Page 46 of The Killer You Know

“The doors are locked,” someone shouts. “They’re dead bolted! We need a key to get out!”

“They’re locked on this side, too,” someone shouts from the far end of the gym.

Seemingly all at once everyone is shouting for a key as the smell of gas pours in thick and heavy.

“She has it,” Fallon pants. “Carrie told me Vanessa has the key.”

Before I can process the thought, the music cuts out and the squeal of a microphone goes off.

“Attention esteemed graduates of Aspen Heights High,” a female voice chimes and we look over to the makeshift stage where Vanessa holds a microphone. She sets something down near her leg and it looks like a hammer. “I can’t seem to find the key, and unfortunately, that means none of us are getting out alive.”

“I called 911!” someone shouts. “They’re on the way!”

“I did, too,” Nikki pants. “And they’re working with the gas company to shut off the stream.”

“Good,” I say. Even though deep down I know it’s far too late.

A few women collapse to the floor, and a thicket of people sit down around them.

“Nobody moves,” Vanessa bellows while holding something small and silver in her hand. “I’ve got a lighter and I’m about to send the entire lot of you to Hell right along with me. We’ll all be dead before anyone can get to us.”

A few expletives go off as the crowd begins to rumble and moan.

“You did this to yourselves,” she shouts at the stunned faces. “You took my life and you made a sport of watching it unravel. Well, tonight I take my life back and make a sport of watching you die.”

She lifts the lighter another notch just as someone tackles her from behind and the lighter goes sailing.

“I’ll get her,” Fallon shouts. “You bust that door open, use the table if you have to!”

A group of us wastes no time in doing just that. We knock over the buffet table, just enough to clear it, and send the chocolate fountain spilling to the floor before charging our way to the door with it.

“We can’t cause a spark,” I shout as Mitch comes alongside me and about twenty of us do our best to bang that door open.

“I always thought I’d go out in a blaze of glory,” Mitch grunts as we knock the table into the doors with all our might. “But this isn’t exactly how I envisioned it.”

The sound of sirens wails from the other side just as we hit the doors once again, and this time we burst on through.

Bodies flood out the door all at once, causing mass panic as the entry grows congested.

“Slow down,” I shout. “Easy, no trampling,” I say, helping to excavate the people that are trapped and streamline the process all at once.

Nikki and I help a few of the women who are too dizzy to make it out on their own. I run back in and make sure no one is in the kitchen, and I check to make sure the bathrooms are empty as well and the smell of gas only grows thicker.

The gym has cleared out in record time and I glance around at the aftermath for signs of Vanessa or Fallon, but there isn’t one.

The back door to the facility has magically opened, and I’m betting Vanessa used her key to let herself out.

I’m also bettering Fallon followed her out as well.

“Stone,” Nikki shouts from the main entry. “I want you out, now.”

“Yes, ma’am,” I say, choking on the dense smell of gas which is thick as sin.

I head out and the fire department ushers us a good one hundred feet from the facility.

“Where’s Fallon?” Nikki shouts over the screams and cries of my classmates.

“I don’t know,” I say. “I think she went out the back with Vanessa. I checked that whole gym, there’s not a soul left in there.”

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