Chapter 3: Infected

How? Why?

Those questions kept running in my mind as the man prepared to inject me with the liquid, whatever it was.

It could be poison, or some sort of new stimulating drug. Maybe a combination of both.

“You’ll thank me once you’re no longer lesbian,” he’d said.

Really? Did he mean that he would turn me somehow? Like those people I’d seen in the news?

Thankfully, I didn’t get to find out, because a split-second later, he had fallen to the ground.

How?!

“Pax!” someone said, just as I realized what had happened. “Pax, it’s me! Are you alright?!”

Who? But another split-second, and someone was pulling my eyelids apart. And this someone, whoever it was, was not gentle enough. “She’s not responding!” A high-pitched male’s voice said. “She’s just staring far away! The poison got to her!”

“No, it didn’t!” Someone pushed the male away. Another moment and I was staring at gray, unreadable eyes, dark caramel-colored hair starting to fall all over it. “Pax?” she repeated, uncertain. “Are you alright?”

“A-Audra?”

Audra’s features started to take shape in front of me. Those familiar lips of hers I’d recognize anywhere. Those slender hips that I’d like to run my hands on. Everything. Everything about her.

Yet before I could feel anything towards it, butterflies or whatnot, I was shrieking at her face, trying as best as I could to save her. “Watch out!”

It happened so fast that nobody else had the time to react. One moment the man in the lab gown was collapsed on the floor, Audra and Neil’s doing no doubt, the next moment, Audra was on the ground, rolling alongside him.

Neil, who I looked up to in horror, rushed to my side instead of aiding his friend. “Once I get you free here you need run to the window,” he instructed. “No if’s. No buts. We have to get out of here right now.”

What? Why?! My eyes went to Audra again. After the man had dragged her down, he immediately grabbed her hair, and was now trying to choke her, his big claw-like hands boring on her neck.

I glared at Neil incredulously once more, confused but terribly angry. Especially since he was taking his sweet time pulling my straps loose. “Are you freaking kidding me?!” I shouted. “You’re her best friend. Go and rescue her first!”

“Can’t and won’t.” He got me free. “Hey!”

Did he really think I would run to the window like he’d told me to? Did he really think that I’d obey him while I was seeing Audra being killed?

Hell no! That was effed up!

But being up suddenly and running to the chaos, I was struck by how unprepared I was. How weak. Especially when Audra and the man rolled past me screaming and grunting. If I wasn’t so shocked, I would have laughed by how ridiculous this was. All of it.

Meanwhile, something banged on the door.

“Shit!” Neil said. “We just locked it from this side. It must be the woman. We need to get out.”

Now that he’d mentioned it; I looked around. Only the man was present now. The woman in the lab coat, his partner, had gone missing. Upon seeing her colleague on the floor, she must have ran out and called for help.

Bang!

My eyes went to Audra and the man again. They were still at it rolling, paying no mind to the other racket across us.

Neil, meanwhile, who looked ready to kill, went to me again, and grabbed my hand, seething. “Listen!” he said. “What are you doing? Don’t you have any idea what’s happening?!”

“N-no!”

“Like at all?!” He tugged at his hair. “Well, it figures. That’s how stupid you are, Leighton. Audra and I should never have come into this room. Obviously, you’re just dead weight to us!”

Excuse me?! I glared at him. Excuse you?! But what was the point in arguing, when some strange men wanted to inject me, and now my classmate, Neil, had completely turned against me?

He yanked me to the window before I could stop him.

“Hey, wait!” I cried. “Audra!”

“Stop looking at her and focus on opening these effing windows down!” Neil screamed. “Damn it, Leighton!””

I glared at him again. Wow. How could he be so freaking selfish? At a time like this too.

The door, unfortunately, started banging again.

“Quick!” he said. “You try the left side, I try the right!”

Seriously?!

But it seemed like I had no other choice but to obey Neil’s command, as the door, for the fourth time, banged so loud it sounded like it would explode out of its hinges.

