A screaming silver face slammed against the glass.
Mark yelled, stumbling backward to bump heavily into the wall of the parking bay. He scrabbled along the stone barrier, fighting to get farther away from the thrashing horror in the car that battered the windows and shook the seats. Then he was seized by the arm, and Paul pulled him sideways and out of the bay. He tripped to the floor and lay there, manic with shock.
Paul and Johnny approached the car warily. The Infected was making a heck of a racket, its buzz-saw shrieks echoing off the walls, but when it didn’t come out after them, Mark realized it was stuck in there. After taking a few moments to collect himself, he got to his feet and joined the others.
“Well,” said Johnny. “Looks like you found him.”
The Infected within was small, and its ghoulishly distorted face bore little trace of the boy it had once been. Now it was just a thing, a monster of sinew and silver. It scratched stupidly at the windshield, trying to get to them, snarling like an animal.
“All it has to do is unlock the door,” said Johnny.
“It’s not smart enough,” said Paul. He turned to Mark. “What did Radley say? They’re only smart in groups?”
Mark just about managed to squeak a “Yes” from a throat that had gone suddenly dry.
“I suppose this one got left on its own. Maybe the concrete walls are too thick for it to connect with its friends.”
“I guess we don’t need to worry about making noise, then,” said Johnny. He tossed away the coat hanger and brandished the iron bar he’d been carrying for defense. “The direct route it is.” He smashed the window of a nearby car, reached in, and popped the hood.
They left the Infected in the car while they searched. It was hard on Mark’s nerves, hearing the creature screeching away in the background, but at least that meant they knew where it was. If it went quiet, that was when he’d worry.
Occasionally they set off an alarm on one of the newer models, but Mark worked out how to disable them quickly enough once they had the hood up. He worried about the noise attracting the Infected, but if they heard, they made no sign. He just had to hope that wherever they’d gone, they’d gone for good.
They checked car after car, but none had the kind of spark plug they needed for the helicopter.
His earlier optimism began to feel foolish. Had he been clutching at straws the whole time? What had Carson said? Ain’t likely … Helicopter engines and car engines ain’t all that similar. What if this didn’t work? What if they couldn’t fix the chopper?
Suddenly, the mental flowchart he’d been relying on had come to a dead end.
Faster and faster he searched the cars, leaving their hoods open and their guts gaping. He unscrewed spark plug after spark plug, then flung them over his shoulder in disgust.
“Not right! Not right! Not right!”
“Hey,” said Paul, laying a hand on his arm to still him. “Hey, it’s okay. Look, it was a long shot, and we had to try something. Might be that the Infected have left anyway, right?” Paul was trying and failing to hide the disappointment in his own voice. “So we head back to the science block, and if Adam refills those generators, then we’ll be safe till morning. Help’s gotta come by then, right?”
“No!” Mark shouted. “No, I don’t want to go back there! We have to get out of this place, don’t you get it? We have to —”
The lights went out. The words died in his throat.
For a few seconds they stood there, not daring to move, frozen in the pitch darkness of the windowless garage.
Then the shrieking began. Not just a single voice. A dozen, two dozen, more, rising from all over the campus like the hunting cry of a wolf pack.
The Infected hadn’t gone. They’d been hiding. Waiting.
Until now.
“They’re coming!” screamed the lookout as she hurried down the stairs from the roof. “They’re coming from everywhere!”
Erika had been on her way to check the defenses on the western side of the science block when the lights went out. She’d felt the hand of dread then, as she stood stock-still, waiting for her eyes to adjust because she hadn’t thought to bring a flashlight with her. When she heard the rising shrieks from all over the campus, she’d known what was coming, and yet some small part of her had clung to hope. The hope that whatever terror was about to occur would pass them by.
The lookout’s warning put an end to that.
BOOM!
She jumped at the sound, which came from a nearby corridor. It took her a moment to recognize it. Something had pounded on the door to the stairwell. Something that made the stout barricade of benches and tables shift and groan.
They’re out there, she thought. They’ve been waiting just outside those doors the whole time.
Waiting for the electricity to be shut off.
BOOM!
Move, she told herself, but she didn’t know where. What could she do? How could she possibly stop this?
Children burst screaming from classrooms. She heard smashing glass and splintering wood. The sound of a flash bomb, dazzling light flickering from a classroom down the hall.
Indecision gripped her. Paul had left her in charge, but there was no way to fight against those things, no way to repel a concerted assault. She backed up the corridor, blinking away the afterimage of the flash bomb, and looked into another classroom in time to see something moving beyond the window. A shadow, glimpsed through the gaps between the boards.
They’re climbing up the walls!
A claw swept into the classroom, smashing through glass and wood, tearing a way inside. The owner was long-limbed and spindly, a ragged thatch of filaments hanging over an inhuman face, two cold eyes burning in the darkness. Its fingers were long and sharp, hag’s claws, and as it came clambering in, it moved like some horrifying insect.
