Chikara pushed on the door and it abruptly b.u.mped into something soft yet unyielding. She pushed again and heard a soft thump like the sound that comes from stubbing your toe on a table in the middle of the night. She pushed harder against the bulk of the door, her face slamming painfully against the wood. Stepping back, she looked down and was horrified to see Luke"s wide eyes staring up at her. The boy"s mouth hung open, his tongue protruding slightly from between his teeth. There was a smear of something dark across the side of his face.
Another scream broke the silence and, putting her shoulder to the wood and planting her feet solidly against the flooring, she pushed the door open. Luke"s inert body slid with it, his way greased by more of what looked like the pool of oil he seemed to be lying in.
As she stepped into the room, utter chaos met her gaze. The children"s desks were overturned; paper and books littered the floor. Gla.s.s glittered like diamonds amidst the clutter and there was more of that dark material spread everywhere. As her eyes adjusted to the light, she saw more figures lying like abandoned dolls about the room. Her vision slowly cleared and her mind put names to those dolls: Sean in his JVC baseball shirt, Angela, Juan, Claudia, Stephanie, the boy they all called Gordo, Tina and Julia.
Her kids.
They lay motionless on the floor, pools of what she now recognized as blood quickly congealed around them. Near her desk, she saw Jeffrey"s thin legs sticking out from underneath. It was like he"d gotten caught trying to climb under it. He must have thought it was the one place he"d be safe.
Chikara stepped deeper into the room and her foot b.u.mped into another doll. She looked down and Lisa"s cold eyes stared back at her, her headband pulled down and twisted around her neck. Her face was now a mask of tears and circular wounds.
Far off across the room, she saw what look like a fort, but was actually a haphazard barricade made up of desks piled one on top of the other. Behind it, a fistful of kids stared back at her. Their faces were wet with tears and the look in their eyes was pure horror. In front of the desks, several more children lay. They were alive and moving, but all were nursing wounds. Georgette was cradling her arm. So were Meryl and Frank. The shoulder of Ming"s shirt was torn and blood was dribbling down her arm. Off to one side, Tia was wailing, a large chunk torn from her cheek. Blood painted the side of her face.
In the seconds it took for Chikara to catalog the devastation, three dark figures pulled themselves from within the cloak of the room"s growing shadows. The figures all had the same blank stare as the people milling about the playground. Chikara looked up and saw that the windows had been smashed in.
"My G.o.d," she whispered to herself, "they must have come in through the fire escape."
The last of the looming figures stepped forward into the waning sunlight which was cascading in through the empty window frames. Chikara"s mouth fell open when she saw that it was the same man she"d seen earlier; the one in the stained shirt and tie who"d been staring up into the window.
"You..." she hissed.
The other three figures-a teenager in a football jersey, a fat, balding man, and a woman who would have looked pretty had half of her face not been ripped away-followed suit and took staggering steps forward. Blood covered each of their faces and coated their hands and forearms. The fat one was frantically chewing something.
Chikara stepped back in disgust and b.u.mped into the wall near the door.
Her mind reeled in abject horror at the scene which spread out before her. And then, suddenly, painfully, the guilt kicked in. In a series of mental flashes she conjured up what must have transpired here: the people coming up the fire escape, the children"s panic, and the invaders hammering on the windows in the same way they"d hammered against the door she and the others had locked.
She drew in a deep, anguished breath imagining what happened next all too easily.
The figures gathered outside, their numbers growing, the malevolent stares, the moans and the pounding.
My G.o.d!
Then, the windows giving way and the gla.s.s raining in.
Dear sweet Jesus!
The panic. The terror.
No!!
And then, the violence.
My fault!!
Her kids.
This is all my fault!!!
These were her kids... and she"d left them alone. Even though she thought she"d been protecting them by locking the door, she had in reality left them trapped and on their own. With nowhere to run, many of them had been cornered and had no choice but to die an unimaginable death.
This was a guilt that she knew she would carry with her for the rest of her life.
