by Dana Fraser
Ellis had seen plenty of proof during the weekly archery lessons where they shot at hay bales. In the last few days, he’d witnessed more ominous proof of Dion’s skills.
Six days ago, the lights had reportedly gone out across the country. That had been late Thursday evening. By Sunday morning, all but three of the weekend staff members had abandoned the students. The glorified babysitters who remained were the same kind of troubled young men the school advertised it could save from a future life of prison. Among them, Martin called the shots.
Come Monday, none of the teachers showed up. Neither did the delivery truck with the weekly supply of groceries for the cafeteria. That was when Martin’s thugs opened the archery shed and the two dozen or so feral cats on the property went extinct, most of them shot down from trees and rooftops by Dion and his ever present bow.
Monday was also the day the wolf pack forming around Martin tried to recruit Ellis.
They had erred in thinking he was a fellow sociopath. Yeah, he had a problem with authority — who wouldn’t after being reared by a hard ass Army colonel who expected Ellis to live by some code he’d never enlisted for to please a father who was never around.
As for the explosions at his Evansville high school — well, Edison had blown up more than his fair share of things during his formative years and the whole world revered him. At least it had until last Thursday. Now Edison was as useful as tits on a boar hog, or fathers on the other side of the ocean when the world finally went to hell.
The jiggle of the doorknob jerked Ellis back to his current danger and the task at hand.
He had to survive. And he wasn’t going to survive by joining up with the vicious bastards preparing to beat down his dorm room door.
With his escape route covered by Dion, his odds didn’t look that great. But they had to get through the door first, giving him time to think.
He unhooked the nylon rope attached to his pack and tied one end around the sturdy frame of his bunkbed. The practiced motion of securing the knot soothed his nerves and eliminated the shake in his hands.
The door shook as he finished, the wood splintering but not breaking. A loud slap of something heavy hitting the door preceded the splintering by nanoseconds and was repeated almost immediately.
They had a sledgehammer or something just as heavy.
The barricade wouldn’t last. They would be through it sooner than he had planned. The booby traps might bring a couple of them down but the rest would just step over the sobbing bodies of their gang to subdue Ellis with their fists.
He shook his head and quickly rolled several loops of the rope around his palm before forming a fist.
“I always wanted to fly,” he said before jumping through the open window with a Kamikaze scream on his lips.
Dion didn’t expect the dramatic exit. His eyes went wide and it took a full second or two for him to pull the bowstring back, the arrow already notched in place. The eyes got even bigger as he realized Ellis was on a collision course. He tried to move away, but only moved back, not to one side or the other where he would have been something other than a landing pad for the airborne teen.
Hitting a rock behind him, Dion started to trip, the arrow releasing as his brain became suddenly occupied with not hitting the ground. Ellis emitted a hoarse scream as one of the three razor sharp blades on the broadhead arrow sliced at his bicep.
Knees bent, he slammed into Dion. The bow went flying out of the teen’s hand. Ellis hit the ground a second later, the rock that had tripped up Dion punching into Ellis’s lower back.
He screamed again, vision graying as he rolled onto his side, scooped up the rock and smashed it against Dion’s cheek as the teen reached for his bow. Down Dion went. Ellis jumped up. Hearing the footsteps of Martin’s crew pounding against the stairs and out the building’s side door, Ellis sprinted for the woods.
After ten or fifteen minutes of running, he stopped. His back was in agony and his arm continued bleeding. He wasn’t going to die from blood loss, but he had brushed against more than one branch or tall bush running away from the school. If he didn’t stop the bleeding, he’d leave a crimson trail that one of them might be clever enough to track.
And if they followed it — they would know he was headed back to the academy.
Ellis waited until dusk to leave the woods. In the four hours since he’d fled the dorms, he had circled around to the opposite side of the compound, low crawling across one open field to reach the opposing tree line. To do so, he’d left his pack hidden in a brush pile, the potential of losing its contents haunting him with every inch of ground he covered.
But as much as he needed the items in the pack, he needed to breach the chemistry lab more. He couldn’t keep what he couldn’t defend and they had him outnumbered.
Just retrieve the pack and leave.
He ruthlessly buried the thought. Leaving wasn’t an option, not yet. Too little time had passed since civilization had started its slow collapse. His dad was probably in Belgium still, but his stepmother was on the East Coast. His stepsister Hannah was even closer, just the other side of St. Louis, less than two hundred miles from the town of Bonnie, Illinois, where the academy was located.
A wave of nausea threatened to send him to the ground. He told himself it was dehydration or the dregs of adrenaline still swimming in his system from the earlier attack. The sudden dizziness had nothing to do with the fact that six days had passed and Hannah, only a few hours away, had not appeared to collect him.
His cheeks went hot as another possibility occurred to him.
Friday, nothing bad had happened when the half dozen or so adults had shown up to retrieve their sons. There was no indication that any attempts had been made over the weekend to sign students out.
But, on Monday…
Ellis closed his eyes, pausing for a moment, his body sagging against the wood siding of the science lab.
