“Hey, man!” he mumbles before crashing to the ground face first. Maybe if he wasn’t stoned, he would have stopped his fall.
I don’t hesitate. I run as quickly as I can, slamming into people like a freight train, bashing them out of my way. I make it a dozen steps and my eyes burn, staring down the hallway, watching the girl as she slams past people, elbowing them, touching them, making contact with them. I stare at all of them. These are all possible hosts. I know that she might not be infested with that demon creature any longer. I look at them all, studying their faces. Some of them are teachers shouting after her while outraged teens stare, gawking at her with disgusted and offended looks upon their faces. I feel like pulling my gun, putting a shot in the ceiling and getting them all to hunker down. The only problem is that they might panic and flee, not to mention that there’s another hallway above me. My luck would be that I put down a kid above me and I’d be hauled off to jail, helpless to stop the demon from getting to my daughter.
Instead, I’m left with the only option, following after her. I shout her name again, ordering her to stop as I take my chance, chasing after her trail that is quickly closing up, like the Red Sea gushing in on the Israelites. I run as quickly as I can, knocking several gawkers aside. One of them is a teacher, who will no doubt want to inquire as to who the older gentleman chasing after the hot piece of ass fleeing from him was.
I watch her as she’s running, wondering if the creature is still inside of her, wondering if it’s still controlling her, what it’s telling her. She has no reason to run from me. She has no reason to fear me. The creature inside of her head must be poisoning her thoughts. I watch her, wondering how the hell this thing is working its magic inside of her. Is it doing all of this just to get away from me? It has to still be inside of her, if that’s the case. But why cling to a doomed vessel?
I watch as the girl lowers her head, dropping her back flat as she runs, putting her arms to her side as she charges a door like she’s some kind of Rocky Mountain big horn. I watch as she charges and her head slams into the door. The door doesn’t give in the slightest to the weight of her body as it all sort of jars forward, twitching before she slides down the door and spills out across the ground, splayed out like some sort of carcass. Already, there’s blood pooling under her face. People are screaming and pulling back from where she made impact. They’re stepping back in a ring of onlookers, vultures and ghouls, all watching her as she lies there.
I chase after her, shouting her name. Maybe she’s not dead. Maybe the demon made a mistake. Maybe it only paralyzed her. I rush after her, skidding to a stop. “Call the police,” I shout to everyone around me, well aware that they’re all packing cellphones. Instinctively, they’re all whipping out their cellphones, but they’re not calling the police. They’re holding up their phones, snapping pictures. Gritting my teeth, I look down at her, at her ruined head.
She’s rammed her head into the doorknob with all her strength and it looks like the doorknob won the battle. I look at it. It’s glistening crimson, covered with strands of hair, chunks of white, and dripping with blood. Looking down at her, her whole body is twitching, dying. Dropping to my knee, I look at her face. All the bones have shifted in her skull, fracturing and separating. Her face looks wrong, like something drawn in an artist’s drug-induced fantasy. Everything just seems weird, askew. Less than an inch from her face, half of Alice’s tongue is sitting in a pool of blood that is pouring out of her mouth. I look at her, pondering what a waste it was to kill such a pretty thing. Her eyes are wide and her lips are twitching. She’s still alive.
“I’m here,” I tell her softly, trying to calm her. Her eyes are wide, full of shock and horror, if she’s even still alive. It looks like the knob punched through her skull and into her brain. I don’t know shit about the human brain, maybe she’s blind now. “Don’t worry, you’re going to be okay,” I tell her. I look at all the teenagers snapping pictures of her. I instinctively pull off my blazer and cover her up. It looks like her skirt was hiked up after the impact. I cover her exposed panties and ass, not wanting the bastards to get their shot. Thankfully, teachers are starting to show up. They’re pulling the kids away, shouting at them to get out of here.
