05 - The Big If

Then, Mark looked around. “We’re not making a move.” He snatched the makeshift board from Isaac’s hand and slammed it on his knee, breaking it in two.

It thundered across the room, and it made me jump. It felt like my heart left my body for an instant.

He strolled around, wiped his frustrated face, and groaned. He stopped at the teacher’s desk and lowered his head, palms stretched out on the wooden surface.

I stood still and heaved in panic, my fingers tapping the skin of my arms. She wasn’t there. Now we weren’t leaving.

But the other group must not have recognized Alia. They must have been mistaken. She had to be there, and they just didn’t know it.

“No,” Gwen’s normally loud voice scraped. There was no persuading Mark, I figured. Especially knowing Alia wasn’t there. Gwen continued, shaking Isaac’s arm. “We have to do something! We have to get Ivan! Don’t listen to him, he doesn’t care about us!”

“Oh, now I don’t care?” Mark argued. “I’m protecting you, stupid!”

Gwen continued whining, as if she didn’t hear him. She didn’t spare a single glance at Mark. Tears streaming down her face, she rested her head on Isaac’s shoulder and sobbed. Isaac sucked his lips, his eyes drifting to the ceiling. If it had been up to me, I would have ignored Gwen’s pestering long ago.

Isaac tried in vain to calm her down; his arm jerked subtly as if trying to get out of her grasp.

Loud noises like this made me scrape my skin with my nails. I felt my heartbeat pound with every passing second. My hands balled into fists with beads of sweat on my palms. “If you keep wailing, you’ll lure every monster to this room.”

She scoffed, a cynical sneer twisting her face. “Are you telling me to shut up?”

I didn’t answer. She already knew that I was.

“Do you have a brother of your own, Amari?” She slowly walked closer to me, her brows creased, and her lips stretched into a crooked smirk. “Oh, right. You and Mark were having that sibling thing, weren’t you?”

What did she mean by that?

“So, you know how it feels to be away from someone you treat as a brother…”

“Gwen, careful,” Isaac warned.

She continued, “How’d you feel if Mark weren’t in this room, huh?”

I don’t know, would be my honest answer.

“Gwen, stop.” Nathalie’s voice made me turn. I locked my eyes on her, hoping she would look back and tell me what Gwen meant by that. But she didn’t glance at me once. She had been avoiding me since we got locked up in this room. She hurried over and grabbed her arm.

“She doesn’t know,” she whispered, but it was still loud enough for me to hear.

“No,” Gwen said firmly. “She needs to hear what we know. It’s time we confronted her.”

“Alright, that’s enough.” Mark pulled my arm, dragging me away. He spoke to her, “You stick to what you believe. Just don’t put someone else into this.”

I was left in the dark as everyone fell silent. Gwen went back to the corner where Nathalie had kept herself surrounded by the chairs.

Mark let go of my arm as we stood in the corner near the door. My eyes fixed on them. Nathalie was shaking her head at Gwen, as Gwen mumbled a probable excuse I couldn’t quite comprehend.

I asked Mark, “What did she mean by that?” That must have caught him off guard, as his eyes widened and his mouth parted.

He leaned closer and whispered, “I don’t want you talking with them, alright, Ri? Don’t ask me why or anything, just don’t.”

“That’s suspicious.” I squinted my eyes. “Especially coming from you. Is it about the breakup that happened a year ago?”

“Which part of ‘don’t ask me anything’ do you not understand?” He gritted through clenched teeth, his eyes glaring at me.

I flinched back.

“Nathalie was my friend, too, Mark,” I said in a lower voice, frustrated and startled by his expression. Mark sighed, as if to disregard what I was saying, but I continued, “She never told me anything. In fact, she never bothered to tell me why she stopped being friends with me. You never told me anything.” Each word came out louder than I intended.

He rolled his eyes to the ceiling. “I didn’t have to. She was your best friend, not me. There’s nothing I’m gonna tell you, alright? Nothing. That’s up to her.”

I stood frozen as he walked away. All I could do was sigh in disappointment. What were they hiding from me?

I surrendered to the floor, hugging my knees as I began to notice the monsters again. The undead that lurked in the halls were the bigger problem. The hope for a miracle sounded too ludicrous to me. But what other options could I consider?

