seriously?” Falisha backed away, shaking her head. “I mean, come on.”
Floating a few feet above Zander’s toppled bike was a giant balloon. It had to be at least ten feet tall and nearly as wide at its fattest point. At first I thought maybe it was a rogue hot air balloon, but the whole parachute thing didn’t fit. There was no basket that I could see and the shape was all wrong— it looked more like a jellyfish with its tentacles tied together.
The balloon was anchored to the ground by wire-thin cords that attached it to something that looked like an old window air conditioner. The box was covered in gauges and dials, and framed in metal bars like a roll cage. One corner of the apparatus was completely submerged in the softened blacktop. Despite the steam rising from the pavement, the dials appeared to still be moving. Whatever this thing was, it was still functioning. The bubble surged up and down lazily like a half-deflated birthday balloon desperate to drift away.
“This is so messed up,” F
alisha as she slowly walked the length of the doors.
“Yeah, pretty much,” I said, shaking my head. Between the parachute and the giant balloon obstructing our view, our hopes of seeing much else from this vantage point were growing thin. I threw my hands up in frustration and kicked a folding chair that leaned against a nearby table. It slid across the slick floor and slam into the wall, with a satisfying bang. “I can’t see shit from here.”
“Hey, Sarge, take a look at this.” Falisha was down on her knees pointing to some lettering stenciled onto the orange parachute. I could just make it out through the black dust on the glass as she read it aloud. “NWS-GB? What the H is that?”
“No clue,” I said, cocking my head to the side. “That’s not my department.”
I grabbed the phone out of my pocket and snapped a picture of the chute, the giant metal box, and weird balloon jellyfish. Jake’s massive brain could work out the details of this puzzle later. For now, we needed to get a better look outside. I had a specific target in mind and we could not see it from here.
“Come on, soldier,” I said, hoping to annoy her with an equally lame nick-name, but she saluted and waved me on with a smirk.
We headed back toward the decimated vending machines, past the locker room door, and down to the skywalk entrance. I had no idea what we would find on the other side of that corridor, but I did not want to take any chances. Anyone or anything, could have gotten into the building since we sheltered ourselves downstairs.
None of us had even heard the strange balloon and its mechanical cargo crash to the ground and it had landed just a few yards beyond the walls of our hidey-hole. My mind wandered to episodes of The Walking Dead, as images of the gray hands clawing at bloody flesh danced in my head. Falisha flanked me by the door. I held my finger to my lips and gestured for her to stay low as we waited for the blaze of hot air to pass before stepping out into the “Steamer Skywalk.”
This part of the building had been little more than an afterthought. The school had spent an entire summer clearing the land to build a fancy indoor courtyard that would connect building one to building two. Unfortunately, the money ran out, and a long hallway was erected in its stead. The pass-through served its purpose, but it was in no way an actual skywalk, seeing as there were no windows and it was at ground level.
We sprinted across and reached the door at the other end in mere seconds. It was already open, so I stepped through it cautiously, palming the knife in my pocket. I jerked my head in the direction of senior hall and Falisha followed. The towel around my head and mouth was beginning to dry out, making it increasingly difficult to breathe. I tapped my wrist and held up two fingers. A couple minutes was probably more time than we could spare, but I refused to go back without answers.
The once bustling hallways felt hollow and displaced, like the dirt around a fresh grave. When we reached the end of senior hall, we tore the spring formal posters and school spirit signs from the glass doors and let them fall to the floor. What we saw beyond the glass looked like a foreign planet ravaged by war and I wanted nothing more than to hang those cheesy posters back up and hide the reality behind their cheerful colors.
The ground outside was little more than a labyrinth of cracks and crevices slicing through the gray dirt. The once lush lawn was stripped of its greenery, save for a few stray blades of dry brown grass drifting across its surface. The crisp new leaves that had shaded us mere hours ago were gone. All that remained were bare branches and snapping twigs. Small flames licked at the crumbling remains of the wooden picnic table and the bushes that had surrounded the brick marquis were nothing more than smoldering, black skeletons. The loose dust from the parched earth blew around in swirling clouds.
“Damn,” Falisha said, barely above a whisper.
Across the street, a small blue house smoldered. Half of the structure had already caved in on itself and the rest was not far behind. A second later, a chunk of burning wood tumbled away from it, and landed in the husked-out bushes next to the neighboring house. The dried twigs immediately burst into flames and I knew the adjoining house would be next. I hoped like hell there was no one in that house, but it hardly mattered. There was nothing we could do from here. I scanned the street, my eyes roaming from house to house.
Please be okay. Please be okay. Please be—
“Hell yeah!” I shouted, relief pouring over me.
Mrs. Proud’s house and, more importantly, her garage were still intact. Hopefully, that meant she was okay, too. The fire at the blue house was spreading fast, but it had not reached her house yet and I needed to get there before it did.
