The Release

Then she heard the echo of a door shutting. She peeked around the corner and saw a flash of movement and a blur of gray and black. She glanced at the camera and stood up, she sprinted forward a few steps and then turned—the camera had stopped following her. At that moment, she could recognize the loud pounding of feet racing down the extended hall. Her breath catching in her chest, she made a dash for the East Wing.

And that was when she heard the shot.

A blast echoed down after her and Lucy jumped.

She ran wildly, hitting her shoulder against the wall as she turned the corner, her body unable to keep up with her feet. Lucy ran up the East Wing hallway, around the corner, and up to the lab where Salem stood guard in the doorway and Lucy yanked her out, motioning for Grant to follow, but he was still carrying the ladder into place, holding it with outstretched arms, wobbling forward with obscured vision.

“Who has the keys?” Lucy asked, out-of-breath.

Salem shook her head and pointed at Grant.

They heard Spencer’s footsteps pound down English hall and then heard him turn into the East Wing hallway. Like a honing pigeon—he knew where they were. A second shot rang out and the blast seemed much louder and menacing than before.

Lucy ran back into the lab, terrified that they were too late. Her plan was failing, instead of leading them all into security, they were going to be caught and shot by a crazy man.

“Keys Grant! Keys!” she whispered, cognizant that Spencer could now hear their voices echoing. But Grant was positioning the ladder under the skylight with both hands and unable to grab them. “Hurry, hurry!” Lucy commanded and Grant stepped back, dug into his pants, and pulling out the jangling janitor’s keys he ran toward the door.

Salem was wracked. Her face was flush with spotty red circles and her hands had gone ghostly white. Lucy opened her mouth to talk, but Salem shook her head violently to stop her. Spencer was close.

They all heard him and his shoes on the tile in the East Wing. He was walking with purpose, but no longer ru

“Now,” Lucy mouthed and Grant opened the supply closet door. They flew inside. Shut the door and locked it without a sound. And sank to the ground.

“He’s going to find us, he’s going to find us,” Salem mumbled.

“Stop,” Lucy said and crawled over in the darkness to her friend.

A sliver of light was all they had—illuminating a few centimeters of carpet beyond the door and nothing else. Lucy waited for her eyes to adjust to the darkness, but they never did. It reminded her of her freshman photography class, when Kyle Ingwood took her into the tiny rooms where they unrolled their film, and tried to kiss her in the complete darkness, his lips groping the air and then the side of her chin before finally landing on her lips. Photography class suffered extinction at the hands of budget cuts the following year and Kyle never spoke to her after their messy make-out session in the dark.

But she still could taste the dark in that room. With her eyes wide open, she could not register anything around her; the thickness of the dark was oppressive.

Pitch-black.

No outlines of the couches or of each other’s bodies as a reference as the room pressed down on them. It weighed on them like a heavy blanket—the sound of waves inside a seashell hummed near their ears. Lucy struggled to take a breath, her head pressurized like she was in an airplane.

Spencer was done with the art room and he paused outside the woodshop. They collectively held their breath. And Lucy had to cover her mouth to keep from screaming when they heard the rattle of the doorknob into their hideout. He turned it once and then twice, pulled on the door, found it locked, and soon gave up the idea. Spencer then must have seen the door ajar to the journalism room, because they heard the door creak open, and without warning or fanfare he was walking away from their hiding spot. For a brief second, the fear of discovery left them like a deflating balloon.

They heard the tumble of the ladder as it crashed to the floor and hit the desk along the way, then the scraping of desks, the push and screech of metal on tile. And afterward: Nothing, just silence. They waited to hear him exit, waited—holding their breath—to see if he would examine every room in the East Wing. After a long moment, the journalism door swung open, hitting the wall with blunt force and then shutting with a distinct click. Spencer’s heavy footsteps walked away from them—away, away—until they couldn’t hear anything anymore.

“Is it safe to turn on the light?” Salem asked.

“No,” Lucy answered. “Not until we know he can’t see us for sure.”

“The cameras in the East Wing don’t show this door,” Salem added. “I don’t want to sit here without being able to see...it’s suffocating.”

Lucy waved her hand around until she felt the cotton of Salem’s shirt and then felt for her hand, grabbed it, and gave it a squeeze. “He might come back.”

“We’ll wait,” Grant said, his voice floated to them from somewhere near the door. “We have no intercom now. No way of knowing what’s happening out there. So, we wait.”

They listened intently, but couldn’t hear a sound.

For minutes, long hour-like minutes, they waited.

Lucy curled up on the floor, the scratchy carpet rubbing against her cheek, as she felt her body melt against the fibers. Even though she struggled against it, Lucy found herself succumbing to sleep. She wished she would will herself to stay alert, but sleep dragged her down into a fitful abyss.

She dreamed Spencer found them. Yanked them out by their hair and dragged them to the auditorium where the boy who had died right in front of her was inexplicably alive, but bleeding out his nose and eyes. The blood pooled at his feet, thick, red, and sticky and his mouth was moving, but no sound came out. As they were pulled past him, his arms shot up he reached for Lucy’s kicking feet.

Defying physics, Spencer hoisted them all on stage and tried to deposit their broken and tired bodies into the dressing room, which was filled to the top with bodies like a hall closet shoved with piles of junk and clothing. But Friendly Kent sent them away. “No room. No room. No room.”

So, Spencer grabbed them back and took them to the pool. The cement cavern was now a mass grave of tangled bodies. He threw them into the sea of limbs and blood. Lucy tried to get out, flapping her arms forward and gaining leverage against the dead, but she couldn’t make any progress forward. The dead pulled her down into them and she sank, as if their mushy decomposing bodies were quicksand or a riptide. Frantic and calling for Grant and Salem at intervals, Lucy gripped a body and the head rolled over to her.

It was Ethan.

She screamed and pushed his bloated features away. Her scream echoed, carrying on for ten full seconds and it appeared to trigger something as select tiles in the ceiling slid out of the way, creating cavernous black holes.

From the ceiling, green and orange snakes descended. Their blood red fangs gripped dead rats in their mouths. But even Lucy could see that the rats were also decaying, clumps of their fur was missing, holes in their sides oozed thick white pus. Down the snakes, with their prizes, slithered, sliding in and out of the masses, appearing and disappearing and reappearing.

As Lucy tried to pull away from the creatures, she saw a mass of dark hair the same color as her mom. The body ebbed and flowed toward her and away from her. Lucy reached out to touch the hair and get a closer look. She needed to know. She had to know.