The door opened anyway.
The entrance to the secret stairwell was at the end of a long tunnel and up a flight of well-worn metal stairs. At the top of those stairs was a thick metal door that opened into a locked maintenance closet. Many of the tunnel entrances were concealed in the back of maintenance closets. Inside that particular closet was a mess of mops, buckets, and cleaning supplies. Jake came up those metal stairs, navigated an obstacle course of paraphernalia in the dark, opened the locked closet door from the inside, and then emerged, feeling a bit like Superman stepping from a phone booth in his Clark Kent disguise.
He entered into chaos. Students were scrambling down the hallways, being ushered outside by men dressed in yellow chemical suits. Panic had overtaken civility, and a mash of bodies was trying to squeeze through the double doors of the Society Building. The marble floor and walls intensified the sound, and the noise of the students and faculty reverberated as indiscriminate chatter.
What the hell is happening?
Jake saw a police officer wearing a gas mask and directing traffic. He approached and asked, “What’s going on?”
The officer took off his mask, but looked nervous in doing it. “Big chemical spill near the access road to the school,” he said. “As a precaution, we’re evacuating everyone to the regional high school. We have buses out front to get folks out of here, and we’re asking everyone to leave their vehicles in the lot so we can expedite the evacuation.”
So that was it, then. Chemical spill. Evacuation. Instead of ordering Jake to the exit, the officer put his gas mask back on and resumed his directing duties. It was a Get Out of Dodge scenario, but for a different reason. Andy was fine. He was probably on one of the buses already.
Jake merged into the flow of bodies, but halfway down the hall he skirted off to one side. He seldom worried about folks venturing into the labyrinth, but a chemical spill might necessitate an exhaustive search of the property. Someone could have architectural plans and mandate every square inch be checked for contamination. If so, his sophisticated biometric door lock would certainly attract some attention. Jake could replace the mechanism with a rusty old lock, but it would take a bit of time. Good thing he had all the tools to do the job in the storage room adjacent to the larder.
It might be an unnecessary precaution, but Jake wasn’t a man who left much to chance.
David, Rafa, and Solomon had been together in chemistry class when the alarm went off. They filed out of the classroom along with the others, thinking nothing of it. Another drill, or perhaps some kid who wanted to get out of a test had pulled a fire alarm on his way to the bathroom. Those things happened. At the far end of the hallway, Rafa spotted a man wearing a yellow chemical suit and pointed him out to his friends.
“What the heck?” David said as he brushed a thick band of hair off his face. David was always brushing hair from his face. Solomon and Rafa never tired of imitating him, but they were too preoccupied with the man in protective gear to have noticed.
“Figures we’re at the back of the pack when something really shitty happens.” Solomon’s comment referred to the location of their classroom, which was at the end of a long hallway of classrooms. They would be the last to reach safety.
Meanwhile, the man in the yellow suit moved against the flow of traffic, perhaps headed to one of those classrooms.
“This is the chemistry wing,” Rafa said, loud enough to be heard above the piercing alarm. “Maybe a freshman tried some advanced mixology and screwed up royally.”
The man continued to force his way through the crowd. As he moved, he scanned in all directions. Only occasionally did he motion for students and faculty to hurry to the exit. Rafa and David picked up the pace, but Solomon lagged behind. They slowed to wait for their friend.
“We’re not going anywhere fast,” Solomon shouted while he huffed for breath. He pointed to the traffic jam at the stairwell. “Why rush it?”
Rafa looked disapprovingly at Solomon. “You may be the most out-of-shape human being I know,” he said, only half joking.
Solomon poked Rafa’s sternum hard. “You have insulted my honor, and I challenge thee to a bowl-off.”
David surveyed the pedestrian backup and frowned. “Hey, if this is a real problem, we could be in big trouble waiting to get out. We might be inhaling deadly fumes right now.”
Rafa sniffed the air. “Doesn’t smell bad,” he said.
“You just came from chemistry, dinkus,” Solomon snapped. “Does everything deadly have a smell?”
“I know from your farts it doesn’t always have a sound.”
“Har, har, har,” Solomon said.
David turned to survey the empty hallway behind him. His eyes narrowed as an idea set in. “Guys, let’s go out the fire escape,” he said. “It’ll be faster and way more fun.”
Several corridors branched off the main hallway, and at the end of one of them was window access to a fire escape. Rafa and Solomon nodded their agreement. Better than twiddling thumbs while waiting to get down those stairs.
Rafa pointed to the man in the yellow suit, who continued to march their way. “We better go now before ‘Banana Man’ sees us and makes us wait with the others.”
The three turned and began a fast walk to where the corridor branched. Halfway there, Rafa turned and noticed the man in the yellow suit had quickened his strides. He seemed to be shoving kids aside to get where he needed to go. But where could that be? There was nothing down this hallway except for empty classrooms and… well, the three of them.
Rafa tugged on David’s arm and pulled him to a stop. The suited man no longer showed any concern for people’s safety. He did not point to any exit or corral folks into a more orderly line. No, this individual was dead set on getting to something-or someone-in front of him. Even in the glare of overhead lights, it was easy to see the man’s dark eyes were fixed on the three boys.
The boys retreated a few steps, but they never turned their backs to the approaching man. Dressed in bright yellow, he looked something like a lion on the hunt, salivating over targets that had separated from the herd. He moved. They backed up. He advanced some more. They backed up some more.
“Maybe we should just wait with the others,” Rafa suggested. His voice quavered, because his gut told him something was very wrong.
“Fuck that,” Solomon said. “I’m getting out of here.”
David turned and broke into a trot as Rafa sprinted ahead of him. Solomon’s all-out run was more like the others’ jog, and he immediately fell into third place. A few strides into his all-out dash, Rafa risked a quick glance behind him. The man in the yellow suit pushed harder through the crowd. He was definitely coming for them.
“Faster!” Rafa could barely hear himself over the piercing alarm.
David heard him, though. He found a new gear, falling into step right behind Rafa. Solomon picked up speed as well, but his friends had already disappeared down the hallway up ahead. By the time Solomon reached the corridor, Rafa and David were already at work on the shuttered window. It appeared to be stuck, and they struggled to pry it open.
Solomon went from a run to an amble. He wanted to rest his hands on his knees to catch his breath, but a long, thin shadow materialized on the floor in front of him. He looked back and saw the man in the yellow suit, blocking the only way to the main corridor-his only way out, unless David and Rafa could get that window open. The man’s dark eyes appeared as venomous as a cobra’s bite. He raised his arm, and Solomon cowered in response to the gun in his hand. A suppressor stuck out from the pistol’s barrel like a long, black finger.
Instinct took over. Solomon dove to the floor-duck and cover-and shouted to Rafa and David to look out, but the boys were too preoccupied or didn’t hear. The window, for whatever reason, wasn’t going to budge without some tools. But Rafa and David worked aggressively to force it open.