Tropical Weird

by Allison J. Wade

  The first blast hits the books, which explode into paper confetti. The mercenary goes after him.

  Sasha’s heart beats in unison with the creaking of the combat boots on the floor.

  He runs blindly and finds himself trapped in the science fiction section, a wall of colored cardboard full of writings which all seem to mark his death sentence.

  The mercenary comes out of the classics section, spots him, aims.

  Sasha can distinctly hear every noise, amplified in a deafening echo. The voices from the hallway come distant and muffled; there’s just him, his heart pounding in his ears, creaking boots and finger on the trigger, the shots exploding.

  He moves back until he hits the wall of books and the bullets pierce his flesh, they’re like hammer blows, they take his breath away.

  Sasha feels something liquid and burning scratching like acid in his breath. Blood comes out of his nose and mouth while he gasps in search of oxygen.

  I have a perforated lung, he thinks. It feels like drowning.

  He bends forward, falls to his knees; now he sees only the black boots, still in front of him, they’re watching him, they want to be sure he will die.

  Sasha rattles, but still doesn’t collapse, he’s coughing, crying for the insane and absurd burning that consumes his throat; he spits something on the floor. His eyes are fogged but he wants to see, a morbid curiosity disrupts his brain; now he’s not afraid anymore, now that he knows the end has come.

  Before him there’s a red puddle of blood and saliva and in the middle a fragment of something that sticks out like an unexpected trophy.

  I’ve spat out a bullet, he thinks, and he would burst into laughter if it weren’t too painful doing anything. He raises his head anyway; he still doesn’t fall. Thus, for no reason, he tries to get back on his feet.

  The mercenary is always there and doesn’t seem willing to wait for his bidding. Again Sasha finds a black muzzle pointing at him and again the sound of muffled explosions.

  What do they need a silencer for, with all these screams? He thinks while a new burst makes its way inside him; he backs off, slams against the shelf again, something heavy falls on his head, hurting like hell.

  Okay, it’s time to die.

  Sasha closes his eyes and slips to the ground.

  Happy now?

  15. Don’t Open That Door

  Daya, seventeen, class 2D, raises his buttocks from the toilet, satisfied with his work, and flushes.

  He has run to the bathroom at the ringing of the ten o’clock bell, and has taken his time. He hasn’t the slightest idea about the hell that broke loose in the school; the bathroom is in the northwest wing of the building and he can hear only muffled noises, which seems the normal chatter of the students preparing for a new class. Moreover it was cloudy outside, maybe it started raining.

  Daya is not very smart.

  He comes out from the booth and reaches the sink to rinse his hands; he whistles beholding his black combed forelock in the mirror stained by water splashing.

  The door swings open and three people come in. His classmates, two boys and a girl.

  Daya stares at them and doesn’t understand what she’s doing in the boys bathroom. She is Kim, a damn cute Vietnamese girl, with black and smooth hair combed to one side with a pretty, blue pin. But it’s even stranger, because the boys – Quan and Stan – are holding her from both sides and she seems unable to stand up straight.

  Daya looks down and sees a hole in her skirt; blood running along her thigh, smearing with red her white stocking and leaving an irregular trail on the floor.

  Quan, short, dark, Asian features; Stan, tall, pale, Western; yet both have the same frightened expression; they look at him as if to seek for help, without saying a word.

  “What happened?” asks Daya, in vain.

  Kim is head down; she twitches, seems to be sobbing, but suddenly a low growl comes from her throat, something that sounds very wrong for such a small and sweet girl.

  Quan and Stan immediately let go of her.

  Kim is still standing, albeit limping. She looks up and points on Daya her eyes, as black as coal, shining of an insane gleam.

  The growl becomes louder and the girl begins to foam at the mouth.

  Daya moves back against the wall; although he’s not very smart, he understands that there is something deeply wrong going on.

  Kim snaps at him.

