Then my head cleared, at least a little. Had I been shot? Drugged? Both?
Tim slowed for no apparent reason, then opened a door. “In here. Fast. We need to talk.”
I followed him into a closet. He shut off the flashlight.
“Tim? Abby won’t wake up.”
Tim grabbed my shoulder. “Don’t say that. Don’t tell anybody where your family is. You haven’t seen them in days. Got it?”
“I need to get back. They’re going to run out—”
“Shut up, Ash!” Tim nearly shouted. Then he started whispering. “The high school is guarded. They won’t let us leave. Best thing you can do is pretend you’re totally happy with that. Okay? Totally happy. And stay the hell away from Reverend Bob.”
I shook my head, not that he could see it. “Tim? What’s going on?”
“Sort of a…a cult, I guess. Look, you’re in shock. And they’re expecting me—I don’t have much time. Just wait in here for a few minutes, okay? Let me get away. Then you can come out. Wander around, whatever. You won’t get far on that leg, but don’t stay in here.” He paused, then changed his mind. “No, never mind, it doesn’t matter; they’ll find you when they want you. The main thing is, keep your mouth shut. About everybody you know, including me and my family. Got it?”
“Yeah…” I leaned against the wall. “Tim, can you help Abby? She needs a doctor.”
“Damnit!” he whispered, and punched something. Maybe the wall. Not the one I was leaning against, though, or I’d have felt it.
Then he left, closing the door quietly.
I took a nap.
Chapter Nine
Everything hurt. My left leg, my left shoulder. The fingers on my right hand where I’d apparently been clutching a dustpan. That was a sick sort of ache, like the bones were…but it didn’t matter; the leg was worse.
Enough light came in under the closet door that I could see push-brooms, garbage cans, trash bags…all the signs of civilization.
I lay as still as I could and listened. From time to time I heard people walk past my door. Some strode quickly, some seemed to wander. Some shuffled, or limped.
Nobody seemed to care that I was here. It was daylight outside, obviously. What else did I know? Not much.
From what Tim had said, I could probably leave my closet and walk around out there. Leaving the high school entirely might be more of an issue, but I wasn’t going to make a lot of progress where I was.
I stood, slowly, using a broomstick to help myself balance.
Then I nearly doubled over with hunger. My mouth was so dry my lips made an audible sucking sound as I peeled them apart.
How long had I slept in here?
I put a hand on the doorknob. Nothing good out there, I knew. But nobody had come looking for me, so maybe I wasn’t all that important. Maybe I’d even fit in, somehow?
I opened the door and limped into the hallway…and nobody cared.
An old man with what looked like it had once been an impressive mane of white hair—assuming he’d ever been the type to comb or wash it—stood, leaning his back against the hall, a few feet down the corridor to my left. His gaze was utterly vacant. And a woman was walking away from me, shuffling really, moving down the hall to my right.
I followed her, slowly, exaggerating my limp. What was going on here?
As we passed classrooms I saw some of them were occupied. Mostly by dazed-looking people who barely bothered to glance at me as I went by.
I turned a corner and saw the woman I’d been following make a sudden right through a set of double doors. Was I back at the auditorium? If so, it had a door to the outside…was it possible…?
But this was the cafeteria again—or it had been. I sighed. And tried to figure out where I was in the building. I’d never had any kind of sense of direction. But put me outside, any time of year, and I could tell you the time within five minutes.
I caught myself as I started to fall over. Not a good time to let my mind wander. Unless, I thought suddenly, it could take me with it…? Heh. Real world, Ash. Where are you?
There was food, sort of. A couple of tables with what had probably been hot dogs. And rice, and buns, and…stuff that had probably been frozen vegetables, cooked and left out for a very long time. The woman I’d followed was eating, sloppily, with hands so filthy I could see the smudges even in semi-darkness. As I watched she reached under her pants and scratched herself, then grabbed more vegetable glop with the same hand.