I whimpered when I reached one of the windows and tugged. Not because I couldn’t pull it apart but because behind me I could no longer hear Audra fighting. Or grunting. Or moving. What had happened to her? But I couldn’t see. Neil, somehow, had made his way to me— again, and tried to block me.

“Mine is no good.” He gasped. “Yours?”

“Audra. . .”

“For goodness sake, forget about her for a second!” Neil looked like he was ready to bite me. More so when he tried my window, only to find out that it wouldn’t budge up from its lock.

A moment more, and someone was pushing us away.

Audra!

“Close your eyes,” Audra instructed, before kicking the window with her boots, sending shards flying everywhere.

I turned around so I wouldn’t get hurt by the blast and saw the man from earlier lying on the floor. His eyes were closed. His mouth wide open. A look at Audra again made me see her gaze flickering to the man, then me in a snap, as if trying to come up with a response. “He’s not dead,” she finally said. “But we will be if we stay here. We need to go. Now.”

To where? I wanted to ask. But already, Neil was pushing me forward. There was no turning back.

The magnitude of being on the third floor only sank in my mind when I looked out the window, felt the wind from outside slapping my face. What I had thought to be a beautiful mellow morning had turned into one complete disaster, the only consolation being Audra who was there right behind me.

As such, I froze when her hand touched my back. We had never been in close contact before, much less spoken to each other like what she was doing now. “Go,” she whispered, “or they’ll catch up to us.”

Sure enough, once the warning was given, another loud crash could be heard through the door.

“Will you just hurry up?!” Neil sounded irritated. “Flirt later or something. I don’t want to die.”

What?

I turned to Audra to confirm what her best friend had just said, but at that moment the door crashed and suddenly opened.

There were two choices here; Stay and fight, or go to the freaking window and see where it would lead us.

I chose the window, of course. But not without Neil’s complaints and incessant shoving, following me from behind. “Go, go, go!” he said. “Go! Hurry up, will you?!”

I took one step out and studied the window ledge. There wasn’t much space to maneuver, much less ‘run’ as Neil was now screaming at the top of his lungs. With one deep breath, I pushed my whole body outside, almost losing balance before I could cry out.

Thankfully, Audra caught my wrist before I fell down, then stepped on the ledge too, beside me. “Neil, quick!” she called back to the room. “Pax and I are getting on the roof.”

Wait, what? Who said anything about the roof?

But already, Audra, not caring about the details, continued giving instructions to Neil.

Unfortunately, right then men with gun-looking tasers ran to us. Three of them, in fact, threatening us to step away from the window. To give up completely. To shut up.

Only, Neil didn’t look up to that. Neither did Audra. In fact, she looked back at me, no trace of worry written on her face, even when the men inside the room was shouting at us.

“The roof, Pax,” Audra said calmly. “Find your footing, and fast.”

B-but. . .

Back in the room, Neil had begun to threaten people too. “I have a gun!” he declared. “I have a gun! I stole it from my house! One step towards us and I shoot!”

Really?! And then he pulled out a gun. A freaking Colt, if I could say so myself. What the hell was Neil doing with that? He could really kill someone.

Audra turned back to me, the signs of concern beginning to manifest on her face; finally. But it was only for a short while before she was urging me up. “Come on now, Pax. One foot at a time.”

“A-Audra. . .” I panted, speaking for the first time in a while. I knew this wasn’t the time, but I really wanted to know before I die.

“Yes?” Audra looked me straight in the eyes. “Any questions?”

“What?” I gasped. “What will they do if they catch us?”

Back in the room, Neil was— again— yelling at us. “Are you effing kidding me, Leighton?!” he said. “This is not the time! You!” He pointed the gun to a man inside the room with him. “Back!”

Audra, who looked like she wasn’t interested in there, glanced at me again, started giving me the answer. “You really want to know?” she said. “You and I. . . They’ll change us. We won’t be lesbians anymore, and I really would like to stay the same. Wouldn’t you?”

