Bryan Smith: Soultaker

He turned away from them and led a grim march toward the school.

Kelsey moved closer to Will as they neared the school’s rear entrance. There was something fucked up happening in there. The screams alone told him that. But there was more to it. The atmosphere surrounding the school was alive with some kind of unnatural energy. It made his flesh tingle and his nads shrivel. It was similar to the way he’d felt during Jordan’s levitation trick, only intensified a thousandfold. A sudden and very intense desire not to venture inside the school gripped him.

Who the hell did he think he was anyway?

John fucking Wayne riding to the rescue?

Who was he kidding?

He searched Will’s pale face and saw at once his friend was thinking similar thoughts. He could also tell Will knew the same unfortunate truth. Their fear didn’t matter. Their friends were in there. Trey was in there. And his only hope of salvation was this banishment spell, which, by God, better not turn out to be a bunch of made-up ancient hokum.

It was their only shot.

We’re doomed, he thought. Oh fuck. We’re doomed.

He nudged Will with an elbow. “You ready for this, man?”

Will swallowed and nodded. “I…think so.”

“Well, that makes one of us.”

And then there was no time left for idle conversation. They’d arrived at the entrance and the screams ripped at their ears. Kelsey worked hard to control the sudden tremors rippling through his body as they passed through the entrance and stood in the hallway, but it was impossible. His mind flashed on the movie Saving Private Ryan. Those soldiers in the landing boats, most of them hardly more than kids themselves. Crossing themselves and saying final prayers in those last moments before storming the beach at Normandy. For the first time, he thought he truly understood how it must have felt to have been in one of those boats.

A door on the left stood open maybe ten yards ahead.

The screams grew louder still as they approached it.

They were a few strides away when a door to their right flew open and Alexis Mackeson came at them in a rush, a scream tearing out of her mouth as she veered toward her son. Will froze in his tracks and gaped at her. There was a large bruise on her forehead. And matted blood in her hair. She was wild-eyed. A savage. She was nothing at all like the very proper society lady Kelsey had known.

There was a knife in her hand.

A big one.

Kelsey’s mind reeled.

What the hell?

The last they’d seen of her she’d been tied up and stuffed inside a closet. How had she gotten here? Who had released her?

She had lain in wait for him.

Had somehow known he would come here.

In the time it took for these thoughts to flit through his head, she brought the knife around in a savage arc and ripped a gash in Will’s throat. Blood leaped from the wound as Will staggered backward and banged into a row of lockers.

“NOOOOOO!”

Then the booming report of a gun overrode his cry of grief. Kristen stood ramrod straight in a classic shooter’s stance and pumped several rounds into Alexis. The woman’s body jerked as each slug tore through it, then toppled to the floor.

Will was on the ground now.

On his back.

His eyes staring up at the ceiling tiles.

Kelsey dropped to his knees, the book slipping from his fingers.

He scooted across the floor.

Stared down at his friend’s eyes.

His dead, sightless eyes.

In the next moment a scream of his own joined the chorus of agony issuing from the auditorium.

He could feel it all slipping away, his control of the situation pouring like sand through his fingers.

No.

Not like that.

Like blood from a mortal wound. A deep gash in the neck, say. And no matter how desperately you wished to stop the hemorrhaging, you just couldn’t do it. Jake stared at the dead boy on the floor and for a moment was stunned insensible. He just stood there. He didn’t know what to do next. Didn’t have the first inkling. He’d known he was heading into a life-or-death situation. Knowing that on an intellectual level was all well and good. But it did nothing to prepare you for that first moment of sudden, shocking violence. He doubted anything could prepare a person for this. He looked at Kelsey’s tear-streaked face and wished he could ease the boy’s pain somehow.

But there was one thing he could try to do.

The only thing left.

He reached for the fallen book.

As he knelt he became aware of a new sound rising above the screams from the auditorium. It was an ominous sound he associated with the impending storm. He was down on one knee when he heard Kristen shout his name. The alarm in her voice diverted him from the task of retrieving the book. He looked up and saw several pieces of notebook paper come swirling down the length of the corridor, buffeted by a powerful, rushing…

WIND.

Now hold on a second.

This didn’t make sense.

A wind originating from inside the school?

How-

And then it hit him. It was like being struck by hurricane winds. The force of it knocked him off his feet and sent him sliding several feet down the hallway. He rolled onto his stomach and saw the mythology book go flying past him, the slim volume’s pages flapping in the gale, looking for a moment like a wounded bird struggling to stay aloft. For a nanosecond, he saw it framed in the light visible through the open back doors. Then it was gone.

Someone screamed.

He didn’t know who.

Could even have been himself.

A burst of adrenaline slammed into him and he surged to his feet to stagger after the book. The wind continued to buffet him, slamming him against the lockers more than once, but he managed to stay upright through a monumental effort of physical will. Then he was through the doors and back in the parking lot. The strange wind followed him out of the building, blew past him, and lifted the book off the asphalt. He dove for the book and a fingertip brushed its spine for a moment before it flew high into the sky and disappeared forever.

He screamed and pounded the pavement with his fist. He was so lost in feelings of impotent rage that he hardly noticed the wind had ceased blowing.

Then Kristen was kneeling next to him, a trembling hand on his back. “Jake? Baby, get up. We’ve got to get out of here.”

Jake found a fresh reserve of strength and pushed himself to his knees. He stared at the open rear entrance, saw only the dead security guard. He looked at Kristen. “Jordan. Kelsey. Where are they?”

She hesitated a moment; then her shoulders sagged. “Still in the school.”

Jake got to his feet and started walking back toward the school.

Kristen hurried after him, grabbed him by an elbow, stopped him. She spun him toward her. “Did you hear me? We have to go. Now.”

Jake shook his head. “I’m not leaving them in there.”

Kristen made a sound of frustration. “You don’t even know them! Don’t you get it yet? This is bigger than us! There’s nothing we can do to stop it. The fucking army couldn’t stop this. We have to leave before we’re dead, too.”

Jake looked at her and felt a bone-deep weariness. The day had started off with a monster hangover and he was still feeling some of its effects. He was in nowhere near peak physical condition to begin with. Factor in an ass-kicking at the hands of his jock brother, an afternoon spent speeding around town like some kind of berserk meth-head, and what you wound up with was an exhaustion so enervating all he wanted was to find a comfortable bed and sleep twenty-four hours straight. And yet he knew he couldn’t just run away. Not this time. Maybe he couldn’t save the Rockville High class of 2009, but he could at least try to save two people. And it didn’t matter that they were strangers. They were human beings. The girl was maybe even related to him somehow. He wouldn’t be able to live with himself if he didn’t make the effort.