“Time’s up, Sarge,” shouted Falisha, wheezing around her towel. “We have to go!”
The journey back down to the weight room went much faster than our trip up had. We gasped and choked our way back down senior hall and sprinted through the skywalk. Then we rushed through the boys’ locker room and took the stairs down into the weight room, two at a time. We made it back into the basement in less than a minute and burst through the door as if we were being chased.
“They’re back,” Jake said, meeting us there with water bottles in hand.
“Oh my god, are you guys okay?” Riley squealed, grabbing at me. “What the hell happened? Why do you have a fat lip? Was there anyone out there? What took you so long? Talk to me!”
She was everywhere I turned, smacking me in the face with questions without giving me any time to answer them. I hunched over, putting my hands on my knees and I sucked down huge gulps of air. Falisha threw her back against the wall, then slid down to the floor and draped her head across her arms. When Riley’s questions showed no sign of relenting, Falisha looked over at her and raised a brow.
“Hey, Tinkerbelle,” she huffed. “You happen…to find any Ritalin…in that box of pills?”
Between the adrenaline rush and oxygen deprivation, I completely lost it. My legs gave out on me and I collapsed to the floor in a fit of hysterical laughter. I laughed so hard, my stomach ached and my cheeks began to cramp. I rolled onto my back and threw my arm over my face. A snort of laughter to my side confirmed that Falisha had apparently lost her mind along with me.
“Seriously?” Riley shouted, yanking my arm away from my face and glaring down at me. “What the hell is going on out there, Liv? What is wrong with you?”
I wanted to explain myself, truly I did, but I could not stop the laughter that was exploding from deep in my chest. The ridiculousness of the entire situation hit me, all at once, and something inside me just snapped.
What we had just done had not only been really dangerous, but it was also incredibly stupid. In that moment, I knew there was no logical reason for my insane giggling. Things were bad; like really bad. After what I had seen, I knew they would be even worse when we actually went outside.
Still, I couldn’t seem to help my hysterics. After all, our mission had technically been a success; we had gotten the information we needed and I now had something vaguely resembling a plan. There was a very good chance it might get me killed, but I was relieved to feel slightly in control of something.
“I’ll have some of whatever she’s smoking,” Jake giggled as he helped Falisha back to her feet.
Chapter 16
Turning Pages
Eventually, my inappropriate laughter subsided, and I was able to bottle up the crazy for another day; I had things to do. I was tinkering with the tiny flashlight Micah had found while we were gone, and piecing my half-assed plan together in my head, when Jake approached from the shadows.
“Falisha told me what you saw up there,” he said, squatting down in front of me. “Mind if I take a look at the pics you took?”
“Take it,” I shrugged, dropping the phone into his hand. “It’s not like I need it. I have this awesome flashlight, now.”
“Sweet,” he said, rising back to his feet.
“Hope you can make sense of it,” I said, taking a swig from my water, “because I honestly have no idea.”
> “If this is what I think it is—” he muttered, then turned on his heel and walked away.
“Okay,” I said, smiling to myself as he disappeared. “Good talk, Jake.”
“How you feeling?” Falisha’s voice preceded her as she slid from the shadows and sat down next to me.
“Like I lost a fight,” I said, rubbing at the ache that had seated in the center of my chest.
“Sounds about right,” she chuckled.
“So, hey, I wanted to say thanks,” I said awkwardly.
“For what?” Her clipped tone suggested she was just as uncomfortable accepting my gratitude, as I was offering it.
“You know, for having my back up there,” I said.
“Whatever. No need to get all chick-flick about it,” she said, nudging my shoulder. She shrugged and climbed back to her feet. “A promise is a promise, right?”
If you had told me twenty-four hours ago, that one of my greatest allies would be a cheerleader and that I’d fall for a biker-boy with daddy issues, I would have laughed in your face and recommended professional help. Then again, I had no idea I’d be locked in the smelly basement of my high school waiting out the end of the world, either.
Turns out, life sort of did its own thing.
Tiny flashlight in hand, I made my way over to Zander, hoping to find him awake and alert. When the twelve-inch circle of white light landed on his face, the droplets of sweat that were gathering in a thin sheen over his skin glistened like tiny diamonds.
“Damn,” I said, feeling a lump form in my throat.
I let my legs give out and dropped ungracefully, to the floor beside him. His skin had taken on a gray pallor since I had last checked on him. Even in the dim glow of the flashlight, I could make out almost every vein in his face. His eyes, which had sunken farther into their sockets, darted back and forth behind their lids and the ache in my chest became a stabbing pain. I put the end of my flashlight in my mouth and began to unwrap the gauze from Zander’s hand.
Killshot (Icarus Series Book 1) Page 14