Out for Blood

by Michael P. Spradlin

  “What just happened?!” Emmet cried.

  “I don’t know,” Dr. Geaux said. She grabbed the microphone on the radio and started talking into it really fast.

  “We’ve got the sedan! All units, there has been a collision, repeat, the sedan has gone over the embankment into the water,” Lieutenant Stukaczowski said over the radio. “Get EMS and paramedics out here! All units respond, code three!”

  Dr. Geaux hit the lights and sirens on the SUV and accelerated into the passing lane. A few miles later, a long line of cars was stopped in the road. Ahead of them, the light bars of numerous emergency vehicles flashed over the accident scene. Dr. Geaux steered their vehicle onto the shoulder, blowing past the backed-up traffic. When they arrived, the pickup truck was crunched against the guardrail, its right side dented up pretty badly, but the driver was standing beside it and appeared to be okay.

  “All of you stay inside this car,” Dr. Geaux said, slowing the SUV and slamming it in park. She opened the door and rushed toward the scene.

  They watched the flurry of activity for several minutes. There was constant chatter over the radio. On the monitor they could see Stuke’s dad and several other law-enforcement agents gesturing and waving their arms. Two men pulled rifles from their vehicles and stationed themselves next to the road where the gray sedan had gone into the swamp.

  “Why do those guys have rifles?” Emmet asked. “We want him alive!”

  “Gators,” Calvin said. “If they send somebody into the water to go after the car’s driver, there could be gators nearby. If they come after the rescuers, then those officers will shoot them.”

  “Remind me never to learn to drive as long as I live in Florida,” Emmet said.

  Two police officers waded into the swamp. The gray sedan had gone in rear-end-first, but the chopper was too high to see everything clearly. Emmet looked out the window to see a tow truck pulling up in front of them, blocking their view.

  Emmet put his hand on the door handle.

  “Don’t even think about it,” his dad said from the front seat.

  “But — !” Emmet protested.

  “Not a chance,” Dr. Doyle said.

  They waited. The radio was silent. Finally, Dr. Geaux appeared, coming around the side of the tow truck and walking toward the SUV. She did not look happy as she opened the door and climbed back in the driver’s seat.

  “Who was it? Did you find him? Is he alive?” Emmet started peppering her with questions, but stopped when Dr. Geaux pounded her hands on the steering wheel in frustration.

  “It was no one. He played us. The car was empty. He had a remote operating system driving the car. He must have suspected all along that we were trying to set him up.”

  “How did he know?” Emmet said, barely able to conceal his disappointment.

  “I wish I knew, Emmet,” she said. “I wish I knew.”

  The line of stopped cars behind them grew longer and longer. The police finally shut down the highway and allowed drivers to turn around in the median and travel in the opposite direction. Amidst all the confusion and chaos, no one noticed the late-model pickup that followed suit, bouncing slowly across the grass between the divided highway, and then onto the road heading back toward Florida City.

  Where it sped quickly away.

  THE NEXT DAY, EMMET WAS IN A SOMBER MOOD. HE couldn’t concentrate on his classes. The thought that Dr. Catalyst outsmarted them was hard to accept. He even frowned through lunch, which was normally his favorite part of the day.

  “Why are you frowning so much?” Stuke asked. Good old Stuke. Never afraid of asking the tough questions.

  “I just can’t believe he beat us,” Emmet said.

  Nobody said anything. Stuke was still limping around but had given up the walker. Emmet’s face had healed to the point where he at least no longer looked like an extra in a horror movie. At first he’d been worried kids would make fun of him, but the Blood Jackets were attacking people all over Florida City. The fact that he was the first — and survived — gave him a little street cred.

  To make matters worse, Emmet’s dad and Calvin’s mom had teamed up on them, and “highly encouraged” they join the Tasker Middle School Service Club. It was something the new principal had started. They had to stay after school and take part in service projects, like helping out at concerts, basketball games, and other school events. Calvin agreed without protest. Emmet immediately understood it was an attempt to keep him from sticking his nose in Dr. Catalyst Business.

