“How do you know that?” she says in a more demanding tone than a questioning one.
“I don’t,” I say.
Six moves the fridge from the door. Bernie Kosar immediately starts scratching at the door, trying to get out, growling.
“I can’t make you all invisible,” Six says. “If I disappear, I’ll still be nearby.”
Six grabs hold of the doorknob and Sarah takes a deep, shaky breath beside me, squeezing my hand as tightly as she can. I can see the knife quivering in her right hand.
“Stay close to me,” I say.
“I’m not leaving your side.”
The door swings open and Six jumps out into the hall, Henri close behind. I follow and Bernie Kosar races ahead of us all, a ball of fury speeding away. Henri points the shotgun one way, then the other. The hallway is empty. Bernie Kosar has already reached the intersection. He disappears. Six follows suit and makes herself invisible and the rest of us run towards the gym, Henri in the lead. I make Mark and Sarah go ahead of me. None of us can really see a thing, can only hear each other’s footsteps. I turn my lights on to help guide the way, and that’s the first mistake I make.
A classroom door to my right swings open. Everything happens in a split second and, before I have a chance to react, I am hit in the shoulder with something heavy. My lights shut off. I crash straight through a glass display window. I’m cut on the top of my head and blood runs down the side of my face almost immediately. Sarah screams. Whatever it was that hit me clubs me again, a hollow thud in my ribs that knocks the wind from me.
“Turn your lights on!” Henri yells. I do. A scout stands over me, holding a six-foot-long piece of wood that it must have found in the industrial arts classroom. It raises it in the air to hit me again, but Henri, standing twenty feet away, fires the shotgun first. The scout’s head disappears, blown to pieces. The rest of its body turns to ash before it even hits the floor.
Henri lowers the gun. “Shit,” he says, catching sight of the blood. He takes a step towards me and then from the corner of my eye I see another scout, in the same doorway, a sledgehammer raised over its head. It comes charging forward and, with telekinesis, I throw the nearest thing to me without even knowing what that thing is. A golden glinting object that speeds through the air with violence. It hits the scout so hard that its skull cracks on impact, and then it falls to the ground and lies motionless. Henri, Mark, and Sarah rush over. The scout is still alive and Henri takes Sarah’s knife and thrusts it through its chest, reducing it to a pile of ash. He hands Sarah back her knife. She holds it out in front of her, between thumb and forefinger, as though she’s just been handed a pair of somebody’s dirty underwear. 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 pinned to the sides of his head. I smile.
“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 tunnel is about a hundred feet long and I have no idea what purpose this could have served at one time. We reach the end; a short flight of steps leads to a pair of metal cellar doors. Six waits until everyone is together.
“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 unnoticed, she pushes the door all the way open and we file out one by one.
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 tunnel!” I scream to Mark and Sarah.
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.
