Nightmare Academy Part 20

She moved her knee in a lightning fast upkick, aiming for the center of this guy's existence. By the way he hollered and let go of her, she knew she'd connected. A blow to his throat with her flashlight sent him reeling backward.

But Rory was right behind him. She leaped sideways, putting the desk between them. He missed his first grab, and she nailed the back of his head with the telephone receiver. She s.h.i.+ned her flashlight on her left forearm. The numbers Elijah had given her were still there, written in blue ink in a safe place she wouldn't lose.

Rory was coming around again. She could see his face in the bounced and reflected light now flying about the room. She whipped the phone receiver across his jaw and then kicked him in the chest. He stumbled backward.

"Four seven!" she yelled into the phone.

Alex grabbed her from behind, his big arm around her neck. She cried out, then automatically whipped her leg behind his and tripped him backward. They both went down, but when his back caught the corner of the empty filing cabinet he weakened enough for her to wriggle loose and bang his forehead with the b.u.t.t of her flashlight.

"One zero, one one-" she said, struggling to her feet in the dark.

She leaped on top of the desk, taking the high ground, and from there, kicked Rory in the face. He staggered away, holding his nose and cursing. "Five five zero! And I love you!"

Alex was coming at her from behind. The big shadow was back, coming at her from in front-she could see his silhouette against the window She emptied her hands, ran along the desk, bounded off the copy machine, and dove right into the shadow's chest. He fell backward through the window, cras.h.i.+ng the gla.s.s. She hung on to his s.h.i.+rt for all she was worth, tucked her head in, and rode him through, letting him take the beating and the cutting and the impact of the sidewalk outside the window as the shards of gla.s.s followed them, tinkling on the concrete.

He wouldn't be getting up soon. She somersaulted onto the gra.s.s, got to her feet, and took off across the field.

There was no question, no option, no choice, no doubt: She was going to reach the mansion, she was going to find her brother, they were going to get out of this place or die in the process.

Elijah had fallen into the sky, but now mud, sand, and weeds surrounded him; thorns jabbed him like stinging nettles. He got to his feet, trying to escape the pain.

His mind told him, insisted, that he was running, deliberately putting one foot in front of the other, even though the ground did not move under his feet, or turned when he did not, or inclined steeply upward though he saw no slope before him. Even when he closed his eyes, he could see. He yelled, cried out verses of Scripture, but he heard nothing. The pathway became a precipice and he tumbled headlong, falling through s.p.a.ce. He was under water. He tried to swim; suddenly his groping arms were pulling him forward through hot, dry sand. The sky above was red like a sunset, the earth below an eye-buzzing purple-then green, then gray, then red as the sky turned green.

Where he was, or why, or when, or how, he could not know. There were no days, no hours, no moments, no way of knowing, no chance for knowing how long he'd been here.

Been where?

No place, at no particular time.

I am Elijah Springfield. His mouth formed the words, but the wind carried them away. He once knew of a sister, a father and mother, a ranch where something, anything, could be known for sure.

But those people, and that time, and that life were becoming ... nothing. Non-things. A vacuum, like s.p.a.ce.

He groped desperately about in his mind for knowledge, something he could know, something true. But there was no knowledge, no thought, no reason. There was nothing here but terror, endlessly repeating cycles of it, layer upon layer of it, with more, more, more to come, in swirling, kaleidoscoping sounds, images, and sensations, pulsing, pounding, surging, throbbing like a swollen thumb.

The only reality.

Elisha ran to the corner of the wall where the wall met the forest-thick forest, with huge trees, p.r.i.c.kly branches, clinging underbrush, and enclosing darkness. Penetrating that nether world seemed impossible, but her brother had been here. He'd been up this hill, he'd encountered a bear. There had to be a way.

She pressed into the brush, groping with her hands, pus.h.i.+ng against limbs and branches with her body, pressing on with nothing to lose. The mansion was built by people and lived in by people, and people needed roads, phone lines, transportation. Somewhere beyond these trees there had to be a real world. Elijah might have seen it, and she was going to find it.