  “Do we really have to do this Service Club thing tonight?” he asked Calvin.

  “Yes,” Calvin said. “What choice do we have?”

  “We don’t do it, go hide in the tree house, and tell our parents we did it anyway,” Emmet said.

  “Dude!” Calvin said in alarm. “That would be lying.”

  “Not if we told them something else came up,” Emmet said.

  “Like what?” Calvin huffed.

  “Finding you-know-who,” Emmet said.

  “No. We have to do it,” Calvin said.

  “But why?” Emmet whined.

  “Because you’re in the club now,” Calvin said.

  “Do I have to wear the outfit?” Emmet said. “A white shirt and black pants? Why don’t you just hang a Kick Me sign on my back?” The new principal had also decided that the Service Club members were required to wear dorky outfits.

  “Don’t worry, Emmet,” Riley said. “Raeburn and I signed up, too. Misery loves company, or something like that.”

  “Great …” Emmet stalled his rant, because Stuke was staring off at something at the far end of the cafeteria. “Stuke … what are you looking at?”

  “Huh? Oh, nuthin’,” Stuke answered. “Just wonder what that gross stuff is, leaking out of the vent up there on the wall.”

  “What gross stuff?” Emmet turned around and looked across the cafeteria. Sure enough, something icky was leaking out of it. A thin streak of grayish-white gunk was running down the wall beneath the vent.

  “Okay, that is gross,” Emmet said. “Wonder what it is?”

  “Don’t know,” Stuke said. “Never saw it before.”

  “Maybe it’s where they keep the lasagna,” Emmet said. Riley and Raeburn chuckled. Calvin raised his eyebrows, which was the equivalent of a belly laugh for him.

  Stuke shook his head. “I’m pretty sure they keep the lasagna in the freezer.” He was still on painkillers after his encounter with the Muraecuda.

  “Riiighht,” Emmet said. The bell rang, and they all stood and emptied their trays as they headed off to classes. The mysterious stain was forgotten.

  The rest of the day, Emmet paid very little attention to schoolwork. His mind wandered, thinking about the previous day’s events over and over. He wondered if they had given something away or tipped off Dr. Catalyst somehow. No matter how hard he thought about it, he couldn’t figure it out. He finally concluded that the crazy environmentalist had just been extremely cautious. And lucky.

  Emmet and Calvin stayed after school, helping get everything set up for the concert. Their first job was pulling out a bunch of long carts with folding chairs stacked on them from beneath the bleachers in the gym.

  Emmet was handing over the chairs while Calvin set them up, when a big glop of something white and gray splattered on the floor next to them. They looked up to find it had fallen from a vent in the ceiling.

  And it smelled. It smelled really bad.

  “Ugh. Could that be any grosser?” Emmet said, backing away from it. “What the heck is it?”

  “I’m guessing bird poop,” Calvin said.

  “It looks like the same stuff from the lunchroom. And it stinks! Ewww,” Emmet said, putting more distance between himself and the pile of glop.

  “A bird is probably stuck in one of the vents. It happens sometimes,” Calvin said. “We should probably clean it up.”

  “You should probably clean it up,” Emmet declared. “In case you’ve forgotten, I’m stil
l recovering from a horrible medical trauma. You wouldn’t want me to get an infection, would you?”

  “You won’t … That’s not …” Calvin sighed, knowing he wasn’t going to win the argument, and left to get something to clean up the mess. Emmet resumed pulling chairs off the cart and setting them up in rows.

  As he worked, he was unaware that in the ventilation system above him, the colony was coming awake.

  Soon it would be time to feed.

  DR. NEWTON WOKE UP WITH A START. HE HAD BEEN dreaming, and he sat up on the edge of the cot trying to recall the details, but they faded away quickly. It was something to do with being locked away in a deserted … He looked around. It was not a dream. It was reality.

  He had completely lost track of how many days he’d been locked away here. A week? Two weeks? He desperately needed a shower. Something had gone horribly wrong with the plan. If he had been missing for so long, someone should have been looking for him.

