by Lukens, Mark
For just a second Ray was back at his home again, back in his own bedroom, swinging a golf club at an intruder who was trying to choke Kim to death. This was just like that. He had killed that ripper with one swing, but that had been with a golf club.
The Dark Angel was down, but he wasn’t dead. He stared up at the ceiling. His goggles were still on his face, but pulled down on one side, exposing one eye. His hat was off and underneath his head somewhere. The DA was carved into his forehead and in the darkness it looked like jagged black lines on his pale flesh.
Ray still gripped the shotgun, aiming it down at the Dark Angel now.
“Hit him again, Dad!” Mike yelled, and again Ray was reminded of being at his home with Mike yelling at him to hit the man again with the golf club. One strike of the golf club had been enough for the ripper in their bedroom, but not enough for this Dark Angel.
“Stay back,” Ray told Mike.
Mike took a few steps back towards the wall.
Ray stared down at the fallen Dark Angel, still aiming the shotgun down at him. A few seconds ago it had seemed like time had stretched out, but now it seemed like everything was happening too fast.
The Dark Angel stared up at the classroom ceiling with his one bulging eye exposed, the white of his eye so luminescent and wet in the darkness. He swallowed hard, his mouth drawn down into a severe frown. He looked dazed, confused about why he was lying on the floor. But he still wasn’t moving or talking.
Ray’s eyes shifted to the sidearm on the Dark Angel’s hip—he was waiting for the man to go for his gun.
CHAPTER 34
Ray
Ray had to calm down and think for a minute. The Dark Angel still hadn’t moved or spoken, he still hadn’t gone for the gun on his hip or reached for the walkie-talkie stuffed into another pouch. He was still lying on his back, flat on the floor, staring up at the ceiling. He still seemed dazed, perhaps not even fully conscious yet. Maybe Ray hadn’t killed the man, but maybe he had scrambled the man’s brain, either temporarily or permanently. Ray could imagine the man’s brain swelling at that very second, fluid building up to an unbearable pressure.
Out of the corner of his eye, Ray noticed that Mike and Emma were on their feet, fueled by adrenaline and relief that Ray had taken the Dark Angel out. Mike still had the small flashlight in his hand, and it was still lit.
“Turn the flashlight off,” Ray told Mike.
Mike thumbed the switch on the side of the flashlight and the beam went out.
It was nearly dark now, and Ray didn’t want a ripper or a Dark Angel to spot the beam of light in the classroom window from somewhere outside.
The next thing Ray had to do was get the handgun away from the Dark Angel. Ray kept his shotgun aimed at the man’s chest as he bent down and pulled the pistol free from the holster on his hip. The man still hadn’t moved.
Ray still wasn’t comfortable with guns. He set the pistol down on the floor and kicked it away from them.
The third thing Ray needed to do was get the classroom door closed. He backed away from the Dark Angel on the floor, still keeping the shotgun aimed at him. He peeked out through the doorway, looking up and down the hall. No one out there that he could see. He closed the door as best he could, jamming it against the metal frame, but it wasn’t closed all the way, and it couldn’t be locked now. He pulled one of the desks over to the door, shoving it against the door.
Ray hurried back to the Dark Angel and took the walkie-talkie out of the pouch on his other hip. Then he grabbed at the goggles on the man’s face, yanking them up over his head, lifting his head up a little. The man’s neck creaked like a sack of marbles being squeezed together. The Dark Angel screamed.
“Shut up!” Ray hissed and pointed the shotgun down at his face.
If there were other Dark Angels in the building, the man’s screams were going to bring them to this classroom.
The Dark Angel’s screams died down to a moan. He was breathing hard, rapid breaths, his chest heaving up and down. His face was slick with sweat. He swallowed again like his throat had gone dry. But he still wasn’t moving at all.
