Silver Page 13

  “Get back to the windows!” he yelled. “Keep at ’em! Keep ’em out!”

  He ran back to the windows and swung with all his might, smashing one of the Infected around the head as it tried to squeeze through, sending it reeling back into the night. The younger kids took courage from that, and resumed their efforts to knock away the silver fingers that spidered through the cracks.

  One way or another, the Infected were coming in. It was only a matter of time. But Adam wasn’t going to make it easy for them.

  Erika knew when she heard the screaming that the game was up.

  She came to a halt in the middle of the corridor, alone. The beam of her flashlight slashed the dark ahead of her, cutting across the doors of the ground-floor classrooms. A bag hung from her shoulder, mostly empty now. All but one of the Molotov cocktails had been delivered; she’d been about to head back and make more.

  It dawned on her how far she was from safety. The doors above the foyer had been barricaded. The back stairs were on the other side of the building from her. If the Infected broke in now …

  But they had broken in. That was what the screaming meant.

  It wasn’t coming from the classrooms ahead. It was coming from behind her, down the hall, around the corner. Little voices, raw with terror. She didn’t know where the courage came from that propelled her toward the sound instead of away from it. Maybe because she couldn’t live with herself otherwise. There were only a few years between the youngest pupils and her, but they were long and important years, and she felt like an adult by comparison. She felt responsible.

  Other children fled from the classrooms, abandoning their posts in fright. The defenses were breached; they all sensed it. The collapse would be quick now.

  “Run for the stairs!” she shouted at them as she passed. “Do as Mr. Sutton told you!”

  Behind them, from the classrooms, she could hear the splintering of wood as the Infected tore their way in through the barricades.

  She rounded the corner and saw a pair of girls, wild with fright, backing out of a classroom. They were the screamers, their voices shrill and earsplitting. They caught sight of her and fled senselessly, as if she were Infected herself.

  “Wait!” she called after them, but they had no intention of waiting, because another student was stumbling after them. A boy of no more than thirteen, one hand clasped to the side of his throat slick and wet with blood. In the other hand was a Molotov cocktail that Erika had given him only minutes before. The rag in its neck was lit. He must have been on the verge of throwing it when he was bitten.

  Blood pulsed through the dam of his fingers. His eyes met hers over the flame. They were blank, emptied out. Then he toppled, and the bottle slipped from his limp hand.

  Erika staggered backward as the corridor erupted into flame. Scorching air swept over her face. She tripped and fell as a wave of searing heat billowed past her. Her bag thumped against her body, cushioning the bottle within; somehow it didn’t break. She scrambled away, one arm protecting the bottle, the other thrown across her face as she looked back. Tears were trickling down her cheeks, caused by heat or fright, or both.

  Oh, no, no, there was a boy in that.

  She heard footsteps. Four students came running around the corner. They stopped dead when they saw the fire.

  “There’s no way through!” she yelled at them, climbing to her feet. “Go back!”

  They didn’t move. They knew what was back there. The Infected. The creatures outside had already begun dismantling the abandoned defenses.

  “Now! Before they block us off!”

  Maybe they were scared by the fierce-eyed figure silhouetted against the flames, or maybe they knew that some chance was better than none at all, but they did as she said. Erika chased after them, around the corner and back into the corridor where she’d first heard the screams.

  Over the years, Erika had attended many lessons in many classrooms all over the science block. She knew every corner of it by now. The quickest route to the stairs had been blocked by the flames, but there were other ways to get there. If they could make it in time.

  There were two classrooms on their left, both with outside windows. As she ran past the first, she glanced inside. The window was a faint, ragged rectangle of moonlight. Something terrible was clambering in.

  The next door was closed. She heard it open behind her as she turned the corner. She didn’t look back.

  Now she was in the hallway that ran along the back of the science block. The sight of kids running away had set off the others, and all thought of defending the windows had been forgotten. Black, poisonous smoke was drifting from the open doorway of a classroom, and a hellish glow seethed within. Another Molotov cocktail thrown.