Looking at the girl, I watch as she quickly begins to pass. Her wide eyelids start to lower, going still and unstrained, almost as if they’re flaccid. Her lips stop quivering and her entire body stops shaking. I can hear the voices shouting at the kids to get back, setting up a perimeter while more teachers begin to start driving the students back. So many of them had gotten their gory panty shots and were probably going to run home to tell their friends about it. I look down at Alice, putting my finger to her neck and feeling that there’s no pulse. There’s nothing. She’s gone. I can smell the faint aroma of piss, followed by shit. I close my eyes. Why the fuck did she have to touch so many people?
Standing up, I look down the three hallways, staring at all the teachers and security officers driving them back like torches keeping the darkness away. Staring down the hallway which I came from, I can’t help but wonder who it was that she touched last. Who was it that the demon hopped into? It wasn’t a mistake that she happened to touch all those people, bumping into them, shoving them aside. It’s out there, in the school, waiting to get to a more suitable host. I shake my head. What the fuck does this thing want? I can’t quarantine the entire school. They’re underage. That would turn into a legal clusterfuck that would end up with me handing this case over to White and Landsmen, turning in my badge and gun, then taking a nice long drive to Florida with early retirement. I shake my head. I don’t know what I’m supposed to do. I can hear kids crying, wailing down the hallways.
“Who the hell are you?” someone demands. I turn and look at a bald man with a fat mustache on his upper lip, trying his hardest to look like a hard ass. Maybe he is, to children. But to me, this guy is just a jackass who is interrupting my thinking process. I look at him and wonder how many tons of shit he’s going to drop when I flash my badge and tell him that he’s got a killer on the loose in the school. I reach for my badge. The rent-a-cop security guards coming up behind me see the handcuffs behind my back and my holstered pistol. They quickly know who I am. These jokers are all sentenced here because they couldn’t make it as a beat cop. The uniform was too much for them, so now they’re all exiled here.
“Detective Steven King,” I tell him.
“Like the author?” He furrows his brow.
“Like the fucking author,” I growl back at him.
“What the hell are you doing here?” the man demands, approaching me still, bold and unwilling to step back. “This is a public school building. You cannot just come in here and chase one of my students, antagonizing her into doing something like this.”
“I didn’t antagonize her,” I tell him with as much authority and force as I can muster. “She was under suicide watch and was a threat to herself. I attempted to apprehend her before she could bring harm to herself or those around her. Unfortunately, I did not have the time to go through the proper channels, her life was in danger. When she saw me enter, she was compelled to take action into her own hands, thus making a public spectacle of her death.”
“I’ve known Alice since she was a freshman,” the man argues. “That girl has never missed a day, never gotten anything less than a B on a test, and sure as hell wasn’t under suicide watch. So I’m going to give you one more time to explain to me what the hell you’re doing here before the police show up.”
“I’m going to need you to back the fuck up,” I tell him. My eyes dart from him, glancing up at the security camera that’s pointed down the hallway. I look at it and suddenly realize that there are dozens of cameras inside this building, probably two pointed up and down this hallway. They have to monitor everything that’s going on inside of these places. “I need access to your camera feeds. I need to see everyone she touched before committing suicide.”
“Over my dead body,” the man wh
o I’m assuming now is the principal looks at me with fire in his eyes. “This is a public school. What do you not get about that? You go get yourself a warrant and we’ll talk about handing over that footage to you. In fact, gentlemen, please make sure that our guest here doesn’t make any sudden movements before the actual police show up to legitimize his claims.”
I can feel all of the wannabes around me lowering their hands to their tasers, ready to pull them if I make any sudden movements. I feel sick to my stomach. I know that there’s another life in danger right now and this asshole is going to make it harder for me to do anything about it. I look around me at the academy dropouts, wishing that backup would get here and one of them might be connected to Owens in some way. If I could get one of his conspirators behind me, then I’d be smooth sailing. I hold my hands up slightly at my sides, showing them that I’m not planning on doing anything stupid, the only one doing that would be the principal. He looks me over and then glances down at Alice.