Erika barely even knew she had the Molotov cocktail in her hand until she’d lit it. The flame that ran up the rag focused her. It drew the attention of the Infected, too. The creature screeched as it saw her, gathered itself, and leaped through the air, covering the length of the room in one bound.
But the bottle of turpentine had already left Erika’s hand. She threw herself aside, the creature and the bottle met in midair, and a fiery bundle of limbs came crashing into the hallway, right at the spot where Erika had been standing. She scrambled away as the thing thrashed and squealed, but the flames had it now, and there was nothing it could do to save itself. It finally slumped in a heap, its blazing body blocking the way, cutting Erika off from the growing chaos on the other side.
The kids … oh, no, the kids …
BOOM!
She heard the cracking of wood as the doors to the stairwell began to give way, but she still didn’t know what to do, where to run, because they were coming from below and all around and they were even on the roof now. She could hear them up there.
No way out.
Paul’s words came to her then. Carson’s the important one. Without him, that helicopter’s useless, and we’re done for. If anything happens, you need to get Carson to the helicopter.
She fixed on that idea. She didn’t know how she could get him out. She didn’t know how she could get anyone out, not even herself. But she couldn’t just stand here. She had a task, and that was all she had to cling to.
She turned from the flames and ran, back toward the room where she’d last seen the pilot and the scientist. As she went, the screams of the younger kids echoed after her, and her vision blurred with tears.
Too late, Adam thought. I’m too late.
He’d made it to the basement without coming across any trace of them. Paul had told him about the press-switches that turned on the lights, but Adam hadn’t needed them. He had his flashlight in one hand, the radiator pipe in the other. If that janitor showed his face, he’d get a clubbing like he’d never forget.
After a little searching, he’d found a faded plastic sign pointing the way to the generator room, and followe
d it. The dark didn’t bother him much. He’d faced too many real threats in his life to be scared of imaginary ones. As he slipped through the tunnels, he heard the hum and rattle of the generators, getting louder and louder as he closed in on them.
And he heard when they shuddered and stopped.
There was a terrible quiet left in their wake. Distantly, he heard a faint chorus of wild screeching coming from the campus above. And behind him, somewhere down the corridor, he heard the dragging of metallic feet.
Adrenaline flooded him, gearing him up to fight or run. He swore under his breath. He could hear other movements now, soft shuffles and scrapes that had previously been masked by the sound of the generators. In the labyrinth it was hard to tell where they came from, or how far away they were. He shone his light this way and that, in case anything was sneaking up on him. Nothing.
Then his flashlight beam fell on a sign on the wall in front of him. Another plastic arrow, pointing the way to the generator room.
Going back was no good. There were Infected in that direction, and anyway, with the science block defenseless, he wasn’t sure what he’d be going back to. But at least he might be able to get those generators running again. Turn on the lights, maybe get the electricity back on the barricades. Give everyone a fighting chance.
He’d been entrusted with a job. An important job. Not told to, not made to, but entrusted. Because he was the best man for it. And he was going to get it done.
He headed off down the corridor. His flashlight would give him away to any Infected nearby, but that couldn’t be helped. He’d rather face them head-on in the light than get pounced on in the dark.
Reaching a corner, he shone the beam around. There was no sign of movement, only another tunnel lined with doors. He hurried onward, and was halfway along it when something caught his eye. He aimed his light at the foot of one of the doors.
A ruined padlock lay on the ground. It looked like it had been chewed through. He raised the beam of the flashlight. The door was made of flaking metal, and hung slightly ajar. A rectangular patch, lighter than the rest, showed where there had once been a sign. Scrawled in its place in permanent marker were the words: GENERATOR ROOM.
They got in. They killed the power on purpose, timed it to match their attack, just like last time. Clever sods.
Probably they’d already sabotaged the generators by now. Or maybe they’d simply switched them off. Either way, he’d come too far to go back.
He reached out carefully, pushed the door open, and shone the flashlight inside.
With a scream, the janitor lunged into the light.
Carson and Radley were in the lab where Erika had left them. Radley had crushed himself into a corner; Carson was beating an Infected over the head with an iron bar as it tried to climb through the window. As she burst in, the creature fell off the sill with a shriek.
“You have to get us out of here!” Radley yelled at Carson.
The pilot retreated from the window, out of breath from his savage exertions. “Get us where?” he cried.
Radley ignored him and turned on Erika. “They’ve evolved, don’t you see? I told you they would! Climbers! They’re specializing!”
“You shut your mouth!” Carson barked at him, pointing the bar threateningly in Radley’s direction. Once the scientist had clammed up, he turned to Erika. “Is there a way out of here?”
Erika was choked up with fright, and the words wouldn’t come. “I can’t … I don’t … They’re everywhere!” she managed at last.
She felt on the verge of hysteria. Some part of her was aware enough to be ashamed of herself, but she couldn’t help it.
“Hey.” Carson held out his free hand, fingers splayed, his rough voice softening as if he were gentling a skittish horse. “Calm down a moment. Take a breath.”
She swallowed and nodded. Took a little of his calm for herself.
“Now think,” he said. “We gotta get out of here. What’s the safest way?”
