No Shelter (Holly Lin, No. 1)

by Robert Swartwood

  He moved to the side so he was standing in her way again.

  “Sarah, please. I acted like an asshole back there, and I wanted to—”

  “I have to go.”

  “What?”

  “Chad”—speaking between clenched teeth—“get out of my way.”

  “But—”

  She pushed him, much harder than she intended, catching him by surprise and knocking him off balance. He stumbled backward, tripping over his own feet and falling to the floor.

  “What the fuck?” he said loudly, then quickly shut his eyes and raised his shoulders, hoping no student (or administrator) was nearby.

  She was already walking past him, ignoring him as he called her name, asking what was wrong, what her problem was, then, under his breath, calling her what sounded like crazy bitch.

  That last bit almost stopped her, her body shaking even more, the blood so loud in her ears she could hardly hear her own thoughts. The idea of turning around, stomping back toward Chad, slapping him across the face appealed to her in a way she knew was wrong. She even paused for an instant, considering it, then continued forward, passing different Art projects taped to the walls, one of them having pulled away from the wall and hanging limp, like it would fall down at any moment.

  She hurried around the corner, came to the room, tried the door but it was locked just as she knew it would be. Fumbling then in her pocket, bringing out the keys, she thought briefly of Eileen, thinking that she wasn’t a complete non-faculty because at least she had a room key. As she opened the door she could hear her cell phone vibrating in her bag located beneath the shelf behind the teacher’s desk.

  A minute, that terrible voice had told her, she had one minute to answer her cell phone, and as she sprinted past the desks to the front of the room, tore open her canvas bag, she knew that Chad Cooper had caused her to miss her deadline, that when she found her phone the sixty seconds would be up.

  The phone was still vibrating when she pressed the TALK button and held it to her ear.

  “Three seconds left,” the voice said. “I didn’t think you were going to make it.”

  So far—from leaving the lunchroom, to her encounter with Chad Cooper, to entering room 218—she had managed to hold back the tears. Now they sprang freely, running down her face.

  “Why are you doing this?”

  “Do you know what I find interesting? You denied being Elizabeth Piccioni only once. Then I mentioned killing your son and you immediately dropped the pretense. Why do you think that is?”

  “Please”—clearly sobbing now—“I don’t know what this is about.”

  “I also find it interesting that you ended back up in a school. Only you’re not a real teacher now, are you? What’s the proper word for someone like you?”

  Her legs had become much too weak so she pulled out the chair and sat down and propped her elbow on the desk and cradled her head with her free hand.

  “Elizabeth? I asked you a question.”

  “Teacher’s assistant,” she murmured. “I’m a teacher’s assistant.”

  “What does that pay—barely minimum wage? Do you even get health benefits?”

  “Please ... let my son go.”

  “Okay.”

  She paused, holding her breath.

  “I mean, you present such a solid argument. Plus, you asked nicely. Why shouldn’t I let your son go?”

  She stared down at the desktop, at the tests spread out before her. They were the ones she had graded only a few hours ago, Mary reviewing them before she added the scores into the computer.

  “Elizabeth?” When she didn’t answer, the voice said, “Elizabeth, answer me.”

  “What?”

  “If you haven’t figured it out by now, I’m not going to let your son go. I will promise you this, though—if you do exactly what I tell you to do, you will get him back alive and without a scratch.”

  Steeling herself, taking shallow breaths, she said, “What do you want from me?”

  “We’ll get to that. First, let’s go over the usual bullshit. No police. No talking about this to anyone. I’m keeping tabs on you, and any slight indication you’ve broken my simple rules, your son dies.”

  She was silent, staring down at the test on top of the pile, a quiz about volcanoes and earthquakes that was scored a 63%. It belonged to Dillon Bockian, a sweet boy but not very bright, whose parents she was pretty sure paid him hardly any attention at home.

  “Elizabeth?”

  She’d been sniffing back the tears, wiping at them, but one managed to escape and flee down her cheek. It paused on her chin and hung there for a second before it fell, splashing on the red ink marking Dillon’s test.

  She whispered, “Who are you?”

  “You can call me Cain.”

  “The world’s first murderer.”

  “Well, that’s open for debate. If anything, I think he was just a troubled, misunderstood individual. Now, Elizabeth, listen carefully, because I’m going to say this only once.”

  CHAPTER 3

  LEAVING SCHOOL WASN’T as easy as she had thought it would be.

  Just as Cain quit giving her instructions and disconnected, the bell rang, signaling the end of lunch. A moment later the door opened and in came Mary Boyle, her long gray hair trailing behind her, Mary’s lips pressed tightly together in a strange kind of smile as she approached the desk.

  Elizabeth said, “I have to leave.”

  Mary ignored this statement completely, striding right up to her and gently squeezing her arm. “He shouldn’t have singled you out like that in there—believe me, we all agree about that—but you really shouldn’t have pushed him down like you did. He was attempting to apologize, after all.”

  “What?”

  Before Mary could respond, the sound of frantic footsteps filled the hallway outside the door, sneakers squeaking against the linoleum, and then the door opened and the students began trickling in, first Roxane Leonard, her dark hair wrapped in a tight braid, followed by Kevin and Justin Humphrey, twins identical in every way except a slight birthmark on Justin’s left ear.