So she was lesbian? I glanced just up above, ready to finally climb up. To fight for what little time we had. Unfortunately for us, the rooftop was a few feet up. Way, way, up there that I wouldn’t reach it even if I jumped.

Audra, noticing that too, tapped me on the shoulder. “I’ll carry you,” she said. “Then I’ll go get Neil. Don’t worry about him. He has the situation under control inside.”

“I do not have the situation under control!” Neil shrieked. “Now can you please just go up?! I’m going to die in here.”

Then what? I glanced at the sky. Barricade ourselves on the rooftop until someone with a helicopter came down to us? But I didn’t say that, of course, especially since a movement in the room made me notice that someone had ran to Neil already, had grabbed his arm to try to steal his gun.

There was a fight underway, and still I was trapped on the freaking ledge with nowhere but the roof to run. This was not my idea of a perfect day. If anything, I should have just stayed home when I had the chance.

“Ungh!” Neil grunted, but it was Audra who had kicked the man from inside. Furthermore, I was surprised to see that half of her body ventured in the classroom again just to punch a man off, then to grab her best friend and yank him outside the window with us. Now there were three of us on the ledge, and what’s worse was there was barely any space to move at all. Yikes.

“Aah!” I shrieked, as I felt someone grabbing my leg.

Audra stomped on someone’s hand, chuckled under her breath.

Meanwhile, Neil and his stupid useless gun was breathing heavily beside Audra, back to blaming me again. “This is all your fault, Leighton!” he said. “This gun doesn’t even have a bullet.”

“What?! And how is that my freaking fault?!” I said.

“Because!” he said, like there was no other explanation.

I was about to say that he could have made for a better alibi, when Audra nodded her head to the distance.

Neil and I, despite someone trying to grab our legs like zombies inside, looked into the distance too, quieted down. Before long, a white Jeep Wrangler came into view, then skidded to the grass, went to the side of the school directly below us.

Its window rolled down, and soon, a guy with blonde-cropped hair waved to us, his smile all but familiar. “Pax!” Hanz Peterson said from below. “Pax, hello, it’s me! I’m here to help you!”

“He your boyfriend or something?”

I shot Neil Rogers a murderous glance. “No! I’m lesbian, remember?”

“A disgrace at that,” he remarked, which made me want to murder him right then.

Audra, meanwhile, took hold of my wrist for a second. “We need to go,” she said, as if muttering to herself. “I don’t hear the men in the room back there anymore. I don’t like this. It’s like they’re planning something.”

But what could they plan, right? We were just a couple of high school students. In fact. . . Now that I thought about it, maybe this was a joke. I mean, they weren’t that serious chasing us. If they were, then one of us could probably be hurt right now, or worse.

I was about to tell Audra that when something blasted through the window, and nearly ripped my ear off.

“Gun!” Neil warned, as if none of us had figured that out. “They’re shooting at us!”

“Jump!” Hanz cried from below. “Jump, Pax! I’m here to catch you!”

The boy from this morning had made it out of his Jeep while we were discussing, and what’s more had installed a trampoline below us. But I knew that even for one second it wouldn’t stand a chance.

My heart went to my mouth when Audra gestured to the trampoline nonetheless. “The odd’s are slim,” she said. “But if Hanz’s timing is right, we might be able to survive. He just needs to catch us.”

“By us, she meant you first, Pax.”

I turned to Neil and saw him eyeing the trampoline too. From the look on his face, he wasn’t sure if any of us would survive that all. So why did he want me to go first?

“I’m not jumping down until I know you’re safe,” Audra said. ” At least her explanation was spot on. But still, why did I have to go freaking first?

The three of us gasped when another bullet whizzed through. They were warning shots but could easily kill us if they wanted to.

“Ready?” Hanz said, raising his arms as if to catch me. “I’ll let you bounce first, Pax. And then I’ll catch you. Audra, go right behind her, then Neil.”

“Right!” Audra said. “You ready, Pax?”

“No!”

“On three!’ she said. “One, two. . .”

She pushed me.