by Raelyn Drake
“We’ll spread out,” he called back down to his friends. “Once you’re in a good spot, just lie still and try not to make any noise. With any luck, the CAPPers will search the basement, think we escaped, and leave to look for us somewhere else.”
The crawl space between the panels and the actual basement ceiling was full of layers of grime and dust and crisscrossed with pipes and wires. Sanjay could hear the noises from the floor above—scuffling feet and yelling—more clearly now, but he could barely see anything. There was no way of knowing what obstacles lay in his path.
“Chloe,” he called down, “hand me the flashlight. I’ll crawl ahead a bit to give you some room, and then you come up next.”
He heard Chloe crawl up the shaky pile of desks. The flashlight appeared through the hole in the ceiling. Sanjay grabbed it and cranked it to charge it.
Chloe pulled herself up into the crawl space, as Luis gave her a boost. She lay down flat and edged carefully to a spot a couple of feet away from Sanjay.
Luis was halfway up the pile of desks when they heard the door to the basement stairs open. Sanjay grabbed Luis’s hand and pulled as Luis kicked off the pile of desks to clamber up. He winced as the pile collapsed and the desks clattered to the floor beneath him. Once Luis was safely positioned, Sanjay slid the panel back into place so that it covered the hole in the ceiling again. The CAPPers would have heard the desks fall over, but they would find the storage room empty. Hopefully they wouldn’t think to check in the ceiling.
They held still as they heard people moving around in the basement and in the room below. There were raised voices outside the storage room, but the sound was muffled and Sanjay couldn’t make out what was being said.
“I bet we can get the teachers out of the boiler room through the ceiling,” Luis whispered. He and Chloe began to crawl in the general direction of the boiler room.
Sanjay moved toward the storage room. “You guys do that. I’m gonna see if I can make out what they’re saying.”
Chloe bit her lip, looking worried, but she nodded. She placed the flashlight on one of the ceiling panels so that it shone off into the crawlspace and illuminated the way for each of them.
“Be careful,” Luis whispered to him.
“You too.”
Sanjay slowly, carefully repositioned himself so he could army crawl along the ceiling in direction of the shouting. He wasn’t sure how secure the support grid was, and he hardly dared to breathe. With his chest pressed against the ceiling panels below him, he could feel his heart pounding. His arm scraped by a metal pipe that tore through his jacket and bit into his skin. He gritted his teeth against the pain and kept crawling. If he could just hear what the CAPPers were saying, then maybe they could get one step ahead of them.
By now Sanjay could hear the voices much more clearly, coming from below him. Sweat stung his eyes, but he willed himself to focus.
That was when he heard the creaking of the ceiling’s support grid.
“No, no, no, no!” Sanjay muttered desperately under his breath. He could feel the ceiling bending underneath him.
And then with a crash, he was falling. He yelped as he hurtled to the ground below, surrounded by a shower of dust and debris and ceiling tiles. He hit the basement floor with a whump that knocked the breath out of him.
Sanjay lay there for a moment in a daze, trying to get his breath back, trying to get his bearings. His ears were ringing from the impact, but he could hear surprised voices all around him.
When he was finally able to look up, Sanjay saw all of the CAPPers standing around him. He quickly shoved himself onto his feet and stood up, backing away. Bits of debris dropped from his body and a cloud of dust puffed as his back hit the wall behind him. He could see the stairs to get out were all the way on the other side of the basement, blocked by about thirty armed CAPPers.
“Sanjay,” Max said, shaking his head. “I’m disappointed. Why couldn’t you just stay put and let us protect you?”
Sanjay straightened. “You’re not protecting us—you’ve kidnapped us.”
Max took a step toward him and Sanjay raised his hands in front of himself on instinct. “Whoa now,” Max said. “Let’s just calm down. Everything’s all right. Let’s just talk.”
“How about you let us go? That’ll show me everything’s all right.”
Max took another step forward, and Sanjay felt his heart speed up. His eyes darted around the room, desperate for anything he could use to fend them off if he had to.
Then the sound of feet came pounding down the stairs. “Get away from my son!” a voice snapped.
Everyone turned, and Sanjay was shocked to see his mother rush into the basement with about a dozen other parents and a handful of uniformed police officers. He’d never seen such an intensity on his mom’s face before.
Max turned and gave her a smile but didn’t step away from Sanjay. “Now, ma’am,” he said, “we don’t want any trouble here. It would be a shame if anyone got hurt.”
“That’s right,” came Officer Mendoza’s voice as she rounded the corner, followed by Chloe and Luis and the rest of the faculty members from the boiler room.
As they filed into the space, Officer Mendoza added, “So I suggest you think carefully before you do anything you’ll regret, Max.”
Several of the CAPPers shifted nervously, glancing from the cluster of angry parents to the group of newly freed teachers.
It was clear that the CAPPers were outnumbered.