  Of course, he had no idea where he was. For all he knew, he could have been put on a plane and flown to another country. He doubted it, but it was a possibility. Still, this heat felt like Florida. There was the familiar tackiness of the humidity, so thick it made you feel like water was literally hanging in the air and would stick to your skin whenever you moved. Florida: The only state where you could sweat while taking a shower.

  He stood and stalked about the cell. His handcuffed wrist and the chain attached to it allowed him to reach the water cooler, toilet, and box of food, but not the door. No matter how he stretched, it was just out of reach. Whoever locked him in here took no chance on him finding a way to pick or break the lock.

  As he paced, he suddenly realized the handcuff was looser on his wrist. Days of captivity had caused him to lose some weight. Twisting his arm slightly, he found the manacle had a bit more give than before. Perhaps there was enough space now to work his hand free! Glancing up at the camera — knowing it was watching his every move — he lay back down on the cot and threw his arm over his eyes, as he if he were attempting to sleep. Tossing and turning, he finally flipped over on one side, with his back to the camera.

  Very slowly, he worked the handcuff over his hand. There was a trick to freeing oneself from handcuffs this way. The method was to use your shoulder and arm muscles to manipulate your wrist. Twisting your hand and wrist muscles just caused the tissues to swell, making it more difficult to get free.

  It was a painful trick. The cuff scraped and dug at his skin until it bled. It took enormous concentration to keep the rest of his body still, while he slowly maneuvered his shoulder and arm. Thankfully, whatever sleepy drugs were in the water helped dull the pain.

  Finally, the cuff slipped from Dr. Newton’s hand.

  He was free! He showed no reaction. Hoping whoever was monitoring him would believe he was sleeping restlessly.

  He pushed the ratcheted point of the cuff through the loop, until the pointed end stuck out the other side. Using it as a lever, he pried at the chain, pulling one of the links far enough apart that he was able to work the handcuff completely free from the chain.

  Now he had to pause and think. There was no question that he was being watched. If he tried to pick the lock on the door, or pry his way out, someone could arrive and stop him before he escaped. But if he waited until dark, he might have a better chance. It was unlikely he was being observed around the clock.

  The hours went by slowly, and the wait was excruciating, but eventually the interior of the warehouse grew dimmer. Still he waited.

  Finally, it was as dark as it was going to get.

  He stood up and hurried to the door. With his hands, he felt around the latch and lock, looking for any weak spot where he might be able to pry it loose. Finding nothing, he used the thick handcuff as a bludgeon and pounded away. Again and again he struck at it, his frustration growing with every blow. It took a long time and he had to stop and rest his arm several times.

  On his next swing he heard a crack.

  The housing had separated ever so slightly from the metal door. His arm was nearly worn out, but he reached through the bars and struck the lock several more times, until there was enough room to work the pointed end of the handcuff into the crack. He wiggled and worked with his primitive tool, prying the lock completely loose. Finally, with a resounding pop, the lock came free and the door swung open.

  Dr. Newton gathered up some protein bars from the box of food and stuffed them in his pockets. He walked through the cell door, half expecting alarms to sound, but was met only with silence.

  He scurried across the floor of the warehouse to the exterior door. To his joy, he found it unlocked. This was good and bad news. Whoever had taken him never expected him to escape. But it also told him he was someplace very remote, with very little chance of being accidentally discovered. There was most likely a long, arduous hike ahead of him to reach civilization.

  Dr. Newton didn’t care. He was free.

  He opened the door and ran off into the night.

  A small black box was built into the wall near the door, on the front of which glowed a small green light.

  As Dr. Newton passed through the door, the light changed from green to blinking red.

  EMMET SAT ON THE BLEACHERS NEXT TO CALVIN, RILEY, and Raeburn, all of them in their white shirts with black pants, watching the Tasker Middle School band concert.