The Lamborghini had been too much temptation. Everyone knew when the teachers didn’t show up that morning that the students were on their own. And if the outside world didn’t care enough to protect the boys at the academy, would it care enough to punish them? Especially when the news reports before the radio stations all went off air said the police had bigger problems to deal with?
That parent, Ralph Linn’s dad, had survived the encounter. But he hadn’t left with his Lamborghini. He’d barely left with both legs and his son. The right leg, however, was undoubtedly broken. It had dragged as he walked away, Ralph supporting his father’s weight.
Ellis couldn’t imagine that they were still alive if the world outside the school was devolving at the same rate.
What if Hannah had already showed up?
Petite, pale blonde hair — it didn’t matter that she hardly ever wore makeup, was nearly ancient at twenty-eight and went around in a shapeless lab coat almost every waking hour. He knew she was beautiful, the fragile nature of her beauty capable of creating a perverse need to break her in some men. She’d fought off an attacker before, back in college. That was one, certifiably insane assailant, but Martin’s crew had been nine strong on Monday. Maybe a couple of the guys wouldn’t want to hurt Hannah, but not a one of them was man enough to protect her.
Ellis’s chest hurt and his spine jerked with the need to fling his head against the building’s exterior wall, to strike again and again until he had a few moments free from thinking about this new reality. He couldn’t do that. He had to survive. He had to hang around at least a few more days before striking out in search of a safer location.
He had to be sure no one was coming for him.
Releasing the fear with a long breath out, he duck walked low to the ground until he reached the window to the teacher’s break room. The teachers weren’t supposed to smoke in the building — not just because of the chemicals or the school rules, but because of state rules, too.
They huffed and they puffed anyway. Ellis had seen the tobacco smoke drifting in the air outside the building
dozens of times. Experience instructed him that windows frequently unlocked tended to remain unlocked. Pressing his palms flat against the glass pane, he exerted an upward pressure. As the window slid open, he allowed a smirk to surface on his lean face but kept a victory cry buried deep inside his chest.
He hauled himself up and into the break room then shut the window but didn’t latch it. With the daylight fast disappearing, he hurried down the hall to the chemistry lab. If he was too slow, he wouldn’t be able to read the labels without using a light and possibly exposing his presence.
The door to the lab was open. It shouldn’t have been. Cursing the way his balls started to shrivel, he took a hesitant step into the room. It could be a trap. They could be laying in wait for him, but they would have needed enough brain cells between them to anticipate his intentions. As far as he knew, no one outside the school administrator had been informed about the little problem back home. His punishment for that mishap was getting shipped off to the Bonnie Lad and not being allowed to sign-up for any science classes at the academy.
The curriculum prohibition didn’t matter. He had maxed out on science credits, even as electives. So the joke was on the director of the Bonnie Lad Academy, and Ellis doubted that Martin’s crew knew about his particular talents when it came to unintentional mayhem.
Or his skill when it came to the intentional variety.
But, seeing the door that should have been locked shut open instead, he moved with caution, his gaze sweeping the aisles between the workstations as his steps slowly carried him toward the supply cupboard.
Spotting the toe and part of the sole of a shoe behind one of the stations, Ellis froze. His head bobbed as he contemplated whether he should back out of the room. If they were waiting to ambush him again, they might not have heard him.
There was something off about the shoe that kept him from retreating. The angle was weird, but not like it was empty.
“I know you’re there,” he said, his voice just above a whisper. “Identify yourself.”
Silence was the only response.
Ellis couldn’t pull his gaze away from the shoe. It belonged to a smallish foot, probably one of the unlucky freshmen sent to the academy because mommy and daddy couldn’t deal with “Little Johnny” and his ADHD or Aspergers.
Fuck, he thought. Why hadn’t the kid’s parents already picked him up? Hell, why were so many parents absent?
A dry laugh scratched inside his chest. Like his family was any better.
This time, even Hannah had failed him. He wouldn’t try to fool himself believing otherwise.
“I said identify yourself,” Ellis repeated, managing to keep the growl out of his voice. The kid was probably ready to piss his pants. “I’m not going to hurt you or steal from you. You have my word on that. I just want to know who you are.”
Still no answer. The foot hadn’t moved either.
Maybe it wasn’t a foot. Maybe it was merely a shoe defying the laws of gravity by resting on the point of its toe.
Ellis eased around the lab table. It took a heartbeat for him to soak in the scene, to have the image scarred into his memory, then he was at the lab sink, vomit erupting from his mouth, hitting the stainless still and splashing back at his wet lips.
Forcing the rest of his stomach to stay down in case anyone was around to hear, he turned toward the dead boy. As dark as the room was becoming, he could still see that a tall metal garbage can had tipped over. Part of the boy’s shoulders and all of his head were stuffed inside. Someone had dumped him in. But they had tied a plastic bag around his head first, securing it with duct tape.
Ellis tried not to think about those last seconds of life, of how the kid had been in there, upside down, disoriented, terrified, neck bent, arms wedged against his sides, legs kicking as he tried to upend the can, success coming too late for him to claw open the plastic bag.
