36 Hours (34 page)

She turned her eyes and stared through two horizontal windows looking into
the sanctuary. It was a gym with several cushioned chairs set out in rows, a
stage with musical equipment, a soundboard, lights, a tripod with some film, all
being torn down and deconstructed and thrown into a small storage locker. She
looked in and watched the busy worker bees scurrying around for the queen bee
yelling orders from the stage.

“Austin, just leave me alone.”

We stood before those windows now, but we only looked at our own reflections. Hannah didn’t want me to leave. She clung to me, deeply. I clung to her. All my wildest hopes and dreams, and the gravest of my relational fears, swirled together to the here-and-now. She held my hand and rested her head on Anthony Barnhart

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my shoulder, and I saw us both just standing there as I looked at the reflection in the mirror, shrouded in darkness from the dark gymnasium on the other side of the glass. She closed her eyes and drew deep. A tear caressed her cheek.

“I want to sleep,” she told me. “Can we find somewhere to sleep? Somewhere safe?”

There were couches at the other end of the YMCA. Brian led the Children’s Ministry there on Sunday mornings, when Southwest Church rented out the building. But it was too far to walk. Who knew what lay there? And yet the alarms had gone off, and no one – nothing – had come. I was tempted to go looking for the pilot now, but he hadn’t come, either. What if he had died? What if he had turned? I didn’t want to go gallivanting about, risking life and limb in this impenetrable darkness.

“I have an idea,” I told her. “It will be warm, too.”

Her own reply stunned me. I remembered, suddenly, when that voice had
come before. We were at this very same place, except not for church. Our
mothers had gotten together and brought us here to work-out and rummage
around on the exercise machines. Ashlie had come, and so had Peyton. I stuck
with Hannah, or at least attempted to. We were friends back then, pretty good
friends, not like the quiet enemies we’ve become. We were in Jr. High then, 8th
grade, and the popularity fest was on tour. Lots of prep kids from our school
were there, lifting weights. Some serious weights, too. Forty, fifty pounds. It was
crazy. I was astonished. Hannah was, too, and when I was talking with her, she
told me, “Leave me alone.” I stepped back, awash in shock. What did she say?

She’d looked at me with those cold, crimson eyes: “Go, Austin.”

I began to turn. Then she said, “No. Not like that. I meant, don’t go
rummaging through my life.”

“I wasn’t trying to.”

“I know. But you were. I just don’t like that. I want respect, okay?”

“You have it. Believe me, you have it. I just didn’t want you to-“

“Do you think you can control my life?”

Les popped in: “Austin, are we going to-“

“Not now, Les,” I growled.

He shrugged and dipped away. Chad and Drake passed, yelling, “Go Austin!

Go Austin!”

Hannah blushed in a blemish of humiliation and anger.
I said, pulling the ropes, “You don’t want to be seen with me, do you?”

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“You’re just not my kind of person, Austin.”

“Does your arm hurt?” I asked her.

“Yes. Maybe if I sleep…”

“That’s your fatigue talking. Your wound is slowing you down. I’ll find you a place-“

“Stay with me, Austin. Don’t leave me alone. Please.”

“You’re just not my kind of person, Austin. We’re really different. Polar
differences. Your north, I’m south. You have polar bears, I have penguins.”

“What about penguins?”

“Austin. I have friends who know more about my struggles than you, and
when you run around acting all pompous and assuming-“

“Pompous and assuming? Is that what care and compassion mean
nowadays?”

“Do I look like someone desiring pity?”

“It’s not pity. I don’t pity you. You have life far better than I-“

“How in the world would you know?” She started walking away, stepping
into the bright gymnasium.

I pushed open the door to the gymnasium; the noise was so loud. The quiet roared. The darkness screamed. I drew Hannah inside with me and shut the door behind us. The room was clear; I could tell because there were no venomous shrieks and the sound of running feet. I felt along the wall, wet sneakers squeaking on the ground. I found the large door and pulled it open, bracing myself for anything. Hannah tensed, too. But there was nothing. It was too dark for our eyes to adjust. Hannah gripped my hand and I searched out some space. I found some mats, almost tripped over a pile of basketballs, and finally found the tarps. I pulled Hannah around to them. “Wrap up in these. It will make you warm. Don’t leave, either.”