She could see the lights from the mansion off her left shoulder, but still no gap in that stubborn stone wall. She kept climbing the hill, breaking and snapping through dry branches, stumbling on loose rocks, groping as if blind, guarding her face and eyes with her forearm.

Then, up ahead, she could see the branches of trees in the amber glow from one of the mansion's yard lights, as if a clearingsuch as a road-was allowing light from the mansion to penetrate the forest. All right! It might be the road her brother almost reached before- Oh, no. What was that?

Closer than she could believe, she heard a low, close-to-theground snuffing, then a snorting. Some bushes rustled. Some twigs snapped.

Oh, great. Remember, girl, what do you do, what do you do? Uh, yell, make some noise, scare it away.

Elijah said it didn't work.

The critter growled. She could hear the bushes rustling closer, the pounding of its big feet on the ground.

She couldn't see where it was, but she could hear it, enough to run in the opposite direction, cras.h.i.+ng through limbs and brush, stumbling over fallen logs and rocks. A log tripped her; she went down, got to her feet, ran. All dark ahead of her, she couldn't see- Oof! She found the wall in the dark, her outstretched arms taking the impact. That thing was still out there, huffing and snorting, looking for her. She groped along the wall, trying to find any way that she could climb it.

AWW! She dropped, as through a trapdoor, quicker than she could realize what was happening, slipping, sliding, dropping down a bizarre rabbit hole, her eyes useless in the total dark. She was just beginning to think this felt like a waterslide without the water when- b.u.mp!-she landed on a smooth floor, tumbling, sliding, squeaking to a stop.

It was quiet, and totally dark. She'd escaped the bear, but where was she? It sounded like a room; she could hear the echoes of the walls in the air. But also, she could discern a steady, mechanical hum as if she were inside the belly of a huge machine.

The party in the Rec Center was over. Some kids had managed to return with flashlights, but the games were all dead. There was no more music. Besides the fear and anxiety, boredom was setting in.

"Where's Alexander?" Ramon asked.

"He went to take care of some business," Brett answered, trying to hold things together in the boss's absence.

"Well, he'd better get some business done here or we're all-" He clammed up when two big guys leaned into his s.p.a.ce. "Hey, cool it, guys, I'm just talking."

"Well, stop talking," said one.

Two flashlights came through the door, carried by two muggers who looked like they were the ones who'd been mugged. Alexander was limping with a sore back, and Rory was holding a cloth to his bleeding mouth.

Brett started to ask, "How'd it-Never mind."

"She ran toward the mansion," said Alexander. "Thinks she can get away ..."

"Where's Clay?"

"We carried him to his room. He'll be okay. He fell through the window."

Ramon was only the first to start asking questions. "So what do we do now?"

Kids were coming out of the dark, gathering like moths around a lamp. They were bored, scared, disillusioned, hungry, and restless. "When do we get the lights back on?" "They're after us, aren't they?" "We're all in trouble now." "How are we going to cook anything?" "There's no hot water." "What are you going to do, Alexander?"

"They're just trying to scare us!" Alexander answered. "They're trying to break us down, make us give up." He yelled so they could all hear, "But we're not going to give up! We've won the first round, and tomorrow morning we're going to win the second!"

Brett asked for all of them, "What's the second?"

Alexander could see lights on up on the hill. "They think as long as they can hide behind that wall they can play around with us and put us off. Down here, we're just their puppets. But up there, up in that mansion, that's where the strings are. That's where the power is." They all looked at him, caught up in his spell, awed by his visions. "Come on. I know what to do."

Nate and Sarah were driving through Coeur d'Alene, returning from a tedious visit to the local branch of the U.S. Forest Service, their last stop of the day. They'd spent the day going over maps, making phone calls, grappling with bureaucrats and checking any discrete sources that would come to mind, but no one anywhere-not the forest service, or the sheriff's office, or the power or phone companies, or the local gas station attendants or restaurateurs-had ever heard or seen anything about a summer academy for high school kids or runaways. Now it was late at night, they were tired, and beyond frustrated.

