by Anthony Izzo
Looking out on the gym floor, she tried to imagine it crowded with the creatures, their grotesque forms squirming and writhing as they transformed from men to beasts. She felt disheartened at the task ahead, going up against an army of predators.
Then there was Matt and Liza to worry about, whether or not they could escape from Rafferty, and whether or not the four of them could all get out of the school alive.
They had planned hastily, and much of their plan depended on luck. Maybe whatever malevolent force had created the creatures had an equally powerful enemy on the side of good and light that would come to their aid. Would it be God, or some other deity that gave them a push?
Or maybe there was no evil force behind the creatures; perhaps they had crawled out of the ooze and had been stalking the earth since prehistoric times. She liked to think that someone was watching over them, that if there were a God, He would not let this go down. They were on the side of good, right? That should count for something.
Sure Jill, and so are Luke Skywalker and the Lone Ranger, and they always beat the bad guys in the end, she thought. Those were convenient endings cooked up by scriptwriters, but in the real world sometimes even the good guys got their heads handed to them.
Still, she had to hope.
She left the balcony, taking one last peek to make sure the cocktails were out of sight, and joined Harry underneath the stage.
He was on his knees at the front wall, the one facing the gym, molding grayish explosives to the blocks.
“C-4?”
“Yeah. How’d you know?”
“Robert Ludlum novels.”
Harry dropped a piece of it and it rolled between his legs.
Jill gasped. “Be careful!”
“Relax. This stuff is highly stable. It won’t do anything without a detonator to set it off.”
He bent over and picked up the C-4, then molded more explosives behind a steam pipe that ran along the bottom of the wall. He took a white cylindrical object with an antenna jutting from the top from the bag. When he was done, cords ran from the explosives to the cylinder.
“Is that the detonator?”
“Sort of. Actually it’s a receiver.”
He took out a similar white cylinder with an antenna and a metal switch on top of it. The transmitter to set off the blast.
“If you need to blast, flip this switch. This goes with us.”
Harry tucked the receiver and wires behind a stack of cardboard boxes. Someone would have to be looking very hard in order to find it. “Let’s just hope no one decides to investigate,” he said.
“I put the cocktails up on the balcony.”
“Good. Now all we have to do is wait.”
That would be the hardest part.
Something shook Jill from the comfort of sleep.
Tilting her head up off the floor, she listened hard, but despite her straining could hear nothing. She chalked it up to nerves and the fact that she was overtired. Might as well get back to sleep.
She rested her head on her hands, which itched from the wool blankets they had laid on the floor. The blankets had been covering three plastic wise men from the Christmas display. They’d decided it was better than sleeping on concrete.
She closed her eyes.
Sleep had almost gripped her when she heard a noise, the type that makes small children cover their heads with blankets in the middle of the night.
It was a long creak, then a slam. A door.
“Harry. Harry!” she hissed, reaching over and shaking him.
“What?” He smacked his lips, half-awake.
“Someone’s here.”
“In the room?”
“No, the gym. Listen.”
A thud, metal banging.
“Sounds like its coming from the balcony,” he said.
He sprang to his feet faster than Jill thought possible and grabbed the shotgun.
The door slammed again, booming in the empty gym.
“They must’ve left the balcony,” Jill said.
Harry bent over, unzipped the duffel bag and took out the M-16, which he handed to Jill.
“This might be easier for you. It has a little less kick than the shotgun. Just point and pull the trigger. Easy, though, ’cause it’s automatic.”
She took the M-16 from him.
“Listen,” she said.
Thumps came from the left of them, near the stairs. Whoever it was decided they were going to check out the stage.
The footfalls advanced until they were right above them, the floorboards groaning. A wet, sniffing sound came from above, like a bloodhound on the trail of a convict in those old prison movies, only much louder.
“It’s trying to get our scent,” Harry said.
“Your heart pumping as hard as mine?” she whispered.
“Is your heart going a thousand beats per minute?”
“Yeah,” she said.
“Then I’m right with you.”
More sniffing, then thuds, moving quickly from left to right, then from front to back, punctuated by grunts and growls.
“It can smell us but it can’t find us. Be completely still,” Jill said.
“I hope it can’t break through the stage.”
“The one that chased me and Matt busted through a brick wall.”
“Well, there’s a comforting thought.”
“Comfort’s got nothing to do with this situation,” Jill said.
The thumping slowed and then stopped at the front of the stage. The beast let out a roar that made her teeth vibrate. She propped the gun against her leg and slapped her hands over her ears to muffle the din.
It sounded pissed off and frustrated that it couldn’t find its quarry.
There were two strides across the stage, then a thud as it hit the floor and took off. The next sound was the door shutting, and then the gym was silent again.
“Do you think Rafferty knows we’re here?” Jill asked.
“I don’t know. Maybe he sent that one here to keep an eye on things.”
“Do you think it was him?”
“I doubt it. Don’t ask me why but I don’t think it was.”
She paused for a moment and then said something that shocked even herself.
“I think we should go find it and kill it.”
