The Secret: A Thriller by David Haywood Young

the guy. “I’m Ash,” I told him.
    “John,” he said. “I got nabbed a couple of days ago. One of the…people like Evans…broke into my house. I ran out, and Reverend Bob’s people grabbed me and stuck a needle in my arm.”
    I nodded slowly. “I watched the military blow up downtown. Then somebody got me from behind.”
    He gave a weirdly amused grin. “They blew up downtown Henge? Cool.”
    “John—seriously, what happens if Reverend Bob’s people see we’re not like the rest?”
    “Ask Harvey.”
    I looked around the room. “He in here?”
    “Nah. He and I were talking yesterday, then he decided to go ask somebody that very question.”
    “And…?”
    “Beats me. Haven’t seen him since. I figure either they killed him or he’s one of them now. But if he’s one of them, I don’t know why he didn’t mention me.”
    “One of who?”
    John sighed, and took out a flask. “Whom. Want a hit?”
    First Mr. Morrison, now this guy. “Okay, whom. If it’s like being born, how come you’re still here?”
    He sipped. “Also a lot like dying. No idea what’s next, and nobody seems to be able to come back to tell me. Harv promised. Listen, man, I don’t want to sit here talking to you. You don’t seem like you’re gonna be a low-profile kind of guy. So I’m gonna shamble over and hang with the living dead.” He offered his flask again. “You sure?”
    “Yeah. Might need to stay alert.”
    “Yeah right.”
    I scanned the room again. John No-Last-Name might have the right idea—but I had to get out of here. My kids needed me.
    So did my wife.
    I hoped.
    I scanned the room, and suddenly noticed: no children at all. At least forty adults—I started to count, but realized it was pointless—but everybody in here was in their mid-twenties, at least.
    The parade I’d seen flashed through my mind, and my stomach roiled. What was happening to the kids? Or had it all already happened?
    But I couldn’t worry about that right then. I had to get out.
    I considered John No-Name, now sitting about twenty feet from me, but couldn’t think of a way to get him to help. And I didn’t have a plan anyway. Might as well leave him be.
    My lips quirked, though, as I decided: getting out of here had to be more like being born than dying. Because sitting in this place wasn’t any kind of life at all.
     
    * * *
     
    A s a first step, I ate. Some of everything, and I tried not to think about what I was swallowing. There were jugs of water, too. At lease I hoped they were water. They…tasted pretty awful. But good, at the same time.
    The version of Henge High I’d attended had been torn down ten years before. I didn’t know my way around the new campus. Soon, though, I discovered a back door in the kitchen area behind the cafeteria. Chained, and padlocked, from this side. Did it open to the outside world?
    Didn’t matter; I didn’t have any way to get past the lock, and the door itself seemed solid.
    So the initial choice was easy: only one way into—or out of—the cafeteria.
    I headed out the way I’d come in, determined to search the closet I’d slept in for tools. A hacksaw would be really nice just now.
     
    * * *
     
    I ’d only taken a couple of steps into the hallway when I realized what an idiot I’d been.
    I wanted a hacksaw? To get through a chain and padlock?
    Every classroom off the hallway I stood in was reasonably well-lit. By windows.
     
    * * *
     
    N ot knowing the school’s layout was becoming a real pain in the ass. I could see we were on the first floor. On the left, classroom windows looked out on Highway 78, which ran north and south. So that was east. On the other side, past the classrooms, I saw a courtyard, with picnic tables—so I’d figured out where the double door from the cafeteria led. But I didn’t want to go that way.
    Okay. We were on the first floor. The hallway I stood in ran north-south. The cafeteria was in roughly the southwest corner, and just past it was another