  More of the children entered the classroom, one after another, and though Elizabeth tried not to—though she tried to keep her mind as blank as she possibly could—she saw Matthew’s face in each of their faces, his eyes, his ears, his nose, even his crooked smile, and then Dillon Bockian came in and the tears threatened again, Elizabeth wanting to rush to him and take him in an embrace and tell him that he didn’t have to be scared of anything, he was a bright boy and would always be bright.

  But no, wait, she couldn’t do that, because some psychopath had taken her child, someone who had given her instructions, a deadline, and that deadline had been for five minutes and now how many precious seconds had she wasted here with Mary Boyle?

  “I threw up.”

  Mary turned to her, raising an eyebrow. “I beg your pardon?”

  For an instant her hands clenched into fists, the nails digging into her palms, Elizabeth wondering what kind of idiot still said I beg your pardon? these days. Mary Boyle, that’s who, and while Elizabeth had heard her say it countless times before—mostly during class when a student mumbled an answer to a question—the fact that this woman would say those four words now, to her face, while her child was someplace unsafe ...

  “I vomited. I’ve been sick all morning. Something I ate for breakfast, I think.”

  “You know,” Mary Boyle said, turning toward her desk to start tidying up the scattered papers, “food sickness usually isn’t the very last thing you ate. Most people think that it is, but ... Ms. Walter? Ms. Walter, where are you going?”

  Elizabeth, her bag hanging off her shoulder, headed straight for the door. She had to pause as a few more students straggled into the classroom, each of them smiling at her and waving and saying, “Hi, Ms. Walter,” but she ignored them all and then was through the door, her pace increasing with each step.

  How many seconds had passed, turning into
minutes, how many of those minutes had expired so far? Cain had only given her five, no more, and she had wasted them on Mary Boyle.

  “Sarah?” said a voice behind her, what sounded like Eileen’s, but Elizabeth kept walking, headed for the nearest exit, deciding she wasn’t going to check out first with the office, why should she? Yes, normally she would, but this wasn’t a normal day, far from it, and besides—thinking this as she pushed through the exit door, took in a deep breath of the crisp fall air—a half hour ago she had been Sarah Walter, a teacher’s assistant, but now she was Elizabeth Piccioni, a person she thought she would never be again.

  Her phone began vibrating as she reached the parking lot. She hesitated, then started running, her sneakers slapping against the macadam as she rushed for where her car was parked.

  But the phone would vibrate only four times before going to voicemail—she knew this for a fact—and she couldn’t let that happen, not to Cain, who had promised extreme violence against her son in the event she failed to comply with his instructions.

  On its third vibration she pulled the phone from her bag and placed it to her ear, nearly shouting, “Yes, I’m here.”

  “Are you in your car yet?”

  She suddenly stopped running, not wanting the sound of her footsteps or her ragged breathing to give away the fact that she had not yet made it to her car.

  “Yes,” she said, as calmly and coolly as possible.

  “I don’t believe you.”

  She closed her eyes, started forward, walking as quietly as she could. “But I am.”

  “Then beep the horn.”

  Her eyes snapped open and her head twisted back and forth on her neck. Vehicles surrounded her but none were unlocked—at least none that she knew of—and none had their windows down.

  Elizabeth said, “But won’t that draw attention to me?”

  “What do you care if attention is drawn to you?”

  “I just left school without permission. Honking my horn in the parking lot might not be the wisest decision.”

  “Are you seriously questioning me?”

  She turned to the closest car, a blue Saturn, and tried the door. Locked.

  “No,” she said. “But I—”

  “Beep the goddamn horn or else I’ll kill your son right now.”

  She hurried to the next car, an aging Buick, and tried the door knowing it wouldn’t open. It did. She leaned in and pressed down on the center of the steering wheel, convinced for an instant that the car’s horn was broken—that it wouldn’t even give off a pathetic little toot—but there it sounded, just as strong as she had hoped, breaking the fragile silence of the day.

  “There,” she said. “Happy?”

  Cain didn’t answer for the longest time, and she worried that she had somehow lost him, and that in losing him she had lost Matthew. Then he said, “The elementary school, you have fifteen minutes to get there,” and clicked off.

  She stood for a moment, still leaning into the Buick, noticing for the first time that Mardi Gras beads hung from the rearview mirror. She didn’t want to move, didn’t want to break whatever little luck she had managed to grasp. Because not only had she beeped the horn when Cain requested it, but she had inadvertently proved that he wasn’t close by watching her. Keeping tabs on her all the same, yes, but he couldn’t see her.

  Which, she quickly realized, wasn’t necessarily a good thing.

  Because if Cain wasn’t close, that meant Matthew wasn’t close either, which meant the two of them could be anywhere.

  Elizabeth sprinted for her car.

  CHAPTER 4

  CAIN HAD GIVEN her fifteen minutes to make it to the elementary school, but Elizabeth managed to make it in ten.