“Where are you going?”

“To find medical-“

She pushed off the tarp. “I’m coming.”

“No. Don’t. Just stay-“ I felt like I was talking to the very blackness enclosing me.

“If I fall asleep, I might go comatose.”

“Go what?”

“Into a coma.”

“Really? Oh. Fine. Okay. Just don’t do anything dumb.”

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She craned her neck around as we stood inside the gymnasium. People were
stacking chairs and throwing them into storage, avoiding the pile of basketballs,
the gymnastic mats, and several camping tarps from the last youth trip, still
stained with dirt and grime and brown grass stalks. She didn’t see who she was
looking for and turned, brushing past me. I followed her to the drinking
fountain. She drank. She stood; I took a drink, saw her leaving, ran to catch up.
She whipped around. “Why the heck are you following me?”

“I thought we were still talking?”

“Stop stalking me.”

“Whoa, whoa,
whoa
. I’m not stalking you, okay? Gosh.”

She looked at me with those absorbing eyes, those wonderful white cheeks, the
placid lips. Her elegant, unspotted church dress clung to her smooth legs. She
was the very icon of beauty.

She clutched her arm, blood cupping between fingers. Her own face was drenched with the blood of another human, and her own clothes were muddy and dirty and stank of garbage. We were walking down the hallway when I realized we had been here just days before, standing here, when she told me to my face, “We’re never going to be friends again. Can’t you get that? It’s over?”

She had wanted to be as far from me as possible; now she didn’t dare me leave her alone. I had wanted her undying affection; now I had it, and I wished it had never come. Her skin had been spotless, smooth as a panther, sweet-smelling as African lilies. Now she reeked of trash, was stained with dirt and grime, speckled with blood; her hair, then combed and gelled and perfected, lay in a meshed cocktail of water and blood. My own jeans and t-shirt had been a social pariah with mustard stains; now I didn’t seem to notice the blood on my clothes. Her hand had held a Bible; now its fingers gripped a bloody dagger.

“Everything has changed,” I muttered.

She looked at me in the silence as we peered down that dark 200-foot hallway.

“What?”

“It’s all changed. It will never be the same again.”

“Don’t say that. This will end. We’ll be-“

I lashed out, grabbing her arm, squeezing tightly. She gasped. I smacked my other hand across her mouth, my own eyes flickering with fear and anger. I pointed down the hallway. It was barren. I removed my hand; she mouthed,
What?

One of them.

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I had been talking, hardly paying attention, when I saw a flicker of motion going off to the left. I prayed it was the pilot. That’s why we were here. She tugged at my arm.
Let’s go back to the room. Let’s wait until morning.
She needed medical attention. Part of me knew walking down that hallway could be entering the gates of Hell on earth – but if I didn’t, she would die. She was already losing a lot of blood, becoming easily fatigued, stumbling around. The adrenaline kept her moving. But if she relaxed, and the adrenaline eased, shock would surely set in and she
would
go comatose. And I would be alone. I wished we’d had that bar.

“Get back by the gym door.”

“What are you doing?”

“Trust me.”

She broke away and went to the door. I backed up next to the drinking fountain. She opened the door. I raised my hand and
slammed
it against the fountain, over and over. The thunderous noise echoed through the wilderness of manmade machinery, drooling into the weight rooms and locker rooms and rippling the calm waters of the cold pool. All color drained from Hannah. I raised my hand, staring down the hallway, expecting the creature to come running. I was not armed. There was nothing to puncture the head with. What was I thinking? Stupid! Stupid moron!

Nothing.

It
was
the man.

“Hannah. Stay behind me.”

