Crisis Event: Black Feast by Greg Shows, Zachary Womack Page A

We were three miles south when the bikers got us.”
    Callie had been a student at Blaine, she told Sadie, but since the Crisis she’d been living in the courthouse and jail at the center of town.
    “We called it ‘the Alamo,’” she said. “Because this professor said that’s what it was like.”
    "What about your parents?" Sadie asked.
    Callie shook her head.
    “Colorado,” she said.
    It was all she needed to say. Even in the early days of the Crisis everyone knew that Colorado, Wyoming, Idaho, and Utah were gone.
    “Thar she blows,” Sadie said, as the black smoke she’d been expecting puffed upward from the science building, then expanded to a big black column. Seconds after she saw the smoke, a big man in blue coveralls came running toward the recreation center. Two younger, smaller men were running behind him.
    “That’s Bryce,” Callie said through her teeth. Sadie glanced at Callie, who had the sawed off shotgun in her hands. Her fingers were wrapped around the forestock and grip so tightly that if it had been someone’s neck she’d have snapped it. “And his sicko sons.”
    Sadie was relieved to see the men weren’t tracking her as they ran across the ashy ground. The two girls hadn’t exactly attempted to disguise their tracks when they’d come to the truck.
    “Guess they didn’t bring enough water to put it out,” Sadie said, “and some jerk stole their extinguishers.”
    Callie didn’t laugh, and nodded instead.
    Some people don’t get irony.
    Seconds after the three men had run into the recreation center, a dozen others came running out. They moved like a herd of wild animals toward the fire, though by the time they got to the science building it was obvious there was nothing they could do. They stood and watched it burn. A few men ran inside but came back out almost immediately.
    “That’s our cue,” Sadie said.
    She looked at Callie. The girl’s lips were trembling. “You want to stay here?”
    “I do,” Callie said, nearly crying.
    Sadie got a jolt of panic to her guts. She was terrified, but what she was about to do seemed less scary knowing Callie was going with her. She sighed with relief when Callie opened the pickup door and said, “Let’s go.”
        They ran up the handicap ramp to the automatic doors. The doors were unlocked, but Sadie and Callie had to work to pry them apart so they could get inside.
    Sadie could see why the bikers had chosen to enter and exit the rec center from the rear doorways, which was a pair of standard hinged glass doors with locking bars across them. The two girls pushed the sliding doors closed again once they were inside.
    Sadie had left her pack in the truck and brought only what she’d needed: her pistol, her multitool, a tiny LED penlight,  the vial of of potassium permanganate, the bottle of glycerine, and the silver foil.
    She had a plan, and the cannibals here at the college weren’t going to like it.
    The entryway was nothing more than a wide hallway with a check-in counter on one side. It had once been the place where students stopped before they went to the gymnasium, the weight room, the basement bowling alley, or the game room, with its rows of pool tables, ping pong tables, and foosball tables.
    Little light made it inside, and an old boxy flashlight sat on the check-in counter, probably something the bikers used to light up the room when they were taking their bikes out on a raid.
    The part of the building they’d entered was empty, but they could hear voices echoing down hallways, moans and cries, bumps and bangs that seemed to vibrate the walls. There were several barks and howls, like dogs that had been left penned too long, and the clanging and scraping of metal.
    Along with all the sounds of life was the constant crackle of thunder.
    An odd odor pervaded the building too, something like fresh mushrooms and B.O.
    Sadie grabbed the flashlight and whispered, “Let’s go.”
    According to Callie, the bikes would be