A low moan brought her focus back to the present. The four strangers took another faltering step toward her and she pressed her back firmly against the wall. Her heart beat painfully in her chest. Her gaze lifted to stare upward toward the ceiling. She felt her tongue go dry as her terror grabbed her roughly and tightened the muscles of her limbs.
And as the first of her tears cascaded down her cheeks, she knew... beyond any shadow of any doubt that this was her fault. Hers and hers alone. It had been her duty to care for these children, to keep them safe and sound. And she"d failed.
G.o.d... she"d even locked the G.o.dd.a.m.ned door!
It was by her hand the kids couldn"t escape this fate.
Almost immediately, her growing fear was replaced by deep and vengeful anger. As the heat of that anger gripped her and took hold, she felt the tips of her fingers wrap around a piece of metal protruding from the wall. She pulled against it and a heavy weight abruptly tugged at her arm. Confused for a moment, she looked down and saw that she"d pulled the fire extinguisher off its hook.
It was at the precise moment that she heard a low moan come from a few feet in front of her. She looked up wildly and saw the man in the shirt and tie come another step closer. A hungry grin strained his features and he slowly licked his lips in antic.i.p.ation of what would come. He opened his mouth and uttered another low, soulless moan. Breath that smelled of the grave a.s.saulted her senses and she saw bits of meat wedged between his blood-soaked teeth.
Teeth, she thought, stained with the blood of her children.
As a kind of madness sidled up to her intellect, she felt its warmth; embraced its momentary comfort. Like a fever dream, the delirium whispered to her and told her what had to be done, what must be done. What followed next was pure instinct and unfiltered insanity.
Spinning at the waist, pulling at the weight of the fire extinguisher as if she were delivering one of her devastating backhands, she brought the canister up and smashed it against the side of the man"s head. With a satisfying crunch, his skull collapsed in on itself and he was slammed to the floor, his body landing like a sack of meat. She delivered two more crushing overhand blows to his skull before leaving him for dead.
Continuing the onslaught, she swung the metal can around and struck the kid in the jersey across the knee. The sound of the joint breaking was both gratifying and, in a way, cleansing. Another overhand swing brought the cylinder down on the fat guy"s bald skull and he went down without too much of a fight. As he hit the ground, the small finger he"d been chewing fell from his lips and landed, rocking slightly, on the floor.
Abruptly, a slender hand with polished nails grabbed at the back of her collar. Chikara bent at the waist, ducking underneath it, and brought the extinguisher upward in a demolishing uppercut. The once pretty woman"s jaw shattered and, with an ear splitting snap, her neck broke. Her body crumpled to the floor in a heap.
Now out of breath, she stood panting over her handiwork.
The kid in the jersey had begun pulling himself toward her again, dragging his shattered leg behind him.
"Behind you," she heard Carolyn scream excitedly from behind the barricade.
Adrenaline now leaving her system, Chikara strained to lift the blood splattered weapon over her head, but with what felt like a Herculean effort, she got it there. Now standing with the dripping fire extinguisher held high above her, she screamed incoherently. As she felt the dead thing at her feet touch her leg with cold hands, she drove the weapon downward with all of her might. The metal rim struck the kid just at the bridge of the nose and smashed whatever was above it to mush.
An unnatural quiet fell over the cla.s.sroom. The stillness punctuated only by soft sobs and sniffles of the frightened children and the heavy panting of their now exhausted teacher.
"Jeez, Lady," Yoshi said, staring wide-eyed from behind the piled desks and wiping back his tears, "what took you so long?"
Helen Walker came out of the stairwell and as she rounded the corner onto the second floor, heard what sounded like a bar fight coming from Miss Pressfield"s cla.s.sroom. She broke into a run and made her way down the long hallway. She arrived at the room, breathing heavily, and pushed the already ajar door open and stepped out of the hallway and into a war zone.
