Carver Pike - Scalp

What would the story be? He imagined it would be something like contaminated water that poisoned them all. No, it would be a gas leak. Then they could set the place ablaze and the story would be that an accidental spark ignited the gas and the entire student body went up in flames.

“Are you ready?” Nitsy asked him.

He nodded, but he wasn’t ready. He could never be prepared for something like this. The only thing he knew for sure was they needed to get the hell away from the campus before something like that “accidental” explosion wiped them off the face of the earth. He’d never had a reason to not trust his government before, but whatever was happening here, this information would need to be locked up and never shared with the public.

Robbie had seen his fair share of conspiracy theory videos on YouTube. He was still sifting through mental debris when Nitsy popped the door opened softly and listened with her ear at the crack in the door. Everyone behind them remained perfectly still. Only silence filled that dark void beyond. No howling, no crying, and no screaming. Wind blew past the corridor and ruffled the flyers posted on the corkboard next to the door.

Nitsy peered up at him, waiting for his encouragement. Robbie nodded and watched her close her eyes, take a deep breath, and then gently pull the door open further, but only wide enough for the two of them to slip through.

Here they stood, hand in hand, unmoving as they tried to get a sense of where they were and what was around them. Nitsy surveyed the area. Robbie did too. He needed to make sure they could get back to the room in a rush. The first time, they’d run blindly through the campus halls until they came upon the unlocked music room. If they were chased this time and ran in the wrong direction, they may never make it back.

When the door behind them was closed, probably by Lance, the click echoed through the hallway and might as well have been a bullet shot from a .44 Magnum. It cracked so loud, Robbie was sure it would awaken and alert anything sleeping or quietly stalking the halls.

“Fuck,” he muttered under his breath.

They remained still for a moment. If anything growled, Robbie would turn and bang on the door behind them. They could return to their safe slumber. It wasn’t too late.

He listened intently.

No growl.

No scream or shriek.

No voices.

Nothing.

Finally, when he was sure the door’s click was unheard, he pulled Nitsy by the hand in the direction he was sure led to the auditorium. She followed, which meant he was right. If not, she would have yanked him down some other path. It was already clear to him that she was someone who liked to be in the lead.

It’s why we’re the ones out here looking for the phones.

As they crept down the hall, something caught Robbie’s eye out in the courtyard to their left. It was parked near the statue of Stonewall Jackson. It was a wheelbarrow and sticking out of it was some yard equipment. He saw the handle of a shovel and a rake.

Leaning in close to Nitsy, he whispered, “Just a second.”

She shook her head when she saw where he was going, but he didn’t care. Those were potential weapons, and he wasn’t too fond of being out here unarmed. He carefully pulled out the shovel. He was about to go for the rake when he saw a rust-stained machete inside the wheelbarrow.

You’ve got to be kidding me.

He pulled the machete out, and it scraped the bottom of the metal wheelbarrow so hard he was sure everything and everyone in West Virginia heard him.

“Fuck,” he swore again under his breath.

Nitsy raced toward him and grabbed him by the arm, whispering into his ear, “Are you crazy?”

“Weapons,” he said as he handed her the shovel.

The rake might have been a better weapon, but it was long and awkward. The shovel was heavy enough to cave in a skull. She accepted it, and he held the machete up proudly. She shook her head again.

Something roared nearby.

It could have been a lion for how ferocious it sounded. It was far away, but it sounded like it was on the hunt.

A growl sounded off a little closer than the roar.

“We should go back,” he said, knowing he was the wimp here, but also knowing this wasn’t the time to feign bravery. This was about staying alive.

“You’ve got a machete now,” Nitsy reminded him. “And I’ve got…” she looked down at the makeshift weapon in her hands and continued, “…a shovel. I’ve got a shovel. This will have to be good enough. If you’re too afraid, you can go back, but we need those phones and I’m capable of getting them. I have to do this.”

A look flashed across her face, and it took Robbie a moment to understand it. Her jaw muscles flexed, and her eyes squinted. It was determination, and he wasn’t sure why she felt she needed to take it upon herself to save them. Why was it her responsibility? He couldn’t answer that now, and he figured if they made it through all this, he would ask her about it. For now, he would have to trust her, and there was no way he was letting her do this on her own.

With a quick kiss on her lips, he said, “Lead the way.”

Each step they took had to be slow, cautious, and planned. Robbie found himself holding his breath from time to time, so he could hear better. The beating of his heart and his own panting made it hard to decipher sound.

A gunshot sounded off from far away and Robbie wondered if it was the distant sound of hunters, young drunks shooting beer cans in a backyard somewhere, or had this thing stretched beyond the campus and now people were out there fighting for their lives? He’d been thinking this was confined to the Stonewall Forge campus, but if this spread to the nearest town, it could keep going. Whatever this was.

They weren’t far from the Stonewall statue when lights popped on all around them. It was the courtyard lights, and Robbie figured they must have been on an automatic timer. That meant the motion sensor lights for the hallways would be on too. This could be bad. More than ever, he considered turning back and hiding inside the music room. They could do this in the morning.

Nitsy froze in place with him as the lights popped on, but then she continued walking toward the auditorium, her fingers interlaced with his.

The hall around the corner from the music room was dark when they entered. At the far end was the auditorium entrance. To their right was the dormitory area and to the left, all along the corridor, were classrooms.

No people were in sight, which meant none of the creatures were either.

Nitsy took another step into the hallway and the lamp above their heads popped on. In reality, it was only a slight flicker, but it seemed so loud. Bathed in light without warning, Robbie was forced to put a hand over his eyes and squint. When his vision cleared, he saw the wall between two classes, to their left, was slathered in blood.

It started with a handprint like someone had slapped the wall, but then the hand kept going, smearing the mark several feet before stopping and slapping the wall again a foot or so later.

A few feet ahead, on the concrete walkway, they came across a puddle of blood.

More blood on the wall a few feet further.

As the corridor opened up to the same grass-covered area Robbie and Nitsy had run from earlier, bodies came into view. None were on their feet. Elias still lay in the bushes below the broken balcony. Other bodies littered the lawn.

The closest to them looked as if its fingers had tried to claw the hair right off the top of its head. Like the kid had dug at his own scalp so hard he’d nearly peeled it off. Skin hung to the side of his head like a haircut gone horribly wrong. The barber put the clippers too close to the skin and sliced it right off in a jagged groove. His face was crushed at the nose and jaw like someone had taken a baseball bat to him.