  Stupid, stupid, stupid. She should have known, should have seen how dangerous it was putting fire in the hands of scared kids. The sprinkler system wouldn’t work with the electricity off. They could end up retreating upstairs only to have the whole building burn down around them. Why didn’t Mr. Sutton think of that? Why didn’t Mark or Paul think of it?

  The same reason she herself didn’t think of it. Everything was moving too fast. They were scared and desperate. Clear thinking was in short supply at a time like this.

  Too late now. Too late to stop it. Too late to do anything but follow the plan and hope.

  Most of the students who were bolting from the classrooms were fleeing headlong up the hall away from her. It was the most obvious route to the stairs, which were in the far corner of the block at the angle where two corridors met. It was also the longest and most dangerous, since it ran along the outer edge of the science block, where the Infected were coming in. It would be easier and safer to cut through the classrooms and labs.

  “This way!” she called, ushering passing kids toward a classroom door that she was holding open. Nobody listened to her. They were caught up in the hysteria of the retreat, pushing each other aside in their haste.

  Three younger girls, gawky twelve-year-olds, came running up the corridor. Behind them came one of the Infected. Perhaps it had been the same age as them once, but it had changed now, its limbs longer and thinner, fingers like claws, spiked hair sticking up and eyes glowing blue. It came lurching up the corridor with an uneven step, one hand scratching the air, head tilted to one side and howling like something damned.

  Erika’s hand went to her bag, and came out holding the last of her Molotov cocktails. With shaking hands she sparked her cigarette lighter and touched it to the rag. The flame sprang up alarmingly. She drew back her arm and threw it. The bottle sailed over the girls’ heads and hit the Infected straight in the chest.

  One moment the awful thing was there, the next a pillar of flame was in its place. The howls changed pitch, became wild shrieks instead. It flailed onward, staggering this way and that, a dark silhouette inside a raging inferno. For a few seconds, it seemed that even fire wouldn’t stop it. But then one of its legs gave way, and it fell. It tried to lift itself from the ground, failed, and didn’t try again.

  Erika stared at the blazing remains of the Infected, her eyes shimmering with tears. She’d never done such violence to a living thing in her life. Now the air was thick with the sweet black stink of burning flesh, and the ceiling writhed with a thin, dark smoke.

  She looked for the girls, but they’d gone, up the corridor and away. There was no one left now, nobody to help. The shapes moving behind the flames were not human anymore. She turned tail and fled.

  “You want some of this?” Adam roared, brandishing the length of radiator pipe. “Do you?”

  Adam found nothing strange in threatening someone while retreating. He’d had dozens of fights with boys who were bigger and stronger than he was, but he’d avoided just as many. Acting scared or meek was the worst thing you could do. So you made yourself dangerous, and you backed off, and you left with your hide and your pride.

  That was how it worked with people, anyway. The Infected were another matter.

&n
bsp; There were two of them advancing up the corridor toward him. The kid they’d been chasing was behind Adam now, and still running. While everyone was fleeing for the stairs, Adam had gone the other way. He’d told Mr. Sutton he was going to cover the retreat, make sure everyone got to safety who could.

  But that wasn’t the real reason at all. He just wanted to wreck some Infected.

  There were certain things that Adam was deadly scared of. One time, when he had to speak at a school assembly, he was so nervous he was sick. Trying to talk to a girl he liked caused the same reaction. But when it came to fighting, things were different. Then his fear got all muddled up with his anger. He didn’t feel scared in a fight. He was like a cornered animal instead. The more afraid he should have been, the more angry he got.

  He should have been terrified right now. Instead, he was boiling mad.

  The Infected prowled warily toward him as he backed away. They weren’t used to their prey acting defiant. Or maybe they recognized him, and it made them hesitate. Maybe they still remembered how they’d feared him once.