That’s when it hit Ray—the Dark Angel was paralyzed from the neck down, or at least from the chest down. When Ray had hit the man with the butt of his shotgun, he had missed and hit him at the base of his skull, possibly snapping some vertebrae and severing his spine. That’s why the Dark Angel hadn’t gone for his sidearm or the walkie-talkie. That’s why his assault rifle had slipped out of his dead and unresponsive fingers. That look in his eye wasn’t because his brain had been scrambled; it was shock as he realized that he’d been paralyzed.
“Hit him again, Dad,” Mike said, tears slipping down his face, his cheeks shiny in the darkness. “Kill him.”
Ray stared down at the Dark Angel.
“Please,” the Dark Angel said, staring right up at Ray. “Kill me. Don’t leave me like this.”
Ray still didn’t move or look away from the man. For a second his body was as frozen as the Dark Angel’s body was. Killing someone who was attacking him or his family was easy; it had been a split-second decision, a gut reaction, instinctual. But this felt different to Ray, killing this man would be murder.
“Please,” the Dark Angel whispered. “Please, kill me.”
Ray remembered Luke telling them how he had questioned one of the Dark Angels. Now it was Ray’s turn to get some answers. “How many of you are here in this town?”
The Dark Angel didn’t answer for a moment. He closed his eyes and swallowed hard again.
“How many?” Ray hissed. “If you want anything from me, then you have to help me.”
The man kept his eyes closed. He licked his lips and opened his eyes. “Murray got killed. I don’t know for sure about a few of the others, but most of us are still alive.”
“How many of you are there?”
“Twelve.”
Ray picked up the walkie-talkie. “Are they coming? Are they waiting to hear from you? What were your orders? Were you looking for us?” He realized that he was barking questions down at the man, too many questions for him to answer.
“They need . . . need to hear from me soon,” the Dark Angel finally answered. He closed his eyes again and licked his lips.
“Do they need to hear from you on the walkie-talkie?”
“Yes.”
“How soon?”
“I . . . I don’t know. Probably in the next ten minutes or so.”
Ray felt the ticking of the clock in his mind, not only the ten minutes that the Dark Angel had to respond, but also the amount of questions he would be able to ask the man in that amount of time. “What do they do if they don’t hear from you?”
The Dark Angel’s face scrunched a little, his eyes still closed, tears spilling out. “I don’t know. They might come looking for me.”
“Tell me the truth,” Ray said, poking the Dark Angel’s face with the barrel of the shotgun.
“I don’t know. Just kill me.”
Ray glanced across the room at Mike and Emma—they were still huddled close together by the wall. He knew they were scared. Maybe it was time to take a chance on going out the window to look for Luke and Josh.
“I’ll help you,” Ray whispered as he looked back down at the Dark Angel. “I will. I’ll do what you want. But like I said, you have to help me first.”
The man still had his eyes closed. He was still breathing heavily, nearly hyperventilating. He couldn’t nod, so he whispered: “Okay.”
“Who’s your leader?”
The Dark Angel’s eyes popped open.
“Who is he?”
“He’s . . . he’s the Dragon Lord.”
“How do you know him? Have you seen him?”
“He’s in my dreams. He comes to me. He comes to all of us.”
“What does he want?”
The man closed his eyes, still breathing heavily. For a moment Ray didn’t think he was going to answer. Then his eyes opened, and he whispered: �
��He wants everything.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“It’s a new world now,” the Dark Angel said. “And he wants to rule it all.”
A chill skittered across Ray’s skin. “What does this have to do with us? Why is he chasing us? Why does he want us so badly?”
“I don’t know. He just wants you. He wants all of you.”
“Ray,” Emma hissed.
Ray stood up, staring at Emma and Mike. Then he looked at the windows, thinking that maybe that was the reason she was calling him, but he didn’t see anyone out there, nothing moving around in the darkness. He was about to ask her what had alarmed her, but then he heard it—a noise somewhere out in the hallway, a familiar sound, a screeching that echoed down the hallways.
The rippers were coming.
