A Shrouded World 4 Page 13

  “Joe, the janitor; where is he?” I asked.

  “What, why? Why do you need him?”

  “We need chains, we need to chain these doors shut.”

  “Whatever for?”

  “Listen, Joe, we’re going to be in some serious trouble real soon and the only ones we’re going to be able to count on until morning are right here in this room. There will be no outside help coming. You have got to stretch some of that hard-earned trust to believe me.”

  “Joe, please,” Bill begged. “You have no idea what’s coming. I saw it with my own two eyes and I don’t believe it. Sometimes I think I’m having an episodic snap, and other times I wish I were. There are crazed people out there, killing everything they see. We barely escaped; if not for this man, we’d be dead. If those things are coming here, we need to be ready.”

  Joe might have had his doubts about me, but Bill carried enough weight that Joe didn’t doubt his sincerity. Joe looked at me, then at my rifle, then at my face, which I hoped conveyed all the information he needed to make an informed decision.

  “Come on, I’ll bring you to Hemmie.”

  “Hemmie?”

  “He’s the janitor—he’s, um, peculiar; if you go there alone I don’t think it will go well.”

  “I’m coming,” Trip replied.

  “I’d rather you stayed here,” I told him.

  “Me too Ponch, but I speak peculiar.”

  Hard to deny that. “All right, let’s go.” We’d no sooner got out into the hallway than someone blessedly turned off the fire alarm in the school.

  “This is Mrs. Jackson. All students please report to the gymnasium, and hurry your little asses up!” she yelled.

  “She was in the Navy,” Joe said sheepishly. “I’ve asked her to tone her colorful language down; she told me to go and tie my dick into a knot.”

  “Right now that might be for the best,” I said as we watched students start streaming back into the gym.

  We were walking at a decent pace, but not fast enough for me.

  “Joe, any way we can pick up the pace?” I asked.

  “There’s no running in the hallways,” he replied.

  “Maybe just this once?”

  “You see the floors?”

  “Oh, that’s why you did that.”

  “Can’t run if you don’t have any traction.” He smiled.

  “Looks like half a dozen lawsuits a school year,” I replied.

  We went down two flights, into the bowels of the school. You know the place, it’s about forty degrees warmer than anywhere else in the building, there are huge pipes wrapped in white insulation. Steam leaks out from random places, and it smells suspiciously like mold. At the far end of the corridor, there was an open door and we could see what I figured were Hemmie’s feet propped up on an old desk.

  “Hemmie!” Joe called out. The man did not move. I brought my rifle up, now on alert. “It’s all right, he’s sleeping.”

  “Maybe we should just go up there.” I wasn’t fond of the extra noise the shouts caused.

  “It’s not a good idea to startle him. Hemmie! It’s Principal Fondue!”

  “Oooh, fondue.” Drool started forming in the corner of Trip’s mouth. He was staring longingly at the man as if he were spontaneously going to morph into food.

  “It’s this hot cheese thing in our world,” I explained as Joe was pushing away a Trip who was trying to smell his suit jacket.

  “He does smell a little like hot cheese,” Trip said on the sly to me. Trip pulled out a baggie. I expected to see an ounce of leafy green substance, but it was crackers instead.

  “Trip, he’s not cheese. You can’t dip those on him.”

  “I see that Ponch, but what if I just rub them on him?”

  “You will do no such thing!” Joe was heading to Hemmie’s office.

  Hemmie finally moved. There was some grunting, a rapid series of throat clearing hucks, and then his feet swung off the table.

  “Oh my gosh, my golly?” he shouted; I heard what sounded like a magazine being shoved into a drawer and another sound I could not place.

  “He’s surprised,” Trip said by way of interpretation.

  “Figured that out all on your own, did ya?” I asked.

  “Scoff now, wait a second,” Trip replied.

  Another series of throat hucks and then what seemed like a half-hearted attempt at a roar. “Awwraaarg.”

  “When Hemmie gets excited, he loses the ability of speech. That’s why he usually works the late shift: no one around,” Joe explained. “You both should wait here; new people make it worse.”

