Jeff and Paola burst through and slammed the door behind them.
As the door swung shut, Suzy saw a pair of snake men sprinting toward them, their wands raised. One shouted, “Chaw!” The air seemed to distort at the tip of the wand, rippling forward. Then the door finished closing, and Suzy twisted the lock. A second later, something hit the door with a thud. Suzy jumped away.
“Come on!” Jeff grabbed her and pulled her to the back of the room. As she turned, she saw Ryan drop from the ceiling, and others were following him. On the back wall of the room was a metal ladder, bolted to the wall. The plan had been to hide, not to run, but that didn’t seem like an option anymore.
Jeff flew up the ladder, but Suzy was right on his heels, and Zoe in turn kept bumping into her as they climbed. They went up, past the hanging ceiling – Suzy realized they needn’t have come down into the room at all; they could have gotten onto the ladder from the ceiling space – until Jeff reached the hatch.
He grabbed the handle and yanked. It didn’t move.
Suzy felt a colossal blow to the door of the janitor’s closet down below. The writhing mass of kids on the ladder was yelling, fighting, surging upward. Her attention was all on Jeff, who was repeating, through clenched teeth, the same words he had said to Paola just a few moments earlier. “It’s locked!”
SIXTEEN
Jeff pounded on the hatch. He grabbed the handle again and pulled with all his strength, shouting wordlessly, desperately.
Another massive blow to the janitor’s room door sounded below.
Jeff hit at the hatch with his fists. He clawed at the frame with his fingernails. Suzy was yelling something at Zoe, who was trying to climb over her. Suddenly, the hatch opened, and Jeff recoiled. Then he recognized the frightened face staring down. “Nacho!”
Jeff launched himself through the hatch, out onto the roof. He looked around and saw only Nacho on the empty, gravel-covered expanse, besides his own classmates who were geysering up through the open door. “Nacho, are you by yourself?”
“Yeah.”
“What are we going to do?”
Nacho looked back helplessly. “I was just going to hide.”
Jeff growled. He looked around for an escape. Nacho waited for the last of the kids to emerge from below; then he swung the hatch closed and slid a nail into the handle like a lynchpin.
Jeff’s mind was racing, but his thoughts were all over the place. He couldn’t think what to do next. “It STINKS out here! Is this, like, a planet made of curry? And what happened to your class?”
“I don’t know. We heard screaming, but Mr. Halverson just said to stay in our seats, but I wanted to see what was going on, and I went out in the hall, and I saw the aliens coming in, and I kinda panicked and decided to hide in the bathroom. But then when I got in the bathroom, I realized they’d find me, so I decided to sneak up here.”
“How’d you get in the janitor’s closet?”
“The door was unlocked, but I locked it after me.”
“Jeff!” Suzy was waving to him from where she crouched on the edge of the roof. Jeff ran over, and seeing her wild gestures, he crouched down. They looked out over the back of the school.
Like the front side of the school, the back faced a black-cobbled courtyard surrounded by a high, stone wall. This courtyard, however, was more ornate, with the black cobbles carefully placed so their edges formed regular lines, pinwheeling out from a central point. At that focal point, there was a small tree, perhaps three feet tall.
Jeff stared. It was beautiful with its red leaves and black bark, and he had a hard time keeping his eyes off it. Four guards stood in a wide circle around the tree. Maybe it has AMAZING fruit, he mused.
He pulled his gaze away and noted the small groups of men standing watch at each set of school doors. They seemed alert, but not alarmed, apparently unaware of the manhunt under way.
“Look,” Suzy nudged him and pointed at the corner of the building. The far end of the school seemed to be fused to the wall that surrounded the courtyard, as if it hadn’t been quite the right shape to replace the building that had stood here before. At the point where the school met the wall, the roof was only five or six feet higher than the wall.
“We could jump down onto the wall...” Suzy whispered.
“But how will we get down OFF the wall? And THEN what?” Jeff scanned the length of the wall, looking for a staircase.
“Is there another door on the roof to get back ins-,” Suzy was interrupted by the sudden jiggling of the hatch.
Jeff froze and listened. Then, muffled, came a deep-throated, “Chaw!” and the thud of something striking hard against the door.
Peter swore loudly and took off toward the corner of the roof. Ramon and Shen followed; then in a wave, the rest of the class flowed after them. Jeff found himself running along in their wake, even as a little voice in his head screamed But where will we GO?!
Ahead, Peter reached the corner of the school and leapt off onto the wall. A shout went up from the yard below, and men came running from all directions.
Jeff slowed, looking for options. Ramon followed Peter onto the wall, but Shen froze at the edge of the roof. Zoe slammed into him from behind, and they both fell to the wall below. Their other classmates poured over after them.
As he neared the corner behind them, Jeff saw Peter was in trouble. Two guards had come out from a