Chapter 10
Sanjay’s mom glared at Max. “How could you do this to our children?” she shouted, gesturing at Sanjay. This was the angriest he had ever seen his mom.
“Mom—” Sanjay tried to get her attention, but his throat felt dry.
“Not only were we dealing with an alien attack, but then we find out you’ve been keeping our children hostage in their own school? What were you thinking?”
“Mom!” Sanjay practically shouted this time, and everyone fell silent. “What’s going on? How did all of you get here?”
Sanjay’s mom turned to look at him, her brow creased with concern. “When we got to the emergency shelter, we’d all assumed the school would have transported you kids there, like the others schools did.” She glared at Max again. “And then a few of these CAPP people showed up, saying they’d taken over the high school and wouldn’t release anyone until everyone at the shelter agreed to stay in town and band together against the aliens.”
Sanjay stared at Max in disbelief. “That was your big plan? Keep the high schoolers hostage in order to get people to cooperate?”
Max wouldn’t meet his eyes.
“We weren’t about to leave you kids to this so-called community group,” Luis’s father continued. He gestured to the police officers who’d showed up with the parents. “These officers were kind enough to help us come back for you.”
“You have our full support,” Officer Mendoza told him. “I’m only sorry that we lost control of this situation.”
Chloe’s aunt turned to Officer Mendoza and the teachers. “How did you get out? I thought they had you all locked up.”
She grinned and pointed her thumb at Chloe and Luis. “These two tricksters snuck into the boiler room through the ceiling and helped us break through the door.” Chloe and Luis grinned, and Luis proudly held up his screwdriver.
“You don’t have to worry anymore,” Officer Mendoza said then. “We’re taking control over the school and will help transport everyone back to the emergency shelter. You kids are safe now, I promise.”
But that didn’t do much to calm Sanjay. The CAPPers had promised them the same thing. At this point, he found the words hard to take seriously even when they came from a police officer.
“The rest of the rescue party is upstairs with the students in the library and gym,” Sanjay’s mom said, “but when we didn’t see any CAPPers upstairs we knew they must be up to something somewhere else.” She looked at Max like she wanted to start yelling again.
/>
Max opened his mouth to speak, but Sanjay cut in. “Mom, it’s okay, they didn’t hurt us. I mean, yeah, they did kinda kidnap us and keep us from leaving—”
“And they were rude and threatening—” Luis chimed in.
“But,” Sanjay continued, “they never actually did anything to hurt us.”
Max looked mortified. “I can’t excuse what happened, but I can try to explain,” he said, looking at the others. “The instant the Visitors’ ships appeared in the sky, CAPP mobilized. We have plans for any sort of emergency, even EMP blasts. We knew that people’s first instinct would be to flee, to take their kids and get out of the town. And we knew that if everyone did that, there would hardly be anyone left in the community to help us defend against the aliens.”
He took a deep breath before continuing. “So we decided to enforce a lockdown at the high school. We figured the students would be safest here anyway, and if we had the kids, then we could ensure cooperation from their families.”
Sanjay’s mom glared at him. “That is horrible. That is just … vile.”
Max winced. “Our intentions were in the right place.”
“You didn’t have to steal our kids just to get us to stay and help the community,” Chloe’s uncle said.
“We would never abandon this town at a time like this,” Luis’s mom said.
“But of course we’re going to do whatever it takes to get our kids back,” Chloe’s aunt said.
Luis’s dad nodded in agreement, then looked to Officer Mendoza. “What are we going to do with the CAPPers now?” he asked. “Shouldn’t they be held responsible for what they did?
All the others turned to look at Officer Mendoza, and she sighed as she considered the question. “Normally, sure, they would have to answer for what they did. But we’re missing the big picture here. Aliens have attacked Earth. Things will never be normal again. Fear can make people do stupid things—”
“Really, incredibly stupid things,” Ms. Kim muttered, giving Max a pointed look.
Officer Mendoza continued. “What the CAPPers did was wrong, but they did it for the right reasons. And I’m sure they’ll all find ways to make it up to us in the weeks to come. To start, CAPP can bring all of the supplies it has stockpiled to the emergency shelter to share with everyone there. The important thing now is to come together as a community and figure out how we’re going to move forward from here.”
Sanjay noticed tears in several eyes and jaws set in determination.
He looked at Max. He wasn’t sure he’d ever be able to trust him again, but maybe he could find it in himself to forgive him. Officer Mendoza was right. They would all need each other if they hoped to survive in this new, Visitor-infested world.
Then he looked at Chloe and Luis. “So who’s ready to plan a rebellion against some aliens?”
About the Author
Raelyn Drake lives in Minneapolis, Minnesota, with her husband (who would help her lead the resistance against the aliens) and her rescue corgi mix, Sheriff (whom the aliens would bribe with belly rubs and tennis balls).
