TAD’S FOOT CONNECTED with something soft. He looked down, choked back a scream, and stumbled back against the lockers.
A person.
Holy hell.
He’d been slamming the door against a person. One who wasn’t moving.
Bile burned the back of his throat. He gagged as he made himself kneel.
“Hey.” He shook the guy’s shoulder. When the man didn’t move, Tad took a deep breath and rolled him over.
Eyes stared blankly. Blood coated the floor. Mr. Rizzo, the biology teacher. He had a piece of splintered wood sticking out of his stomach and blood leaking all over the place.
Nausea bubbled and pushed upward as Tad forced himself to take the teacher’s pulse. Nothing. Tad’s skin crawled, and he scrambled backwards. His stomach cramped. Tad doubled over and threw up. He shook as his stomach emptied and emptied again, until there was nothing more to come out.
Slowly, he pushed himself up to his feet, his legs shaking. Sweat dripped down his forehead. Goddamn, he wanted out of here. He started to take a step away, then looked back down at Mr. Rizzo. He knew he couldn’t hear him, but still Tad said, “I’m sorry, man. Someone will come back and find you. I promise.” For a second, Tad stared at the dead teacher he’d hit with the door. Then he turned to look down the hall.
Everything was trashed. The ceiling was collapsed in places to his right. There were art desks and paint cabinets and crap that must have fallen from the floor above that were blocking the staircase entrance to his left, and water was dripping everywhere. Lockers were opened and debris lined the hallway to the left, but from this end, it looked in better shape down there than here. Time to move.
Racing down the hall, Tad slipped on the wet tile and almost crashed to the floor. Slow and steady wins the race, he told himself as he spotted the entrance to the stairwell. It wasn’t blocked.
Tad kicked something that went flying into the wall with an echoing crash as he ran toward the stairs. He had to get down to the first floor. The front atrium entrance was mostly glass and was probably completely demolished. But there were other exits and a ton of windows to escape from if he could just get down—
“Hello?”
Tad stopped and held his breath. There was dripping and the sound of something buzzing and—
“Is someone there? Can you please help me?”
He stilled at the sound of a voice. When the guy called out again, Tad let out the breath he had been holding. It wasn’t Frankie.
Tad looked over his shoulder at the stairwell. If he got out of the school, he could tell the firefighters that there was someone trapped on this floor. They had the training to deal with this crap. He’d probably make things worse if he tried to move something he shouldn’t and maybe bring the whole building down.
But if Frankie was still in here somewhere and heard someone yelling for help, he wouldn’t run for the exit. Frankie would be the hero everyone assumed he was. He’d say it was his job as captain to tell Tad to beat a path to safety and let him handle saving the day.
Well, screw that.
Tad turned and headed back down the hall as fast as he could without looking at Mr. Rizzo’s lifeless body. As he navigated the debris, he listened for the guy to yell again.
Come on, man. Give me another signal.
“Hey, is someone here?” Tad hollered as he got closer to the cave-in of desks and two-by-fours and tons of other junk that must have once been on the floor above this one. This sucks. “Hello! Anyone there?”
No response.
Come on. Yell again. “Hey. Is anyone there?”
“Hello?” the voice came again, and it sounded as if it was just on the other side of that mess.
Everything in Tad screamed to get out while he could.
He pictured Mr. Rizzo’s lifeless eyes.
God, he hated this.
“Hang tight. I’m coming.” Tad grabbed a two-by-four, yanked it out of the rubble, and threw it behind him. Then he tugged another free. All he needed was just enough space to tunnel through, find the guy, and bring him out.
Another board. Some tile. Good enough. He climbed over a desk and around a bunch of beams. “Hey, man, can you hear me? Tell me where you are.”
“In the bathroom.”
Which was currently blocked by a piece of the ceiling that had fallen in. Awesome. Just freakin’ awesome.
Tad studied the wreckage, pulled hard at another board, and stumbled back as it came free. He threw it to the side, and as he reached for another, he was pitched forward as the school rocked with another explosion.
Dust and bits of tile fell from the ceiling. The boards and desks shook. Metal groaned somewhere behind him.
The stairs.
He looked through the dust and yelled “No!” just as the stairs he’d almost fled down and the area around it collapsed.