Hissers (23 page)

Connor said nothing, he didn’t need to. They knew he’d killed the creatures. If it hadn’t worked he’d have told them. Am saw him shaking as he started the SUV. She knew it had nothing to do with cold rain and his thousand-yard-stare confirmed it.

Sunday, 12:44

They drove the SUV around the back of the school and parked it in the teachers’ parking lot. Inside the school, the emergency backup system was providing dim lighting throughout the hallways.

“Alarms will probably be on,” Connor said. He felt miserable in his wet clothes. The images of the two hissers still lingered in is mind’s eye. The way their brains and blood had shot up out of the bullet holes in their foreheads and plopped on the road. The way the gun had kicked back and shocked him. The incredible loudness of the shots. The way the hissers lay still with their eyes wide open. Two men, mid-twenties. Somebody’s fathers or brothers or sons or boyfriends, both of them. But when they’d stopped moving, he didn’t feel a whole lot of remorse. He just felt betrayed.

Please don’t make me do that again,
he prayed.

Seth said, “Yeah, alarms could be on but maybe the phones are on, too. That would be a blessing.”

Nicole took out her cell for good measure and tried to get service. She got bupkis.

All four of them grabbed a weapon from the SUV and followed Connor to the school windows. The rain was coming down in full sheets and they were all soaked the moment they stepped outside. Connor shined his flashlight around the windows of the ground floor, into the classrooms where teachers had already hung up posters and arranged shelves for the incoming classes. They all inspected the window edges for wires. Some had them, others did not, but it was too hard to tell if they were just not seeing things properly in the rain.

“Would it be so obvious,” Nicole asked. “I mean, do we just break the ones without the wires?”

Connor took a moment to assess the building. “I can’t tell. How about…look, I’ll climb up to the roof over that door, get up on the landing on the second floor. I think I can get up from that fence there. If nothing else I can get to that window ledge over there.”

Nicole shook her head, her sopping wet hair whipping back and forth. “In this rain? Are you nuts? You can’t—”

“Yeah, ‘scuse me, Nicole,” Seth cut her off, “you saw him run down the street in front of those things, right? Connor is nuts, but he knows his limits. Just let him do it.”

“You’ll fall,” Nicole continued, ignoring Seth. “You’ll fall and then what? We’ll have to carry you.”

The thought of falling was almost appealing to Connor. To fall and hit his head and just lay there and die. Such a relaxing wish.

“It’s either me or one of you,” he said. “If we’re going then we need to be stealth about it. All in favor of me?”

It was like the moment with the gun, he didn’t expect them to answer, but he knew they wouldn’t object. In the last couple of hours they had come to adopt him as a de facto leader. Which was fine for moments like this when he didn’t want to argue, but it was not what he wanted to be. He was unfit for leadership, unfit for saving anyone from trouble. If he’d had any ounce of bravery and leadership then his parents would still be alive. He would not have let his dad stand by the door alone, would not have abandoned his mom in the bedroom.

“If I can get in and open a door I will. If not, I’ll just get a window open and we’ll have to crawl in that way. Maybe you should all get back in the car just in case.”

“Fine by me,” Seth said. He went back to the SUV and got in the backseat.

“Such the white knight,” Amanita said. “A white knight fifty pounds overweight.” She pulled her wet shirt off her stomach and let it slap back again. Connor could see the white bra underneath, and could swear he saw a faint circle of pink through the bra. He turned away embarrassed.

“Be nice to Seth, Am,” Nicole said. “He’s got a weight problem. Not everyone can be a twiggy like you.”

“It’s the end of the world, Nicole, I don’t have to be nice. Besides, I’m fucking soaked and I’m miserable and I’m scared and on the verge of a nervous breakdown.”

Nicole and Am shared a moment of unspoken words through a glance only girls can produce. It said
you are the bitchiest bitch I’ve ever known and I love you to death but you need to take a chill pill and stop before the claws come out.

“Fine,” Amanita said reluctantly, “I’ll go apologize. He was kind of cushy after all. Maybe I can use him as a pillow.”

She got back in the SUV as well, leaving Connor and Nicole in the pouring rain together. They were far enough away from the SUV that he felt alone with her for the first time. He knew this was one of those moments when he was supposed to say something nice, or romantic, or just funny, but he could think of nothing. He wished he could blame it on the rain, but he knew he was just too much of a wuss to ever tell her she was kind of cute and he wanted to kiss her.

Instead, she took the reins, as she always did. “I like you, Connor. If you weren’t here right now I’d be crying in a corner somewhere.”

“Nah. You wouldn’t, you’re too smart. You’d have already gotten out of town.”

“No, for real. I’d be at home, waiting for my mom. I’m not stupid and I know that, I know I’m the straight-A girl, but I wouldn’t have had the strength to leave. I’m worried about her and I know she’s probably dead but I don’t know how to go on just wondering what happened. So I’d still be there, crying, and probably getting attacked by now. You made sure that didn’t happen. Just be careful up there. It’s gonna be slippery.”

She leaned in and kissed him on the mouth. She pressed into him and opened his mouth with hers, as if she’d been kissing men this way her whole life. He felt her tongue slip into his mouth for the briefest of moments before it darted away. He felt her arms slip around his back as she pulled him close. Somehow his own body ignored any rational thought and he found his hands moving up to her cheeks and cradling her face, then he let them slip around her neck.

They pulled each other tight as if they were trying to become one person. It was the first time he’d felt a girl’s breasts against his chest. It made him flush. Finally, their lips parted and they pulled back from each other.

They uttered no words in the moment that followed, as she looked into his eyes, wet strings of hair dividing her face. They just stared at each other for a heartbeat, and then she was gone, back to the SUV.

