I Am Number Four (25 page)

“We have to get out of here then,” Sarah pleads, her voice soft and shaky.

Six nods reassuringly to her. And then I remember something I had forgotten in all the excitement.

“Wait, your being here, us being together, that breaks the charm. All the others are fair game now,” I say. “They can kill us at will.”

I can see by the look of horror on Henri’s face that it had slipped his mind as well.

Six nods. “I had to risk it,” she says. “We can’t keep running, and I’m sick of waiting. We’re all developing, all of us are ready to hit back. Let’s not forget what
they did to us that day, and I’m not going to forget what they did to Katarina. Everybody we know is dead, our families, our friends. I think they’re planning to do the same thing to Earth as they did to Lorien, and they are almost ready. To sit back and do nothing is to allow that same destruction, that same death and annihilation. Why stand back and let it happen? If this planet dies, we die with it.”

Bernie Kosar is still barking at the window. I almost want to let him outside, see what he can do. His mouth is frothing with his teeth bared, hair standing tall down the center of his back.
The dog is ready,
I think.
The question is, are the rest of us?

“Well, you’re here now,” Henri says. “Let’s hope the others are safe; let’s hope they can fend for themselves. Both of you will know immediately if they can’t. As for us, war has come to our doorstep. We didn’t ask for it, but now that it’s here we have no choice but to meet it, head on, with full force,” he says. He lifts his head and looks at us, the whites of his eyes glistening through the dark of the room.

“I agree with you, Six,” he says. “The time has come.”

WIND FROM THE OPEN WINDOW RUSHES INTO
the home economics room, the refrigerator in front of it doing little to prevent the cold air. The school is already chilly from the electricity being off. Six is now wearing only the rubber suit, which is entirely black aside from a gray band slicing diagonally down the front of it. She is standing in the middle of our group with such poise and confidence that I wish I had a Loric suit of my own. She opens her mouth to speak but is interrupted by a loud boom from outside. All of us rush to the windows but can see nothing of what is happening. The crash is followed by several loud bangs, and the sounds of tearing, gnashing, something being destroyed.

“What’s happening?” I ask.

“Your lights,” Henri says over the sounds of destruction.

I turn them on and sweep them across the yard
outside. They reach but ten feet before being swallowed by the darkness. Henri steps back and tilts his head, listening to the sounds in extreme concentration, and then he nods in resigned acceptance.

“They are destroying all the cars out there, my truck included,” he says. “If we survive this and escape this school, it’ll have to be on foot.”

Terror sweeps across both Mark’s and Sarah’s faces.

“We can’t waste any more time,” Six says. “Strategy or no strategy, we have to go before the beasts and soldiers arrive. She said we can get out through the gymnasium,” Six says, and nods at Sarah. “It’s our only hope.”

“Her name is Sarah,” I say.

I sit in a nearby chair, unnerved by the urgency in Six’s voice. She seems to be the steady one, the one who has remained calm under the weight of the terrors we have seen thus far. Bernie Kosar is back at the door, scratching at the fridges that are blocking it, growling and whining in impatience. Since my lights are on, Six has a good look at him for the first time. She stares at Bernie Kosar, then squints her eyes and inches her face forward. She walks over and bends down to pet him. I turn and look at her. I find it odd that she is grinning.

“What?” I ask.

She looks up at me. “You don’t know?”

“Know what?”

Her grin widens. She looks back at Bernie Kosar,
who races away from her and charges back to the window, scratching at it, growling, the occasional bark in frustration. The school is surrounded, death imminent, almost certain, and Six is grinning. It irritates me.

“Your dog,” she says. “You really don’t know?”

“No,” says Henri. I look at him. He shakes his head at Six.

“What the hell?” I ask. “What?”

Six looks at me, then at Henri. She emits a half laugh and opens her mouth to speak. But just before any words escape something catches her eye and she rushes back to the window. We follow and, as before, the very subtle glow of a set of headlights sweeps around the bend in the road and into the lot of the school. Another car, maybe a coach or teacher. I close my eyes and take a deep breath.

“It could mean nothing,” I say.

“Turn your lights off,” Henri says to me.

I turn them off, clench my hands into fists. Something about the car outside causes anger within me. The hell with the exhaustion, with the shakes that have been present ever since I jumped through the principal’s window. I can’t take being confined in this room any longer, knowing that the Mogadorians are out there, waiting, and plotting our doom. That car outside may be the first of the soldiers arriving on the scene. But just when that thought pops into my mind, we see
the lights quickly retreat from the lot, and speed away in a hurry, down the same road they came.

“We have to get out of this damn school,” Henri says.

