by Tracy Sharp
I pushed through the side door leading to the back staircase, as I didn’t think that using the main stairs or elevator would be prudent at this time.
I took the stairs two at a time and jumped the last five to the bottom, then ripped the door at the bottom open and quickly booted it down the hall. I was almost to the back door of the first floor when a voice made me jump.
“Hey!”
I spun around on my heel, wondering what I’d do if it was campus security. Giving up wasn’t an option. They’d take me to the cop shop no matter what. So I prepared to run.
Three guys were at the other end of the hall. These three I’d seen before, leering at me and chuckling in the cafeteria as I’d washed the floors. No doubt they were watching my ass. You keep pretty trim just eating packages of crackers you pocketed from the kitchen, while the more wealthy college students chowed down on steak sandwiches or pizza. The smells of which are heavenly.
But I told myself I didn’t like that crap anyway, as my stomach growled over and over again.
The middle one, the one I’d already pegged as the alpha of the bunch, lifted his chin expectedly at me. His hair was perfect, and had more product in it than I’d ever seen on a girl’s hair. The other two snickered, chins down, glancing at each other in anticipation.
This wasn’t good. Not even a little.
I was in an empty lower hallway that was rarely used. They must’ve spotted me walking through here before, and waited for me at the other, darker end. I hadn’t seen them.
Engaging them would seem like an invitation no matter what I said, because when you say anything, you open up the lines of communication. So even ‘piss off, jackwad’ can sound like, ‘hey, big boy, come talk to me’ to the narcissist.
So instead I spun on my heels and quickened my pace. I was only about forty feet from the door.
“Hey! Raggedy Ann! I’m talking to you! Want to make some money? I know you can use the cash. It’ll be real easy.”
I rolled my eyes and walked even faster. Thirty feet.
“HEY!” The sound of footfalls running.
I didn’t need to turn around to know they were now full out chasing me, and their intensions were not honorable.
But I’m a fast runner. It comes from running in the dead of night when creepy guys suddenly appear behind me when my car is dead, again, and I miss the last bus out of this place.
Blasting through the door, I ran full-tilt across the slick, icy walkway leading to the back end of the building, skidding and falling on my knees. They were on me in a second. If one fell, there were two others to grab me. Not many people around at this time of the night in the early winter. None were at the back of the building. The parking area was empty. My idea was to lay low and take the wooded walkway to the main parking lot where my car was parked.
But now I was alone with three assholes who wanted to take something from me that I wasn’t willing to give. Not while I was alive, anyway.
Maybe that didn’t matter to them.
They could pretty much do what they wanted to me if they got a good hold on me.
“Get her behind those trees!” The leader of the pack grunted. Excitement quickened his tone. His breaths were coming quick and ragged. He’d been thinking about this for some time, apparently.
One grabbed my wrists while the other two each grabbed a leg, and I screamed my lungs out, kicking and flailing to no avail. I’m a small girl. I weigh a hundred and five pounds after a big meal, which is rare. I have a wicked fast metabolism so I burn fat before it has a chance to settle.
I couldn’t believe this was actually happening to me. Campus rapes happen all the time. Usually, though, the girl is drunk and never reports it. They’re too ashamed and know the blame will be shifted to them. They can’t remember if they were too flirtatious or not, like it mattered.
I screamed my throat raw. But nobody was around to hear it. The last classes of the night haven’t let out yet.
I screamed again and got a punch in the face for my trouble. They dropped me in a thick copse of trees and I could see the sky between their heads. Slow, fat snowflakes were falling on my face. In my eyes and mouth. I felt hot and cold at the same time. The trees loomed above me, branches frosted in snow. The scene would be gorgeous if I wasn’t about to be raped and beaten. This was the wooded area around a long bike path which snaked through the college grounds. Great also for jogging.
Nobody was jogging now.
The leader smiled down at me, his face already flushed with arousal. “Look, Raggedy Ann. This is happening to you whether you like it or not. So shut the fuck up.”
“Don’t fight and it’ll be over quicker,” one of the other guys said.
The third stayed quiet, he stood back a little, like the reality of what they were about to do to me was sinking in, and it scared him.
I locked eyes with him. “Please.”
He took a step toward me, but stopped. He shook his head, his own eyes panicked. Like the actions unfolding before him had already been set in motion and there was nothing he could do about it.
He’d been involved up to now. He’d helped carry me there. He was into it up to his eyeballs.
Still, I tried again, but it came out as a croak. “Please.”
And amazingly, it seemed to work. The guy stammered, “Jordan. Maybe we shouldn’t—”
But Jordan already had his jeans shoved down, and was kneeling between my legs when he said, “Shut up and don’t be a pussy. Hold her legs.”
The other friend giggled as he knelt on my wrists, keeping me from fighting back.
But then, like some kind of gift from the gods, I looked up and saw a ball of fire in the sky, blasting down toward us, sizzling and sparking, crackling as it lit up the heavens.
Everything stopped.
“Holy shit!” The giggler shouted, and pushed himself back, standing up.
That left my hands free. While Jordan looked up, I brought my knee back and booted him in the throat. I heard a crunch. He clawed at his throat and choked, making gasping, gurgling sounds.