“Okay, how about the rooftop? It could be empty, though,” Andrew said in a low voice. He was standing, the same marker still in his hand. He leaned one arm on the armchair as he drew something on its platform.

Josh clasped both hands, leaning on the backrest of the same chair. He nodded and replied, “I went up there earlier. It’s locked. We can’t go up there.”

“But it’s empty, right?” Andrew replied, his eyes lit up as he smiled widely, shoulders lifted. Then he turned serious after a moment. “Seriously, though, we can’t go anywhere anymore but up. We gotta find a way to make it there.”

“Got any ideas?” Josh asked.

Andrew peered at the ceiling for a few seconds before he shook his head.

Josh groaned and slumped.

“We can’t stay here forever.” Lenore approached them, her arms crossed over her chest. “We’ll starve or get sick. Who knows how you might get whatever sickness is outside? Maybe we can climb through the windows and get up there.”

“What? No,” Mark cut in as he passed. He stormed over to the three with his finger pointing at them, like a dad telling his kids not to do something stupid. “No one leaves.”

Everyone else turned to him. He passed his eyes to the faces around him, including me, and continued, “Those sickos will kill you the moment you step out. There could be rescuers out there who might find us here. My dad… He’s a cop, and he could help them. If he comes here and we are gone, then it’s gonna be a huge problem.”

“If your dad comes,” Isaac remarked.

Mark turned to him. “He will,” he said. But it didn’t sound like he was trying to convince everyone. Instead, he was trying to convince himself.

Silence hung in the room. The faint moans behind the doors began to overwhelm it. My hands trembled as I shuddered, my heart beating rapidly.

Nathalie was the first to cut the silence. My shaking eased. “What if he doesn’t come, Mark? What if you’re wrong? What’s your backup plan?”

His eyebrows softened when Nathalie said his name. He gulped, opened his mouth to speak, but shut it again. He looked away from her, not saying a word.

He glanced at me. He needed my help. I gulped. “Okay, so…”

All eyes were on me. My heart pounded, and my hands began to sweat. “We should make a vote. We stay and wait until tonight. If no one comes, then we leave in the morning. We go somewhere else. Or if you want to stay, then that’s okay too. And then, we make another plan afterwards. This also goes for the other group. Then this is where we make the vote. Raise your hand if you agree to this, don’t if you think there’s another way to decide upon. Majority wins.”

Almost everyone had their hands raised. Only Gwen and her friends had theirs remain at the sides.

I nodded and exhaled, my chest lightening. It was almost like winning a jackpot. Then everyone settled, speaking in quiet conversations.

I looked at the window panes. Darkness had already swallowed the day. The sun had finally hidden behind the horizon, leaving nothing but shadows. The rain still fell as the stars stayed invisible. The sun that once gave me little hope had left me alone in this decaying world. My heart began to ache with each beat, and my breathing became labored. Heat began to sting my eyes.

I held back. This is no time to cry.

The hours crawled like a slug, and the sickos outside did not seem to thin out. Their snarling noises were as loud as ever. They knew we were here. They were waiting for us to come out, to make a stupid decision. It seemed like they weren’t brainless at all.

“Do you hear that?” Isaac asked out of nowhere.

He looked up to the ceiling, his gaze going from left to right. He pointed his finger upward, his brows creasing as if he was trying to listen to something that only he could hear. Was he going insane?

“There’s a loud chug coming from somewhere else,” he muttered.

Raising my eyebrows, my eyes drifted to the dark ceiling. A hushed murmur and shuffling spread across the classroom.

But when a soft light began to filter through the windows, I slowly moved forward. The light flickered and swayed, casting erratic shadows over the walls. As I approached the window and peered below, my eyebrows creased. The whirring outside grew louder, quickening my heartbeat. The beam of light grew brighter, piercing through the darkness. It took a moment for me to realize it was a helicopter.

I panted as I opened the windows wide, gripping their handles as the helicopter’s searchlight broke through the night. The shrieks on the ground grew so loud that even the chugs of the helicopter couldn’t overlap them. The monstrous silhouettes thickened toward the walls. Strong light blinded me from the windows, bleeding through my hands, covering my eyes.

Mark was right. Someone had come for us.