  Only pausing through stop signs, making every traffic light except one, she was doing nearly fifty in a thirty-five zone when she came around the bend of the development that lead to the school and saw the fire trucks, ambulances, police cars.

  The sudden salvo of so many flashing lights caused her heart to skip. She pressed down on the brakes so hard the tires screeched as her Corolla came to a halt. A horn blared behind her and a car swerved past her, its driver shouting at her in frustration.

  She glanced in the rearview mirror, conscious now that she wasn’t alone in the world, especially on this street. There was a car farther back coming her way and she hit the gas again, pulling over to the curb.

  Her hands shaking, her heart pounding, she turned off the car and got out and hurried toward the large group of mostly children fanned out on the soccer field. Teachers were circulating among the students, and there were a handful of police officers and firemen talking to each other and into radios.

  Elizabeth came up to the closest teacher—a young man named Mr. Daniels—and said, her voice a little too rushed, “What happened?”

  He stood with his arms crossed, holding a clipboard at his side. He glanced at her, glanced away, then glanced back when he recognized her as a school parent. He looked past her, as if what he had to say was completely confidential, before whispering, “Bomb threat.”

  The school itself stood maybe two hundred yards away, all that brick and mortar and glass much too close in the event a bomb really did detonate. There was nothing here to protect the children, nothing at all, but Elizabeth reasoned that there wasn’t a safe place to take them, not here in the middle of this neighborhood, not to shield over five hundred children from an explosion.

  “I’m looking for my son,” she said.

  The young teacher uncrossed his arms, looked down at his clipboard. “What’s your son’s—”

  She was moving before he could finish the question, having spotted Joyce Gibbons, her son’s teacher. Weaving in and out of children, some sobbing, some laughing, she noticed that Joyce was talking with Mrs. Ross, the assistant principal. Mrs. Ross holding the standard school-issue radio in her hand, a big black bulky thing, saying something to Joyce as she pointed across the field toward a row of newly developed houses.

  They must have heard her coming, or sensed her, or maybe Mr. Daniels had a radio of his own and warned them of her arrival, because they turned simultaneously, their bodies shifting to greet her.

  She said, breathless, “Where’s Matthew?”

  The teacher and assistant principal glanced at each other for a moment, long enough for a look of exhaustion to pass between them, Elizabeth no doubt the first in a very long line of parents who would be arriving with demands to see their child.

  Then Mrs. Gibbons, a plastic smile on her face, said, “He’s here.”

  Relief flooded her at once, her eyes closing, her shoulders lifting as she took in a large gulp of air and released it. She wanted to drop to the ground, scream her frustrations and happiness into the grass, but she managed to stay on her feet, a smile creeping on her face, as she said, “Where is he then? I need to see him.”

  Mrs. Gibbons lifted her clipboard, began shuffling papers, Elizabeth noticing from where she stood it was a list of the entire elementary school. Beside each name was a perfectly formed checkmark in blue ink, the pen of which rested in the crook of Mrs. Gibbons’ right ear.

  As Joyce Gibbons flipped through the attendance her posture changed. A slight scowl formed on her face. She glanced up at Mrs. Ross, glanced back at the clipboard, then said to the assistant principal, “Maybe he’s with Clark?”

  The relief that had so quickly flooded her now dissipated, leaving her dry and hollow, and before Mrs. Ross put the radio to her mouth and asked Clark (the school’s principal) if Matthew Walter was included in his group, Elizabeth knew why Cain had given her the extra time to make it here. He’d wanted her to see the fire trucks and ambulances and police cars, have another panic attack as her imagination threw its worst at her. Then, just as he had planned, she had dived into the sea of students, searching for her son, maybe finding a teacher who would tell her that her son was fine, safe, here with the rest of the students, and that the blessed relief she’d felt for only an instant w
ould pour into her until, when she asked for her son, demanded he be brought to her, she would receive the answer he had known she would, the one that Mrs. Ross, having listened to the radio, now looked at her with just a glance that told her the whole truth:

  Her son was missing.

  ALSO BY ROBERT SWARTWOOD

  NOVELS

  Man of Wax

  Ben Anderson goes to bed Sunday night, lying next to his wife in the comfort and safety of their Pennsylvania family home, to wake up the next day in a rundown motel in California — alone.

  He doesn't know how he got there, he doesn't know where his family is, and written in dried blood on the bathroom door are the words LET THE GAME BEGIN.

  Soon Ben is contacted by Simon. Simon knows all there is to know about Ben, more than he cares to remember himself.

  If Ben wants to save himself and his family, he will have to do everything Simon says.

  As the game begins — with stakes much higher than either man can imagine — no one knows where it will lead or how it will end.

  Only one thing is for certain: this time the game will change everything.

  Man of Wax is 80,000 words and the first book in a thriller trilogy where every day men and women must fight a power that threatens to destroy the world.

  “Man of Wax grabs you by the throat in the first chapter and never lets go. A suspense-filled thrill ride with plenty of shocks along the way. Read it!”

  — F. Paul Wilson

  —————

  The Dishonored Dead

  In a not-so-distant future, the world has devolved and most of the population has become the animated dead. Those few that are living are called zombies. They are feared and must be hunted down and destroyed.