We crept down the hallway, the whole time hearing her whisper:
No, no, no…

At the end of the hallway, I looked towards the Health and Wellness Center, the door locked and the windows bare. To the right was the lobby, the cushioned seats where Hannah and I had sat a week earlier, where a shallow stunt small talk erupted into a jealous craze of yelling, a hotbed of stagnant emotions. The skylight sent drumming sighs through the building as the rain sprinkled the glass. The lobby doors were shut tight and locked, the glass unscathed, the cars in the parking lot hidden in the night. The gas station fire burned, sending wan light over the business complex, now small and distant; I couldn’t believe we’d been there.

We saw no one.

The pilot had gone left.

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I motioned Hannah to keep watch, saying nothing. My feet tapped on the tiles as I walked past several doors, all locked, painted with ivory numbers.
101, 202,
303
.
404
– I had taught Sunday School there many a time. So distant, so long ago. Hannah would always sit quiet and forlorn in the back. Now she covered my own back, and my own heart pounded, and now it was a matter of life and death. We used to run up and down this hallway careless and carefree; now each step was one teetering on the edge of a bloody death and a bitter afterlife. My own reflection stared at me through Health and Wellness Center windows. My own fear, ruby red in the dried crusts of blood, held sunken eyes glaring like portals into another dimension. I froze. Movement to my right. Hannah was shaking all over. I looked at myself in the reflection, and saw my nerves were not behaving any differently.

Movement flared; the creature rushed after me, one arm raised; something sparkled in the arm; I delivered a swathing punch to the woman’s face, taking her arm in my hand, twisting the ankle. The creature shrieked; the sparkling object in her hand collapsed, falling to my feet, clattering, metal-on-tile. The figure hit the floor hard, back crackling. I raised my foot to stomp her grizzly face in, seeing the purple and the sunken eyes and the yellow, hollow, vacant eyes, the primal bloodlust.

Hannah hollered out, throwing herself into me. I slammed against the wall, thoughts knocked into a frenzy. I yelled at her, imagining the fiend jumping up and driving her down, beating her and tearing at her flesh, hearing her screams, and killing the brute, I would be left alone in this god-forsaken temple. Hannah threw herself at me, screeching, “Are you crazy! You imbecile!” I didn’t know what to do; the creature was standing! I tried to move but she punched me in the gut; I buckled over, gasping and coughing, retching phlegm all over the tile, seeing spots, lungs fighting for just a taste of cold oxygen.

“Austin,” she said, but the voice was not hers. “You hurt me! You punched me!”

I rolled over, confused, bewildered, world spinning. “Oh my gosh, oh my gosh…”

She knelt down next to me and embraced me as I lay there, her shivering body pressing against mine. I felt her damp hair touching my face and it’s the greatest thing I’ve ever felt. I reached with burning arms and embraced her, hugging her close, and a tear blended with her spoiled hair, and I kissed her so softly on her cheek, then vigorously in her hair. “I didn’t know, I didn’t know…”

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Hannah was grinning. We hugged for I don’t know how long. Then Hannah asked, “Where’s Les?”

She pulled away, and her color dripped to snow. “He couldn’t get out. I tried, but…”

I didn’t let her finish. I gripped her as I have never gripped anything or anyone. “I thought you were dead, oh gosh, I thought you were dead, I left you, I left you…”

“It’s okay, Austin, it’s okay, okay?”

“I left you, I left you…” I couldn’t let it stop. “I left you…”

“Austin, it’s-“

I spoke into her hair. “Forgive me. Please! Forgive me. I’m so sorry.”

“You saved Hannah,” she said. “She was hurt. I saw you going away. You were carrying her.”

“I left you, though!”

“Because you thought it was a lost cause.”

“It wasn’t!”

“You didn’t know. Austin. I’m fine.”

Hannah said, “What happened to Les?”

“They got to him.”

“Is he…”

She didn’t answer. Hannah turned away, staring at her reflection in the mirror. I clutched Ashlie like she was my only child. In a way, some weird and awkward way, she was.

Finally I allowed Ashlie to pull away. “Is there anyone else here?”

“There was someone.” She pointed towards the other end of the building.

“Was it one of them?”

“I just ran. If it was, they didn’t see me.”

“How many?”

“Just one. He was walking around. Or she was. I don’t really know. I just hid.”