I decided: I was hungry enough. And so thirsty…
I moved forward.
Farther back, there were people lying on the floor, with or without padding. One man, short and dark with a white streak on the left side of his beard, gave me a quick look before blanking his face to match the rest.
Was everybody drugged? Why was the guy with the beard pretending? What—
“Ah, Mr. Ashton,” I heard behind me.
I unfocused my eyes and shuffled forward as if I hadn’t heard, hoping I was getting it right.
A hand landed on my right shoulder. I let it turn me around.
Reverend “Slimy Bob” Germain stood in front of me, self-important and smug as always. His hairy face and jutting jaw and unibrow reminded me of the picture my daughter had painted, of a family of Cro-Magnons. Clothes and clean hair aside, he’d have fit right in…Abby was awfully talented. Or she had been.
I blinked, and left my eyes unfocused as I directed my gaze just past Germain’s shoulder.
“Ah. I’d thought you might be ready to join us,” he said. “But never mind, never mind…time enough for that later.”
I gave him a vague smile, aiming it just left of center.
He frowned, and I thought, mildly panicked but not sure it mattered, that I’d given myself away—but then he stepped quickly around me. “Mr. Evans! Kindly calm yourself, sir!”
I heard a low hooting sound behind me and it was all I could do not to spin around.
“He’s turning in here!” the Reverend shouted over his shoulder.
By this point I’d shuffled to the wall, and I turned around slowly as I slid to the floor.
Two men burst in carrying shotguns. Reverend Bob inclined his head to a man—Mr. Evans?—who was standing with his face in his hands.
“Mr. Evans,” Reverend Bob said gently, “please remove your hands. There’s no sense in hiding, if—”
Mr. Evans sobbed, and started to settle to the floor, and Reverend Bob seemed to relax a little. Then Evans spread his hands, revealing fangs that didn’t fit his mouth, that had apparently just ripped—grown?—through his left cheek. Blood flooded over his face to his button-down yellow shirt collar and on to his shoulder, then stopped all at once as Evans roared, louder than I’d have thought a man could roar, and his cheek flaps seemed to find each other. And held together. Though the shirt bulged and ripped.
Evans’ eyes opened wide, he took in the shotguns, and he jumped.
Reverend Bob dove to the floor. Two shotgun blasts roared, and Evans was hit in the chest and belly.
Evans staggered back, flailing his arms, and eviscerated a young woman who’d been standing behind him—with what had been his fingernails a few moments ago.
Evans spun his head to the left, startled at the resistance to his claws, and his look of shock was grotesque but had to be genuine. Was he still…?
The two men with shotguns fired again and again until Evans fell.
“Gentlemen,” Reverend Bob admonished them after rising to his feet, “head shots, please, next time. They’re chancy but they are much more effective when you do manage to hit your target.”
He shook his head. “Check the rest of them. Evans was a local—we can no longer assume only outsiders will turn.”
* * *
After Reverend Bob left his flunkies moved around the room, opening people’s mouths and peering within.
I slumped against a wall next to the dark-haired guy who’d seemed alert earlier. He glanced at me, then let
his face go slack again.
The flunkies weren’t especially thorough. They didn’t check either of our mouths. In fact they checked, at most, one in four or so.
Not that I wanted somebody’s dirty fingers on my face. But on the other hand it would have been nice to have some reassurance that the folks around me weren’t about to sprout fangs and rip out my throat.
I kicked the dark-haired guy’s foot once the flunkies had finished and left the cafeteria. “Think we should check the rest of ’em?” I whispered.
He sighed, then whispered back. “Maybe. That Evans guy was shaking his head and moaning a lot earlier, though. Nobody else has been doing that.”
“Good to know. Why are these people…the way they are? Drugs?”
He grinned a little. “Maybe they’re faking. How would we know?”
I considered that. “What happens if they stop?”
