I was already nervous at the kids’ close proximity to the dead and I was even more nervous when the Infected wouldn’t retreat at the frozen deaths of their colleagues. “They’re too smart to play the victim and keep taking it,” I thought. And yet I was so relieved to get a break from the knocking, from all the pushing on the doors and the constant threat of them bursting through, that I let them carry on with their nitro-freezing.
Dorothy was the first to say something. “Watch the floor,” she said. “They’re using the classic technique of distraction to keep you from focusing on their real plan.” As usual, Dorothy was right. There were no fresh eyeballs to be seen through the space between the doors, so the ones who were “looking” through were probably on their last legs. I guess while the boys were freezing the older-dead, the freshly dead were rigging something up to flood the theater with a parasite smoothie.
It was Mouse that saw the first rivulets of water creeping under the door. She screamed a scream that seemed incapable of coming from her. It was the scream of someone who couldn’t bear to watch any more of her friends die. It was a scream meant to stop anyone in their tracks no matter what they were doing. It was a scream that I could not make but could definitely feel as I faced losing two of my children after all we’ve been through.
KC, Houston, Doom, and Kaboom booked it back to us, but not before they got the soles of their shoes wet. These kids were running faster than Olympians, but the downward slope of the floor to the stage aided the water’s flow and stayed hot on their heels. What began as fingers of water turned into sheets but even so they managed to reach the stage before the water did. I was relieved, but I couldn’t let them up yet, I couldn’t let them bring that water up here with us. “Sit on the edge of the stage and kick your shoes off—they’re wet!” I bellow. The look of shock on their faces confirms they didn’t realize there was water at their feet before they started running. They kicked those shoes off like they were on fire and scurried to the back of the stage.
Jesse, Sarah, and Mouse start to grab the rearranged split kits and head for the stairs to the clubhouse, but before they can reach it Mr. Cromwell holds up his hand and in a commanding voice calls out, “Wait!”
Everyone stops in their tracks and together we watch the water rise. Dorothy, Mr. Cromwell (does this guy even have a first name?) and I tiptoe up to the edge of the stage and peer over the side. The thing is, the water isn’t rising that much. It’s at its deepest where it hits the bottom of the slope and the bottom of the slope is the stage, and even then it’s only about two to three inches deep. More water has been added to it as it seeps under the doors and down through the seats but this is sporadic and comes in waves. “There’s only salt water in the plumbing,” Mr. Cromwell says. “They can’t have a large source of infected water here.”
“They must be filling buckets of it from the flooded basement.” says Dorothy. “No one wanted to go down there, so the soldiers didn’t bother to lock it up.”
“The stage is pretty high,” I affirm, partially to myself. “Even if they form an assembly line of water buckets, they won’t be able to flood this place.” The three of us sit back with a sigh of relief. Well, not exactly relief—it’s more like we’re just too trauma-weary to care. It feels like these things are pushing us until our backs are up against the wall. First they take over our house, then our neighborhood, then the grounds of our school, then the school itself, then the theater and now the only patch left for us to live on is the stage. Why does this make me feel like an animal being herded into the corner of a cage?
They won’t let us stay here indefinitely. I look at what’s left of the Mclean Refugee Center and rally the remaining survivors. “Let’s hurry up and fill our bug-out bags with what we need. We can stay here tonight with a lookout, but have the kits up in the clubhouse ready to go to the roof.”
In the stillness that follows I hear KC turn to Nadia and say, “I win.”