Sugar & Squall (14 page)

10. ANGER

I’ve never forgotten that initial darkness from when I was a kid. It was so unbelievably black when Mom switched off my bedroom light. I’d make sure the wardrobe doors, the windows and drawers were closed completely so as not to let any monster, imagined or otherwise, find the smallest space from which to emerge.

All those fears came flooding back when the lights went out that night in the sick bay. One second the stranger was there, blank and expressionless, and the next they were gone, a grand illusion.

Logan pushed at my back violently, forcing me towards the dark envelope that was the door. Somehow I moved. Logan reached around me, turned the knob and pushed the door wide open in a single movement.

The small window in the door exploded. I screamed instinctively, covering my head as glass rained around us. It was falling into my hair, tumbling down my back. I scanned the darkness again, frozen to the spot.

There was a loud noise, a shot. Something zipped past me, the air wrapping around it as it thudded into the center of the door. It was a horrible sound, the wood splintering and buckling under the force of the impact.

Logan pressed hard against the small of my back in the direction of the hallway. I slipped and fell, my wrists pressed awkwardly out in front of me, skidding across the floor. Logan’s hand squeezed me hard around my upper arm as he pulled me back to my feet.

It was just as well he was there. Someone was actually
shooting
at us, of that I was sure. The shock of those few split seconds filled me with so much terror I was absolutely stiff with it.

Gripping me by the arm, Logan started running. For a minute I thought we had the advantage having been through this part of the school more than most the last few days, but then I heard a door being kicked open behind us, footsteps, running. We were being chased.

It was strange how I could more or less find my way around Carver in darkness now. I wasn’t completely used to the silence, however. It was an acquaintance, not a friend.

Logan increased his grip on my arm, pulling me after him with greater urgency. It hurt, it would bruise, but I would not argue or let a single syllable escape my mouth in fear our pursuer would hear it and fire a lump of lead into my back.

Why were they shooting at all? That was the question.

We rounded the corner. The jacket Logan had given me caught on something. I let it peel off behind me as he dragged us forward.

Why shoot at
us
? It made no sense. Nothing did.

Logan flung us into a room on our left, spinning me along the inner wall until I was pressed close to surface. His hand fanned out across my chest. My heart pounded against it.

We were in one of the small supply rooms dotted around campus. I could make out odd buckets and shelves, little else. Logan, too, was flat against the wall, just past the doorway. He said nothing, intermittently peeping out into the hall.

The unmistakable sound of hurried footsteps soon filled the space outside. I went to say something, but Logan put a finger to my mouth. The footsteps grew louder, then faded.

“Who is it?” I whispered, frantic, as Logan removed his finger.

“I don’t know.”

“Where should we go?”

“I’m not sure. We can’t stay here.”

“The roof?”

It seemed like a good idea. Access to the roof was back the way we’d come, away from the direction the stranger was headed. We could lock the door once we were up there, check around the perimeter of the building, and there was space to move around. Down here, we were cornered.

We quietly agreed and moved out into the hall toward the stairs in the foyer area. I followed Logan, given he seemed to know what he was doing, and noticed he made not a single sound when we moved. His feet rolled off the ground, cat-like, while mine squeaked or shifted in the rush. There was such grace in his movement, and here was I, an uncoordinated idiot with all the finesse of heavy machinery.

It didn’t take long to reach the room and door that led up to the roof. We hadn’t run far, but we’d been moving fast. Sweat soaked through every article of clothing I wore. I
tried to breathe as quietly as possible, but the effort of doing so was choking me of oxygen, forcing me to take one extra-deep breath for every four or five shallow.

Logan was calm, concentrating in the dark at the door. His breathing was barely audible, even and unobtrusive. It was taking him longer than it had last time. Eventually, the lock popped open and he pushed the door out. I rushed in after him. He closed it behind us, twisting the lock into place.

The weather was now exponentially worse outside. Rain morphed from needles to knives, each driving itself deep into my skin. The wind blew it in waves so it looked like a floating ocean, the miniature shrubs and trees that made up the garden bending back on themselves against the coming tide.

It was hard to believe we’d been up here just moments ago, one being, connected to each other on a level deeper than I’d ever imagined.

How spectacularly I’d managed to screw that up.

We reached the top of the stairs, stooping low as if the sky itself was spying on us.

Logan started to whisper, but was forced to raise his voice over the wind and rain. “Go over to that side. Stay low and see if you can see anything down there. I’ll check the other side.”

I nodded and crab-walked over to the wall, raising my head ever so slightly over the edge and looking down into the dark below. Everything looked as it should, not that I knew exactly what I was searching for. The weather made it difficult. I could make out the dorms running off each side, the courtyard and statues below, but not much more.

A sheet of lightning lit up the sky, blowing out the landscape in stark white. For a few seconds it was like daylight again. There was no one out there.

I met Logan in the middle of the roof. We brought our heads together under a small shrub in some attempt to shield ourselves from the downpour.

“Who the fuck are they?” I asked, my voice jumpy.

“I don’t know,” Logan replied, “but I don’t think they’re part of a rescue party.”

“Did they cut the lights?”

Logan looked down at his watch. “No, it’s just lights out. The generators are on a timer.”

“Good timing.”

“Yeah.”

“What do we do?” The million-dollar question.

Logan bowed his head. Water snaked through his hair and down the nape of his neck.