"Let's call Morgan," said Nate. "It may be more fruitful to help him track down Margaret Jones."

Sarah picked up his cell phone. "Oh-oh. We missed a call."

She pressed the b.u.t.ton to play back the message, listened, and her face went pale. "PULL OVER!"

On the west edge of Coeur d'Alene, Mr. Morgan stepped out of his big black car and looked toward the car parked just ahead of his. The driver, head down to hide his face, pointed toward the cla.s.sic old house across the street and then drove away.

"Thank you, sir," said Morgan, watching the car shrink in the distance.

He opened the pa.s.senger door of his car, and a matronly woman got out. Together, they walked across the street and up the steps onto the broad front porch. Some lights were still on. Apparently the occupant was enjoying a late TV show and not expecting callers. That was fortunate.

Morgan rang the doorbell.

The sound of the television cut off. A moment later, the door opened a crack and a redheaded woman looked out.

"Very sorry, ma'am, please pardon the intrusion," said Morgan.

"And who are you?" she asked, wary and bothered.

"My name is Morgan." He showed her some ID. "This is Emily Perkins, a forensic consultant a.s.sisting me." He then referred to some papers in his hand: color copies of KnightMoore brochures and a photograph of Kathy Simons holding a trout. "Kathy Simons? Or should I address you as Suzanne Dorning? Or perhaps Margaret Jones?"

She looked at his evidence and said nothing, but her face said everything.

"I work with a team of private investigators, and since our investigation thus far seems to be leading to you, I thought it might be in your interest to make sure our information is correct. May we have a chat?"

She sighed and let them in.

Nate and Sarah were forcing themselves to remain calm, to think, to work with the information they'd just received from Elisha's frantic, tortuous phone call. They could hear the struggle, the cursings and yellings in the background, the sounds of kicking, tripping, cras.h.i.+ng, falling, the sound of the receiver being dropped, followed by a horrible cras.h.i.+ng of gla.s.s. It sounded like the end of their daughter, and now, all they had was a hodgepodge of numbers staring at them from Sarah's notepad.

Nate listened to the error message from his cell phone. "It's not a phone number, not even international. Did we miss any of the numbers?"

Sarah shook her head. "It's all she gave us. She finished her message. She said she loved us at the end, right before we heard the crash. It has to be enough."

They stared at the numbers.

"Forty-seven," Nate mused.

"Four hundred, seventy-one .. ." Sarah tried. "Four thousand, seven hundred and ten."

"Forty-seven and ten." He froze. He tapped on the numbers with his pen. "That's it. THAT'S IT!"

Sarah was already catching on. "Forty-seven and ten ..."

Nate grabbed his pen and divided the digits into groups. "Forty-seven and ten. One hundred fifteen and fifty."

"Lat.i.tude and longitude!"

Nate was already scrambling for the forest service map. "47 degrees, 10 minutes north lat.i.tude, 115 degrees, 50 minutes west longitude! Oh, kids, I love ya! I love ya!"

He located the coordinates on the map. "Closest town is Stony Bend, a good distance southeast of here. Call Morgan, tell him where we're going."

He tossed Sarah the map and hit the gas pedal.

Minutes pa.s.sed, enough for Elisha to conclude nothing further was going to happen unless she made it happen. With the floor the only thing known, she lay belly-down and began inching along, reaching out in front and to the sides, probing and exploring.

BANG! A loud noise and a sudden flood of light nearly scared her to death. A wall panel had opened, vanis.h.i.+ng into the ceiling in the blink of an eye. Squinting in the light, Elisha could see she was in a small, square room. At one end was the bottom of the slide that brought her here; at the other end, with the panel raised, was a long, narrow hallway, washed with an amber glow from hundreds of tiny ceiling lights.

Squinting, trying to get accustomed to the light, she could vaguely see someone walking up that hallway, coming toward her. It was a man. No, it was a young man. He was wearing a burgundy blazer. He kind of walked like her brother.

It was her brother!

She got to her feet, wanting to run to him, but she was wary of walls that could disappear, lights that could blind, trapdoors that could open. She just wasn't sure about this place. "Elijah? Elijah, are you all right?"

