Nightmare Academy (18 page)

Whatever it was, it sounded big.

Elisha and Marcy sat in their darkened room, peering out the window through small, cautious cracks in the curtain. There were voices out there, some whooping and hollering, some angry enough to kill. The voices were mostly male, but she could hear some females, too, some laughing, some screaming and swearing. Vague shadows were running in the dark, coming, going, chasing, brawling. Suddenly, startlingly two raced by just outside the window, one pursuing the other, feet pounding the sod and breath chugging. The one doing the chasing caught up with his quarry, and with a violent jerk, ripping his clothes, dashed him to the ground.

“Okay okay, I give,” came a voice, muffled against the ground.

But blows followed, fist against flesh, and grunts of deep, guttural pain.

Marcy gasped.

Elisha was reviewing in her mind the building exits and escape routes. “We may have to get out of here.”

Bears are usually afraid of people, so Elijah tried hollering. “YAAA! GO ON! GET OUT OF HERE!”

The thing replied with a deep growl that filled the forest. More branches and twigs were snapping, each sound a little closer. Now he could hear and even feel the heavy thumping of huge feet.

“Guess this one isn't afraid,” Elijah considered, but when a huge, furry form came charging his way, he was quite certain. He ran for all he was worth, widening the trail he'd made coming up, breaking out of the woods and into the field with a clear, new insight: “Okay,
one
thing's true around here.”

Outside the dorm window, the rioting shadows began to retreat into the dark, their time of mischief over. A moment later, except for the soft whimper of a pulverized young man struggling to his feet, it was quiet.

“Is it over?” Marcy asked.

“Looks like it,” said Elisha, feeling relieved.

“That was scary.”

“Has this happened before?”

“No. Not like this. We've played some jokes on each other, but this was mean.” Her frightened eyes widened in the dark and she gave a little gasp. “What if they'd come in here?”

Already, the thought had more than crossed Elisha's mind. “Good question, Marcy. What
if
they'd come in here?”

“They . . . they wouldn't have
done
anything, would they?”

Elisha looked out the window, still afraid she might see shadows lingering and sneaking about. “When there's no right or wrong, why
shouldn't
they do something if they feel like it?”

Marcy had no answer.

Across the field, a tiny light began blinking. A flashlight, most likely near dorm B. The blinking continued as the light waved back and forth, shining, then obscured behind something, then shining again. There was a pattern to it. Elisha had seen this signal before: the letters E, E, S.

Elijah! He was trying to signal her, using their hailing code, their initials! “Marcy! Do we still have that flashlight?” Every room was issued a flashlight, and now they could put it to good use.

Marcy groped about in the dark until she found their official KM flashlight where she'd left it, on top of the dresser. She joined Elisha at the window, handed her the flashlight, then knelt there, silent and spellbound as Elisha signaled back, ducking the flashlight in and out from behind the curtain to create her signals.

“Who are you talking to?” Marcy asked in a hushed voice. “Is this a code? Where'd you learn to do this?”

“Later,” said Elisha.

“When there's no right or wrong,
why shouldn't they do something
if they feel like it?”

Elijah, safe in his room, got her message: “DORM D RAIDED. WE ARE OK. HOW ARE YOU?”

He signaled back, using the curtain to make the flashlight blink. “OK. MAY HAVE FOUND ROAD. STOPPED BY BEAR.”

There was a significant hesitation before Elisha answered, “REAL BEAR?”

“REAL BIG BEAR. SCARY.”

“STILL NEED BACK DOOR. DAMAGE HERE. FIGHTS.”

Elijah could hear Alex and his guys laughing and reliving the raid out in the hall. Freshly stolen KMs were jingling. “TOM CRUISE BEATEN. KMS TAKEN. ALEX WAS LEADER. BE CAREFUL.”

“YOU TOO. I MISS MOM AND DAD.”

Mom and Dad. Elijah knew he would have missed them anyway, but this place only made their love all the more precious. He signaled back, “WE WILL SEE THEM AGAIN. LETS MAKE THEM PROUD.”

“LY.” Their code for “Love you.”

“LY.”

As Elijah put away his flashlight, a chilling thought crossed his mind:
What if
we can't
get out of here?

Nate and Sarah rented a high-performance, single-engine airplane and flew themselves to Borland, Colorado, in less time than it would have taken to fly commercially Joe Pike, owner of a local hunting and fishing resort, met them at the airstrip in his SUV

“I've been checking around,” he said as he loaded their gear into the back of his rig. “It's like I told you on the phone. Sure, a lot of people remember the government having some kind of camp or something way up in Cougar Gulch, but that was a few years ago.”

“We need to talk to those people,” said Nate.

“And we need to see that camp,” said Sarah.

An hour later, Pike eased to a stop at the end of an obscure, seldom-used access road. Nate and Sarah climbed out and looked in all directions, enjoying the scenery regardless of their serious mission. This was the great outdoors at its best: green, tree-covered mountains rising steeply on all sides of the valley, their jagged, snow-frosted summits stark against a deep blue, cloud-laced sky; the valley itself, stretched out like a green hammock between the peaks, garnished with young trees, a sparkling stream, and rust-red outcroppings of rock.

“This way,” said Pike.

They followed him over a berm of earth that blocked the road and into an open meadow where all the trees were young, only a few feet tall.

Pike stopped. “This is it.”

They waited for a clue that he was joking, but it didn't come.

Nate walked several yards into the meadow, looking about. “There used to be a campus here? A whole academy?”

Pike pointed to a mound to their left. “There's some rubble over there, what's left of a foundation.” He pointed ahead. “And there used to be a large meeting hall right over there. You can still see the base for the fireplace.”

Nate walked far ahead and stooped down to pick up some broken brick from the remains of an old chimney. Carefully scanning the ground, he could see a vague, rectangular shape under the grass, wildflowers, and young trees.

Sarah took out the brochure they'd gotten from the former runaway named Tyler, and compared the photograph on the front with the terrain she was seeing now. The photo couldn't capture all the mountainous background, but it included enough. In the photo, behind a large hall, was the very same rocky outcropping and steep-sided valley she was seeing right now from where she stood.

“What happened to it?” Nate asked. “It couldn't have just rotted away, not in so short a time.”

Pike shrugged. “Near as anyone can tell, the government came in and tore it all down, and then they replanted the area. And they did it quick.” He surveyed the open field that was once a campus. “Yeah, if you hadn't lived here and hunted here and seen it for yourself, you'd never know there was such a thing.”