  The “music” was nearly unbearable. Emmet was all for extracurricular activities, and he supported the idea of the band in theory. So long as he didn’t have to attend the concerts, or hear the music, or wear the clothes. He had to figure out a way to drop out of the Service Club. He was never going to catch Dr. Catalyst if he spent all his extra time cleaning up after concerts.

  While they waited for the program to end, Emmet compiled a list of things he would rather do than go to a middle-school band concert. He was deciding between walking barefoot across broken glass or having a double root canal when there was a loud crash from the ceiling vent directly over where most of the crowd was sitting in the rows of folding chairs.

  Emmet looked up just in time to see the metal grate fall to the gym floor with a resounding crash. It just narrowly missed giving the mother of a fifth-grade trombone player a solid conk on the head.

  At first, there was silence. Even the band had stopped playing, a few straggling notes echoing throughout the gymnasium. Everyone stared at the open space in the ceiling in silence. The entire gym quieted, but no one could take their eyes off the gaping hole.

  Then a writhing swarm of Blood Jackets poured out of the opening in the ceiling. The creatures came in wave after wave, dipping and darting everywhere. Their cries alternated between the chittering bat noise and the hum of an angry hornet. And, as always, there was the sound of the flapping leathery wings. It seemed like it was the sounds that drove the people mad. As if some primitive instinct in the brain compelled them to escape upon hearing the dreadful noise. The sound meant danger. Death. Run away from the sound. Chaos erupted in the gym as everyone in attendance rose as one, rushing toward the door.

  “What the — ?” Raeburn said.

  “Get out!” Emmet shouted. “Find a door! Get out!” The four of them dashed down the bleachers to the gymnasium floor, but it was a turbulent mass of confusion. Parents grabbed children and ran. The creatures hovered over their heads. The more everyone ran and screamed, the more feverish the flying monsters became.

  Riley was knocked to the ground by a kid holding a snare drum over his head; Calvin helped her scramble to her feet. More Blood Jackets flooded out of the vent in the ceiling and raised the shouting and trampling to higher levels.

  “This way!” Emmet shouted. The other three followed him toward the wall of the gym. A single Blood Jacket swooped down at Calvin, and its claws raked his head. Calvin waved his hands and arms, trying to scare the creature off, but nothing worked. He dropped to his knees and was about to cover up, when something whirred through the air and connected with the animal, send
ing it careering into the wall. It fell to the floor, flapping its wings, disoriented and wobbling around.

  Riley had picked up one of the metal music stands and swung it like a baseball bat, hitting the flying creature flush. Another swooped down and she delivered another wallop, sending the winged monster swirling away with an agonizing cry. Another creature took up the attack and suffered the same fate. Riley was playing a game of airborne Whac-A-Mole. And winning. At least for the moment.

  “Awesome,” Emmet said, picking up his own music stand. Calvin and Raeburn followed suit.

  The main doors leading out to the hallway and the exits from the building were clogged with people desperate to flee. The Blood Jackets were everywhere, soaring over the crowd. The entire scene was right out of the scariest horror movie they had ever seen.

  Raeburn swung her music stand and drove one of the creatures back. “We have to get across the gym to the other doors!” she said.

  “No way, it’s too far, those things will overwhelm us!” Emmet cried.

  “Over here!” he heard Calvin shout.

  Calvin gestured to them from beneath the bleachers. Like in most school gyms, the bleachers at Tasker Middle School were collapsible, folding into the wall when there were no activities taking place. Calvin led them underneath the wooden seats, where they found some temporary relief in the partially enclosed space. A few of the creatures tried to fly in after them, but the close quarters inhibited their ability to maneuver. They flew away in search of easier targets.

  The crowd was nearly trampling one another to get away. Parents shouted for their children, their voices drowned out in a cacophony of names. The relentless attacks from the Blood Jackets and the bottleneck at the doors had frozen everyone in place. The flying pests reminded Emmet of a school of fish swimming in the ocean. They came in groups almost like they were flying in formation. And when some instinct they possessed identified a target, they descended in unison, attacking without mercy.