Sarah's Story - Segment #2

The vote is in, and the winner is: a loud bang in the back of the library! 

In case you were wondering, here's what your other votes would have gotten you:

• The law student walks over and introduces himself as someone who can help - but Benny is skeptical.
• Someone screams. When Sarah and Benny investigate, they find a body hidden between some shelves.

Originally, I was rooting for "someone screams," but I had so much fun writing the next segment that I think you made the right choice. And now, here's segment #2 of Sarah's Story, with a brief lead-in from segment #1 (or read from the beginning):

She tossed another furtive glance around, and then she pulled the paper out of her bag.

It was thin, the disposable paper from a large sketch pad folded to fit in her pack. She spread it out across the table, careful not to smudge the ink as she smoothed the creases. And then she waited.

It didn’t take him long. She knew the moment he saw what she had seen, and her heart dropped and then began to thud. He looked at her, his usually cheerful eyes narrowed with concern, and she felt her hands tremble.

“Sarah, this can’t be right. Are you sure this is right?”

“Of course. I checked the facts a dozen times before I even called you. It’s all accurate.”

“Then it has to be a coincidence.” He looked at the sheet again, his frown deepening as he ran his fingers over the words. “It has to be-”

A thud rang through the library, as if someone had dropped a book. Three more thuds followed in quick succession, and then silence. Benny glanced around, suddenly as furtive as Sarah, and then he leaned closer and lowered his voice.

“It has to-”

This time, a great creaking groan cut him off – the complaint of wood under duress, eerily familiar and unaccountably ominous. Another series of thuds followed, as if someone had pushed all the books off of a shelf. The echo of them made it hard to determine their location, but a sense of premonition had Sarah glancing over her shoulder. She could see nothing beyond the massive row of shelves at their backs, but when the creak grew into a roar, she knew it came from somewhere behind them. A thunderous crash seemed to shake the walls, and she could have sworn she felt her chair tremble.

“Oh, my god,” she said, and at the same time, Benny said, “What the hell?”

Another groan, another round of thuds. Suddenly, she realized what was happening. She looked up the shelf that stretched to the ceiling at their backs, a thick wall of dense book and dark, heavy oak.

It would kill them.

“We have to get out of here.”

She said it softly, automatically, the vocalization of a thought that was not entirely conscious. And for seconds that felt like minutes, she sat unmoving, her eyes staring at the books behind them as if she could see through them to the nightmare fast approaching. Another crash – a much louder bang – and someone in that sea of knowledge screamed. And then another boom followed by a horrific crunch.

And the scream was cut short.

Sarah jolted. For a second, overwhelming silence followed that scream, as if even the disaster itself paused out of respect for the sudden loss of life. Then the thuds came again, and Sarah shuddered.

“They’re falling,” she said. But her voice was too quiet, so she had to say it again. This time, she forced the words out through lips gone numb, a jerky statement that was nevertheless loud enough to get Benny’s attention through the din. “Someone knocked over one of the shelves, and they’re falling. We have to move, Benny. We have to move now!”

He looked at her, and she saw the understanding click through his mind in the space of a heartbeat.

He always had been quick.

And then every movement they made seemed to be punctuated by another resounding crash. Benny stood and grabbed the paper she’d brought.

Bang!

He grabbed their bags and her arm, and he yanked her around the table.

Bang!

He shouted to the study group, “Get out of here!”

Bang!

She wondered how many shelves were between them and the one that would crush them.

Bang!

And then she saw, as Benny backed her away from that wall of death, that the shelf behind their table was all that was left. She watched as the thing began to tip, and the books began to fall – thud, thud, thud-thud-thud-thud – and she shuddered. And a girl beside her screamed, and a sob seemed to tear through the racket, and she realized that someone had fallen beside their table. It was a girl, young enough to be a freshman, lying utterly still beneath the monstrosity that was about to take her life.

She’d passed out, and she was going to die unless someone did something.