It took a minute for Connor to regain his composure, to force his legs to stop shaking. He’d pecked girls before, in the way that young boys will, as a dare, as part of a game, but not like that. That was a first for him. For the first time in his life, he felt like a man.

Getting up on the fence was no problem. Getting up to the window proved a bit harder but he found footing on a water pipe and used it to launch himself up. He grabbed the edge and rolled onto the thin landing that ran around the building just below the windows. He lay on his back resting for a second, letting the rain pound him in the face. He could still taste Nicole’s breath in his mouth and he never wanted it to go away.

As he sat up he realized he had an erection. Oh great, please tell me I didn’t pop that while she was kissing me. If she saw it she’ll think I’m some kind of creep.

He stood and walked around the windows, checking them each in turn. Amanita must know her shit because none of them were wired. When he reached the corner he stopped, looked out over the school’s property, a square of grass connected to a half basketball court. Through the rain he saw a crowd on one of the near streets, excitedly racing this way and that, like children on a playground. But they did not move the way humans did—they were hissers. His heart raced as he watched them leap and scurry. So fast, so deadly. More than a few of them were sporting extra limbs now.

Freaks.

Undead, psychopathic freaks.

And then, way off in the distance, almost lost in the shadows, something hulking and monstrous lumbered into view like a tank on spider legs.
What the hell is that,
he wondered. The massive form walked slowly on its many legs, letting hissers run beneath its belly as it stalked something. It spun in a circle, then charged off into the darkness and was gone.

Every hair on Connor’s body was standing up.

What the hell was that!?

He turned to the window behind him, raised his good leg, and kicked through the glass. There was no alarm.

Sunday, 12:50

Seth had never been inside the school before. It felt weird wandering the hallways alone. It felt almost invasive. And yet, being in a place where authority normally reigned supreme, there was a strange sense of freedom that accompanied it. He wanted to run down the halls shouting as loud as he could. He wanted to go into the principal’s office and rummage through his desk. He wanted to be the bad boy for once.

But he had absolutely no idea where they were.

Connor shined his flashlight on the wall. The gun was tucked into his waistband now, there’d been no squabbling about who would hold it, even though Seth was pretty sure his aim was better than Connor’s. Something was written over the lockers. WELCOME TO C WING. “Anybody know what’s in C wing?” he asked.

Amanita looked around her. “Four of the wettest losers the world has ever seen.”

“Doesn’t really matter,” Nicole said. “The bomb shelter will be in the basement so we need to find a stairwell. And I assume the nurse’s station will be near the offices.”

They continued on and turned right down another hallway. Either no one had thought to install emergency lighting here or the bulbs had never been tested because it was darker than a serial rapist’s thoughts. To avoid any Jack-in-the-box surprises they all huddled a bit closer together, ready to swing fists and weapons in unison should it come to that. They read posters on the walls declaring the benefits of saying no to drugs and studying hard. The graffiti on the lockers declared just the opposite.

Seth stopped in front of a poster with a small girl on it. It was an ad for depression. You could tell because she had a tear sliding down her cheek and was staring at her feet. Also because it said
Defeat Depression: Talk To Someone
. Connor’s flashlight had illuminated it only briefly but long enough to see the girl’s face. She looked as Jo would have looked, had she grown up.

Are you still alive,
he wondered, staring at the dark wall, barely seeing the edge of the poster.
Is it my fault? I’m sorry.

The poster lit up. The girl still stared at her feet, but he waited for her to say something.

No, the
poster
wasn’t lighting up, Connor had swung the flashlight beam back to find him. He moved it again and hit Seth in the eye. “Hurry it up, man. We found the nurse’s station.”

Sunday, 1:00am

As they checked the cabinets and drawers for supplies, Nicole risked eye contact with Connor. Even though they’d just walked the halls together, they had yet to speak since the kiss. She felt awkward, almost ashamed, but she was glad she’d done it. He hadn’t resisted, which would have made her want to crawl in a hole and die. No, he’d kissed her back, wrapped his arms around her. She didn’t know if that made them boyfriend and girlfriend exactly, but it was a good sign.

Or maybe he just felt bad for you,
she thought.
Maybe he was just too embarrassed to tell you no.
God she hoped not. For once in her life she needed something beyond grades, something to make her feel there was more to life than school and her mom’s constant warning that all men were evil.

Connor stood the flashlight on its end on the counter. It threw light up to the ceiling like a dim lamp. He was still limping, with his clothing soaked and his skin slick with rain he looked like a lost and wounded dog. How she wanted to kiss him again right now. Tell him she needed him, that she’d been watching him since they were six, that she had dreams about him.

“Ook ab all dis spuff,” Seth said. He had two tongue depressors in his mouth, clicking them together like mandibles. He took them out and tossed them into a small metal trash can. He reached into a drawer and extracted a small device that looked like an outdated MP3 player, held it up to his ear. “What’s this?”

“Diabetes meter,” Amanita said. “My father uses one. When he remembers.”

“Oh.” Seth put it back where he’d found it.

They found gauze and iodine in the other cupboards, along with various ointments, Band Aids, cotton balls, a defibrillator, cold and hot packs, CPR masks, lice products, feminine hygiene products, and a collection of medical tapes and bandages.

“I guess they don’t keep butterfly sutures in the school,” Nicole said, taking out the gauze and bandages. She pointed to Connor’s leg. “But maybe if we pull the bandages tight enough…”

She unwrapped the dressing Officer Whitaker had applied. The blood had completely seeped through and the gauze was already shredded.

Connor ran his hand down his wound. “It actually doesn’t hurt that bad anymore. I mean it hurts, but it’s more itchy than anything else.”