Safest? There was no safest way. The Infected were coming from every direction.
Except maybe one.
“The back,” she said, her eyes widening in realization. “The science block is open on three sides, but at the back there’s only the campus wall. If the Infected are coming at us from all over the campus —”
“They won’t be coming from that direction,” Carson finished.
“You want to go out there? Outside?” Radley shrilled.
“You want to stay, be my guest,” said Carson. He turned his gaze to Erika. “Lead on.”
The hallways were filling with smoke. Impossible silhouettes flitted across fiery doorways, like capering demons from some medieval nightmare.
“Out the back!” Erika screamed to anyone within earshot, and immediately began to cough. She seized a frantic student and shoved him in the direction he needed to go. “That way! Out the windows!”
Radley pushed past her. Carson’s arm was across his shoulders; the pilot was limping as fast as he was able with his twisted ankle. Erika looked around for more kids. There had to be more. She couldn’t just leave them; she was supposed to look after them.
But they were lost, somewhere in the smoke and the screams and the fire, and she didn’t know where they were.
BOOM! And this time there came the grinding of splintered wood after the impact, a massive, slow sound like a ship’s prow plowing into a dock. The barricade was being bulldozed aside. Somewhere out of sight, the doors to the back stairs had been driven open, and the Infected were swarming through.
No time left. No way she could save anyone else. But she could try to save the pilot.
They burst into a classroom darker than the firelit corridor. Moonlight slid through the gaps between the planks that covered the windows. Those windows faced the back of the science block, and they were unbroken. The Infected hadn’t come in this way.
Carson left Radley to close the door, then limped to the window and began prying the planks with the iron bar in his hands. Erika ran to help, tugging them away as he loosened them.
Escape was hopeless, she knew that. Even if they got outside, it would be out of the frying pan and into the fire. In the open, with Infected everywhere, they’d be caught in seconds. But she wouldn’t stop; she wouldn’t lie down and accept her fate. She’d struggle till the end, because that was all she had left.
“Hurry up!” Radley snapped at them. He opened the door a crack and peered outside. “Hurry up, they’re coming!”
Carson swore at him under his breath. With a wrench, the last plank fell away. He smashed the window, cleared the jagged glass from the frame, and looked out. Erika looked out with him.
At the back of the science block, a sunken path ran around the exterior of the building. On the other side of the path, the ground rose up, a slope topped with a thick row of bushes, separating the path from a narrow strip of lawn. Beyond that was the wall.
And in that slender space between building and wall, there were no Infected to be seen.
“Go!” said Carson, his eyes glimmering fiercely in the moonlight. “I’m right behind you.”
Erika didn’t argue. She climbed up onto the windowsill. The drop looked scary, but if she hung off with her fingers, it wouldn’t be so bad. Two yards or so, that was all. She shuffled herself around so she was kneeling on the sill, facing into the room, and got ready to lower herself.
“Hurry up!” Radley said again, and then the door exploded inward and a huge hand reached in and seized him by the leg. The scientist screamed as he was pulled out into the hall. But he only screamed for a moment.
Something dark dipped its misshapen head and glared in through the doorway with round blue eyes. Its dreadful gaze caused Erika to lose her balance on the sill. She slipped backward and fell through the air, panic bursting across her senses.
She landed on her back in the bushes with a flurry of vicious scratches. But the bushes were soft, and raised higher than the path, so they cradled her as she hit an
d nothing was broken in the impact. She was still looking up at the window when Carson launched himself out. He flailed clumsily in the air before landing in the bushes next to her with a grunt of pain.
Her senses locked back into place and she could move again. Suddenly she knew what she had to do. She clambered to her feet, grabbed Carson’s hand, and hauled him out of the leaves. He suppressed a yell as his ankle came down.
“Under the bushes!” she gasped. “Get under the bushes!”
It took him a moment to understand her, but when he did, he scrambled to obey. The bushes were thick, but they were set widely enough to push through, and there was space underneath. They crammed themselves in where they could, hiding like children from the horrors of the night.
When they were in as far as they could go, they stopped, and there they lay cocooned in the cold, damp tangle of leaf and branch, chests heaving. They listened to the sound of their breathing and the dreadful shrieks of the Infected as they went to work on the children left behind.
The science block was burning.
Paul had cracked opened the metal door of the parking garage to stare through the gap. Distant flames blurred in the wetness of his eyes. His breathing grew ragged with emotion. He watched, transfixed, disbelieving, as the last of his hope died.
Fire glowed and flickered behind smashed windows. Poisonous smoke seeped and twisted into the night sky, or hung around the building in a filthy haze. In the light of the blaze, there were silhouettes, moving behind the windows like some depraved Victorian shadow play. Great hunched monstrosities; spindly, clawed things; fat-bellied, waddling lumberers; four-legged creatures that ran back and forth with the restless energy of the crazed. The Infected raced across the roof, clambered up the walls, storming the building.
He pulled the door shut before any of the Infected could notice him. He’d seen enough anyway. There was no way anyone was getting out of that. All those kids, taken.