The alarm woke him up as planned. Noah smiled as he got up to turn it off, feeling tentatively hopeful about what the night would bring. His brief mishap in the dark was a good warning to be careful about operating in poorly-lit conditions. It would be annoying to deal with such an obtrusive weakness, but there was nothing to be done about it. Even perfectly healthy people had trouble in the dark.
He was still feeling quite pleased about how smoothly he had handled the situation with his dad. Everything was in place for him to make a straightforward getaway with his friends. It would be a fun vacation for a few days before he had to return to his regular studies.
He looked at the bed and, feeling somewhat silly, thought about stuffing some pillows under the blankets in the shape of a sleeping person. Eventually he decided to just leave it be. Maybe whoever came to pick them up would think they had simply missed the appointment by accident. Leaving behind such ineffectual and obvious signs of deception could only hurt them and arouse suspicion.
All of his things were downstairs, so he left the bedroom without a second glance. I hope I never see the inside of that room again, he thought spitefully. It would have been nice enough if the school just left us alone during our time here, but Dr. Jansen kind of ruined the whole experience by dragging Insight into our business.
His smile slipped at that thought, but he brightened again once he walked into the kitchen and saw Brian trying to fit a couple folded towels into his swollen backpack. They looked to be from the bathroom upstairs.
“What happened to just bringing some clothes and a comb?” Noah asked. He put his face up to the window and squinted outside, trying to see if the girls were already out there, but he didn’t see them. He turned back to the table.
Brian somehow finished pressing the towels into his bag and managed to shut the zipper over them. “No point leaving them behind. It could be useful to have towels in a number of situations, and it’s not as if I’ll feel the strain of the extra weight. If Oakridge didn’t want us to take our towels with us when we ran away, they shouldn’t have left any in our house.”
“You’re lucky they got your bag back to you in the first place. Otherwise you’d be stuck with a knotted wad of clothes like me.”
Brian grinned. “You should have asked for your stuff when you had the chance. A guy swung by to drop it off while you were napping. It still has everything in it that I packed for our cemetery visit yesterday evening, which means we have our flashlights back.”
Noah’s face lit up. “Hey, that’s fantastic!”
Brian looked smug. “I know. Things work out when you pack properly.” He gave Noah’s clump of clothing a doubtful look that Noah pretended not to notice.
“It’s kind of insane how much has happened in the past twenty-four hours,” Noah said. “I mean, everything was normal yesterday. Who could’ve guessed that we’d end up getting the whole campus shut down?”
“The first sign that things were beginning to go wrong was that horrible mausoleum,” Brian reflected. “I knew we should have just stood our ground and fought the wolves like men.”
“Very, very dead men,” Noah said. “Don’t be silly. Those things would have totally eaten us if we hadn’t found a nice convenient little place to hide.”
“Speak for yourself.” Brian crossed his arms. “I carry bear spray.”
“Yeah, and it’s definitely buried under twenty pounds of miscellaneous items at the bottom of that bag. You were about half a second from getting slammed by a wolf before I pulled you inside the mausoleum.”
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“If May were here she’d probably say something about how we should have bravely laid down our lives for the greater purpose of keeping the disease locked up away from society.”
“Well, May’s a little crazy,” Noah said. He checked the time on his phone. “We should probably go outside now. It’s nearly ten.”
Brian shouldered his massive backpack and Noah slung his sack over his shoulder.
“Bye-bye, housing unit number three,” Brian said cheerfully as they exited the back door.
There was a small porch light next to the door, but all it really managed to do was emphasize how dark the far side of the meadow was.
“Uh, maybe you should get those flashlights out now,” Noah said.
“I think I will.”
As Brian began the unenviable task of fishing them out from his overstuffed bag, Sophie and then Leah and May stepped out from their respective units.
“Here,” Brian said finally, handing Noah a light and tucking the second one under his elbow so he could close his bag back up and heave it onto his back.
The girls crossed between the pools of light cast from each door to meet Noah and Brian.
“Is everyone all set?” Sophie asked.
She had a backpack like Brian’s, though not nearly as tightly packed. May and Leah each had hobo bundles nearly identical to Noah’s.
Noah expected to see some sign of displeasure from May, but she seemed just as excited as the rest of them to get off campus.
“All right, there’s a wire fence that runs around the edge of the field,” Sophie said. “It’s nothing too crazy; we shouldn’t have any issue climbing it. Brian, you might want to toss your backpack over ahead of yourself. That thing looks like it weighs fifty pounds.”
“Don’t worry, I can’t even feel it.”
“Sure, but that doesn’t mean your body has physical limits you shouldn’t exceed. You might want to reconsider bringing all that before we leave.”
Brian looked liked he was actually considering it, but he ended up just shaking his head. “Everything I packed is essential.”
“Somehow I doubt that,” Leah said.
“Let’s wait until we’re off school grounds to have this conversation,” Noah said.
They moved away from the building, out into the meadow. Noah was quite glad to have the flashlights. Maybe there was a danger of being seen, but in his mind risk was completely outweighed by how badly they needed the light to see. The twin beams of light cut through the dark like knives through soft butter, paving their path forward.
They passed the picnic table, looking somehow ominous in the way it loomed out of the dark at them, and soon enough the fence Sophie had mentioned came into view.
It was a simple metal-wire fence, probably intended more to demarcate the edge of the property than to keep people in or animals out.
“Careful of the wires along the top,” Sophie said. “It’s not barbed, but some of them are a little sharp.”
She hopped over it with impressive dexterity considering the double impediments of the darkness and the clumsiness that came with being fully numb.
Brian did as she had advised and quickly passed her the flashlight before slinging his backpack onto the other side of the fence. He picked his way up and over with considerably less skill, but he got himself over.
May and Leah joined them without any issues, leaving just Noah to climb the fence.
“Take this,” he said quietly, passing Brian and Leah his bundle and the flashlight.
He braced a foot in one of the small gaps in the wire, hoping that he had enough of his weight braced on his toes to get him over, and stepped his other foot onto the top of the fence. The wires sticking up under his foot bent slightly as he shifted forward, his disconnected sense of touch making him feel oddly like he was piloting a suit. From there he crawled the rest of his body over the top and let himself drop down on the other side to join his friends. There was a strange resistance on the right half of his body before his feet touched the ground.
As he accepted his things back from the siblings, he was quite surprised to suddenly feel a peculiar warmth bloom along the bottom of his right forearm. He held his arm up and shone the light at it curiously.
He stifled a gasp, making the others all look in his direction.
“Oh, no,” May said.
The flesh was split open, dividing his arm nearly in two from the base of his wrist to the inside of his elbow.