I tugged my jeans back up while the other two continued to gawk at the thing in the sky.
Taking the opportunity fate had gifted to me, I slid my boot knife from my combat and stepped forward, slicing the giggler’s face. He turned to me, eyes wide with shock. I grinned, waving the knife around in front of me, murder in my eyes.
“Crazy bitch,” he sputtered, blood spilling between the fingers pressed to the gash in his cheek.
“Yeah, that’s right.” I smiled widely. “Go call a cop.”
He did a comical little skipping move before he tapped his friend on the arm. “Let’s go.”
The friend, who had made the feeble attempt to stop my attack, looked at me, shame crossing his face, and followed his buddy toward the main parking lot.
I kept hold of the boot knife in case there were any other creeps lurking with the same idea these guys had, looking up at the fire streaking down from the sky as it rocketed toward us.
It landed with a huge crash, sounding like a bomb in slow motion.
Heat radiated toward me, and my hair blew backward as a burning wind swept over me.
I said a silent prayer of thanks as I made my way toward the landing site, which amazingly, happened to be through the top of the Physical Education building, housing the gym and pool, and locker that I’d just robbed.
* * *
Everything had a dreamlike quality as I made my way to the PE building. There was a grayish, silvery dust floating through the air, coating everything around it. The dust was being dispersed by the wind, landing in trees and sailing through the air with the wet snow that fell through it. The smell was sulfuric, and some of the powder landed on my lashes. I blinked it away. Wet snow dribbled over my cheeks, chilling me. I began to shiver, despite the heat radiating from the crash site and the steaming ground near my feet.
Pockets of steam popped and whistled upward, like a pot of boiling sauce. I look
ed down at the ground, watching as if hypnotized. The scene before me was surreal.
Heat radiated from the PE building. The snow had melted all around it, and bubbled at my feet. I stood just on the periphery of it, stopping just before the sizzling, popping heat on the ground.
The building was coated in the dust, the ground around it dotted with glowing embers of various sizes and shapes. A fire had started in the ceiling where the thing had landed.
A bespeckled kid walked toward me, his eyes round behind his Harry Potter glasses. “It’s a meteorite. I can’t believe it. Have you ever seen anything like this?”
I shook my head. “No.”
“This is incredible!” He held up his phone, recording the flaming, smoking, dust covered site as the sirens screamed toward us. He smiled at me, his face awestruck, then pointed his phone toward me. “We’re witness to an historical happening right now. What’s your name?”
“Zoe.” I saw my reflection in the screen of his phone, and blinked at what I saw. The wild, disheveled girl that looked back had dodged a bullet because of the meteorite.
But many others died because of it.
The fall-out of the crash hadn’t yet begun.
At that point, I couldn’t help but be thankful for it. I revelled in the dust falling all around me.
Chapter 2
Finally, I was released from questioning. Rayback insisted on driving me home. My sister and Derek were still at the station being questioned.
The events of the last twenty-four hours had been so unbelievable, I wondered if I’d been hallucinating. I hoped that I had.
Rayback’s car was cold at first, and I ducked down into the seat, my thrift store army issued jacket rising around my jaw. The winter hat on my head was another find from my mother’s things. A pink and grey, whimsical thing with an exaggerated pom-pom on the top. It was far too cheerful for me, but it was hers, and strands of her chestnut hair were still woven into the yarn.
I didn’t know why I felt like I needed her things near me. Little snatches of her with me, at all times. I guess I remembered the mother she was when Kelly and I were little --- before the drink took over.
The thing I remembered most was her smile. The wide, lovely smile that lit up her entire face. I remembered her wearing this hat, outside in the snow, making snow angels with her two small daughters.
I held on to that memory with a death grip, because it was the thing that reminded me that my mother had loved me at one time.
“Zoe, if you know something, you need to tell me. If you’re trying to protect Kelly or Derek, you’re not doing them any favors.”
I stared straight ahead, through the windshield at the falling snow. The wipers moved back and forth steadily, making me feel sleepy. I felt so tired, and knew that if I closed my eyes right then, I’d nod off without a problem.
“Do you know where Jessica is, Zoe?”
His words snapped me back to reality. I turned to him and stared. “No. I wish I did. But I’m . . .”
He watched me, and his eyes were a strange mix of expectation and compassion. “You’re what, Zoe?”
The words stuck in my throat. I could barely get them out, because if I did, it would make it real. I whispered them. “I’m so scared.”
“Of what? Tell me, what are you scared of?”
I’d been scared when the three guys had attacked me at the college. But this kind of fear was real. It was a raw, intense fear that made it hard for me to even think. It paralyzed me. Jessica was gone. Someone had her. Was she being cared for? Was she cold? Hungry? Scared? Was she still alive?
A sob caught in my throat, making me swallow. My breath hitched. Again, I whispered, because what I was telling him was too horrible to say out loud. “That she’s dead.”
I regretted the words as soon as they were out of my mouth. It would just give Rayback something to grab on to. He’d misunderstand what I was trying to say. It was fear. Fear. Not guilt. What else could you think when a two year old is stolen from her bed?