  But it was already too late. Hemmie was staring at us through the doorway. I was sort of in shock as to what I was seeing, and the pitiful mewl that was escaping the man’s mouth. Remember when Fabio was a huge deal? He of the rock-solid abs and chiseled facial features? Except for the hair, which was cut short and looked like it had been done by the inexperienced hand of a child using a bowl as a guide, Hemmie was a friggin specimen by any standard definition of the phrase.

  “Don’t shut the door, Hemmie! We need help,” Joe said.

  Trip held out a pastry as a sort of peace offering.

  “You’re shitting me, right? We’ve been together for days; you’ve never offered me one,” I said, more than a little miffed.

  Hemmie seemed interested.

  I didn’t think we had time for this; I felt like we were making first contact with a new anthropomorphic species and were trying to lay down the groundwork for trust.

  “What’s wrong with him?” I whispered to Joe as Trip slowly moved forward, his head hanging down, eyes averted and gift held high. Looked just like I would expect a submissive chimpanzee would trying to curry favor with the alpha male.

  “No idea. He wandered into town about twenty years ago. They think he was up in the mountains that surround this place. Couldn’t have been more than five years old, though we don’t know his real age.”

  “In the mountains, like a wild boy? Where are his parents?”

  “I realize you’re not from around here. The mountains are a forbidden zone.”

  These were things I wanted to know more about, in fact probably needed to know about, but there were very serious immediate problems that needed to be addressed first.

  Hemmie took the snack from Trip, sniffed it a few times, and began to eat. I moved when Trip reached into a different pocket and produced a joint.

  “Not a good time,” I said. Hemmie shied back.

  “Awarraag.” Trip had turned to me. The grunt-growl I guessed was a way to keep me from coming any closer.

  Hemmie hucked a few times and nodded his head.

  “Trip, I realize you two are bonding or something, but we need those chains.”

  “One does not simply demand something; first a careful groundwork must be established, with clear and distinct parameters, before we can move forward,” he said.

  “Hemmie,” I started. He turned his head away but did not retreat into his office. “Bad things are coming, night runners. We need to protect the kids, we need to protect everyone.”

  “Mad eaters?” Hemmie asked.

  I’d never heard them called that, but it was an apt description if there ever was one.

  “Mad eaters, yeah; they’re coming, Hemmie, and we need your help.”

  Hemmie turned to look at me with as pained an expression as I’d ever seen before he bolted into his office.

  “Well Ponch, you certainly screwed the rhinoceros on that one,” Trip said.

  “What?”

  We could all hear all manner of things being tossed about, then the heavy clanging of metallic objects, and then a sound Ebenezer Scrooge would have been terrified of: chains, and a bunch of them.

  “Awwraag!” Hemmie said as he once again came back to the doorframe, this time wearing thick, heavy chains around his neck, padlocks as large as my fist dangling from the ends of a few of them.

  “He’s on board,” Trip
said triumphantly.

  “What would we do without you?” I asked Trip sardonically.

  “Oh, ain’t that the truth. You’d be fucked without me.”

  “I feel like I’m fucked with you, Trip,” I told him.

  “It all evens out in the end,” he said as we fell in behind a running Hemmie.

  “Comforting,” I mumbled.

  By the time we got to the hallway leading to the gym, we could hear sirens and the occasional burst of gunfire outside. The shit show had indeed gotten much closer, as I’d feared. The gym was packed with students and faculty, though I had no way of telling if this was everyone. We could only hope. Joe was pushing stragglers in and yelling at anyone lollygagging. He looked so much like the prototypical bureaucrat that it was actually encouraging to see him shoving, screaming, and ordering the kids and a few teachers, who seemed utterly shocked by his display. I had a hunch Joe knew more about what was going on than he was willing to admit. He had sure jumped on our crazy train pretty quickly, even got his ticket punched.