The cla.s.sroom looked as if a bomb had gone off in it. Papers, desks, and gla.s.s were everywhere and some of the windows had even been shattered. Unbelievably, amidst the rubble, were several bodies laying strewn about. And there-and this was the most unbelievable of all-standing over what looked like a corpse and driving a fire extinguisher repeatedly into its skull was Chikara.
"What the h.e.l.l?" Helen asked to no one in particular.
Chikara, her face, chest and arms now spattered with blood, looked at the extinguisher in her hands with disgust and dropped it. The metal clanked against the floor with a hollow sound. Immediately, she rushed over to the pile of desks in the corner and pulling them away, made a throughway to where her kids cowered. Once a way was cleared, she frantically saw to some children who were obviously injured.
"Chikara..." Helen asked hesitantly. "What"s going on here?"
"Helen," Chikara shouted, "get me the f.u.c.king First Aid kit in the desk."
The children all got that all too familiar "Ommmm, you"re in trouble" look on their faces and it wasn"t until the two ladies realized it was because Chikara had said the "F word" that they understood. If it hadn"t been for all the blood and carnage around them, the two women might have laughed. Instead, they each set their faces and went to work.
Once it was apparent that whatever danger there had been had pa.s.sed, the children encircled them both and began wildly gesturing and talking, all trying at once to relate the horror of what had happened. A few of the others grabbed onto each of their legs crying, holding on for dear life.
"Hold on... Hold on. We need to see to those who were injured and then we can all talk," Helen said. She"d retrieved the First Aid kit and pulled gauze and antiseptic out of the case.
"No," Chikara said, still trying to catch her breath. She gently started freeing her legs and directing the traumatized children toward the door. "We need to get out of this room and lock the door behind us. There could be more of them coming up the fire escape."
"Right. Come on, children. We need to exit this room," Helen responded as she ushered the unhurt children through the debris and toward the door. "Just like we do when we have a fire drill, ok?"
"Go downstairs to the Teacher"s Lounge and tell whoever"s there what happened." Chikara called to her. "Roger, honey... I know you"re scared, but I really need you to run ahead. I need you to go tell the other teachers what"s happened here."
Roger, jug-eared and bespectacled, stared at his teacher and fear once again gripped his expression. He looked around nervously at his cla.s.smates for support, but his gaze was met by wide-eyed stares which mirrored his own.
"It"s ok, Roger," Chikara said trying to soothe his worries. "There"s none of those people anywhere else in the building. It"s safe. I promise."
To his credit, the boy nodded and stood up, but not before helping a few of the others to their feet. Once he was sure those around him were ok, he looked back at Chikara. She smiled at him and winked as if to rea.s.sure him. With a quick nod, the boy turned and took off at a run out the door. The sound of his footfalls slowly receded as he sprinted away from the cla.s.sroom.
One by one, the children were attended to and carried out of the room. Helen brought the uninjured kids to the Teacher"s Lounge where they were given drinks of water and allowed to recuperate from their trauma. Even Jim Rhodes helped out by gently taking the hands of some of them and holding them close as they cried and sobbed out their stories. In the end, he wasn"t such an a.s.shole after all. The injured were tended to one at a time and then taken to an impromptu infirmary in the main lavatory on the first floor.
And the dead...
Even though it broke her heart to do so, the dead were left where they lay. There was little choice other than to leave them in the cla.s.sroom. It would simply be too traumatic if any of the other children were to come across the dead bodies in any way, shape or form. And so, after taking one final, soul-crushing look at their bleeding and broken little bodies, Chikara turned her back on her room and locked the door behind her.
As night fell, all of the children from the other cla.s.ses were brought to the gymnasium and the rest of the cla.s.sroom doors had been secured one by one. The injured from Chikara"s cla.s.s were cared for on makeshift litters and left in the infirmary that was set up in the first floor lavatory. Around midnight, the first of them began dying. Poor Tia-who had been bitten so badly on her cheek-was the first to go. Chikara had cradled her little body in her arms and felt her slip away.
In the end, every one of those who"d been slightly injured died; delirious and hot with fever.
