Sugar & Squall by J. Round

Author:J. Round [Round, J.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2013-06-01T05:00:00+00:00

9. GUILT

It was so faint I almost missed it at first. It floated on the wind, ethereal, like part of a dream. The sound of helicopter blades cutting through the night.

The wind had gotten stronger, much stronger, and there was something else building in the air. It rumbled like a caged animal above us.

Logan looked puzzled. “Am I really hearing that?”

“I think so. Where’s it coming from?”

Logan cupped his ear, rotating it around to catch the origin of the sound.

“Over there,” he said, pointing towards the pier. He stood and ran over to the wall, looking out into the night. I joined him, but the moon was in hiding, blanketing everything in sight black and making it hard to pick out particulars.

“I can’t see anything,” he groaned. All the while the sound increased in volume. It was intermittent, quiet, but it was there.

“Is it coming this way?”

“No, I think it’s landing.”

I should have been excited. Help had come, but I didn’t want it. I would have sufficed with the ferry so Logan and I could have more time alone, bubbled away here from constraints of the outer world. But he’d pushed me away just now. I felt scalded by his denial.

“I guess we should go down there, check it out, offer them afternoon tea,” I suggested.

Logan stepped back from the wall. “Let’s not jump to conclusions. We don’t know who they are. But I agree it does warrant closer observation. We’ll go downstairs, see what we can see. Agreed?”

Rain started to fall. “Agreed.”

We didn’t say it, but we both knew whoever was in that helicopter had answers. It was true I had been occupied over the last few days, beautifully occupied, but the disappearance had always been there in the background, eating away at us.

We moved quickly down into the cavernous inner confines of Carver by night. I followed Logan as he stepped down into the lower foyer area. We’d never bothered to turn off the lights in this area of the school, and my eyes protested against the brightness.

I moved to the front doors that led out into the open.

“Wait,” Logan said. “Is there somewhere inside we can look out from first?”

“The sick bay,” I pointed, “down the hall”. I’d been there earlier. It offered the clearest view out the front of the school.

Logan didn’t respond, turning on his heel and continuing down the corridor. At my last school, the sick bay had a reputation as a place to make out more than anything, as it was regularly left unlocked, and unguarded given there was no medication in there anyhow.

This room was different. It was almost like an operating theatre in design, with specialist lights, monitors and glass cabinets filled to breaking point with bottles and stainless steel. The only antiquities were the walls and a leather-bound book on the counter with a gleaming gold caduceus on the cover.

I hated hospitals, medical centers, their stale, antiseptic smell, and the creeps rolled over me as soon as I stepped foot inside.

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