The Release

“You wasted it, you little bitch,” he seethed. “Do you know what this cost me? This,” he gestured to the bottle, “was two Tasers. And twenty bottled waters.”

For a second, Lucy couldn’t process what that meant. Then she turned her head sharply to him, her mouth dropping open. “You’re trading the school’s supplies…for alcohol?”

Spencer laughed, a grotesque, throaty laugh, his unbrushed teeth bared. “And weapons. And pills. And other food. But that doesn’t have much to do with you, now does it?”

“It does when you think you can trade me!” Lucy said, practically screaming.

He dropped to her level and grabbed her chin. “The moment you chose to stay in my school, you became my property. It’s just my luck that someone seems to think you’re worth trading for.”

“Who?” Lucy asked while Spencer’s hand still gripped her. “If it’s not my brother, then who?”

“Doesn’t matter to you.” He let her go violently and Lucy’s head snapped backward and hit against the metal edge of the table. Her head burned and a shooting pain traveled down into her neck. She took her free hand to rub the spot and realized that the back of her head was wet and when she looked down at her fingers, they were smeared with blood.

Spencer frowned. “Oopsie,” he glowered, “accidental damage to the goods. Such a shame. I hope it doesn’t hurt your value.”

“Who are you?” Lucy asked. She was too shocked and scared to cry, but her whole body trembled.

“I am a man. A fighter.”

“An opportunist,” Lucy spat.

“You see,” he smiled, “yes. And you say it like it’s a bad thing. But I’m alive. You and me…we aren’t supposed to be alive. And yet, here we are. I realized…quickly…all those people.” He stopped to drink and then he walked back over to Lucy, squatted down, his eyes were bright and wild. “All those people…they wanted into our building. For food and water and shelter. The limited survivors need me.”

“You made yourself important.”

“I am important. I am needed.”

“So you abuse that need?” Lucy’s head felt thick and achy. “What about your own family?”

Spencer broke into a sinister smile. He rose and waltzed over to his office. Lucy could only see only a corner of the room. He leaned over and swiped a picture off of his desk, walked back out, and tossed it to her. In a fancy metal frame, was a wide-smiled and white-toothed brunette, the ocean in the background, wind whipping her hair into her face.

“Fake. My girlfriend, I’d say.” He shook his head and laughed. “Some picture off the Internet. But teachers are kinder to you when you have a family. Paint yourself as a family man; tell people how eager you are to start a family. I was always this close to marrying her, settling down. Do you know how eager all the young female teachers are when they think they get to offer up some dating advice for their boss?”

“You’re a sociopath.”

“Opportunistic.”

“You lied about having a family?”

Lucy noticed the flash, however brief and fleeting, of self-awareness passing over Spencer. She wished he would drop the act, but the drinking wasn’t helping anything.

“Please.” He drank. Then added, “I’d say I’m lucky.” He stared off at one of the office walls, his eyes glazing over. “Who did I have to mourn?” And even though it was a fact that was supposed to have spared him pain, Lucy watched as Spencer closed his eyes and took a shaky breath.

“The world,” Lucy answered in a whisper. “We have the entire world to mourn.”

This did not even garner a response. Spencer went and drank another tumbler—his back to her. Then he slammed the empty glass down and grabbed his rifle, taking an exaggerated step over Lucy’s legs, and walking five feet away to a small table. Sitting on top was the head of the school’s mascot, Spartan Joe. Without an owner, the head took on a freaky vacant quality. Grabbing Joe by his foamy crown, Spencer walked out of office. Lucy could see from her vantage point the front windows, still taped over with black construction paper.

First, Spencer loosened some tape around the edges and then he kicked over a black crate to the window. He placed the mascot head on top of the crate, its empty eyes staring outward. Then he let the black paper fall around it, creating an obscured view back into the school. Onlookers from the outside would just see a giant head in front of a black background. Then Spencer yanked up on his long sleeved shirt and checked a wristwatch.

After several minutes, Lucy heard a knock on the front door. Four short knocks right in a row, then knock followed by a beat and two more knocks. Spencer raised his gun and walked forward. He unlocked the plastic covering the security panel and punched in his code again. The large mechanical bolts slid open; then Spencer hit a second key code and one of the front doors starting to swing forward automatically.

Lucy hoped that Salem and Grant would be the ones to enter the school. That somehow in that short amount of time they would have pla

Instead, a single body ducked through the doorframe.

It was a tall, slender young woman with raven hair. A large single stripe of faded pink framed her face. Spencer pointed his gun at her as she entered with one hand and typed in a key code that slid the metal back over the doors.

The woman had a gun of her own in a holster around her hips; her hand hovered over it like she was about to engage in a duel. She wore black lace-up combat boots over black leggings and a white long sleeve t-shirt—a clear mixture of every video-game heroine Lucy had ever seen. If the new visitor was trying to adhere to some cliché of a badass female, she was succeeding in the category of costuming. She held a bulging messenger bag across her body and her eyes shifted as she watched Spencer’s every move.

“Afternoon,” Spencer mumbled to his guest, he lowered his gun and then walked over and kicked the Spartan head away from the door, the paper flapping back into place.

The new visitor did not return his greeting. She looked at him with nothing but suspicion and potential loathing, her big bright eyes moving quickly from Spencer to the office and ultimately to Lucy.

“You got the girl,” she said. Her voice was smooth and deep.

“Just like you asked. I can see her appeal,” Spencer grumbled as if Lucy couldn’t hear.

The woman slid the messenger bag off and strode with wide, far-reaching, steps into the office, where she tossed it on to the desk where Lucy was handcuffed. Without even a single word to Lucy, she began to pull out various items from the bag: A bottle of whiskey, bottles of pills, a stack of magazines, a box of bullets, and other sundry items.

“Everything on your list, plus some extras thrown in for good measure,” she said as Spencer examined everything piece by piece.

“And what do you want?” Spencer asked.

She snapped her head at him, a

Lucy saw the girl’s hand itch above her gun, then she slid her hands to her hips, standing there looking at him squarely, her mouth drawn into a thin, tight, frown.

“We didn’t have a deal,” Spencer said. He picked up the whiskey bottle and palmed it, then he tossed it up and down, the brown liquid splashing around inside. “We were in talks. And now that Lucy Larkspur King…that was the name you gave me, right? Well, now that she’s here, in the flesh, in my office, I feel like perhaps she’s more valuable than all of this.”

The woman’s eyes flashed with unmistakable rage. She let out a small huff and then gracefully recovered. Taking a breath, she then gave Spencer a tight-lipped smile. “I see. You want to play a game.” She said it as a statement. And then she nodded, as if giving Spencer credit for his using Lucy as a pawn. “What could you possibly want? Try me.”