Henri sits in a chair ten feet away from the door with the shotgun aimed right at it. He is breathing slowly though he is tense and I can see the muscles flexed in his jaw. None of us say a word. Six made herself invisible and slipped out to do some exploring. We’re just waiting, and finally it comes. Three slight taps on the door, Six’s knock so that we know it’s her and not a scout trying to enter. Henri lowers the gun and she walks in and I return one of the fridges to block the door behind her. She was gone for a full ten minutes.

“You were right,” she says to Henri. “They’ve destroyed every car in the lot, and have somehow moved the wreckage to block every door from being opened. And Sarah is right; they’ve overlooked the stage hatch. I counted seven scouts outside and five inside walking the halls. There was one outside this door but it’s been disposed of. They seem to be getting antsy. I think that means the others should have been here already, which means they can’t be far.”

Henri stands and grabs the Chest and nods at me. I help him open it. He reaches in and pulls out a few small round pebbles that he sticks in his pocket. I have no idea what they are. Then he closes and locks the Chest and
slides it into one of the ovens and closes the door. I move a refrigerator up against the oven to keep it from being opened. There really is no other choice. The Chest is heavy, it would be impossible to fight while carrying it, and we need every available hand to get out of this mess.

“I hate to leave it behind,” Henri says, shaking his head. Six nods uneasily. Something in the thought of the Mogadorians getting ahold of the Chest terrifies them both.

“It’ll be fine here,” I say.

Henri lifts the shotgun and pumps it once, looks at Sarah and Mark.

“This isn’t your fight,” he tells them. “I don’t know what to expect out there, but if this thing goes badly you guys get back in this school and stay hidden. They aren’t after you, and I don’t think they’ll care to come looking if they already have us.”

Sarah and Mark both look stricken with fear, both holding their respective knives with white-knuckled grips in their right hands. Mark has lined his belt with everything from the kitchen drawers that might be of use—more knives, the meat tenderizer, cheese grater, a pair of scissors.

“We go left out of this room, and when we reach the end of the hall, the gymnasium is past double doors twenty or so feet to the right,” I say to Henri.

“The hatch is in the very middle of the stage,” Six
says. “It’s covered with a blue mat. There were no scouts in the gym, but that doesn’t mean they won’t be there this time around.”

“So we’re just going to go outside and try to outrun them?” Sarah asks. Her voice is full of panic. She’s breathing heavily.

“It’s our only choice,” says Henri.

I grab her hand. She is shaking badly.

“It’ll be okay,” I say.

“How do you know that?” she says in a more demanding tone than a questioning one.

“I don’t,” I say.

Six moves the fridge from the door. Bernie Kosar immediately starts scratching at the door, trying to get out, growling.

“I can’t make you all invisible,” Six says. “If I disappear, I’ll still be nearby.”

Six grabs hold of the doorknob and Sarah takes a deep, shaky breath beside me, squeezing my hand as tightly as she can. I can see the knife quivering in her right hand.

“Stay close to me,” I say.

“I’m not leaving your side.”

The door swings open and Six jumps out into the hall, Henri close behind. I follow and Bernie Kosar races ahead of us all, a ball of fury speeding away. Henri points the shotgun one way, then the other. The hallway is empty. Bernie Kosar has already reached
the intersection. He disappears. Six follows suit and makes herself invisible and the rest of us run towards the gym, Henri in the lead. I make Mark and Sarah go ahead of me. None of us can really see a thing, can only hear each other’s footsteps. I turn my lights on to help guide the way, and that’s the first mistake I make.

A classroom door to my right swings open. Everything happens in a split second and, before I have a chance to react, I am hit in the shoulder with something heavy. My lights shut off. I crash straight through a glass display window. I’m cut on the top of my head and blood runs down the side of my face almost immediately. Sarah screams. Whatever it was that hit me clubs me again, a hollow thud in my ribs that knocks the wind from me.

“Turn your lights on!” Henri yells. I do. A scout stands over me, holding a six-foot-long piece of wood that it must have found in the industrial arts classroom. It raises it in the air to hit me again, but Henri, standing twenty feet away, fires the shotgun first. The scout’s head disappears, blown to pieces. The rest of its body turns to ash before it even hits the floor.

Henri lowers the gun. “Shit,” he says, catching sight of the blood. He takes a step towards me and then from the corner of my eye I see another scout, in the same doorway, a sledgehammer raised over its head. It comes charging forward and, with telekinesis, I throw the
nearest thing to me without even knowing what that thing is. A golden glinting object that speeds through the air with violence. It hits the scout so hard that its skull cracks on impact, and then it falls to the ground and lies motionless. Henri, Mark, and Sarah rush over. The scout is still alive and Henri takes Sarah’s knife and thrusts it through its chest, reducing it to a pile of ash. He hands Sarah back her knife. She holds it out in front of her, between thumb and forefinger, as though she’s just been handed a pair of somebody’s dirty underwear. Mark bends down and lifts the object I had thrown, now in three separate pieces.

“It’s my all-conference trophy,” he says, and then can’t help but chuckle to himself. “It was given to me last month.”