  Surely not. As Adam flashed his light over them, he could make no connection between these twisted silver ghouls and the kids he’d once shaken down for sweets and pocket money. They were barely human anymore. One of them was hunched low to the floor, the sharp metal ridges of its spine visible through the ripped remains of a shirt. The other stood ramrod straight, its head back and bent to one side. One of its hands was a deformed paw that ended in a straggle of shiny cables, as if it were midway through changing into something else but hadn’t quite made it.

  They were closing in on him, losing their caution. Adam couldn’t turn his back on them now, and they didn’t look like they’d be scared off. He knew the signs. And he knew there was only one thing to do.

  “Let’s have you, then,” he snarled. And he lunged forward and swung the pipe with all his strength.

  They hadn’t expected an attack. The Infected with the hunched back took the full force of the strike on the side of its skull. There was a loud ring of metal on metal, and the creature slammed into the wall and went down in a heap. The second Infected lurched toward him, grabbing at his arm with its good hand. But Adam had dodged faster moves than that in his time. He pulled back, let his opponent overreach itself, and then brought the pipe down in a crushing arc on its shoulder, smashing it to the ground.

  He backed off, breathing fast, cold with adrenaline. A smirk of triumph touched his lips. One, two, and they were on the floor, lying still. He’d done that. Him!

  “Yeah!” he shouted at them. “How’d you like that?”

  Then one of them stirred, and a moment later, the other one did, too. Slowly, they lifted themselves up again. Blue glowing eyes fixed on him, and he could have sworn they had hate in them now.

  “Right,” he said to himself, his bravado diminishing. Then he turned and ran for it.

  Where is she?

  Paul stood on the wide staircase that led to the upper floor. Frantic kids hurried past him in the beam of his flashlight. How many now? How many hadn’t made it? He hadn’t even been counting. He was waiting for a sight of her. He had to know that she was safe.

  But every passing second brought them nearer to the moment when they’d have to retreat up the stairs, barricade the doors, and shut out the Infected. And still there was no sign of Erika.

  She couldn’t be one of them. Paul wouldn’t allow the possibility. Everything else might change and turn, but not her. She was his one fixed point. If she was taken, only survival would be left.

  The staircase stood at the southwest corner of the science block, at the junction of two corridors that ran off at right angles. Paul had seen to it that the windows of nearby classrooms were particularly heavily defended, so the Infected couldn’t block their route to the stairs. When the attack came, everyone had fled through the building, heading for this point. But the Infected were close behind them. And Erika was not here.

  Fire regulations meant that the corridors had heavy swinging doors placed at intervals along their length, with narrow windows of wire-mesh glass. Good thing, too, because there was a dark haze gathering at ceiling height and the air stank of burning plastic and charred wood. Paul wished there was an easy way to barricade them, but unlike the doors at the top of the stairs, they had no handles to jam, and there would be no time to nail boards into place.

  He saw the beam of a flashlight swinging crazily in the darkness behind one of the fire doors. His hopes lifted for a moment, but then the doors swung open and Adam ran through, coughing.

  “Any more back there?” Paul asked quickly.

  “Just Infected,” said Adam, hurrying toward the stairs. “We gotta shut the doors.”

  “Erika’s not back,” Paul heard himself say.

  “Lot of kids aren’t back,” Adam replied as he passed him. “Not coming back, either. At least, not how they were.”

  Paul looked up the stairs. He couldn’t see the doors at the top, because the steps turned back on themselves as they climbed, but he knew Mr. Sutton and Mark were up there waiting for him. Caitlyn, too, who’d been upstairs when the attack began. Paul would be the last one through.

  “Go on,” he said. “I’m gonna wait.”

  Adam stopped halfway up the stairs and looked back down at him. His eyes had gone narrow and piggy, a sure sign he was gearing up for a fight. Paul felt his hackles rise even before Adam opened his mouth. He couldn’t stand this kid, this petty, small-minded bully. He couldn’t stand anyone who tried to push people around.