CHAPTER 35
Ray
Ray looked back down at the Dark Angel lying on the floor. He saw the panic in the man’s eyes—he had heard the sound of the rippers out in the halls, he knew they were close.
“I told you what you wanted to know,” the Dark Angel said, his voice something between a shout and a whisper. “Now kill me.”
Ray didn’t respond to the Dark Angel. He looked at the windows. They were going to have to leave soon, take a chance on going out the windows into the darkness. The fire was still raging in the restaurant, and the light from it lit up part of the playing fields just a bit, an orange glow in the night sky. They couldn’t stay here in this classroom. The rippers would be down those halls soon, testing doors, kicking and pushing at them. They would be through the damaged door to this classroom in seconds. But if Ray, Emma, and Mike left the school, then how were Luke and Josh going to find them?
If they were even coming back.
Ray couldn’t think about Luke and Josh right now; he had to worry about getting Mike and Emma to safety somehow.
“Please,” the Dark Angel whispered. “Don’t leave me for the rippers. Shoot me.”
Ray got up and hurried over to the Dark Angel’s weapons on the floor—the assault rifle and the handgun. He picked them up and carried them over to the same window Luke and Josh had crawled out of over two hours ago. He set the guns on the floor and looked at Mike and Emma. “We need to go out this window.”
“But there might be rippers out there,” Mike said.
“There are going to be rippers in here soon,” Ray told him. “We can’t wait in here too much longer.”
“You could shoot them when they get inside,” Mike suggested to Ray.
How was Ray supposed to tell Mike that he didn’t really know how to use a gun? He’d never fired one before shooting the Dark Angel who had tried to take them hostage earlier. He wanted to be truthful with his son, but he also wanted Mike to trust and believe in him; he wanted him to look up to him like he looked up to Luke and Josh. “I don’t know how many rippers are coming.”
“We have three guns,” Mike argued.
“The guns will make too much noise. The sound will bring more rippers. And more Dark Angels.”
The walkie-talkie next to the guns crackled to life. A voice squawked from it. “Reed. What’s your location?”
Silence while the man on the walkie waited for a response. Ray glanced over at the Dark Angel on the floor; he was just a long, black shape in the darkness now, but Ray could hear the man’s labored breathing.
“Reed?”
Ray looked at Mike and Emma. “Get all of our packs and throw them out the window on the ground out there. Get ready to go out through the window when I tell you to.”
Mike still didn’t look too sure about this.
Just then the rippers in the school yelled and screeched, the sounds echoing down the hallway. There were loud banging noises, like the rippers were slamming into the metal lockers built into the hallway walls.
“They’re almost here,” Ray hissed at Mike. “Do what I said.”
Mike grabbed two of the backpacks and darted to the window after Ray opened it. Then Ray hurried back to the Dark Angel on the floor.
The Dark Angel looked hopeful when he saw that Ray still had the shotgun with him. “Please. Shoot me.”
“I can’t,” Ray whispered.
The Dark Angel’s face suddenly turned mean. “You know what I was going to do to those two? I was going to kill your boy, cut his throat and watch him bleed out. And then I was going to do some terrible things to the pretty blond girl. I was going to take my time with her.”
Ray realized that the Dark Angel was trying to bait him into shooting him, but he wasn’t going to do it. “The gun will make too much noise,” Ray whispered. “The rippers will hear the gunshot and come right through that door.”
“I have a knife,” the Dark Angel told him. “A hunting knife. Use that. Cut my throat.”
Ray shook his head. His stomach was turning. “I’m sorry. I can’t do that.”
“Stab me in the eye, then,” the man begged. “Push the knife down deep into my brain. I won’t even feel it.”
Ray shook his head again. He felt like he was going to puke at any second. He looked over at the window. Mike and Emma were there, waiting for his go-ahead.
“I’ll scream,” the Dark Angel said. “If they’re going to get me, then I’ll make sure they get all of you, too.”
