“Where did you go, little lady?” Gill’s voice called out.
Maya pushed off the wall and ran again. She headed left, down another hallway. She came to yet another door, but this one wasn’t chained shut. The door opened to a stairwell, and she thought of running up the stairs but decided against it. She had a better chance of getting out of the school if she stayed on the ground floor. So, she ran down the next hallway.
Halfway down that hall, Maya slowed to a quick walk. She looked inside each of the classrooms, hoping to find a place to hide or something useful to break a window and get out of the building.
“You don’t want to know what I’m going to do to you when I find you, bitch.”
Gill’s voice sounded closer now. She could hear the other goons laughing, as well, opening and then slamming doors as they methodically checked each unlocked classroom. They’d eventually find her if she hid in one of the classrooms, but Maya needed a few moments to think and she couldn’t do that with Gill getting closer.
Maya’s eyes lit up when she saw the sign above the classroom three doors down from where she stood. She sprinted for it, opened the door, ducked inside, and eased the door closed behind her.
She couldn’t believe her eyes, or that Gill’s hillbillies hadn’t looted it already.
Long ductwork stretched across the top of the room and connected to exhaust hoods hanging over workstations. Massive, industrial machines sat silently in the corners while five tables had been positioned in the middle of the room.
The woodshop still had most of its tools sitting on workbenches, haphazardly left out in the open as the students had evacuated at some point in the recent past. The drill presses and power tools wouldn’t be much help, but Maya saw countless saws, drills, screwdrivers, and other assorted hand tools that could be used for their intended purpose—or as weapons, if necessary.
Maya knew she would be able to find something in here to break out of the school if only she had a few seconds to think. But the loud footsteps grew closer, and so did the voices. She saw a cabinet on the other end of the room and hurried over, opening the door and crawling inside the dark space that smelled of paint thinner and wood stain. The harsh, chemical fumes made her eyes water.
She wiped away the involuntary tears, listening to the heels of the men’s boots slapping on the tile as they proceeded down the hallway. Then the noises stopped just outside of the woodshop.
“Where the fuck did she go?” Gill said.
“Maybe into the shop? I don’t know.” That voice was Rodney’s and he was clearly trying to be funny.
“Don’t be an idiot. What would a woman want with power tools? She probably ran for the Home-Ec classroom.”
Maya bristled, but then realized that their jokes and misogyny might save her life.
“Why the hell would you leave her alone in there?”
“You mean you didn’t want me to come tell you that your pregnant wife was hurt?”
“Oh, to hell with this. Quit talking, Rodney. You’re only making my head hurt more. I wanna find that bitch, you got me? Go get Joey and Mark and head upstairs.”
Maya paused as she heard several men enter the nearby stairwell, this followed by silence as the stairwell door shut. Another sound. She waited.
The door to the woodshop opened. Maya could hear it but not see it. She felt a chill on her neck, and the paint thinner fumes had gotten to her so much that she felt like she might sneeze.
A metal object hit the floor and then an entire shelf that must have been full of woodscrews and hinges crashed to the ground in the woodshop. She shook and closed her eyes as they tore the room apart.
“Stupid, fucking bitch wouldn’t be in here. Wouldn’t know a belt sander from a jigsaw.”
The classroom door opened and then shut again, and even without opening the closet door, Maya knew Gill had left and probably headed into the stairwell to catch up with the others.
After counting to twenty just to be sure, Maya crawled out of the cabinet. Then she looked around the room for something she could use to escape from the school.
She thought of simply breaking one of the windows and making a run for it. But when she looked closer, she saw that the window was made from some kind of safety or security glass. A tight, steel mesh appeared to be sandwiched between the panes. She suspected that, because of the equipment in the room, the school had taken measures to protect their investment. A chair or desk would simply bounce off the glass, and it would bring Gill and his assholes running.
Maya had started to open the door to a supply closet when she stepped on something that felt hard. She looked down, realizing that she had stepped on the curved end of a crowbar.
Years ago, she’d locked herself out of her shed. She’d been married to Gerald at the time, and he’d let one of his friends borrow their bolt cutters. After fussing at him and rolling her eyes, she’d taken a crowbar from the garage and used it to break the padlock.
At least that son of a bitch is still good for something. Like jogging my memory.
She smiled as she bent down and picked up the crowbar. On her way out of the woodshop, she turned and pulled the door shut behind her—just as Gill had left it.
She looked both ways, making sure nobody had stepped into the hallway. She neither saw nor heard anybody.
Maya hurried down the hall to an external door that had been padlocked. She turned to face another door leading into the stairwell.
With the hooked end of the crowbar in her hand and the straight end aimed for the padlock, Maya heard voices coming from the stairwell. She ran beneath the stairs, ducking under them and out of sight.
Sitting with her knees at her chest, Maya held her breath as a stairwell door on the second floor flew open. The footsteps and voices seemed to be going higher in the stairwell instead of coming down.
“She’s on the third or fourth floor, I just know it,” Rodney said.
The footsteps echoed throughout the stairwell until another door opened and shut. Maya waited for several moments until she was certain that they’d gone up the stairwell to look for her and that nobody had snuck back down the way Gill had come into the woodshop after separating from the earlier group. Counting to fifty this time, she finally stood up and went back to the external door.
She pried the crowbar under the padlock, putting it in a position where she had leverage. Then she leaned into the lock and grunted, pushing down until the veins in her arms bulged.
“Come on, dammit.”
She closed her eyes and pushed harder, hoping the lock wouldn’t pop and shoot shards of metal into her eyes.
First came a snap, and then her knuckles smacked off the face of the door. Maya stumbled backwards, thrown off balance by the sudden release of pressure. Pain blossomed in her fingers and arms, but when she looked down, the broken lock lay on the floor at her feet.
She smiled and laughed, pulling the chain off the door and opening it. The fresh air almost made her want to cry, but she realized she had no time to spare. If Gill hadn’t heard the door open, he’d certainly discover the broken padlock when they descended the stairwell again after searching the upper floors of the school.
The sun had turned golden and it felt warm on her face. Maya shook out her arms and looked around. She saw a pickup parked against a curb in the yellow-lined “no parking” area behind the woodshop. No school official or student would have parked it there before everything had happened, so she had to assume it belonged to Gill or one of his crew.