He shrugged, then leaned closer. “It’s a lot like birth, I suppose. You’re safe in here, but not doing much. Then one day you poke your head out, everybody makes a fuss, and…you can’t come back.”
I studied the guy. “I’m Ash,” I told him.
“John,” he said. “I got nabbed a couple of days ago. One of the…people like Evans…broke into my house. I ran out, and Reverend Bob’s people grabbed me and stuck a needle in my arm.”
I nodded slowly. “I watched the military blow up downtown. Then somebody got me from behind.”
He gave a weirdly amused grin. “They blew up downtown Henge? Cool.”
“John—seriously, what happens if Reverend Bob’s people see we’re not like the rest?”
“Ask Harvey.”
I looked around the room. “He in here?”
“Nah. He and I were talking yesterday, then he decided to go ask somebody that very question.”
“And…?”
“Beats me. Haven’t seen him since. I figure either they killed him or he’s one of them now. But if he’s one of them, I don’t know why he didn’t mention me.”
“One of who?”
John sighed, and took out a flask. “Whom. Want a hit?”
First Mr. Morrison, now this guy. “Okay, whom. If it’s like being born, how come you’re still here?”
He sipped. “Also a lot like dying. No idea what’s next, and nobody seems to be able to come back to tell me. Harv promised. Listen, man, I don’t want to sit here talking to you. You don’t seem like you’re gonna be a low-profile kind of guy. So I’m gonna shamble over and hang with the living dead.” He offered his flask again. “You sure?”
“Yeah. Might need to stay alert.”
“Yeah right.”
I scanned the room again. John No-Last-Name might have the right idea—but I had to get out of here. My kids needed me.
So did my wife.
I hoped.
I scanned the room, and suddenly noticed: no children at all. At least forty adults—I started to count, but realized it was pointless—but everybody in here was in their mid-twenties, at least.
The parade I’d seen flashed through my mind, and my stomach roiled. What was happening to the kids? Or had it all already happened?
But I couldn’t worry about that right then. I had to get out.
I considered John No-Name, now sitting about twenty feet from me, but couldn’t think of a way to get him to help. And I didn’t have a plan anyway. Might as well leave him be.
My lips quirked, though, as I decided: getting out of here had to be more like being born than dying. Because sitting in this place wasn’t any kind of life at all.
* * *
As a first step, I ate. Some of everything, and I tried not to think about what I was swallowing. There were jugs of water, too. At lease I hoped they were water. They…tasted pretty awful. But good, at the same time.
The version of Henge High I’d attended had been torn down ten years before. I didn’t know my way around the new campus. Soon, though, I discovered a back door in the kitchen area behind the cafeteria. Chained, and padlocked, from this side. Did it open to the outside world?
Didn’t matter; I didn’t have any way to get past the lock, and the door itself seemed solid.
So the initial choice was easy: only one way into—or out of—the cafeteria.
I headed out the way I’d come in, determined to search the closet I’d slept in for tools. A hacksaw would be really nice just now.
* * *
I’d only taken a couple of steps into the hallway when I realized what an idiot I’d been.
I wanted a hacksaw? To get through a chain and padlock?
Every classroom off the hallway I stood in was reasonably well-lit. By windows.
* * *
Not knowing the school’s layout was becoming a real pain in the ass. I could see we were on the first floor. On the left, classroom windows looked out on Highway 78, which ran north and south. So that was east. On the other side, past the classrooms, I saw a courtyard, with picnic tables—so I’d figured out where the double door from the cafeteria led. But I didn’t want to go that way.
Okay. We were on the first floor. The hallway I stood in ran north-south. The cafeteria was in roughly the southwest corner, and just past it was another set of padlocked doors. Through their windows I could see a couple of classrooms before the hallway beyond took a left turn. But I saw no movement in that direction.
Conclusion: the school seemed to be at least partially built around that courtyard.
At its north end, my hallway turned west. I shuffled that way. I passed a room that stank worse than the cafeteria. As I went by I heard someone urinating in there…I saw buckets but whoever it was seemed to be using the floor.