Stumbling backward, Ellis caught the lip of a workstation, his fingers curling like iron around its edge to keep from passing out. Slowly, he forced himself forward, navigated around the body on shaky legs and crossed the rest of the way to the supply cupboard.
Pulling a slim piece of wire from his pocket, he inserted it into the lock, eyes closing as he visualized the tumblers separating him from the chemicals inside. Hearing the last tumbler fall into place, a gruesome smile crawled along his young face.
He could play just as hard as those assholes, but he’d do it his way.
The smart way.
Chapter Three
Banker Lee Petty’s body bounced lightly against the solid concrete wall of his prison cell. He was in the top bunk. No one had thrown him, or so much as laid a hand on him. It was the restless, irritated tossing of his bunkmate, a giant of a man, that had caused the collision of flesh and hardened cement.
Banker Lee didn’t complain. Big as he was at six-foot-two, two hundred fifty pounds, Ricky Suarez, the convict on the bottom bunk, was both taller and heavier.
Suarez had also killed his last cellmate nine days earlier.
Just my shit luck, Banker Lee thought, his hands curling into fists. As if the universe hadn’t already repeatedly crapped inside his mouth from the day he was born, he had to have a homicidal maniac as a roomie when the world was ending and two-thirds of the guards at the Harrow State Penitentiary had abandoned their posts.
Being bounced against the wall for a second time in as many minutes, Banker Lee bit at the inside of his cheek to keep from growling.
Some dogs you could stare down, but not the rabid ones.
A third bounce and his hands started to claw at the thin mattress beneath him.
Metal rang out, jerking him up in surprise as a guard trailed his baton over steel bars at the front of the cell.
“No chow today,” the guard cackled. “Unless you want to earn it.”
Banker didn’t look at the man. Suarez sat up.
“What you mean?” he asked, his Sonoran accent as thick as his ridiculously ugly mustache. “You want me to let you suck my cock or something pretty boy.”
Banker eased a leg up, his thumb searching along the edge of his shower shoes for the shiv he had buried inside the foam soles.
“There goes your chance, beaner,” the guard snapped. “What about you, Petty? You feel like eating today?”
“Sure he does,” Suarez answered. “What he gotta do?”
Banker closed his eyes and pictured the woman who had landed him back in prison on a parole violation. Marie Lodge, her high and tight body showing no signs that she’d been pregnant twice.
“Something I hear he’s good at — fighting.” The guard dragged his baton along the bars a second time, the sound like nails on a chalkboard to every convict who could hear it. “What do you say, Petty?”
“He says yes,” Suarez persisted. “Who ya want him to beat?”
Just who the hell did Suarez think he was? A boxing agent? A regular Bjorn Rebney or Don King?
“Someone a little tougher than a rookie cop,” the guard smirked.
Sighing, Banker Lee swung his legs over the side of his bunk, careful not to come anywhere close to hitting Suarez’s ugly mug. Putting a cop in traction for six months and a little packet of meth was why he’d been locked up in the first place. His father had taught him how to win fights. He hadn’t had any choice when it came to the lessons.
His choice tonight was equally absent. Either he fought whomever the guards had picked out and maybe got a meal out of it, or he fought Suarez and got nothing.
He’d take his chances with an unknown opponent over the crazy Mexican mountain every day of the week.
Lowering himself to the ground, Banker Lee walked backwards to the bars and stuck his wrists through a slot five inches wide so the guard could cuff him.
The whole time he was being walked out to the exercise yard, he kept thinking about Marie.
She was one hundred sixty-nine-point-something miles away. The distance put a tw
isted smile on his face. A sixty-nine was something he definitely wanted to try with the dark haired beauty. After he had disciplined and trained her, of course.
Reaching the exercise yard, the smile faded.
He was going up against Brett Boadley, boss of the prison’s neo-Nazi inmate population. The man had reportedly killed more people than Banker Lee had toes.
“I thought I was getting the Mexican.”
“Thing about Mexicans,” the guard joked, “they’re lazier than shit.”
Blood pumping hard in his chest, Banker Lee forgot about the woman in Dover, forgot his own name. His attention narrowed to the hands uncuffing him and the steroid-sculpted freak in front of him. Boadley’s cuffs came off at the same time. He charged, iron fist swinging before Banker Lee’s guard could back away. Seeing the big right arm aimed at his head, Banker Lee ducked.
The arm connected with the guard, the sick snapping sound loosing a little piss from Banker Lee as he dropped even lower and slammed his skull into Boadley’s testicles.
The skinhead went down, rolling to put some distance between him and his attacker. The guards were screaming out encouragement, their blood lust at a fever pitch despite their dead co-worker on the ground.
Banker Lee whipped his body through the air, one knee coming down on Boadley’s neck. His fists moved in a hard, rapid flurry, pummeling the other man’s shaved, tattooed head. A skull had been inked over the temple and he focused there to the extent the adrenaline surging inside Banker Lee allowed him to aim with any precision.
Over and over he hit the spot. His fists turned bloody, then pulpy gore clung to them, not all of the flesh Boadley’s.
The guards screamed themselves hoarse and then they were thumping him on the back, congratulating him, calling him buddy instead of convict for a few precious moments.