Alex Van Helsing Voice of the Undead - By Jason Henderson Page 0,7

was running out of time.

PASS.

Pull-Aim-Squeeze-Sweep, he heard his father say in his mind.

Pull. As he ran, he yanked the metal safety pin that held the operating lever in place. Students were pouring into the hall behind him, shouting. Flames from the board had spread to the wallpaper and now were licking against the ceiling tiles.

Aim. He stopped and picked the base of the fire as his target, which in this case was still the board.

The flames began to spread across the ceiling tiles. Maybe they weren’t past the tipping point yet, though. Maybe. Squeeze. He squeezed the handle up, waiting for the propellant to push back and up against his hands.

It did no such thing. Alex looked down at the markings on the extinguisher and read an expiration date that roughly coincided with one of his sister’s births.

So there would be no sweep of the extinguisher’s contents because the propellant inside had dissipated years ago. Also, the ceiling was on fire.

Alex turned and ran, meeting Javi Arroyo next to the stairwell entrance, where he was shouting orders for everyone to move steadily down the stairs.

Bill was walking Steven with his arms under his shoulders. Steven looked pale. “What’s wrong with him?” Alex called.

“I don’t know,” Bill said. Smoke was coming faster now.

A terrible thought occurred to Alex. “Is it because of the bite—” Alex said quickly.

“If it is, Van Helsing, I will kill you,” Bill said, and disappeared down the stairwell, charging past several others, including Paul and Sid.

Great.

Alex looked back and saw flames licking across the ceiling, and starting to come out of his room.

“Alex, what are you doing?” Sid called.

The overhead lights began to flicker. Alex heard what must have been tubes of paint exploding in their room.

Javi slapped him on the back. “Come on, look alive,” he said.

“There might be more we can do. . . .”

Javi shook his head. “The alarm is linked to the village and the fire department can take it. Let’s go.”

Dismayed into silence, Alex joined Sid and Paul. Down the stairs the students moved as the alarms rang out, deafening them all.

Out at the gate, the whole school gathered and watched. Alex heard the RAs counting off students in the dark. Standing together, Alex, Paul, and Sid watched the upstairs, where the fire had moved from one room to at least two or three adjacent.

Alex heard Bill Merrill shouting and turned to look. A pair of teachers bent over Steven, who lay unconscious and deathly pale.

Paul tore his eyes away from the fire to nod toward Steven. “What happened to him?”

Elle. Elle. Freaking Elle.

“Something meant for me,” Alex said.

There was a screeching of tires and Alex saw a racing green convertible scrape across gravel and stop near the gate. A man in his mid-thirties wearing a sport coat bounded out of the car. It was Sangster, with a look of horror. He saw Alex and relief crossed his face. The sounds of fire trucks filled the air.

Chapter 3

As alarms continued to flood the area with noise, paramedics burst through the crowd. Alex watched a young man in scrubs size up the situation instantly; almost no one needed help except for Steven, still prone.

Alex moved to Steven’s side and found himself across from Bill, who looked up at him with disgust and worry.

“What happened to him?” the ambulance guy said in heavily accented English as he felt for a pulse. Steven’s head was already elevated. He was unconscious but breathing. “Did he inhale smoke?”

“I don’t think so,” Bill said.

A woman in scrubs showed up with a gurney and the two paramedics lifted Steven’s body and laid it on the gurney.

“He was bitten,” Alex volunteered.

The woman touched a metal lever next to the wheel base and the gurney popped up to waist height. “Bitten?” she asked, with the same French accent. “By what?”

“I don’t know, it was a freakin’ bat, I think,” Bill said. “I’ve seen ’em in the rafters.”

The paramedics nodded as they began to hurry with Steven. Bill ran with them.

The rest of the gate area was bedlam. Students were gathered in excitable groups. As the last of the fire trucks arrived and the ambulance sped away, Alex saw Headmaster Otranto talking intensely on a cell phone.

He was calling for buses. That was Otranto’s skill: arranging things.

Even so, at eleven P.M. on a Friday this was not an easy task. They waited numbly for an hour until buses rolled in next to the fire trucks. The first order of business was loading