FicWad

gjnhjfdhns: Part ELEVEN: Hole in the Ship

We congregated in Ms Rubenfield's room, carrying a Dylan and two first aid kits. Tyler made a move to take the bandages, but he dropped the roll and clenched his hand in sudden pain.

"What is it? Glass?"
He peered at the dots of blood on his palm that were steadily growing into tiny pools. "Think so."

I took a pair of tweezers and started the most frightening game of Operation I'd ever played.

"What're we going to do?" Angel pouted, handing Carl an ice pack.

"I hope Andrew and Mitch're okay..." Marina sprayed disinfectant on Dylan's cut, making him screech and fall backwards off the table.

"What happened to Brian?!" Ale asked, putting a butterfly bandage on a rather nasty gash in Carl's cheek.

It took all of my self-control not to jerk the tweezers in Tyler's hand.

"Shouldn't we go and help them...?" Angel's question hung in the air, a thick blanket of guilt encompassing our souls. We left three of our friends alone in this place, two of them risking their tails for us to get out of there, the other...

"We should," Tyler answered, blunt as a ball, "but we shouldn't."

Normally, this would've been followed by some asscrack remark, but all of us seemed to understand; morally, we should've stayed and helped, but the priorty was to survive, and the more the merrier. If all of us went flatlining by helping, everything we'd done would've been for nothing. It was a horrible decision, but survival was a deeper and more primitive instinct than friendship and nobility...

Right?

We finished dressing their various wounds in contemplative silence.

"Now what?"

Yes, now what? Did we go and check on them? Or did we try to escape? Either way, we'd be facing something scary...

Or what if we just stay there and bide our time?

We heard yelling, and all of our eyes snapped to the door window. The screaming got closer, and then died down, replaced with the crescendo of rapidly approaching footsteps. A body flashed past the window, paused, and then slammed into the door. Marina screamed.

Tyler catiously looked at the body through the window and relaxed, pushing the bookshelf from in front of the door and opening it with a bandaged hand.

"Mitchell!"

Alone?

"We have to get out of here, hurry up!" He demanded, voice raspy. His face had many cuts, and his lip was bleeding. He looked much worse than when I had first seen him in the school.

"Wait, we have first aid supplies, you need to get bandaged up-"

"There's no time!" He interrupted me, glaring.

"What d'you mean? And where's Andrew?" Dylan inquired.

"... You mean..." He stared now, dumbfounded. "You can't hear it?"

"Hear... Hear /what/, exactly?" Angel replied.

Mitchell stormed toward the windows and flung one open. Floating in came the sound of someone weeping, a pathetic, despairing sob, something that made you feel just awful because something was in so much agony... Was it coming from the shadow things?

And it sounded so /familiar/...

"Let's go!"

"Where!?" Carl cried. "Andrew's gone, Brian's insane, outside is filled with crybaby shadow creatures, and the library's all f--ked up! And you want us to go!?"

"What happened to Andrew, Mitch!?" Marina yelled. "And Brian!"

"We ran past the library, Andrew shoved Brian in it, but Brian pulled him down, too," Mitchell spat. "I couldn't do anything. They didn't come back. Happy? Now let's go or I'm going /alone/."

"Go where!?"

"The library."

We gawked at Angel.

"What the hell are you talking about?"

"Are you insane?"

"Are you trying to get us killed?!"

"NO." She growled. "There's something in the library, and if we can get to it, we might be able to destroy it!"

"Like Bongo-Bongo!" I piped up, lost in Zelda fanatisism for a split second.

"What the f--k..."

"It was just a mass of black, right, Mitch?" Angel asked. He nodded. "See? What if it's somehow connected to those shadow things?"

"And if it is?"

"We kill it," I said.

"How? Death by chairs?" Tyler scoffed.

"No..." Angel frowned, thinking about ways to destroy some scary, stuff-repelling mass.

"Let's bomb it!" I suggested. "Moltov cocktail! We have rubbing alcohol here, cloths... All we need are some type of bottle and something to light a fire with!"

"You idiot," Carl interjected, "Andrew and Brian're are in that thing! Hello!?"

"Then we get them out!" I stubbornly replied, crossing my arms again.

"How? Going in!?

"Sure." Mitchell was sitting backward on a chair, arms folded atop the chair's back, chin resting on his arms. "I got out once, I can do it again..."

"Then... Then we have a plan."

The words 'suicide mission' flashed through my mind.