Yesterday
I attempted to sleep, a hammer by my side, trying not to think of the damage it could do. Skulls, teeth, kneecaps. Other kids clutched pieces from a disbanded car engine, while Theo held a can of WD-40 and a Zippo lighter, flicking it nervously. The room was filled with tension and anxiety rolled off us in waves.
Once we had picked our weapons, we ate. Earlier, the group had trekked to the cafeteria. They didn’t take the risk of actually cooking the trays of frozen meals—it would take too much time—but they’d brought back plenty of fruit and wilting vegetables, along with cans of beans, pre-packaged cookies, cereal and bread.
I feasted on black beans. No salt, no spice, just straight from the can with my plastic spoon. I sat in the corner, slurping, my arm moving nonstop from the can to my mouth. I didn’t know how hungry I was until I smelled the first mouthful, my stomach growling, this beast inside me and I ate and ate. Manners, I thought, came only with comfort. Soon enough—too soon—I was dredging the bottom. I followed it with two apples and a chocolate chip cookie. It tasted better than Thanksgiving.
Theo snacked on cereal right out of the mini-box, while Dirk stuffed his mouth with hamburger buns, covering his shirt in crumbs.
I caught Max looking at me, bean juice on my face, and I smiled, which caused him to smile. His teeth were stained brown and he looked like a teen Count Dracula and for some ridiculous reason I thought it was hilarious. Our laughter floated over the room, and the others stopped and stared.
I laughed so hard my stomach hurt, hyena-side-splitting-on-the-floor laughing for a solid minute until it piddled out to silence. I was so drained. Empty. As if someone scooped out my insides and I was left hollow. I think the laughter was our tears in a different form.
Bone tired, I rested on the floor next to my hammer. The floor was firm, unforgiving and cold, and there were dust bunnies in the corner, and if I looked closely, decades old bubblegum, too. But it was better than the forest. There were no bugs and surrounded by four walls and a roof, it felt safe. No adults here, only us.
Theo locked the door and flipped off the lights and as darkness descended, I heard the others curl together, their breathing falling into a rhythm.
“Max,” I whispered. “You awake?”
“Mmm hmmm.”
“Cuddle me.” It sounded strange to say it aloud, to actually request it. Max and I—it was all happening in the wrong order. But any embarrassment I had disappeared when he scooched near, his arms around my body. Almost instantly, I wasn’t cold anymore. We stayed like this, his belly against my back, my body cocooned.
“Are you scared?” he whispered.
“Not right now,” I said.
“Did I ever tell you I wanted to be an architect?”
“No. I had no idea.”
“’Cause I lied,” he laughed and I playfully smacked him. “I want to be one of those people on those TV shows. You know, those home shows, where they go from one weird awesome house to another? I’d love to see all those places, all those cool things, and then one day after seeing them all, I’d decide where I want to live.”
“Can I come?”
“Sure,” he said and I felt his breath against my neck. “But I don’t think that’s ever gonna happen.”
“Why?”
“What do you think is going to happen? After, I mean? It’s not like we can move on and forget about it.”
I wanted to tell him he was wrong, but we both knew better. All I knew was in that moment, right then, everything was okay.
“I know there’s no going back,” he said. “But I’m scared. ’Cause I don’t think there’s any way forward, either.”
Searching for words I told him, “Now’s pretty good.”
“Yeah, it is.” His lips were so close to my skin. “Maybe it was all worth it, then.”
I closed my eyes, picturing the houses he might never visit—yurts in the desert, igloos in the Arctic, stilt-homes, tiny homes, mansions overlooking oceans, maybe even cave dwellings and domed hotels under water. I drifted from place to place imagining them all until I fell into the dark.
I heard whimpering, and I thought it was in my dream. The sounds of the dying. It might’ve even been me. But I was awake.
It was one of the girls in the group. She moaned softly and she very well could’ve been an animal caught in a trap. No one else woke up. They were all so tired, or immune to the sounds of pain. It had only been what? A day or two and we’d adapted already.
Poor girl, I thought. She needed a mother. Someone to whisper, It’ll be all right.
Max slept next to me, and I wondered what he dreamt. I wished I could enter his head, but I wouldn’t want anyone in my mine. The things they’d see. I couldn’t picture ugliness inside of him and I wondered if he would be frightened if he saw all of me?
I’ll get to know Max, that’s what I promised myself. Once it was all over, I saw us going from here and staying someplace quiet in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by acres of land or an endless ocean and if I dreamt hard enough, I saw us growing old together. Two high school sweethearts holding hands on a rocking chair watching as the sun set.
I wish I knew now what I didn’t then. I would’ve held him tight and kissed him again and again.
It was the last night I’d ever spend with him.
Gas. I woke to the unmistakable scent of gas.
I rose and was surprised that I nearly wobbled back down. My brain banged in my skull and my legs swam. The floor reeled beneath me and I had an awful queasiness.
“Wake up! Wake up!” I shouted.
The group rustled, a carpet of bodies slowly stretching out.
Theo didn’t wake up, and I kicked him. “Theo!”
He moaned, groggy.
“There’s gas. Do you smell it?” The sulfur, rotten eggs stench was impossible to miss. “Everybody get up!”
People stirred, slug-like, from their sleeping positions, but as they stood, they reached for support. It was like watching people atop a lurching ship at sea.
Dirk was the only one who seemed alarmed. “Where’s it coming from?” He searched, nose upturned, blood-hounding it across the room. He stopped at a vent and suddenly jerked his head back. He coughed, waving the air away from his nose. “The vents.”