“What?”
“Look, we have to leave the stage before tomorrow night. What if Rafferty left that thing in here as a guard dog? We’ll have to go upstairs eventually, and we’ll have to face it. And I’d rather us hunt it than it hunt us.”
Harry scratched the back of his neck, and his brow furrowed.
“I hate to say this, but you’re right. We’re gonna have to eliminate that thing. I just hope there’s only one of them in here.”
She would rather take a hot poker in the rear end than go looking for one of the creatures and she knew Harry felt the same way. But they had to make sure it was dead and not somewhere waiting to ambush them.
“Fire is our best chance. We’ll go to the balcony and grab a Molotov cocktail.”
“Let’s just hope we don’t burn the joint down in the process,” Jill said.
With a sigh of resignation, Harry took the Zippo from the bag and then dug around and pulled out a box of shotgun shells. He filled his shirt pockets until they bulged like misshapen breasts. He also gave Jill a spare clip for the M-16.
“Keep sharp. That damn thing could be hiding anywhere,” Harry said.
They started up the steps, Jill feeling as if she were about to go hunting a tiger armed with only a slingshot.
Somewhere in a dank corner of the cell water dripped a steady beat. Liza’s breathing became a series of moans and groans as her health grew worse. Rafferty better come for them soon, or Matt’s little plan wouldn’t work. He needed Liza to be alert enough to get out of the line of fire, scoop up the keys and unlock Matt’s cell. Maybe he was asking for too much, but it was all they had to go on.
He sat on the edge of the cot tapping h
is feet, feeling the lump that was the revolver jabbing him in the rear end. In his mind he ran the scene over and over again: whipping out the gun like an old-time western gunslinger, praying that he was quicker on the draw than Black Bart. If he missed, they were dead. He had no doubt that they would be killed right here, and the hell with taking them to the school as hostages.
“How goes it?”
He looked up and Rafferty was there, propped against the cell door as if he were sidling up to the bar to order a tall cold one.
“You really want me to tell you?”
“Not really. I could give a shit.”
“What do you want? If you want me to deliver another package you can put it where the sun don’t shine.”
“No, nothing like that. Although that was quite effective, I’ll bet. I’d give my left nut to see the look on the fat guy’s face when he opened that box and saw his old lady’s ring finger.”
“I’m glad you find it so amusing.”
“Oh, I do. Even more amusing than the plot I think your friends are hatching.”
Matt did his best to look puzzled and didn’t think it worked.
“Come on. You don’t honestly think I thought they would go quietly. Not after the fight you all put up at the cabin.”
“You’re nuts.”
“Am I? Well, maybe. But just in case I sent a watchdog over to the school, to make sure no one crashes the party early.”
If there were only some way to warn Jill and Harry. But his ass was stuck in this cell, and the chances of Rafferty letting him use a phone were next to nothing. They would have to fend for themselves until he found a way out of here.
Harry went first, nudging the trapdoor open with the barrel of the shotgun, looking like a Neanderthal emerging from a cave.
He held the trapdoor and then pushed it all the way open, holding onto it with his free hand and setting it gently on the stage floor so it wouldn’t slam. On her way up the steps, Jill brushed against the opening and kicked up a cloud of dust. The need to sneeze was immediate, and she stifled it by shutting her eyes tight and bunching her nose.
They crossed the stage, the boards creaking, each groan sounding like a wrecking ball slamming into a brick building. In reality Jill knew the noises were nowhere near that loud, but who knew how sharp the beast’s hearing was?
They made it across the gym floor to the door, Jill watching the balconies, half expecting the creature to come swooping down from above like a hawk. Its scent hung in the air, chemical and putrid all at once.
They climbed to the balcony, and twice Harry thought he heard something. They stopped to listen, but it turned out to be Harry’s ears trying to put one over on his brain.
Once they were on the balcony, Jill threw aside the tarp that covered the Molotov cocktails and removed one of the firebombs. Then she closed the box and replaced the cloth.
“We’ll try cutting through the lobby over to the other wing,” Harry said.
“It could be anywhere out there.”
“There are a lot of places to hide in here,” Harry agreed.
The sensible part of her mind, the part that told her not to pet strange dogs or play on train tracks, screamed at her to turn around and leave the building immediately. She did her best to stifle those thoughts and instead focus on the fact they were heavily armed and a match for their enemy. It wasn’t working very well.
“Maybe it’s gone,” she said.
“And maybe I’ll grow angel wings and fly off the balcony,” Harry said.
“Aren’t the doors to the lobby locked?” she asked.
“Yeah, they probably are.”
“That means it has to be on this half of the building,” she said.
“Not necessarily. If it came in on the top floor—not through the front doors—it could circumvent the lobby by traveling on the second floor and going to the other side. You really don’t even have to go through the lobby to get to the other wing.”
“But how much do you want to bet it’s on this side, waiting?”
“I’d bet more than a dollar on it.”