I stopped, considering my options. And then I went in. It was beyond awful, and I accidentally knocked a bucket over, and privacy would have been a good thing. But I felt better afterward.
And very, very glad to be wearing boots. Even so, I decided this particular pair had officially reached their end of life. Unless something on them was now alive, growing, nourished by—stop it, I told myself, and shuddered. Which I then told myself was okay and actually very manly of me, because nobody saw.
Around the corner I found another set of double doors. But these didn’t have chains on them—at least on my side. I leaned against the wall, trying to zombify myself in case anyone glanced my way, and watched through the windows in the doors.
Lots of movement. Just…people, moving normally. None of them even glanced toward me.
If I just went out there—assuming the doors weren’t locked, and there wasn’t a chain on the other side—could I just keep going?
But then I saw Tim walk by.
He seemed okay, except for his bandaged arm, but two armed guards stalked behind him. Were they there to protect him? Probably not, given that I’d seen at least twenty other people walking around freely. And Tim was ignoring them a little too aggressively.
Whatever freedom of motion my friend had had in this place, it was gone…at least for now. Which explained why he’d just left me in my closet. I’d been wondering why he hadn’t checked on me—unless he had, and I’d still been passed out—but anyway, something had changed for him.
I shuffled back around the corner, away from the windows, where I could think without having to worry about my expressions giving me away.
No matter what, I had to get back to Abby and Rebecca. But if I could manage it, I wanted to take Tim with me.
I owed him that much. And…well, he was a doctor. Abby needed one.
Unless she didn’t, anymore—but that kind of thinking wasn’t going to help.
I’d do what I could.
Chapter Ten
When I got back to the cafeteria both doors were shut. I pulled one open, propping it with an attached kickstand-like support, and trying to make it seem accidental. Yeah…that was totally believable. I was sure.
Then a cloud of gnats flew out of the room. Nasty—and a couple of wasps followed them. I stepped back warily, b
ut they headed down the hallway towards the non-zombie population.
Maybe they smelled something good? Or the cafeteria’s stench finally got to be too much for them? If they had a decent escape plan, maybe I should just follow them.
Inside, I leaned against a wall and closed my eyes to help them adjust to the darkness. A few minutes later, I shuffled over and kicked John’s leg. “Wake up. I need your help with something.”
He grunted something foul and sat up. “Dude! Trying to fit in, here.”
“Yeah. C’mon, I’ve got an idea for getting out of this place.”
He shook his head, then dragged himself to his feet and put his face next to my ear. “Listen, man. I’m going to wait this out. Nobody’s shooting at me in here, okay? Eventually somebody from outside is going to come into town and take over. This mess can’t last forever, you know?”
I paused. “It’s not just here. I got online for a few minutes the other day. Whatever this is, it was happening in at least three other places around the country. Maybe a lot more by now.”
He blinked, then looked away and shook his head. “Still. We’ve got crazy people running this town, but if I try to get out I have to go through the U.S. military. I might try to leave later, if things get worse—”
“Worse than this. That’s what you’re waiting for? Just how bad does it need to get?”
“Dude. Here I have food and water. Kind of. But if I go with you I’ll probably get dead, or worse. So if you don’t mind—”
“Enough. I need your help. I don’t think you’ll be taking much of a risk, and if it works you’ll know what I did later if you decide you need to follow me.” I grinned at him. “Plus, I may scream if you don’t quit arguing about it.”
He sighed. “I heard what the Reverend called you. You’re Jacob Ashton, right?”
“Yeah. So?”
“So what the hell? That’s the name of the guy who founded this damn town. There’s a statue of your great-great-whatever guy standing in the town square. Reverend Bob’s crowd are all about keeping strangers out and pulling together. If you go tell them you’re awake and push a little, man, they might just let you take over.”
The Secret: A Thriller Page 8