  A higher rate of gunfire was immediately followed by some earsplitting shrieks and then screams as night runners closed in on and dispatched the shooters. I was keeping an eye on this hallway. Hemmie had cut a path through the throngs to the far side of the gym and wrapped a chain as thick as my forearm around the push levers, securing it with one of the oversized locks. He also threw the bolt at the top and bottom of the door. I had hopes it would hold; if it didn’t, this was going to be a buffet that the night runners would reminisce about for generations. Probably sing songs about it.

  I turned back to my hallway just in time to see a trio of night runners appear at the far end, coming in by the main entrance. About midway down the hallway a girl appeared, adjusting her top; I figured she’d come out of the bathroom—until she was followed by a smiling boy.

  “Run!” I screamed at them. Not my smartest idea, as I was holding a rifle up and aiming in their direction. They turned to see the night runners who were absolutely loving their chances to get a warm meal. “Toward me, toward me! They’ll kill you!” I realized the boy might not have all the necessary blood running to his big head to make a decent decision, but the girl got it real quick and was moving posthaste toward me, even realizing that staying close to the wall gave me better lines of sight to the true enemy. The boy, well how do I put this delicately? A box of rocks would have scored higher on an intelligence test. Numbnuts actually took two steps toward the running trio, not sure if it was the savagery in their eyes or the much more visible thick coating of blood that sluiced off their clothes as they ran, but then he turned and started running toward me.

  That was all great and fine, except he was running smack-dab down the middle of the hallway, constantly turning his head to watch his pursuers, which made his gait unsteady and he weaved back and forth, not giving me any clear shots I felt comfortable taking. I would have told him to get out of my way, but I had more than a sneaking feeling he would get down onto his belly. I was waving my arm to get him to the side; he ignored me.

  “Fuck me, there’s no way he still has a boner. Must play football.” I was advancing, the girl spared a glance at me as she passed by. I heard Joe tell her to hurry and get inside. Rock-Boy was about to have his penis get him killed—wouldn’t be the first time in the annals of history. I was thinking of poor hapless Cash, who had been dragged down by the speeders at the beginning of my z-poc, as much a victim of them as he had been by April. Very few people deserved to die the way he had, and I’d be damned if Rock-Boy was going to go out that way on my watch. Oh, eventually he would find a unique and stupid way to remove himself from the gene pool, just not this minute.

  The night runners had worked themselves up into a frenzy. Rock-Boy had less than ten feet on them; I’d made up some of the distance and had a decent firing angle, not quite as clear as I would have liked but my time had run out. I fucked up now and we were both going down. I took the easiest shot, at the one on my side of the hall; was a little low, popped it right around the navel, generally a slow death but the bullet did me a favor and severed the thing’s spinal column. Its legs stopped working and splayed off to the sides as its head bounced off the hard tile floor. Blood sprayed from its ruined mouth and nose. Not dead, but out of the fight. Rock-Boy was not a fan of the rifle fire and finally moved off to the side.

  “Now you fucking get it,” I hissed. I had ten feet, or less than a second. I sent a three-round burst, two rounds destroyed the middle monster, think I punctured a lung with each shot, he deflated quicker than a room full of balloons with a pissed off cat. Not sure how much sense that makes, but I was under the gun to come up with that analogy.

  There are times when I enjoy working on machinery, but no matter how old or new, if you have the correct tools or not, there is always, without fucking fail, always one screw, bolt, or nut that will for some fucking reason just not come off without a fight, and ninety-nine times out of a hundred, yeah, it’s the last one. I felt like the third runner was my sticky widget.

  I saw blood and a spray of tissue exit from his shoulder. The hit spun him slightly, but not enough to deter his trajectory, and this one was smart: he made sure to use Rock-Boy as his own personal shield. He pulled a very athletic move as he ran, taking two steps on the wall and then launching onto his target. They both went down in a tangle of arms, legs, and in one case monstrous, gnashing teeth. He let go a victory shriek before he bowed his head to go in for the kill. By this time I was close enough, I could just about press my barrel into the runner’s back. The problem was getting a shot that didn’t kill them both, as the runner and Rock-Boy were more tightly intertwined than I figured the boy had been with his girlfriend. It was Trip—yup, the same Trip of the perpetually stoned and hungry kind—who from twenty yards let loose a ball-bearing from his slingshot that made a sickening thud as it struck the night runner flush in the forehead, just as it began its downward arc to tear into Rock-Boy’s neck.