I stand. It was the trophy case that I crashed through.

“You okay?” Henri asks, looking at the cut.

“Yeah, I’m fine. Let’s keep going.”

We rush down the hall and into the gymnasium, sprint across the floor, jump up onto the stage. I flip my lights on to see the blue mat being moved away as though of its own volition. Then the hatch is thrown up. Only then does Six make herself visible again.

“What happened back there?” she asks.

“Ran into a little bit of trouble,” Henri says, climbing down the ladder first to make sure the coast is clear. Then Sarah and Mark go.

“Where is the dog?” I ask.

Six shakes her head.

“Go on,” I say. She goes down first, leaving only me on the stage. I whistle as loudly as I can, knowing full well that I’m giving away my position by doing so. I wait.

“Come on, John,” Henri calls up from below.

I crawl into the hatch, my feet on the ladder, but from the waist up I’m still on the stage, watching.

“Come on!” I say to myself. “Where are you?” And in that split second when I have no choice but to give up, but just before I drop down, Bernie Kosar materializes on the far side of the gym and comes sprinting my way, ears pinned to the sides of his head. I smile.

“Come on!” Henri yells this time.

“Hold on!” I yell back.

Bernie Kosar jumps onto the stage and into my arms.

“Here!” I yell, and hand the dog to Six. I drop down, close and lock the hatch and turn my lights on as brightly as they’ll go.

The walls and floor are made of concrete, reeking of mildew. We have to walk in a low crouch to keep from hitting our heads. Six leads the way. The tunnel is about a hundred feet long and I have no idea what purpose this could have served at one time. We reach the end; a short flight of steps leads to a pair of metal cellar doors. Six waits until everyone is together.

“Where does this open?” I ask.

“Behind the faculty lot,” Sarah says. “Not far from the football field.”

Six presses her ear to listen in the small crack between the closed doors. Nothing but the wind. Everyone’s face is streaked with sweat, dust, and fear. Six looks at Henri and nods. I turn my lights off.

“All right,” she says, and makes herself invisible.

She inches the door up just enough to stick her head out and have a look around. The rest of us watch with bated breath, waiting, listening, all of us wracked with nerves. She turns one way, then the other. Satisfied we’ve made it unnoticed, she pushes the door all the way open and we file out one by one.

Everything is dark and silent, no wind, the forest trees to our right standing motionless. I look around, can see the busted silhouettes of the twisted cars piled in front of the doors of the school. No stars or moon. No sky at all, almost as though we’re beneath a bubble of darkness, some sort of dome where only shadows remain. Bernie Kosar begins to growl, low at first so that my initial thought is that it’s done for reasons of anxiety only; but the growl grows into something more ferocious, more menacing, and I know that he senses something out there. All of our heads turn to see what he is growling at but nothing moves. I take a step forward to put Sarah behind me. I think to turn on my lights but I know that will give us away even
more so than the dog’s growl. Suddenly, Bernie Kosar takes off.

He charges ahead thirty yards before leaping through the air and sinking his teeth deeply into one of the unseen scouts, who materializes from out of nowhere as though some spell of invisibility has been broken. In an instant, we’re able to see them all, surrounding us, no fewer than twenty of them, who begin closing in.

“It was a trap!” Henri yells, and fires twice and drops two scouts immediately.

“Get back in the tunnel!” I scream to Mark and Sarah.

One of the scouts comes charging towards me. I lift it in the air and hurl it as hard as I can against an oak tree twenty yards away. It hits the ground with a thud, quickly stands, and hurls a dagger my way. I deflect it and lift the scout again and throw it even harder. It bursts into ash at the base of the tree. Henri unloads more rounds, the shots echoing. Two hands grab me from behind. I almost deflect them until I realize that it’s Sarah. Six is nowhere to be seen. Bernie Kosar has brought a Mogadorian to the ground, his teeth now sunk deeply into its throat, hell ablaze in the dog’s eyes.

“Get into the school!” I yell.

She doesn’t let go. A clap of thunder breaks through the silence and a storm begins to brew, dark clouds now forming overhead with flashes of lighting and
thunder tearing through the night sky, loud pounding thunder that makes Sarah jump each time one booms. Six has reappeared, standing thirty feet away, her eyes to the sky and her face twisted in concentration with both arms raised. She’s the one creating the storm, controlling the weather. Bolts of lightning begin raining down, striking the scouts dead where they stand, creating small explosions that form clouds of ash that drift listlessly across the yard. Henri stands off to the side, loading more shells into the shotgun. The scout that Bernie Kosar is choking finally succumbs to death and bursts into a heap of ash covering the dog’s face. He sneezes once, shakes the ash from his coat and then rushes off and chases the closest scout until they both disappear into the dense woods fifty yards away. I have this unbearable fear that I’ve seen him for the very last time.