  “They’re right behind me, I said,” Adam told him. “We’re not gonna have time to barricade the doors if we don’t close ’em now.”

  Paul thought he could see figures moving in the dark through the windows of the fire door. “I’m gonna wait,” he said again.

  “And get everyone killed? No, you’re bloody not!” said Adam, grabbing his arm.

  The touch was the excuse he needed. Anger flared like a struck match. Paul whirled, fist clenched, ready to use it.

  And then he heard her scream.

  It had come from the other corridor. Before he knew what he was doing, Paul had a flash bomb in his hand. He stuck his flashlight under his armpit, dug out a gas lighter he’d salvaged from the supply pile, and pulled the trigger to ignite the flame.

  Running footsteps. Erika was going to be coming through the east door. He glanced at the other, the one Adam had come through, and saw blue lights in the darkness behind the glass. Eyes.

  Adam had come down the stairs and was standing next him now, pipe held ready. Not getting in his way now, but supporting him, ready to take on the Infected if they came through. Paul was grateful to him for that much, at least.

  He held the flame near the fuse of the flash bomb. He listened to Erika’s running footsteps, and tried to hold his nerve. Timing. It was all about timing. He’d get one shot at this.

  He touched the flame to the fuse and tossed it to the floor of the corridor. A second passed. Two. Three. And then it all happened at once.

  Both sets of doors burst open at the same time. Through one, a half-dozen Infected poured in, a tide of limbs and teeth. Through the other came Erika, running as hard as she could. Paul saw the instant of horror on her face as she saw the group of Infected lurching into her path, but it was too late to stop herself. Their hands pawed and jaws gaped to receive her.

  Then the darkness was blasted away with a loud bang and a blinding, stuttering flash of searing light. The Infected froze at once like some grotesque tableau. Erika, shocked by the flash and the noise and still traveling at full tilt, tripped forward. She blindly kept her balance for a few more steps, then fell heavily into Paul’s arms, who was there at the bottom of the stairs to catch her.

  He didn’t waste time on relief. He barely gave her time to find her feet before he began pulling her up the stairs. They staggered up together, Adam guarding their backs, the snarling Infected still paralyzed in the dark at the bottom of the steps
. At the top, Mr. Sutton and Mark were waiting on either side of the doors. As soon as they were through, the doors were pushed shut, and an iron bar was rammed through the handles to secure them. Immediately, a team of kids sprang into action, putting up boards and hammering in nails.

  The girls flocked to help Erika, but Paul and Adam were ignored in the frenzy of activity that followed their arrival. They went a short way down the corridor to get out of everyone’s way. Paul sat down against one wall, head hung, pulling the smoky air in and out of his lungs. Adam sat against the opposite one, the radiator pipe still in one hand.

  Alive, thought Paul, but he wasn’t sure whether he meant himself or Erika.

  And suddenly the corridor was blinking with light. Both boys looked up as the fluorescents overhead came on, flickered, and stabilized. The electricity was back. The darkness was banished.

  Paul met Adam’s eyes across the corridor, and in that instant an understanding was there, the shared relief of two people who’d been through something terrible and come out the other side. The knowledge of soldiers.

  Then the fire alarm went off, and the sprinklers activated, drenching them. Neither Paul nor Adam moved, and neither broke the gaze. Paul saw Adam’s mouth twitch at the corner. The two of them started laughing and couldn’t stop.

  He could hear them out there. He could sense the weight of them, pressing on the doors.

  Wanting to get in.

  Mr. Sutton ran his eye over the defenses for the tenth time. The doors were wooden, plated with thin metal. They were barred, boarded shut, barricaded with heavy desks, and braced with benches jammed against the opposite wall. The doors to the other stairway leading to the foyer were similarly secure.

  It still wasn’t enough.

  The Infected were changing. Adapting. If another one of those hulking monstrosities came along and started pounding on the door, they’d break through eventually. And what was to stop them from coming back with arms like drills, or as spidery wall-climbing things that could get up on the roof?