He looked around urgently as he continued on. He had to get somewhere. As they walked, he found a piece of discarded ribbon which he made into an impromptu leash.
“Thanks for staying with me,” he said to his dog, scratching her neck and ears. “But you seem to be calming down, and you’d probably love to take off. We don’t need that again, do we?”
This made him remember the trouble he was in with his dad.
His dad.
He had to get to his school; to the safe-zone; to his dad. That was his goal.
NICOLE
The tunnel was incredibly eerie. Sun shone through the thin plastic, like it was nothing more than stretched out garbage bags, but when Nicole touched it she found that it was strong. The whole thing was held up by metal ribs every ten feet. Everything other than her own breathing and the sound of her feet dragging on the plastic floor, was muffled. The outside world was clearly there—she could make out shapes through the plastic—but it was still so far away. At the far end, she could make out the door to St. Joseph’s.
There’s no guard on this side, she noted. Probably on the inside. Makes sense.
When she got to the door she crouched and stared at it, unsure of what she would do next. She couldn’t just burst in. There was only a small window for her to look into the building, and if there was a guard on the other side, they would be bound to see her. Her whole plan started falling apart around her.
“Now what?” someone whispered behind her.
She let out a quick yelp with a jump, then turned to see David crouched directly behind her.
“What the hell are you doing here?” she almost yelled, just catching herself and lowering her voice before she let out the first word.
“You said we were going—”
“I said I was going! I told you to stay with Ryan!”
David grimaced, then leaned to one side revealing Ryan crouching behind him. “I thought you meant—”
“What is wrong with you?” Nicole said, smacking her brother in the head. “Why do people think you’re smart?” She looked around again, as if someone could somehow see them in the tight tunnel. “You get back over there, right now!” she said, pointing back the way that they had just come.
“But—” David started.
It was all he got out before the screaming started.
Nicole had read a lot of books and watched a lot of movies that used the term “blood-curdling scream,” and she thought she knew what it meant. Now she knew she had no idea what it meant until that scream coming from inside the medical-centre reached her ears.
It was blood-curdling.
The three kids stood perfectly still, frozen in the moment.
The second scream, quickly followed by a loud crash, brought them out of it.
“What was—” David started to ask, no longer caring to whisper.
Nicole slapped her hand over her brother’s mouth. “Shhh!” she hissed, then, after some consideration, slowly whispered “I’m going to look.”
David, still frozen, only nodded.
On the other side of the door, she saw a short hallway with double doors facing her at the end. A group of people, some standing with confused looks, others running around, blocked most of her view, but clearly the room behind the double doors was their focus. Another smash echoed from inside the room, followed by a series of screams. Some were quick and short, others more drawn out and gurgling, almost like someone was drowning. An orderly moved quickly toward the scream, away from the door. He must have been the guard on this side, Nicole thought. She turned the handle and started to pull.
Suddenly, a hand grabbed her and spun her around. “You can’t go in there!” David squeaked.
“Yes,” Nicole said, shrugging his hand away, “I can. I need to know what is going on. You stay here with Ryan.” She said the last sentence very slowly and loudly, as if she were speaking to a dog.
David glared at her.
She shoved his head down and did the same with Ryan, though he showed no interest in seeing, and was also much too short to even try.
When she looked back through, she saw a group of people—two doctors, the guard/orderly, and a soldier—about twenty feet away, talking, clearly upset and confused. They had their backs to her, looking cautiously at a set of doors opposite to the one she was looking through.
A loud crash made everyone jump.
Suddenly the double doors flung open and four panicked people ran through. Two were covered in blood. She couldn’t tell whose it was; it looked like it was just splashed on them, like a bad Halloween costume. Another had a nasty cut on his hand, and the fourth, a doctor, looked uninjured though he screamed, clearly horrified. They ran to the group gathered in the hall; two of them fell and the doctors tended to them, while the orderly and soldier stood to the side.
Now that the double doors were open, Nicole had a clear though narrow view of what was happening in the room where all the screams had come from.
More sounds of chaos followed. A few beds were visible from the door, but from the way they were positioned, Nicole guessed that there were more. A make-shift med-bay, she thought. An over-crowded one.
On the bed nearest the door lay a sheet, covered in blood, right where a person’s chest would be; like something had clawed its way out. Or in. From the bed next to that, a hand, covered in dripping blood, hung limp just inches from the floor. Nicole thought she saw it twitch.
Two people, also covered in blood—what the hell is happening in there?—cowered past the door. The soldier tried to grab them, to pull them out, but