Ray pulled off the Dark Angel’s black glove from his lifeless hand; it was made out of some kind of neoprene fabric. For a moment the Dark Angel looked hopeful, maybe thinking that Ray had given in and was pulling the hunting knife out of the sheath, but then the man’s eyes widened in shock when Ray grabbed the tape dispenser on the floor.
“What are you—” the man began.
Ray shoved the glove down into the man’s mouth and then wrapped strips of tape around his head, pulling his head up just a little to get the tape all the way around his head, the tape keeping the glove stuffed in his mouth. The Dark Angel screamed into the impromptu gag as Ray lifted his head up.
“They might not come in here,” Ray whispered to the man. “They might pass us by. You stay quiet. If you’re lucky, your Dark Angel buddies will find you and put you out of your misery.”
From the look in the Dark Angel’s eyes, Ray didn’t think the man was holding out much hope of that prospect.
Ray hurried over to Emma and Mike at the window. “I’ll go out first,” he whispered to Mike. “Then you help Emma through. Okay?”
Mike nodded, but he still looked nervous.
Ray put the Dark Angel’s night vision goggles around his neck, then he grabbed the pistol and shoved it into the waistband of his pants. He leaned the M-16 and the shotgun right by the window so he could grab them once he was outside—he didn’t want Mike touching either weapon. Ray wasn’t sure if the guns could go off just by touching the trigger.
A moment later, Ray was outside. He tried to be quiet, but it sounded to his own ears like he was making too much noise. He crouched down under the window for just a moment, looking around. He brought the night vision goggles up to his eyes, searching the playing fields and then the woods beyond. He didn’t see anyone moving around out there. He pulled the goggles back down to his neck and stood up, reaching in through the window to grab the assault rifle and the shotgun. He leaned both weapons against the brick wall of the building a few feet away, moving the backpacks over by the weapons.
“Help Emma through,” Ray whispered to Mike when he was back in front of the window. He wanted to pull the goggles back up to his eyes again and check the fields behind him, but he also didn’t want to waste the precious seconds. He hadn’t seen any rippers or Dark Angels out there, and he had to resist the urge to keep checking even though his skin was crawling with fear. He couldn’t help feeling like he had missed someone out there in the darkness.
Mike helped Emma through the window, but he didn’t have to do much—it seemed like Emma could have gotten out through the window by herself, merely by feel and touch. She was on the ground a second later and Ray guided her over by the wall.
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The classroom door burst open.
The Dark Angel on the floor screamed into the glove stuffed down into his mouth as three rippers rushed in, crashing down onto him, ripping at his clothes, cutting strips of cloth away with the knives they had, then his flesh. The strips of tape and the glove were torn away from his mouth, and one of the rippers leaned down to tear off part of the man’s nose with his teeth.
Mike was frozen by the window for a moment, staring back at the slaughter like he was too shocked to move, hypnotized by the horror.
The Dark Angel was still alive, still screaming loudly now that the glove was out of his mouth.
Ray reached in through the window and touched his son’s hand, tearing his attention away from the rippers, but trying not to make any noise.
“Come on,” Ray whispered.
He locked eyes with his son for just a second, then he glanced beyond him into the dark classroom. The ripper that had been tearing chunks of flesh out of the Dark Angel’s face stood up, noticing Mike standing in front of the window. And it didn’t help that a splash of headlights from outside had just illuminated Mike and Ray.
Ray looked back at the headlights—a loud vehicle was coming their way.
CHAPTER 36
Luke
“Right there!” Josh yelled.
Luke had found a narrow path at the side of the school that he could fit the old, rumbling van through. A moment later they were speeding across the playing fields behind the school, the large brick school building whipping by in a blur out the passenger window. And then Luke saw what Josh had spotted: two people were standing beside a line of windows halfway down the next building, a man and a woman—Ray and Emma.
Where was Mike?
Luke gunned the gas, the van speeding up, the powerful engine growling. He glanced to his left as he drove, trying to spot any other vehicles in the vast playing fields that stretched off towards the darkness, but he didn’t see any headlights out there.