  Quan and Stan are in complete shock. They no longer know which way to run, now that even that place doesn’t seem safe anymore. They leave them and go back out.

  The man in black has entered the hallway; he sees them. Fires.

  Quan and Stan hold hands, for no reason, they are each other’s last hope. They seem to dance together, as they are hit by a burst of gunfire. They collapse to the ground, never letting go of each other; they exchange one last gaze before their view clouds, before the darkness takes over.

  Goodbye my friend.

  The mercenary, call sign Epsilon Five, moves past them as if nothing happened; now they are just inoffensive dead meat. Not that before they were more offensive than this, but now they are totally inert, part of the furniture, if one has a taste for the macabre.

  Epsilon Five at the moment has no taste, no thoughts other than shooting at everything that’s still breathing. He opens the bathroom door with a kick.

  The boy he finds before him doesn’t seem to be breathing much longer.

  He is sitting on the ground, his eyes wide and glassy, ​​his open mouth has become a bloody hole, as if someone had bitten his tongue, torn his lips. He’s shaken by spasms and his white shirt is a pool of bright red.

  The mercenary approaches him cautiously. Whoever did that, is still in there; he can hear a slight growl.

  He points the MP5 in the first booth. Nothing, only the ceramic bowl. He goes to the next.

  The dark pile is there; she jumps as soon as he enters her field of vision, without giving him time to do anything but shoot a burst, which goes to crush the tiles on the wall.

  She clings to his waist, sinks her teeth and finds the consistent hardness of his belt. A few inches lower and she would have attempted on his manhood. While thinking about the family jewels, he tries to take her off himself; he feels bony fingers piercing his buttocks, a furious growl choked by the black paracord she stubbornly holds in her jaws.

  Epsilon Five grabs her hair with his left hand, reaches the thigh holster with his right and draws the combat knife. He plunges it in her neck.

  The growl ceases in a muffled sound.

  He pulls out the blade and a red squirt splashes on the white tiles.

  She gasps, gurgles, slips to the ground.

  The mercenary catches his breath, but still doesn’t lower his guard. He finishes inspecting the other booths. The bathroom is clean, if one doesn’t mind the red painting.

  He stops in front of the boy with the slashed mouth. The wound is not fatal but he’s losing a lot of blood. He could be saved by a few stitches.

  But today is not his lucky day.

  Epsilon Five points the submachine gun and finishes the job.

  Section D

  Out of My Mind

  16. Hide & Seek

  Hideo and Sophie remain for a few seconds to stare at each other in silence, while the other students leave the computer lab to get to their next class.

  Fah, the Thai boy, stays close to his classmate; he has been sticking to him since the very first day of school and still hasn’t let go. Hideo thought that losers are drawn to each other and accepted him almost naturally. Fah is taller than he is, lanky and with tame and adoring eyes; he seems astonished and admired by everything the Japanese does or says. And even at that moment he has realized that something is in the air. He seems almost excited about it.

  Sophie, with a desperate look, observes the students who go out, unaware of everything, talking to each other. She would like to stop them, yelling at everyone to run away, but whoever would listen? And what
could she tell them anyway?

  “We have to get out of here,” she says out of the blue, raising her voice. Someone looks at her, but immediately returns to his thoughts. Aruna is behind her, with a worried expression, although she hasn’t understood yet what’s going to happen.

  Hideo instead stands up; he only says, “They’re coming.”

  He runs to the window overlooking the back of the building. He sees the vehicles of the Future & Hope parked outside the gates, the mercenaries have already got out. He turns back, terrified. “They’re already here!”

  He keeps walking back and forth, prey of a nervous breakdown. “We must get away, hide, but where? They will be certainly controlling all the exits...”

  “The roof,” says Sophie, thinking back to the images that have materialized in her head. “If we go to the art classroom we can get on the roof of the gym, they won’t find us there,” her tone seems very confident.

  Hideo stops, suddenly suspicious. “How did you know that?”

