inside helix
531 Words
The left wing smelled like a school. Chalk and floor cleaner under everything else.
David went first. Tobey close behind.
The corridor was long. Lockers on both sides, most closed. A few hanging open. Someone's bag on the floor, textbooks scattered, a water bottle on its side.
They moved past it.
"You check left, I've got right," David said.
"Yeah."
They worked through the first classrooms. Empty. Chairs knocked over in some, in others everything still in place, like the kids just stepped out.
No signs of anyone. No sounds either.
"Nothing," Tobey said, coming out of the fourth room.
"Keep looking."
They pushed further in. More of the same. Overturned chairs, a whiteboard with half a lesson still on it, a coat on the back of a door.
No Elena.
No children at all.
Tobey stopped outside a room near the end of the corridor. Vending machine inside, pushed up against the far wall.
He looked at David.
David shrugged.
Tobey picked up a chair and swung it. The front panel caved on the second hit. He pulled it open and looked inside.
Drinks. Chips. Chocolate bars. All of it untouched.
"This'll cover us for about a week easy," Tobey said, already pulling things out. He reached further back and held something up. A torch. Decent size, military grade by the look of it. "And look."
David took it. Checked the battery. Strong beam.
"That's useful," he said. He put it in his bag. Tobey took the food and drinks.
They did the rest of the left wing in twenty minutes.
Nothing.
No Elena. No signs anyone had been there recently.
They headed back to the main entrance to find the others.
Kai and Lia were already there when they arrived. Kai was crouched near the main hallway junction. Lia was standing a few feet back, looking at the floor.
"Nothing on our side," David said. "You find her?"
"No," Kai said. He didn't look up. "Come and see this."
David crouched beside him.
The floor. Scuff marks, a lot of them. A chair on its side. One of the lockers hanging open with the contents spilled out. A shoe. Just the one.
David looked at it.
"Blinkers?" Tobey asked from behind them.
"No," Kai said. "Look at it. No blood. No blinker traces."
He pointed further down the corridor. More scuff marks. Long dragging lines in the dust, like multiple people being moved at once. Handprints low on the wall. Small handprints.
"Kids," Lia said quietly.
"How many?" David asked.
Kai stood up. "Five, maybe ten. Hard to say. But they went that way." He pointed toward the back exit. "And they didn't go on their own."
Lia looked at David. "There's no blinkers here. No blood. This wasn't them."
"Then who?" Tobey said.
Nobody answered that.
"Why would anyone take children?" Lia asked. She wasn't asking anyone specifically. Just putting it in the air.
Kai looked at the back exit for a moment. "I don't know," he said. "But we need to tell Derek and Tanisha."
He walked toward the front door.
The others followed.
Nobody said anything else on the way out. There wasn't much to say.
- Writer