Sarah darted forward, crouched low to the ground as if that could possibly prevent her from being killed under the crushing weight of the bookshelf. As she moved, she heard Benny shout, “Sarah, NO!” And then she had the girl’s hand, and she pulled with all her strength, but the girl barely moved. Sarah made a sound under her breath, a strange guttural roar that seemed to harmonize with the groan of the wood, and she pulled again. And then she saw someone grab the other hand, and she knew without looking that Benny was with her.

They yanked in concert, and the girl slid a few precious feet toward safety. The bookshelf crashed onto the table, shattering the thing as if it had been built with toothpicks. Splinters the size of fingers puffed through the air in an almost graceful display, and a sharp stake of broken wood speared past Sarah’s head. And then the bookshelf was down, stopped from crushing the freshman’s leg by the small bit of table not yet pulverized.

They tugged again, and the girl was free. Sarah stood, shaking uncontrollably, and looked out over the rubble of shelf and book.

Someone was dead in there. She’d heard them die. And if this had happened earlier in the semester – or even earlier that day – more would have lost their lives. Nausea welled within her, and under it, the terrifying fear that this had been for her.

That this had happened because of what she’d found.

The horrible, skittering sensation of being watched shivered over her skin, and she looked toward the back of the library.

And there, watching her with the eerily flat expression of the soulless, stood the law student.

He pulled his sleeve down over his arm, and she realized that he’d covered something silver that ran from wrist to elbow. He put a finger over his lips, shook his head, and walked away.

She had to go. She studied Benny for a moment – his perfectly blue eyes, his adorably floppy hair, the kind face that had drawn her in the moment she’d met him four years before. He was looking down at the freshman in concern, and she suddenly wished she could kiss him. Not a kiss of passion, but not entirely a kiss of friendship, either. He was special to her, she suddenly realized, in ways that she hadn’t even begun to understand. Because of that, she had to leave him behind.

As other students rushed over to help, Sarah silently backed away. When she was clear of the crowd, she picked up the sheet of paper that had started all of this, and for a moment, she considered destroying it. Burning it, shredding it – whatever it took to get this to stop. But she knew that wouldn’t be enough. The paper wasn’t the problem; she was. Because she knew what they didn’t want her to know. She looked at Benny again and told herself that he was safe. He didn’t know enough to be a threat to them.

And she was going to keep it that way.

She left the library without a backward glance. The cold hit her face like a sheet of ice, but the chill was welcome after the shimmering heat of panic and sick. It cooled her mind, cleared her thoughts, and she stopped on the lawn of the commons to plan her next move.

“What in the hell do you think you’re doing?”

Sarah jumped and turned around to see Benny striding after her, angrily tugging his jacket on with one hand while he held his bag in the other. With a grunt of frustration, he tossed his pack toward her, where it landed with a thud at her feet. He finished pulling on his jacket and just stopped, hands on his hips and a murderous glint in his eye.

“You think you can just walk away after that?”

“Benny…” She looked over his shoulder, where campus security was already pulling up to the old marble building. “You should stay and help. You know you’ll feel guilty if you don’t. I have some things I need to take care of.”

He just looked at her for a moment, and the expression on his face had her stomach twisting. She realized he was disappointed in her, and defensiveness put her back up. But before she could attack, he asked, “You really think I’m buying that?”

And she just exploded. “You don’t understand what’s happening here, Benny!” Terror made her voice shake, but fury strengthened it. “They’re coming after me! I’ve found something that someone didn’t want me to find, and now they’re coming after me. And I won’t have you put in the middle. I won’t put you in danger that way.”

She watched, fascinated despite herself, as a vein began to throb at his temple. “You think I don’t know that?” he asked. “What is it about me that makes you think I’m that much of a fu-.” He cut himself off and took a breath. “Either you think I’m an idiot or a coward. Tell me which one it is so we can deal with it and get on with whatever the hell is happening here.”

Stunned, she realized that he was furious. Her sweet, gentle, patient Benny looked like he wanted to smash something. Completely unsure of how to handle this side of a man she’d thought she knew better than anyone else, she could only say quietly, “Neither. I…I don’t think you’re an idiot or a coward.”

He studied her for a moment longer, and the tension in his shoulders seemed to release slightly. When he nodded curtly, she realized he was still angry. “Now that that’s settled, come on. I think I know someone who can help.”