  Sophie has gone to the window and now she doesn’t really want to give explanations. “We’ll talk later, now we have to move!”

  She holds Aruna’s hand and the Indian girl is guided by her resolution. Before leaving the room, she turns back to look at Hideo and he finally decides to move. There is no need to call on Fah: where Hideo goes, he follows.

  They go out in the hallway and walk among their classmates, who are taking a breather before the next class; they don’t know it will also be their last.

  Sophie wants to save them, she wants to yell at everyone to go away, but she has no choice; alarm the others will do no good: they can’t escape, not all of them. And that awareness freezes her blood.

  Hideo seems to sense her thoughts and shakes his head saying no.

  They enter the art classroom, which is empty at the moment. The windows on the right side overlook the roof of the gym, it’s just a three or four feet jump.

  Hideo slides the glass panel and leans out. The hot air caresses his face. He looks down to the wide surface covering the building used as a gymnasium and auditorium for the school meetings. It’s a sort of terrace lined with solar panels, tilted mirrors, tidy like soldiers. A shiver runs through his back, but he closes his eyes and jumps, followed soon after by Fah, who seems to be the only one having fun with his recklessness.

  Sophie makes way for Aruna, helps her get on the window sill. Hideo is a gentleman and catches her from below, then it’s the turn of the American girl.

  She stops for a moment to look beyond the outside wall. The men in black are ready to enter the perimeter. She wastes a moment praying that no one would look up and meet her eyes. It doesn’t happen.

  She jumps.

  “Now that we’re here, what do we do?” asks Aruna.

  “There should be an external ladder used for maintenance, with that we can get down to the courtyard,” wonders Hideo.

  “Not now,” says Sophie coldly. “Not until they’re here. We must remain hidden.”

  “How long?”

  “I wish I knew.”

  17. Sweet Revenge

  The hallway upstairs is a narrow bottleneck of madness and death.

  The students in transit, those curious, attracted by the noise, those prey of panic who’ve tried to flee, everyone has gone to meet their inexorable end.

  Bleeding bodies, lying stacked like macabre still life, line the path toward the last classrooms.

  Someone escaped the first gusts and found refuge in class 3D, the last at the bottom left. After that, there’s only the fire escape, but the door is blocked and a student has slumped in front of it, shot to death as he tried in vain to get out.

  Epsilon One follows the procedure and throws a fragmentation grenade into the room. He moves away from the door, waits a few seconds, then there’s a bang.

  He knows what awaits him when he returns in the classroom: a little smoke and bodies mangled by the shrapnel, some are already dead, others dying, someone luckier is only wounded if not unharmed.

  Keeping close to the wall, eyes open and quick fingers, ready to aim at any sign of movement, the mercenary takes a breath and enters the classroom.

  They’re just defenseless students.

  He makes a general picture of the situation: figures lying on the ground, standing figures, figures who complain and cry. He stamps a pattern in his head, which will guide the direction of his shots.

  No hesitation, just shoot shoot shoot.

  The MP5 jolts while spewing bullets, everything’s normal, everything’s by the book.

  Something grabs his ankle.

  Epsilon One flinches, loses aim and a burst hits the floor already battered by the grenade. He looks at his foot and there is something sticking out from one of the piles on the ground. Whatever it is, it’s not an arm. Arms don’t twist around ankles and squeeze so hard to the point of breaking the bone.

  It’s a red and bloody offshoot, alive and pulsating.

  The mercenary tries to regain his cool and shoots on that sort of tentacle. Splashes of blood and flesh explode. But immediately another one makes its way, rises in the air and this time it aims to his neck.

  That being, half octopus half student, gets up; his face looks normal, peaceful, with slanting eyes and a round, chubby face. Disheveled black hair, tainted only by a trickle of blood running down his forehead, but then, looking down, from his school uniform emerge red tentacles. The one to which the mercenary has shot is cut off and splashes blood in intermittent spurts, while the other has wrapped around the man’s throat and is squeezing, stronger and stronger, until he’s out of breath.

