Bentley Little - The Burning

What had happened? How had it started? Where were the campus police? Angela's mind raced, bogged down with the impossible logistics of such a lynching, but no matter how she imagined the scenario, she could not seem to make the pieces fit. She and Derek broke free of the crowd and dashed between the two science buildings, circling back around on the outer sidewalk to the south parking lot. They were both completely out of breath from running, and with no one pursuing them, they slowed to a tired shuffle as they passed between the cars to Derek's Hyundai.

"It was Edna Wong," Angela said numbly. "They-"

"I know. I saw."

"So what do we do now?"

"Tell the police."

"And if they don't do anything ... ?"

It was a very real possibility, and discouraged, disheartened and demoralized, neither of them said another word until they were in the car and out of the parking lot, heading up the highway past Bookmans.

Before them, above the city, rose the majestic San Francisco Peaks, and in every direction the deep blue sky was as big as it was purported to be in Montana, but Angela still felt trapped and claustrophobic, as though she were in a room with walls closing in on her. This was the last straw. She could not stay here anymore. She needed to go back to Los Angeles, although at the moment even that teeming metropolis did not seem safe. It would be only a matter of time before Flagstaff was taken over. And then the rest of Arizona. And then California.

But at least it would take a while to get that far. And maybe, in the meantime, Dr. Mathewson or someone else would figure out a solution and it would all be over.

Unless she was a carrier.

Maybe that's what had happened. Maybe she was the cause of it all. Maybe she was spreading the mold.

No, she refused to let herself think that way.

But she couldn't help it. She imagined her friends turning on her, calling her a stupid brown bitch, saw in her mind's eye her mother's kitchen and her father's workroom overrun with fuzzy black mold.

For the first time, she understood the utter hopelessness felt by people who considered suicide.

They went under the train tracks and around the curve. Humphreys Street was blocked off for some reason, so Derek continued on to the next stoplight and turned left, intending to take Aspen to the police station.

"Stop the car!" Angela screamed. "Oh, my God!"

Derek slammed on the brakes, and the Hyundai slid a few inches to the right as it stopped in the middle of the street.

The car was stopped half a block in front of the hotel where she'd gone with Dr. Welkes' class.

And they were coming out of it.

The corpses from the tunnel.

Crawling, limping, sliding, pulling themselves forward with skeletal arms, broken legs dragging uselessly behind them, they emerged into the sunlight. It was a vision from a nightmare, all the more horrifying and unbelievable because it was happening in the middle of the day while smartly dressed women and business-suited men walked down the sidewalk from their offices to the restaurants where they intended to eat lunch.

"Jesus Christ," Derek said, throwing the car into reverse and backing up on the one-way street.

Angela kept her eyes focused on the scene through the front windshield, even as it began to recede. She saw men and women turn and run away the second they saw the skeletal figures moving across the sidewalk and onto the street, saw cars come to screeching halts, saw curious people emerge from stores and restaurants to find out for themselves what was happening.

A tall mummified man dressed in rotted rags shambled across the street, like something out of an old horror movie.

Someone must have called the police, because sirens suddenly sounded, growing instantly louder, and Derek backed the car into an open space at the corner of the block just as four patrol cars, lights flashing, sped by. She wanted to see what they were going to do- Try and capture the corpses? Start blasting away with their guns? -but Edna was dead and swinging from a tree in the center of campus, murdered by a gang of crazed students, and that had to be their priority. Derek must have faced the same dilemma because he looked at her quizzically, as though wondering which was to go. She said, "Edna," and he nodded, taking the car around the corner and going up to the next street so he could drive straight to the police station.

The place was a madhouse. Two police cars and two motorcycles rolled past them, lights and sirens on, as the Hyundai tried to pull into the small visitors' lot, and they had to jockey for a space with four other civilian vehicles whose drivers all seemed desperate to report something.

"I think those cops were heading south," Derek said. "Toward the school."

"We'll find out."

The only parking space left was a handicapped spot, and Derek pulled right in, parking between the blue lines. "Limp," he suggested drily.

They got out and hurried through the front door into the station's lobby, where at least a dozen men and women, although mostly men, were lined up in front of the counter and noisily declaiming their reasons for being here to all who would listen. One couple, incongruously young, looked like they could be college students, and Angela wondered if they, too, were here to report the lynching.

Lynching.

She never thought that was a word she'd be using outside of a historical context. She tried not to think about the look of agony and abject terror on Edna's face as the doomed woman tried to claw at the noose around her neck.

She wondered if Chrissie had been in that crowd somewhere. And Winston and Brock.

She hoped not.

A blue-uniformed officer emerged from a side door and stood before the front counter, hands raised. "Ladies and gentlemen! If you are here to report the incident on Aspen, we already know about it and have officers on the scene. The situation is under control. If you are here to report on the incidents at NAU or Flag High, we are aware of those, too, and our men are on it."

Incidents?

Angela looked at the young couple. The girl was now sobbing on the boy's shoulders. They weren't college students, she realized. They were high school students.

What had happened at the high school?

She was not sure she wanted to know.

Nearly all of the people, with visible relief, were heading outside, but Angela, holding tightly to Derek's hand, remained and moved to the front of the room. The officer behind the counter looked at them as they approached. "Yes?"

"We were at NAU and then we were on Aspen Avenue, so we saw both ... incidents," she said. "But I just thought you should know that they're both probably connected. There's this mold that-"

"Oh, that was you who reported that," he said, eyebrows raised in surprise. "Thank you. We were already operating on that assumption with Aspen. Obviously. The officers at the high school and college are aware of it, too. Just in case it's a factor. I don't know if Sergeant Sandidge ever got back to you, but we quarantined the apartment house on State Street and called in the CDC, which apparently one of the NAU professors had already done. I assume you talked to him?"

They both nodded.

"Well, someone from Atlanta should be here today. Possibly someone from the FBI. We're on this."

"Thank God," Angela breathed. Already she felt better.

There were still two men standing in front of the counter, one talking to the uniformed female cadet at the desk, another waiting to talk to Angela's officer. "Excuse me," he said. "We're a little overwhelmed right now. Unless there's anything else ... ?"

"No," Derek said. "Thanks for your time."

The two of them went outside, where the visitors' lot was quickly emptying. The Hyundai did not have a ticket for parking in the handicapped spot-cops definitely had higher priorities right now-and they got in, Derek starting the engine. "Let's see where they are," Angela said.