Max was up, Theo, too. Max asked, “Is it a leak?”
I had the same question, but it didn’t matter.
“Don’t know. Everybody out!” Dirk said. He rushed to the door, all of us stampeding behind. His hand was on the knob, and it was turning, but the door wouldn’t open. We were trapped, the gas was leaking and time was running out.
“What’s wrong?” Max asked, his voice rising with panic.
“Won’t open. Why won’t it open?” Dirk looked through the door’s small rectangular window, and I pushed through to the front.
“What is it?”
“Can’t tell.”
I peered through the window and into the darkened hallway. Desks were piled up outside the door, stopping it from swinging open. I realized with shock. “Someone’s barricaded us in.”
They found us. They’re here.
Dirk wasted no time. “Theo,” Dirk said. “Come here.” Dirk scanned the group, and he pointed to two of the biggest guys. They would’ve been on the football team if we ever had one. “You two!” They came to the door. “On three, we barge against it, got it?” They nodded, lining up, following orders. “One, two, three,” he said, and just like that, they bashed into the door.
The door inched open, meeting resistance on the other side. They bashed against it again, each time straining, slamming against the door, their elbows scrunching.
“Almost there!” Dirk shouted. “Keep going!”
The door screeched open against the furniture, and finally it opened wide, and I heard the desks on the other side clattering on the floor, an earthquake of rattling noise.
The students congregated near the door, waiting to get out, the gas this invisible force pushing us out, when suddenly I saw Dirk duck, not saying a word. Before I knew what was happening, the window shattered with the sound of a gunshot and one of the big guys slumped to the floor.
He didn’t move.
Kids screamed, scrambling back into the room.
He’s dead. He’s dead. He’s dead.
Dirk yelled something and I couldn’t process the word with its meaning. All I heard was sound from his mouth. He repeated it and finally I understood. “It’s the sheriff!”
Another shot rang out and we all dove to the floor. My hands and cheek pressed against the cold linoleum. Dirk dashed across the room, grabbing his gun.
My brain was a big blob of nothing. No feeling, only seeing.
Dirk passed me, his eyes on fire, and he said, “Go time.”
Everything got quiet. The door was closed. I didn’t move, but the room started to spin. I focused on one spot, willing the room to stay still. It so wanted to tilt.
Dirk laid down, his back on the floor, his feet facing the door, the gun across his chest. He wormed closer and closer to the door, and we watched, mesmerized, until his feet were against it. He raised the rifle, propping his elbows up, looking awkwardly through the scope, the gun aimed at an angle from the floor to the center of the door.
“Hey, Sheriff,” he called out. “We’re in here. And we’re coming out. You hear us? We’re coming out!”
I slid as far away from the door as I could.
Dirk kicked his feet against the door and it swung open in a wide arc.
His finger was on the trigger.
His finger moved.
A shot rang out.
“Got him!”
Due to momentum, the door swung back shut. Dirk rose to his feet, gun in hand. “I got him! I nailed him!” He stood over us. “I got him, I got him, I got him!” He saw our hesitation to stand up. “Nothing to fear, see?” To prove his safety, he twirled in place. I expected a barrage of bullets to mow him down from through the door, but nothing happened.
The sheriff must’ve been dead.
I thought of Sasha. Is this what she would’ve wanted?
I was struck with an odd sense of sadness. Sasha’s father was dead. The man who baked us cookies when we had sleepovers as young girls. This big linebacker of a dad, dead. It didn’t seem possible. He’d seemed supernatural. Immortal.
Or maybe it was the gas. My mind was mud and my eyelids pressed down, heavy weights. I knew the sheriff tried to lock us in here, to kill us quietly. And I couldn’t tell if that might have been a mercy—a painless death. To fall asleep in a room full of gas and never wake up. I couldn’t think of a better way to die.
My head sloshed in my skull, and I stood, weaving to the door.
I thought the gas was making me hallucinate.
The sheriff’s body was gone.
Then I saw the blood. Next to the fallen chairs and desks, there was a thick streak of it. A streak leading away from the hallway and around the corner.
Dirk’s voice was in my ear. “I hit him, that’s for sure. Thought I took him down.” Max, Theo and the rest spilled out.
The hallway didn’t spin, but it was tight, pressing against me and I leaned on it, retching the poison from my body. Dirk’s voice faded as I clenched my eyes, and I wished he would stop talking. I wished everyone would stop moving. The sound of shoes squeaking on the floor reverberated in my ear, every small sound digging deep into my head.
Max leaned near me, Theo, too, and we were gulping air.
Then I heard Dirk say, “His bulletproof vest! Damn. I forgot about the vest.” He looked back and gestured us forward as he aimed the rifle toward the trail of blood. “Time to go hunting, I’d say.”
All of us followed Dirk, a kind of weird pied piper. I knew what needed to happen to the sheriff. I knew what he’d done. Yet, like watching those Animal Planet shows, I couldn’t help but root for the underdog.
I didn’t know what to think.
We’d been minutes from sleeping forever in that room. Just walking upright seemed like a miracle. As we walked, I smelled something—the sheriff’s blood. It wasn’t just coppery. It was primal. I sensed it like an animal. The ancient part of me knew it. Felt it. The sheriff was scared. And I thought of the warning to never corner a scared animal.
We were just about to turn the corner. I expected to see him there, shivering, begging forgiveness. He was there, but he wasn’t begging.
And he sure as hell wasn’t alone.