“Jesus Christ,” he mutters, putting his hand over his mouth and shaking his head. “We’re not even a month into the first semester.”
I look at him, resisting the urge to punch him right in the middle of his round, red nose. I look at him, wanting to tell him everything. I want to tell him how it was a demon inside of Alice that made her kill herself, that it’s done this hundreds, if not thousands, of times before already. I want to inform him that it’s now lost somewhere in his school and while they’re wasting time with me, it’s out there somewhere, finding someone else to infect.
But before I can tell him any of that, we all hear the scream.
VII
“Miss Beasly has gone insane!” someone screams down the hall. It sounds like a young man who has yet to experience the full power and might of puberty. I feel bad for the squeaky-voiced youth, who is no doubt experiencing something horrible. I look past the principal who is also looking over his shoulder down to where the young man is standing outside of his classroom door, waving his arms and screaming for help. Soon, there’s another silhouette next to him and another appears after that. I look at the principal, waiting for some kind of action here. Clearly there’s something happening down there. He looks back at me.
“If we don’t go down there,” I tell him in a calm, determined tone of voice, “those kids are going to panic and they’re going to flee the classroom, and there’s going to be no way of knowing who is in trouble next.”
“What do you mean?” He lifts an eyebrow, looking at me suspiciously. I wonder what it was that possessed him to grow a mustache. I keep seeing them everywhere. Someone out there convinced the world that mustaches are badass, just like they convinced the world that real men have beards. No, they’re just as dumb as they’ve always been. I think facial hair is for men who are trying to hide something, most likely their flaccid, limp dicks. I look at him and want to rip that mustache off of his smug, ignorant face. I don’t have time to explain everything to him. I need him to get the fuck out of my way and let me do my job.
“There’s a man using a neurotoxin,” I lie to him. I can’t think of a better excuse. So far, I’m only operating under the assumption that after this, Mendez is going to run with the neurotoxin idea, that it’s being transmitted from victim to victim, thanks to the killer. Hopefully no one starts to ask questions like: why is it only one victim? Why aren’t people just dropping dead before infecting others? Do you even know how neurotoxins work? So far, all I have is this and I’m sticking with it. “He’s selecting, targeting, or whatever you want to call it, his victims by using a neurotoxin that the victims transfer to the preceding victim without ever knowing it. He’s created a chain reaction, killing the last people that come in contact with his last victim. So I’m promising you, whoever Alice touched last is in that classroom and they’re about to give someone else, if not the entire class, the neurotoxin. So I need you and your rent-a-cops to get your asses in gear, put on your serious, big boy pants, and get down there and quarantine that class before more people start dying.”
He looks at me with fully justifiably suspicious eyes. I mean, I hardly believe that story myself and I was trying to convince myself that it was a thing before Lola and I watched those three precious frames of pure horror. I look at the officer and feel something rolling in my gut. Maybe the next victim isn’t in that room. Maybe whoever Alice touched already touched someone else, throwing us off, wanting us to quarantine just the classroom while it got away scot-free. Shit. If the demon is on to me, then I’m totally fucked. I have to hope right now that the demon doesn’t know that I’m completely aware of what it truly is, or how it’s doing all of this. If I’m lucky, it’ll still be in the classroom and I can partition off the kids one by one.
Another scream followed by dozens more roll down the hallway. I stop looking at the stupid principal and stare down the hallway where more and more classroom doors are opening, curious, morbidly interested heads are popping out. Any second now, they’re going to lose complete control. I see bodies stepping out of the doorways now, in front of me down the hall, to my right and left, out of my peripherals. This whole thing is about to blow. If another body drops, then this school is going to erupt and the demon is going to get away completely. It’s going to slip through my hands just as I was closing my fingers in around it. I want to scream, pull out my gun, squeeze as many rounds off into the rent-a-cops before running down that hallway to execute every one of the possible hosts for that demonic entity. So far, if the principal doesn’t move, that’s my only option. It’s the only plan that I can think of that will keep my daughter safe.