He put a finger to his lips. "Sh. Come on." He beckoned to her.

She ventured into the hall. It looked solid enough. She could touch the walls. The floor was solid beneath her. She quickened her pace. Elijah was smiling at her, encouraging her. He looked pretty tired, but okay.

"Where are we?" she asked in a hushed voice.

"Come on," he answered.

He turned and disappeared into a side pa.s.sage. She hurried to catch up, rounded the corner, and saw him go through a door. She broke into a run, got to the door, and hurried through- BANG! The door slammed shut behind her-a short little scream escaped her throat-and she was blind again, in total darkness, feeling like she'd walked right into a trap ... but ... how could her brother ... ? "Elijah! Talk to me. What's going on?"

A voice from somewhere said, "Okay, here she is."

"h.e.l.lo?" she called.

"Hang on, Elisha," said the voice. She didn't recognize it. 'Just stand there a minute."

She heard the rumble of another wall moving on rollers. A vertical slit of dim, rose-colored light appeared, then widened, expanding from right to left like a curtain drawing back. She saw red, blinking lights far away in the dark, then red digital readouts, huge cabinets and equipment racks, more glowing lights, TV monitors, patch cables, k.n.o.bs, switches. The wall kept moving, the vision broadened before her, and she was awestruck; stretching into the semidarkness were two rows of control consoles with a dozen technicians wearing headsets, sitting at computer screens, TV monitors, and daunting control boards with thousands of k.n.o.bs, dials, faders, toggles, readouts. On the far wall, huge video screens were flickering from one view of the academy campus to another.

I'm either in a really big TV studio or a s.p.a.ces.h.i.+p, she thought.

A man dressed in black approached her. He was thin, a brainy sort, with his hair tied in a long ponytail down his back. "h.e.l.lo. Let me show you to a chair."

He guided her to a corner of the room, to a comfortable stuffed chair on a small platform, surrounded by a curved, green wall, and pleasantly lit. It looked like a small set for a TV talk show, but with only one chair. She looked the chair over carefully, then sat in it.

"Comfortable?" he asked her.

"Yes," she answered, still too blown away to say anything else. Then her first question finally came to her. "What happened to my brother?"

Another voice from amid all that blinking, glowing equipment answered, "Your brother is here with us."

That voice she recognized, and now she could see his face bathed in orange light, the blinking lights and red digital readouts reflected in his reading gla.s.ses. "Mr. Bingham."

"Welcome, Miss Elisha Springfield. Please make yourself comfortable."

His wasn't the only familiar face. Just behind him, looking very pleased, even victorious, was Mr. Booker, none the worse for wear, his formal, imposing air gone, his hair combed differently, like ... like an actor out of costume. Next to him, perfectly comfortable in Booker's presence and apparently still employed, was Mr. Easley, now in long pants and s.h.i.+rt, no longer the "phys-ed" guy. Mrs. Meeks-or whoever she really was-was occupied at a control station, wearing a headset, minus her bookwormish gla.s.ses and hair-in-a-bun. Mr. Stern, wearing a headset and carrying a clipboard, came and stood with Booker, Easley, and Bingham, smilingly sharing the sight of a ragged, scratched-up, nearly exhausted girl in old jeans and an army-surplus khaki jacket.

"We'll get to you in a moment," said Bingham. "I'm sure you're wondering- "They're in the tool room," reported a technician, tweaking dials and looking up at the big video screens.

Elisha watched in amazement. The four big screens provided multiple, wide-angle views of the tool room, and she could see Alexander, Brett, Ramon, and Rory gathering up the rakes, shovels, axes, hammers, and anything else they could lay their hands on, pa.s.sing them outside to the other toughs.

"Yes," said Bingham, addressing Booker, "thanks to your little recruitment meetings, they all know about that tool room." He looked at the large, digital clock on the wall. "Nearly three in the morning. They might pause to get some sleep, but in any event, I predict they'll approach us at first light."

Booker chuckled as he shook his head. "So predictable."