They resigned themselves to keep going, Jill feeling like a mountain climber who simply can’t continue up Everest. Her joints ached, and her eyes felt heavy and grainy from lack of sleep. But they had to keep moving toward the top of the proverbial mountain, where something was waiting to tear them to pieces.
The lobby doors were locked, so they decided to check the second floor.
They went back into the hallway, past the principal’s office and up the stairs until they were at the full-size crucifix. Jesus was still staring with His weepy, glassy eyes, looking toward heaven. They could use a hand from Him right about now, even if the statue wasn’t the real deal. Maybe they could lure the beast to the statue and it would collapse on the bastard and crush it.
Harry growing those angel wings seemed more likely.
“Do you smell it?” Harry said in a whisper.
She hadn’t noticed an odor when they entered the old wing, but she took a good sniff and detected it, a wild animal smell, thick and sour. There was no doubt that it was in the hallway with them.
They moved straight ahead to the other side of the T-junction, where there was one classroom and another beige door leading to the stairs. Jill peered through the small window in the door and saw only blackness.
They turned around and made a right down the long hallway, the smell of the creature getting heavier as they went.
Jill whispered, “We know it’s not in the classrooms because the doors are all locked. I doubt they can pick locks either.”
They moved, both of them in a semi-crouch, scanning up and down, side to side, watching for any flicker of movement that might indicate their enemy’s presence.
As they reached the stairway to the third floor, the scent grew thicker.
One set of stairs, black with yellow grip tape on them, led up, and another led back to the first floor.
“Up or down?” Jill said.
Harry looked back down the hallway, then up the stairs. Jill thought he was stalling, indecisive.
“Up.”
“Any particular reason?”
“Nope.”
“What’s up there?”
“No more than a landing with two rooms. One’s the music room and one’s an old classroom that hasn’t been touched since the fifties. And the door to the roof.”
The more Jill thought about it, the less she liked the idea of heading upstairs; it could become a trap if their pursuer sneaked up behind them. She didn’t think St. Mark’s School was lax enough to leave the roof door open, so that eliminated another possible escape route.
“I say we go downstairs. If it comes up behind us, we’ll be trapped up there,” she said.
“Jesus, you’re right. I can’t believe I didn’t think of that.”
They turned to go down the stairs when Harry put his hand on her shoulder as if to stop her from moving any further.
“Wait. Hear that?”
Jill cocked her head to one side. She heard footsteps coming from the third floor. The footsteps stopped. Harry raised the shotgun, ready to fire.
“It’s waiting on the landing,” Harry whispered.
“Wish it wasn’t so damned dark.”
“C’mon. What are you doing?”
As if on cue, something bounded down the stairs and charged toward them. Harry fired, the shot hitting the beast in the arm, but it kept coming.
It plowed into Harry, knocking him back, the two of them rolling over and over each other, Harry pushing its head back to keep the jaws away from his face. It was a small one, just over five feet, but no less ferocious than its bigger brethren. It hissed and spat at them.
They stopped rolling, the creature on top, and Harry pushed it up like a man doing a bench press until there was a foot of space between the two of them. Then he balled up his knees, planted his feet on its legs and pushed off, thrusting the beast away from him. It rolled into the wall a
nd got up, the quizzical look that had crossed its face turning into insane rage.
Jill stood stunned, the whole thing unfolding too quickly. A little voice inside her told her to get moving.
Harry picked up the shotgun, but the creature charged again and he couldn’t turn the gun around, so he swung by the barrel, cracking his foe in the head. The blow sent the beast staggering like a drunk, and it nearly plowed into Jill.
She sidestepped quickly, moving to her right as the assailant sailed past her. She snapped herself out of her fog and raised the gun, but by then the attacker had regained its bearings and lunged for her, pushing her onto her butt.
The Molotov she was holding hit the ground, and she expected to hear glass break, but there was only a hollow ping! The jar was still intact.
It got on all fours and scrabbled toward her; she crab-walked backward, the beast advancing on her too quickly. The muscles in its legs flexed, ready to pounce, when Harry brought the shotgun down on it like an executioner swinging an ax. He connected at the base of the skull.
Jill tried pushing it off of her, but even stunned it was too heavy to move.
“Harry!”
Harry dropped the shotgun, took two steps back, lowered his shoulder and charged like a linebacker drawing a bead on a running back. He slammed into the creature, knocking it off of her.
Jill got on her hands and knees. She hurried over to the Molotov cocktail and gripped it, prepared to throw it before realizing it wasn’t lit.
Harry got to his feet and saw what she meant to do.
“Jill!”
The Zippo came flying at her quick, and she caught it one-handed and flicked it open, the flame licking her hand. She held the flame to the rag jutting from the jar’s lid and it lit.
Harry backed up and Jill threw the jar to the ground, smashing it at the creature’s feet. The flames raced up its legs as it flailed and spun around, beating at the fire. Harry and Jill retreated down the hallway, a good twenty feet from the flaming beast. Jill snatched up the M-16, and as the demon advanced toward them, still aflame, she fired, exploding its head with two bursts from the rifle.