“After three hours, the odds of finding an abducted child alive drop drastically, don’t they?” I asked him.
Rayback opened his mouth to say something but his cell chirped. It must’ve been important because even though I could tell he wanted to ignore it, he lifted the cell to his ear. “Yeah.”
I took deep breaths to try to calm the rising panic threatening to choke me. It was the most helpless feeling in the world, having a child you love taken from you and not being able to do anything about it. A scream began to bubble up in my throat and I swallowed it down. Hysteria threatened to send me into a shrieking fit.
I opened the passenger door and almost fell out of the car. My combats sank into slush, and I felt icy water seeping through to my socks. The freezing air puffed out from my mouth as I took gulps of breath into my lungs, trying to stop the rush of dread from taking over.
Where is she? Who would’ve taken her?
This isn’t the best neighborhood. I checked her windows, they were locked from the inside. The locks were not broken.
Could someone have picked the front or back door lock and snuck past me while I slept on the couch?
But Kelly and Derek had to use their key to get in, and the doors were both locked.
They could’ve locked the door on the way out, with Jessica.
But we’d been through this, over and over, Rayback and me. It sounded ridiculous even to me. Unbelievable. But there was no other answer.
Do you sleep walk, Zoe? He’d asked me.
No. But I used to as a kid. I left that part out. Still, I’d never hurt Jessica. She was the best thing in my life. I’d take a bullet for her. I’d---
“Zoe.”
Rayback’s voice steadied me, and I turned to look at him.
He stood at the cruiser, slammed the car door and walked toward me, his face serious. As he approached, his eyes skipped over me.
I hesitated on my feet, still standing in several inches of slush, water seeping through my boots.
I dropped my gaze and looked down at myself. I was a mess. Inside and out. I pulled my eyes back up to his.
He had news. And it wasn’t good.
My stomach knotted, my bladder loosening, about to let go. A faint tremble moved over my body. My teeth began to chatter as my legs grew rubbery. Please, please don’t let her be dead.
I looked up at him, waiting, unable to even breathe.
“There have been more disappearances.” His was face was a study in bafflement.
I frowned, not sure I understood what he was telling me. “How many? In Ripley?”
He shook his head. “Thousands. All over the world.”
* * *
Thousands of babies and children, from newborns to ten years old, gone. Vanished overnight, without a trace.
“What in hell is going on?” I sat watching the news. It was on every single station. No one could explain it. The children were just gone.
Then came scenes of meteor crashes all over the globe. The crash at the college had only been one of thousands. Entire cities were coated in dust.
Of course they had to be connected. But the implications of what I was seeing flicker madly across the TV screen was too crazy to wrap my mind around.
Crazy things were happening. People were going insane, running the streets. News reports showed scene after scene of people locking their jaws around someone’s arm, throat, or face, blood spurting into the air and coating them. People were sending in phone recordings.
It was happening all over the planet. The entire world had gone insane. In a single night. I could still smell the remnants of the meteor dust in my hair and on my jeans. It had gotten into my eyes, and seeped into my pores. Would I turn out like those lunatic people on TV?
I booted up my laptop and tried to search the cause of the bizarre, lunatic behavior people were displaying all over the world. What was making them go so crazy?
Report after report suggested that it had been someth
ing in the meteor dust. Not everyone seemed to be affected in the same way. The reason why some people were going insane and others weren’t seemed to be a complete question mark.
But then I found it. A real time recording on PheedMe made by a kid of about fifteen years old. He was using a webcam, and kept looking away, nervously toward some source of noise off to his left.
“If anybody is watching this, It’s eight o’clock, December 10th, two-thousand fourteen.”
A chill crept over me. He looked terrified.
“I know why people are biting. They aren’t alive. They’re dead.” He sobbed. Wiped tears from his eyes with his forearm. “My dad died of a heart attack a half hour ago.”
Banging and screaming from off to his left. The kid looked toward the noise, his face frightened. “I was helping my mom cover him up. He got up. Teeth snapping at me. Grabbing for me. He got my mother. She hasn’t gotten up yet but I don’t think it’ll be long. I’ve locked them both in their room.”
My mouth dropped open. I stared at the screen.
“I’m waiting for someone to come and help me! The dead are everywhere outside. Banging on the windows. Wandering around the streets. They are killing people and making more like them, because when you die, you come back . . . like that. If you can get to me, if you have a gun, I’m at 3 Pinewood Ave in Ripley. Please, help me. I don’t know how much longer that door will hold.”
He’d kept his webcam on, but he was out of the screen shot now. I waited, watching for him. Stunned.
Rayback had taken off after making sure I was okay. That had been about a half hour ago.
I thought of Jessica. Maybe it was better that she wasn’t here right now. I hoped that wherever she was, it was safer than here.
* * *
I kept watching the kid’s video, then getting up and peering between the blinds into the streets. There was nothing moving out there. I wondered if I should try to go out and stock up on food for when Kelly and Derek came home. And for when Jessica came home, if she ever did. From the warnings on the news that everyone should stay inside until the situation was controlled, it might be a while before we could get out there again.