Or I could just run. I look at the security guards who are completely preoccupied by the screams, and the students that are beginning to trickle out of the classrooms, peeking around corners, and craning their necks to get a glimpse at the fresh abattoir. Not a single one of them still has eyes on me and if they’re worth anything they’re being paid, then this might just be my chance. I decide that it’s worth the try.
I go for it. I plant my feet on the white linoleum, leaving dead Alice behind me in a pool of her own fluids, and shoot down the hallway as quickly as I can. I dodge the principal, who doesn’t even register my flight with the bubbling chaos that is rising up all around him. All I care about is getting to the hallway where five kids are now stumbling out, their hands over their mouths. A girl plants her hands on the lockers nearest to the classroom before she bends over and relieves herself of her lunch. There’s more screams, more shouts, and soon, there are others vomiting all around me. All I know is that this place is going to need to be emptied immediately.
“Stand aside,” I shout to the five kids. I can hear the principal coming hard down the hallway after me, shouting to his hired help to stop me. Thankfully, there are too many children around for them to pull out their tasers and put me down.
I feel the principal’s hand clamp down on my shoulder and I resist the urge to just lay him out, but instead, I think I’m going to need him. He looks at me with horrified eyes, seeing into the classroom at whatever the demon has waiting for me before I get a chance to enter the room. His eyes are transfixed, glued to the scene within. Thankful for the momentary lapse in his focus, I use it to my advantage.
“Hey,” I slap him across the cheek, bringing him back to reality. He flinches and shudders before shooting a hand up to his cheek, rubbing where I smacked him as hard as I can. His eyes are watery, terrified, and as clear as a mountain creek. “I need you to focus,” I tell him. “I need you to keep anyone coming out of this classroom nearby. I don’t want you to touch them, I don’t want you to speak with them, and I don’t want them getting out of your sight. Everyone in this classroom needs to be against the wall and everyone else in this school, I need them to get out. Whatever you have to do, get them out of here.”
He nods to me, barely cognizant, from what I can tell. His already shaken mind is now a whirlwind of questions, memories of what’s lurking in that room, and scenarios of what co
uld possibly be happening to his school. I look at him, hoping that he’s done with his little power struggle with me and I can expect him to actually help me now. He stares at me, blinking, while I give him a shove. Several of his security are standing in their uniforms like golems, staring into the classroom where dozens of teens are up against the walls, trying to sort through what they’ve witnessed before they escape whatever horror has happened inside. Reaching down to my side, I grip my badge and yank it free. It’s time to do this. I don’t want any of them to touch me, but if that’s how the demon wants to play this, then so be it.
“Evacuate the school,” the principal tells one of the guards. “I want you to have the teachers escort the students off of the campus. Tell them that we have a serious incident and that everyone needs to get out. Don’t let them see Alice. Make sure they’re going different directions.”
“You got it.” One of the men turns and starts to take off slowly, picking up pace the farther away he gets from the gravity well that is the classroom.
“You two take the other halls,” the principal says as I try to figure out what the hell I’m doing. I might have a little time before the ambulances arrive. If they take my theory to heart, then they’re going to call the Center for Disease Control. They’ll call them up and they’ll have hazmat crews sent out, a quarantine set up, and I’ll have plenty of time to make my way through all of the students in the classroom, questioning each of them. If that’s not enough time, then the tests will ensue and the demon is going to have plenty of doctors to jump inside of. I look at students nearest me and wonder if it wouldn’t make more sense right now to start threatening each of them. Maybe the demon will come out that way. Then again, maybe it’ll just stay dormant until I’m forced to take more drastic measures.
The Darkness Inside Us (A Detective King Suspense Thriller) (A Detective King Novel Book 3) Page 6
