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Mark bends down and lifts the object I had thrown, now in three separate pieces.
“It’s my all-conference trophy,” he says, and then can’t help but chuckle to himself. “It was given to me last month.”
I stand. It was the trophy case that I crashed through.
“You okay?” Henri asks, looking at the cut.
“Yeah, I’m fine. Let’s keep going.”
We rush down the hall and into the gymnasium, sprint across the floor, jump up onto the stage. I flip my lights on to see the blue mat being moved away as though of its own volition. Then the hatch is thrown up. Only then does Six make herself visible again.
“What happened back there?” she asks.
“Ran into a little bit of trouble,” Henri says, climbing down the ladder first to make sure the coast is clear. Then Sarah and Mark go.
“Where is the dog?” I ask.
Six shakes her head.
“Go on,” I say. She goes down first, leaving only me on the stage. I whistle as loudly as I can, knowing full well that I’m giving away my position by doing so. I wait.
“Come on, John,” Henri calls up from below.
I crawl into the hatch, my feet on the ladder, but from the waist up I’m still on the stage, watching.
“Come on!” I say to myself. “Where are you?” And in that split second when I have no choice but to give up, but just before I drop down, Bernie Kosar materializes on the far side of the gym and comes sprinting my way, ears pi
“Come on!” Henri yells this time.
“Hold on!” I yell back.
Bernie Kosar jumps onto the stage and into my arms.
“Here!” I yell, and hand the dog to Six. I drop down, close and lock the hatch and turn my lights on as brightly as they’ll go.
The walls and floor are made of concrete, reeking of mildew. We have to walk in a low crouch to keep from hitting our heads. Six leads the way. The tu
“Where does this open?” I ask.
“Behind the faculty lot,” Sarah says. “Not far from the football field.”
Six presses her ear to listen in the small crack between the closed doors. Nothing but the wind.
Everyone’s face is streaked with sweat, dust, and fear. Six looks at Henri and nods. I turn my lights off.
“All right,” she says, and makes herself invisible.
She inches the door up just enough to stick her head out and have a look around. The rest of us watch with bated breath, waiting, listening, all of us wracked with nerves. She turns one way, then the other.
Satisfied we’ve made it u
Everything is dark and silent, no wind, the forest trees to our right standing motionless. I look around, can see the busted silhouettes of the twisted cars piled in front of the doors of the school. No stars or moon. No sky at all, almost as though we’re beneath a bubble of darkness, some sort of dome where only shadows remain. Bernie Kosar begins to growl, low at first so that my initial thought is that it’s done for reasons of anxiety only; but the growl grows into something more ferocious, more menacing, and I know that he senses something out there. All of our heads turn to see what he is growling at but nothing moves. I take a step forward to put Sarah behind me. I think to turn on my lights but I know that will give us away even more so than the dog’s growl. Suddenly, Bernie Kosar takes off.
He charges ahead thirty yards before leaping through the air and sinking his teeth deeply into one of the unseen scouts, who materializes from out of nowhere as though some spell of invisibility has been broken.
In an instant, we’re able to see them all, surrounding us, no fewer than twenty of them, who begin closing in.
“It was a trap!” Henri yells, and fires twice and drops two scouts immediately.
“Get back in the tu
One of the scouts comes charging towards me. I lift it in the air and hurl it as hard as I can against an oak tree twenty yards away. It hits the ground with a thud, quickly stands, and hurls a dagger my way. I deflect it and lift the scout again and throw it even harder. It bursts into ash at the base of the tree. Henri unloads more rounds, the shots echoing. Two hands grab me from behind. I almost deflect them until I realize that it’s Sarah. Six is nowhere to be seen. Bernie Kosar has brought a Mogadorian to the ground, his teeth now sunk deeply into its throat, hell ablaze in the dog’s eyes.
“Get into the school!” I yell.
She doesn’t let go. A clap of thunder breaks through the silence and a storm begins to brew, dark clouds now forming overhead with flashes of lighting and thunder tearing through the night sky, loud pounding thunder that makes Sarah jump each time one booms. Six has reappeared, standing thirty feet away, her eyes to the sky and her face twisted in concentration with both arms raised. She’s the one creating the storm, controlling the weather. Bolts of lightning begin raining down, striking the scouts dead where they stand, creating small explosions that form clouds of ash that drift listlessly across the yard.
Henri stands off to the side, loading more shells into the shotgun. The scout that Bernie Kosar is choking finally succumbs to death and bursts into a heap of ash covering the dog’s face. He sneezes once, shakes the ash from his coat and then rushes off and chases the closest scout until they both disappear into the dense woods fifty yards away. I have this unbearable fear that I’ve seen him for the very last time.
“You have to go into the school,” I say to Sarah. “You have to go now and you have to hide. Mark!” I yell. I look up and don’t see him. I snap around. I catch sight of him sprinting towards Henri, who is still loading his gun. At first I don’t understand why, and then I see what is happening: a Mogadorian scout has snuck up on Henri without his knowing it.
“Henri,” I scream to get his attention. I lift my hand to stop the scout with its knife raised high in the air, but Mark tackles the thing first. A wrestling match ensues. Henri snaps the shotgun closed, and Mark kicks the scout’s knife away. Henri fires and the scout explodes. Henri says something to Mark. I yell for Mark again and he sprints over, breathing heavily.
“You have to take Sarah into the school.”
“I can help here,” he says.
“It’s not your fight. You have to hide! Get in the school and hide with Sarah!”
“Okay,” he says.
“You have to stay hidden, no matter what!” I yell over the storm. “They won’t come for you. It’s me they want. Promise me, Mark! Promise me you’ll stay hidden with Sarah!”
Mark nods rapidly. “I promise!”
Sarah is crying and there’s no time to comfort her. Another clap of thunder, another shotgun blast. She kisses me one time on the lips, her hands holding tightly to my face and I know she would stay like this forever. Mark pulls her off, begins leading her away.
“I love you,” she says, and in her eyes she is staring at me in the same way that I had stared at her earlier, before I left home ec, as though she may be seeing me for the final time, wanting to remember it so that this last image might last a lifetime.
“I love you too,” I mouth back just as the two of them reach the steps of the tu
Terror sweeps through me. The scout pulls the knife from Henri’s side, the blade glistening with his blood. It thrusts down to stab Henri a second time. My hand reaches out for it and I rip the knife away at the last second so that it is only a fist that hits Henri. He grunts, gathers himself, and presses the barrel of the shotgun to the chin of the scout and fires. The scout drops, headless.