“How did you and Melissa meet,” Charlene said. My kid was smart. She’d sensed the funk the career conversation was causing, and knew to change the subject.
“That,” Gene pointed a finger, “that is a great story. I mean, you’ve seen her. Look at me. You’ve got to be asking yourself, how’d this Joe Schmo wind up with a babe like that?”
We rounded a corner.
Gene stopped. Held up a hand. “Shh. Door’s open. Shouldn’t be.”
“Mud,” Charlene said.
It wasn’t clearly footprints, but someone…or something, was wet and tracking mud around inside the school. “I’m guessing this wasn’t how you left the mechanical room?”
“It was not,” Gene said. “I’m going in. You guys have my back?”
Charlene already had her long sword drawn. I pulled mine from the scabbard. “We got you.”
Chapter Sixteen
1002 hours
“Dad, I don’t like this.” Charlene held the hilt of her sword in both hands, the tip of the blade on the ground. She kept bouncing on the balls on her feet. She looked ready to swing that blade in any direction in an instant. Her eyes pivoted left and right and left.
“We need to warn the others. If they have weapons, we’ve got to be ready to kill them,” Chase said.
“Weapons? You don’t think it’s those things?”
“Sneaking into the school, breaking into the mechanical room, and cutting the power from the generators?” I shook my head and almost snickered, but stopped. I thought about Charlene’s mom and the photograph, and the zombies figuring out how to climb higher on a fence, and unfasten a belt. “No, dear, I do not think it’s zombies. This is too well organized.”
“I don’t know which is better.”
I knew. “It’s people. Survivors. They’re not friendly, though.”
“How do you know that?”
“They didn’t try to make contact. They…”
What they’d done instead was disorient and split the group. “Gene?”
“What is it?” Charlene raised her sword.
“Stay right here. I’m going after--”
The lights flickered on in the hallways. Gene must have managed to restart the generators. Another flicker, two, and then they stayed on. From where we stood outside the Mechanical Room door, I could hear the motors of the generators whine as they geared up and sent out energy though the school.
“Gene?” I pushed the door open with the sword’s blade, stood back, still cautious, still ready for anything. “Wait here, Char. Yell if you see anything.”
There were green painted rails that followed down three cement stairs, and outlined and turned off this way and that down the small maze of different pathways. I knew nothing about machinery. There were dials, gauges, pipes. No idea. I wasn’t even sure I would recognize a generator if I saw it. I assumed it looked like one giant car battery. A positive and negative lead…
“Gene?”
Something grunted. Groaned. I reset my grip on the hilt of my sword. I felt my breathing go quick, shallow. “Gene?”
“Chase?”
I spun, bringing the blade around fast, hard.
“Chase!”
I stopped, lost my balance doing so, stumbled forward and into a rail. I’d come a breadth away from chunking into Gene’s ribs. “What the fuck!”
“What are you doing?”
“Fixing some of these wires. Trying to anyway. Going to have to get some electrical tape, do some splicing.” He held them up. “They’ve been ripped out of electrical box, and the panel’s a mess. I’m not sure I can fix it. The generators are up and running, for now anyway. Someone did this. I hate to think it’s one of our people.”
I wasn’t about to play any finger pointing game. I knew it wasn’t any of my people. He could be suspicious all he wanted. It was his people I did not know, his people I did not yet trust. “The mud, though, that suggested someone just came in from outside. Or, from somewhere wet and muddy. We should check the nearest doors. All the doors, actually. Did you check the whole school before? I mean, like the entire school top to bottom, left to right when you locked the place down initially?”
“I did. I do. We check everything regularly. Last night, they would have gone around checking classrooms, making sure windows were closed, locked. Doors, too. No one besides us is in here. Couldn’t be.” He bit his lower lip, pressed fists against his hips and looked around. I’d swear you could visibly see his confidence level descend.
“Char,” I said, just before Gene and I emerged from the Mechanical Room and back into the hallway. I knew she was tense. I did not want to give her any reason to accidentally swing.
“Everything okay in there?”
I shook my head. “Someone messed with the wiring. Bad. We’re going to check the doors around here. See if we can figure out how someone got in.”
“Someone got in from out there?” Char shifted weight from foot to foot. I touched her shoulder. It was meant to mentally steady her. She shrugged the hand away. She was no longer fourteen. That age was gone. A simple number that meant absolutely nothing anymore.
“Place was locked up good,” Gene said. “Andy and your man, Dave, they would have said something this morning.”
Of course, they would have. I was not sure why the fresh mud tracks didn’t alert Gene to the fact that whoever it was that had breached the school had just done so, or had so recently done so that they left a trail. “Let’s get back to the others.”
“I don’t, ah, I need, I’m gonna need a weapon.” Gene must have been comfortable with his notion that no one else could be inside the school. I hadn’t even realized he’d walked the halls unarmed. I don’t know that I’d ever go anywhere, ever again, without my steel.
I handed him a machete.
“These lights just went off, which means the person can’t be that far.” Gene held the blade by his side. His white knuckle grip revealed the panic he felt. I heard it in the way his voice cracked when he spoke.
There was only one set of prints that were too smeared to indicate whether they were coming or going. “We’re going to check it out, Gene. Just not yet. Not now. They either knew we’d send a few to check the mechanical room for the problem, or knew that the lights going out would cause some chaos. Either way, what they wanted was an opportunity to strike. We’ve been divided. It’s a ploy. They got us three away from the others. Let’s not get surprised, okay? Char, you stay right behind me.”
“Got it.”
Not sure what I heard first. Someone, somewhere, screamed. There was also a raggedy mix of gunshots that echoed down the halls, bounced off metal lockers and square-tiled walls. The high school was under attack.
# # #
I led as we ran from the Mechanical Room toward the cafeteria. There was no way to prepare for horror. With the screams, and guns being fired, it was bound to be a mess.
“Whoa, wait!” I held out my arms as I skidded to a stop before rounding the last corner.
“What?” Gene said, and panted while bent forward as if trying to catch his breath.
Charlene answered the question. “We have no idea what’s going down. We can’t just, just -- barrel in there. Gotta take a peek, see what’s what.”
“Exactly,” I said. “Exactly.”
At the next corner, I laid down on my belly and inched forward. Peeking around the corner, I was not sure what I expected to see. Gunmen in black ski masks holding our families hostage. I suppose that is what a part of me thought might be waiting for us.