  Epsilon One shoots awry, but in that situation his submachine gun is no longer effective. He must think, with the little oxygen that still reaches his brain, before becoming cyanotic, before losing consciousness, before...

  He touches, in search of his knife, finds it, pulls it out, sticks it in the tentacle.

  The boy doesn’t make a sound, his grip becomes firmer.

  The breath is gone. Epsilon One, who for the record is called Emilio, gasps, grabs the slimy offshoot with his gloved hands; he wants to squeeze it too, but he no longer has the strength, everything is becoming dark; he would like to remove his glasses and that balaclava that feels like a shroud.

  He would like many things and then eventually he wants one thing only. To close his eyes and sleep.

  A gunshot echoes in the classroom.

  A reddish hole bursts in the octopus-boy’s head. It came from Epsilon Two’s handgun.

  The student dangles halfway for a moment, then collapses. The tentacle relaxes and slides off Emilio’s neck.

  Emilio too is relaxed and slips to the ground. He doesn’t get up anymore.

  Epsilon Two finishes the job, firing the last rounds on those who still move. He leans on his comrade. Feels his neck with two fingers.

  Nothing. He’s gone too.

  He presses the PTT button on his radio and communicates with unstressed voice, “Epsilon One is down. I say again, Epsilon One is down.”

  He gets up and takes a second to contemplate death.

  One in exchange for two hundred and fifty, it almost seems an acceptable price.

  18. Alone in the Desert

  The library is quiet again.

  The noises in the rest of the school seem to have died down too.

  Is it really over?

  Is this Heaven?

  In complete darkness, he knows he’s lying on his stomach. Slowly he comes back to consciousness; he feels the cold floor, he feels his cheek resting on something sticky, with a pungent smell. A metallic and salty taste in his mouth.

  Sasha opens his eyes. His body is shaken by coughing, but now his throat seems to burn less.

  He lifts himself, spits red mucus.

  With a hand, he wipes his blood-stained cheek. He’s sitting on the ground, now; he looks around confused, some books have fallen, are dyed in red. Sasha realizes he’s immersed in some kind of lake.

&n
bsp; Is this blood all mine? he thinks, and then starts to touch himself, searching for wounds. He inspects the holes in the school uniform, but underneath, his skin is intact, just dirty, as if it had all been a dream, as if he’s back from a game of paintball.

  Was it all a joke? He laughs hysterically.

  I’m alive.

  I’m fucking alive.

  Yet there are lead fragments scattered in the pool of blood, and those are bullets crushed by the impact with something that he can swear, was his flesh and bones. And then there are the holes in the fabric.

  And still he feels only slightly sore.

  He thinks back to when he spat out the first bullet, and it’s as if his body had rejected the lead and then the wounds have healed by themselves, in a matter of... how long?

  Absurd.

  Sasha stands up a bit shaky. He walks through the shelves.

  From a corner sticks out a leg, the leg is attached to the body of a girl. She’s Bina, his classmate, always smiling and kind. She was, before. Now she’s just a lifeless doll thrown on the ground in a grotesque position, with broken limbs, the school uniform stained and torn, and she seems to float in that red puddle.

  Further on are others classmates, and the memory of the mercenary shooting at them hits him like a slap in the face, waking him up altogether.

  Only one thought bugs his head. They might still be here. I must leave.

  He carefully leans from the door of the library, peeking at the hallway. It seems deserted.

  Except for the bodies scattered here and there like the breadcrumbs of Hansel and Gretel.

  Hansel and Gretel mass murderers.

  A shiver runs through his spine. Which way to go?

  Nearby there’s an emergency exit. He tries to push the handle, but it’s blocked. It would be too easy. He moves to the other side and follows the hallway leading to the cafeteria. He has to zigzag through the corpses. He doesn’t even feel nauseated. He’s too shocked to be nauseated. Shocked to the point he has become apathetic.