Near midnight, on a patrol of the hallways, Jim Rhodes heard the sound of something scratching against the door from inside Miss Pressfield"s cla.s.sroom. When he looked through the small piece of gla.s.s set in the wood, little Lisa Jackson, with her floral headband still twisted around her neck and her face hot with festering bite marks, stared back at him from the darkness with cold, dead eyes. He"d stumbled away from the door, his hand covering his mouth in horror, and vowed never to go back.
As the news on the television in the teacher"s lounge continued to play on through the night, the newscasters did their best to explain the gravity and extent of the situation. All too soon, it became apparent just how widespread it was.
And what needed to be done.
It was just after the news had switched over to the Emergency Broadcasting System that Chikara quietly searched the school for the kind of weapon she figured she"d need for the gruesome job which surely lay ahead of her. She found a never used fire axe in an enclosed case near one of the toy bins by the front door and decided that it was the best thing she"d be able to find at the school. It was either that or an old aluminum bat. She couldn"t ever imagine bringing herself to doing what she knew had to be done with that. As odd as it sounded, she thought the axe would somehow be kinder. It would at the very least be quicker.
However, knowing that didn"t stop her from shuddering at the thought of it.
So now, more or less armed, she sneaked off by herself and sat quietly on a folding chair in the lavatory and waited, waited for them each to come awake.
Just her and her kids.
And the heavy, metal axe.
And as each of her small and hopelessly fragile students slowly opened their eyes, their pupils now clouded and opaque, their mouths open and hungry for all things wet and red, she tightly gripped the firm wood of the axe"s handle and raised it over her head.
Then, as compa.s.sionately as she could, she put each one of them back to sleep.
It was, after all, the least she could do... for her kids.
Poisoned Apples Cleese stood brooding behind the thick Plexiglas wall of the pit. His right arm raised and pressed against the clear laminate, he glowered and gave off a distinct "don"t f.u.c.k with me" vibe. Behind him several teams of workers busied themselves with the mult.i.tude of tasks necessary in order to put a television show of this scale on the air. Cameramen moved large cameras about like they were gun turrets, each angling for the best shot at incoming enemy zeroes. Others sat behind giant consoles, busily turning k.n.o.bs and sliding levers. Scores of fresh-faced Production a.s.sistants rushed back and forth like baby chicks as they herded paper from one disorganized desk to another. It was all business as usual for them, but for Cleese it looked like a chaotic mess.
His mood was a foul and malignant thing and it showed. His was a demeanor that very nearly shouted for people to leave him be and, for the most part, they were all smart enough to comply. He"d always been a man who wore his emotions on his sleeve; the good, the bad, and-like this one-the ugly. It was an integral part of his charm. He was not someone who kept things bottled up and now was no exception. His intent gaze burned its way through the gla.s.s and a troubled sneer lay fixed upon his face. A few yards in front of him on the sand under the blinding lights stood the catalyst of this grim temper.
Inside the Pit, Chikara had just regained her footing after eviscerating the UD (an impossibly skinny old man wearing boxer shorts and not much else. His scalp had been ripped away and the shiny whiteness of his skull lay horrifically exposed) that had stood in front of her. It was technically still a "live" combatant, but with the old guy"s guts rapidly cooling in a pile at his feet, he wasn"t going anywhere fast. Gutting him bought her some time and had given her, at the very least, some breathing room. Around her, the bodies of the fallen lay heaped like cordwood, their vacant eyes staring blankly upward toward the blackness of the ceiling.
Cleese leaned closer, nearly pressing his face against the gla.s.s, and carefully watched Chikara at work. The vapor of his breath made small clouds of moisture on the acrylic. She really was something to behold. Standing there beneath the hot lights, her body glistened with the perspiration created by her prolonged movement. Her short, spiky hair threw droplets of water off and into the air like a sprinkler head. Her face was covered in thick, Kabuki-style makeup: curving, purple splashes of color covered her eyes with deep, lavender shadows. The harsh coloring gave her face a constant aspect of extreme rage. With her chest and shoulders heaving from her exertions, her muscles danced beneath her grue-coated skin.