“The cave under the chapel’s safe, but there’s no way to escape from it either. We’d be better off heading out into the open, down to the beach or somewhere where we can see him, her, whoever they are, coming.”

“But we’d have to go back through the school to get out again?”

The last thing I wanted to do was go back in there, with whatever it was.

What worried me more is Logan jumping in front of said bullet. I absolutely could not live with that. I’d had enough taken from me prematurely.

“Why are they were shooting at us?” I questioned, rain running into my mouth.

Logan turned his lip out. “I have absolutely no idea, but it’s not good. Not good at all.
The security guard. He could have been shot. That would account for the blood.”

He looked to the sky, agitated. “I could try to disarm them, but I don’t know what, or who, we’re dealing with. Someone with a gun but no sense how to use it can more dangerous than a trained killer. They could get four or five shots off before I even got close. We’ve got to be a bit more careful about how we go about it. For now, we just need time to think. We’ll be right here for a while.”

Disarm them? What the hell was he talking about?

I looked to the sky. “What about the lightning? We’re not going to get struck up here?”

Logan pointed to a lightning rod running up from a small weather station in the far corner. “It’ll hit that before it hits us – hopefully.”

“Look,” he said, a guttural rumble rolling through the roof beneath us as another fork of lightning stabbed into the sea, “we’ll keep watching over the walls for a while. We’ve got to be sure no one else is coming. Once we see them walk out of the school, then we make our move.”

There was another crack in the air, distinctly metallic. At first I thought it was a lightning strike in the distance, but the way Logan’s head snapped around to the stairwell made me think otherwise.

“Damn,” he said, “the door. Someone’s shooting at the lock.” There was another bang. I heard the door whip open in the wind and slam against the stairwell wall.

“Go!” Logan motioned towards the back of the garden. I stood and started sprinting, the rain cutting into my face.

It was maybe two-hundred yards to the end wall, but getting t
here was taking too long. I braced for the bullet to strike, to be knocked down, until Logan dragged us down behind a hedge at the back of the roof and the scant safety it offered.

We stared through the leaves at the stairwell. A figure emerged, alone.

They were dressed solidly in black, like a soldier. They wore some kind of poncho, a balaclava, eyes reflective, treading forward carefully, scanning the shadows.

“I’ll give myself up,” Logan hushed, looking at me.

“Are you insane?!” I said, slightly louder than I should and pulling at his shirt just in case.

“They’re coming this way.”

He was right. The figure was walking slowly and methodically down the distance of the roof, what appeared to be a gun steadied out in front. They hadn’t seen or heard us, but it would only be moments before we were discovered.

“What should we do?” There was urgency in my voice.

Logan glanced down the side, as did I. I was certain he was thinking the same thing. There was not enough cover and it was too far. We’d never make it.

He crawled over to the wall behind us and hung his head over the side.

“We have to jump,” he said, sliding back over.

“No way.”

“We’ve
got
to jump,” he repeated. I turned back to the stairwell and saw the distance between the figure and our hidey-hole closing fast. If we were to stand, even for a second, they’d see us. Logan was right. The only way out of here was directly down behind us.

He grasped my hand. It was wet and slippery, but strong. He started pulling me toward the wall, trying all the while to keep us out of direct sight.

We had our backs against it now. The stone bricks were cold, edges sharp and unnatural against the silk of my dress.

I hooked my head over the wall, fearful all the while it’d be blown off.

Connected directly to the main building was the girls’ dormitory. It didn’t look good. The dormitory roof was flat and graveled, but too far below. I could just imagine jumping, breaking my leg and then looking upwards as we were shot at from above.

Logan dragged me down. His breath was hot and heavy against my face. A faraway shimmer of light reflected in his eyes. They sparkled.

“When I go, you
have
to follow me, okay? Just jump. Don’t look back.”

He was right. ‘Ladies first’ did not apply. We’d be here all night if I had to go first. If Logan went first, however, I’d follow. I’d have to.

He took another look over the wall. “Drop like a cat, arms and legs outstretched and loose. Then roll. Take the impact with your legs. Copy me.” He stood up and leaped over the wall, my head snapping over the top to watch. He glided down through the air, arms outstretched. He hit the roof, took the impact with his legs and rolled, almost instantly jumping up and turning to face me.

This was it. There was no choice now. I stood and put one leg up. Behind me I heard someone shout, but it was lost in another drone of thunder. Fear paralyzing every part of my body, my legs bent and I fell, rather than jumped, off the wall.

When Logan dropped it was like a feather, as if he’d simply floated onto the roof below. I was leaden. I landed hard about ten feet to the right of him and tried to roll like he’d said. The motion was natural, I’d done combat rolls by their hundreds, and it did help alleviate some of the shock that had been taken up by my legs and feet, but my shoulder blade took the brunt of it instead, biting painfully into the gravel. I came out of the roll almost running, over-balancing. Logan caught me and before I knew it we were again sprinting towards another door at the far side of the girls’ dormitory roof. It was too far. They’d have made it to the edge by now.

The door loomed up. Logan ran out in front and literally launched himself through it with his shoulder, disappearing into the nothingness beyond. I was too close and had too much momentum to stop, so I crashed through as well, piling up onto his back as we both slid down the stairs on what remained of the door.

When we came to rest at the bottom of the stairwell, it was like stepping out of a car wreck. Logan had cut his arm. A vibrant shade of red etched itself out against his shirt.

I untangled myself from his legs as fast as I could, pushing the panel of wood off my arm I assumed was once part of the door.