Descent

After I walked Nathan and Krista as far as I could I made my way to Archery. I was considered the star of the Archery team and this year I was captain. I went into the dressing room and looked around. As always I was the first one there. There are very few girls in archery this year and they were always late for one reason or the other so I usually have the whole dressing room to myself. I started to change into my other uniform when I noticed that there was another security camera in the locker room as well. They were just popping up everywhere now. I was sure that that was an invasion of privacy. I shook my head and decided I would bring it up to coach later and opened my locker to change. The archery practice uniform wasn’t all that special but it was considered a uniform. It was a warm up jacket with wind pants and since our school was maroon that was the color. It even had the school mascot on the front, a charging lion, with the words St. Michael’s Archery Team done in calligraphy font all done in white. I tugged on a black sports bra, a black tight long sleeve shirt with an embroidered mascot on the left breast, the jacket and then the wind pants. I straightened my ponytail and after that I put on the gloves that only covered my thumb and first two fingers. In about five to ten minutes I was done. Woohoo, I’m the girl with a fast changing record. Too bad I couldn’t boast that to anyone else but myself. With one last look to the new security camera I closed my locker and headed out of the locker room. I made my way to the archery grounds. I wanted to at least get in a couple of shots by myself to calm down a headache that started above my right eye. I normally never get headaches but the couple of times that I had them I have noticed that when I’m in archery mode I can calm down my thoughts and usually the pain goes away. As I walked some of the team caught up with me and I sighed inwardly. It looked like I wasn’t going to get my alone time. We were passing by the school gate that was in the front when I noticed that it was locked with a padlock. The school never locked the gates during school hours so it didn’t make any sense. My curiosity rose even more when I saw a couple of black Hummers parked in front of the gate and I was betting there might be more. One of my team mates, my co-captain Chance, nudged me and asked, “Hey, what do you think is going on?” I looked him right in those blue eyes and said the only thing I could think of. “I don’t know but I don’t like what I see.” It kind of bothered me that this 6’0” shaggy blonde haired blue eyed guy with nice bulging shoulders and biceps was looking to me for guidance. Shouldn’t he be the one to say “I don’t like what I see maybe we should go in or maybe we should investigate?” Chance Lans was the type of guy that was a “me big man and you little woman. I protect you and you go cook” kind of guy. There were a couple of other guys who had the same mentality and they just so happened to be Chance’s group of friends. I wasn’t a big fan but I knew I could count on him to have that mentality and now that he didn’t I was at a lost. Things just didn’t look right to me and I was getting a bigger headache. I didn’t really want to deal with the lost looks on my team mates because they too were thrown off by Chance’s comment. Chance was still looking at me to make the decision. I knew it chapped him and the others when I became captain and Coach said that they would have to listen to me. Sometimes Chance would throw something my way just to see how I would deal with it and I was beginning to think this was one of those times. I blew out a small breath that blew up my bangs slightly and made a decision. I decided that archery could wait due to my ongoing curiosity. We stood off to the side and waited to see what would happen. A black van rolled up to the gate and the side door opened. A sickly looking man stumbled out of the side and made his way to the gate. The guy was walking weird. It was as if his right leg was refusing to work the way it should and he was forced to drag it along. I didn’t know how else to describe the person other than that he just looked wrong and sickly. Shambling was the word I was looking for. The sickly man was shambling towards the gate. I squinted as he drew closer and it wasn’t because I was trying to see him better but because of my headache. His skin color was off. It was paler than it should have been with a slightly gray-blue tint. It looked like he was covered in wounds. When he reached the gate he didn’t bother to try to open it. He kept bumping against it. He wasn’t even catching himself with his hands. Something was just off with that guy. As the guy kept bumping the gate my headache grew and grew. It wasn’t the noise of flesh against metal that made it worse but something else and I couldn’t name it.