Standing there covered in blood and sweat she looked-in a word-magnificent.
Cleese had given up trying to decide if throwing in with her was a good idea. When she lay beneath him, it seemed like the best idea he"d ever heard. When she wasn"t, he still thought it might be good to have someone there watching his back, especially someone who just might be his physical equal. It"d been a long time since he"d trusted someone enough to do that.
So, without much thought, he decided to give it a go.
In for a penny... in for a pound.
Having made the decision to leave together only made the tableau being played out before him that much harder to sit through. Watching her, surrounded by these lethal creatures, he only wanted to protect her, to keep her safe, to get her the h.e.l.l out of that Pit. But he knew, like it or not, his only choice was to let this play out. If one of The League"s premier fighters suddenly cancelled a match-a televised match-it might make the powers-that-be suspicious. And, if they were to get away without complication, their disappearance had to be kept quiet. Otherwise, who knew the lengths these f.u.c.ks would go to in order to keep them here. They"d already done some pretty f.u.c.ked up things to drive their ratings up. He could only imagine the kind of s.h.i.t they"d pull to keep them both in the Pit, earning revenue. So, with a kiss and a whispered prayer, he"d watched her walk down the gangway and out onto the sand.
He didn"t like it, not one bit.
But she"d made it clear it was her intent to go through with the match and there wasn"t much he could say or do to stop her. Besides... They both knew she was a skilled fighter and had done this s.h.i.t a thousand times before. She wasn"t stupid. She"d do the right thing, make it through the match, and they"d be scott-free.
Still... the compulsion to step in and take the risk for her was maddening.
He looked up from his reverie as motion from inside the Pit caught his eye and returned his attention to the match. From over her shoulder, Chikara drew the katana which rested in the ornate scabbard-which she called a "saya"-she kept lashed across her back. With a flash of gleaming sliver, she drew the blade and slashed it across the s.p.a.ce in front of her. The old man"s head separated from his shoulders and bounced like a ball across the sand. With a flick of her wrist, she expertly whipped the sword around in a tight circle and dislodged any blood and tissue from its metal with centrifugal force. She turned and expertly slid the sword back into place.
Across the pit, the final UD of the round (a comic book geek-looking Asian kid with a Moe Howard haircut and a ma.s.sive gunshot wound to the throat) was weakly pawing at the sides of the Pit, oblivious to the imminent danger that was now stalking across the sand toward him. Chikara came up behind him, delivered a lightning fast, straight blast of punches to the dead kid"s kidneys, and then leveled him with a reverse wheel kick. The kid was unceremoniously slapped to the ground. She stood over him and grabbed a handful of hair, pulling the kid"s head back. A flurry of hacking knife hands to his already damaged the throat and he was soon drowning in a cascade of his own blood.
Once more, Chikara reached back for the katana. She was going to make more of a show of things, but she knew that she"d need to make this quick since the round was undoubtedly almost over and another would soon begin; one that would bring a fresh crop of UDs. As her fingers touched the handle of the weapon, she heard the buzzer go off.
Cleese winced when he heard that. He knew better than anyone that having any number of UDs hold over from one round to the other wasn"t good. It did nothing but add to the already daunting numbers the fighter faced; especially this late in the match. It meant that she"d be beginning the new round at a disadvantage.
As the spindles turned, he felt their vibrations through his hands which were pressed firmly against the gla.s.s.
"Whoa, John, this could be a real problem for Chikara. She has a holdover and she"s going up against four fresh UDs."
"Indeed... she is certainly going to have her work cut out for her."
Almost immediately, Cleese sensed that something wasn"t right. In fact, from the looks of things, something was very wrong. From his vantage point, it was difficult to take in the whole of the Pit, but he instinctively knew that it simply looked too crowded out there. He could see Chikara and the leftover UD. He could see the new UDs staggering out of the spindles. Still, it just looked too d.a.m.n populated out there.