  It didn’t kill it, but it sure dazed the living fuck out of it—I guess it made it somewhat like Trip in that respect. It was enough that Rock-Boy was able to scramble away on the floor and I was able to put three quick rounds into the night runner. I grabbed the boy’s shoulder and dragged him to his feet, just as I saw a whole fresh batch of mad eaters heading our way. We both made it to the gym; Joe quickly shut the doors as Hemmie began wrapping chains around the bars. He’d no sooner clicked the fat padlock in place than the doors were slammed into. I pressed back in and threw the bolt on the top while Hemmie got the bottom. We gave each other a quick look as the doors were absolutely assaulted.

  We both backed up a few steps, the panic level in the gym beginning to escalate; between my shooting, the doors being hammered, and Rock-Boy and his dalliance telling their stories, it was palpable. Luckily, Joe could feel it too. He was getting the faculty together and hopefully coming up with a battle plan to combat the rising dread.

  I did a quick scan of the room looking for any weaknesses or access points that I may have initially missed.

  “Hemmie, is there any other way in?” I asked as I looked up at the windows that were easily twenty feet high. The runners were smart, I just didn’t think they were ladder or human pyramid smart. I had to bank our lives on that because there was absolutely nothing I could do about it should that ingress be exploited.

  Hemmie hucked and shook a bit. I could just about see words forming in his head but whatever ailed him was not going to allow him to verbalize it; instead, he looked to the oversize air vents in the ceiling.

  “Ducts? Shit,” I said as I looked at the eight giant vents spaced out at regular intervals in the room. I was pissed there were so many of them, though it made sense: the room was huge and hosted sporting events filled with warm-blooded creatures. “What are the odds they go downstairs and gain entry?” I was asking, more to myself.

  Hemmie surprised me. “Half of those are pulling hot air out of here.”

  That meant the smell of fea
r and human pheromones was traveling down the length of them and depositing itself in vast quantities in the guts of this building. Like we were inadvertently chumming ourselves.

  “Can we turn it off?” I was watching the fans slowly turn inside the galvanized steel covers.

  “Awrrarrg.” He was shaking his head from side to side.

  “That means no,” Trip interpreted.

  “Thanks,” I replied absently. Between the constant drumming on the doors and the increasing noise in the room as everyone attempted to be heard over each other, I was having a difficult time thinking. Not sure the reason for this phenomenon and not sure if it is just a male deficiency, but have you ever been lost and had to turn down the radio to help you find your way? If you said yes, I guarantee you’re a guy.

  “Shut the fuck up,” I said quietly enough. As expected it yielded no results. “SHUT THE FUCK UP!” This time I reached down into the depths of my Marine Corps days and belted that out. Worked though, as fast as if someone had switched off the stereo at a house party while the home-owning parents called to check in on their son.

  Joe wasn’t thrilled with my use of language, but it was hard to argue with the results. Mrs. Jackson gave me a knowing nod and I think a wink. It had not been my intention to garner all this attention; I just wanted a few seconds to evaluate our situation. Now that all ears and eyes were on me, it was sort of expected that I make an announcement.

  “Listen…” I coughed. “I know all of you have questions and you want to go home, but I’m telling you we are stuck with each other, at least for the night.” I gave them a rundown of what I knew about the night runners and how they would be gone come morning. I did my best to avoid describing what would happen to us if they got in, but I made it abundantly clear it would be for the best that they didn’t. “Now the odds they can make it through the doors is minimal, so we should be good to go.” I did my best not to look up, which didn’t stop Hemmie or Trip, who looked like domesticated turkeys in a rainstorm. If you’re not familiar with this behavior, they will actually stare up into the droplets to the point that they endanger themselves to drowning. Yup, same pose: heads thrown back, mouths agape. Even the hormone-infused, scared teens were smart enough to realize something was up. A shit load of hands went up like I was Mr. Talbot, their fifth-period history teacher or some shit.