Fic-with-no-name, Third Part
I can't believe I missed Seasonal Spuffy free day! It's been that kind of couple of weeks -- I blinked, and then it was gone. Wah.
Ah, well. I'll just keep posting here when I get the chance. So, a little Halloweenish scare reading for you -- part the third of my as-yet nameless fic, a BtVS Season 7 redux.
3. CAN'T RUN, CAN'T HIDE
Cornered by the milkshake machine, Buffy kept a smile frozen to her face as manager Lorraine delivered the anticipated lecture.
"I have to tell you, I'm really disappointed in you, Buffy. You've been showing such improvement lately, and I'd hate to see things go back to the way they were when you first started here. With the absences and excuses--"
"But, I--" Buffy bit her lip. "I'm sorry. I'm not trying to make an excuse. I just... it's my sister. There was school, and--"
"I know. I have family too. I have two daughters in day care right now. But as an adult, you have to figure out how to manage your time and be where people need you when they need you." She sighed. "Look, I'm not trying to be the bad guy here. But you have to understand. If you want to keep this job, I need to know that I can count on you."
__________
"Buffy, will you PLEASE pick up!" Dawn shouted into the cell phone. "This is me calling, and it's definitely an emergency, and I need to talk to you right now! Dammit!" She snapped the phone closed and ran a hand through her hair in frustration.
"Excuse me? What do you think you're doing?"
Dawn looked up. Her entire class was staring back at her. It was her teacher who had spoken. He was poised by the chalkboard, paused in the midst of writing a sentence.
He coughed politely and added, "By the way, there's actually a no cell phones on campus policy--"
"Are you serious?" Dawn interrupted. "What do you think is going on here? With the screaming, and freaky noises and the--" As if on cue, she was interrupted by an ominous groaning sound that seemed to be coming from inside the walls. "Look. We have to get out of here. I don't have time to explain everything right now, but monsters are real, this school is cursed, and unless you want to stick around and find out what it's like inside a horror movie, we really should go. Now."
"You mean leave the school?" one of the students asked.
"You have a better idea?" It was starting to freak Dawn out the way the whole class was just sitting frozen at their desks, paralyzed like a herd of deer framed in oncoming headlights.
The walls gave out another unearthly groaning sound. This time it was echoed by some of the students, who hunched at their desks like they could somehow shrink away from it and hide.
Twenty pairs of eyes turned toward the teacher. He hadn't yet moved from his position at the chalkboard, but now he shrugged, put down his chalk and dusted his hands.
"Class dismissed."
__________
The class followed Dawn into the hallway which, for the moment at least, looked entirely normal. Nonetheless, the group huddled close together and shuffled forward at a slow, deliberate pace, rather like a Roman phalanax. Dawn, at the formation's apex, seemed to have been confirmed as the leader -- no one attempted to get in front of her, not even the teacher.
"Should we tell people in the other classrooms?" This from the boy standing at her right elbow, the one who'd been sitting across the aisle from her in class. "I'm, uh, Carlos, by the way."
"Dawn," she answered. "Yeah, we probably should. Oh!" She hooked her chin in the direction of the nearest classroom and fished in her purse -- it had suddenly occurred to her that Buffy wasn't her only option for help. "Go ahead and tell them we're leaving and why. I'm gonna try another call." She opened the phone and pressed the speed dial for Xander.
__________
Outside on the sunny school grounds, Xander and about ten more construction workers were clustered under a yellow tarpaulin. A payloader was already at work digging in an area marked out for the new swimming pool, and a few other workers could be seen surveying the grounds and stringing pegs to mark out the edges of the soon-to-be new athletic field.
Brandishing the blueprints, hardhat tipped back on his head, Xander put on an ingratiating smile. He had discarded the suit jacket and put on his toolbelt and workshirt, but he was still a little self-conscious about his new status as foreman. He didn't want the rest of the guys not to like him. Not when his work was about all he had anymore.
"Okay!" he addressed the group brightly. "So, here's where we're at. We are a little behind schedule right now, but if we can get the bulldozers to work over here--" He gestured to the blueprints. "--and get the area graded and leveled, we can turn that section over to the groundskeepers for seeding and start working on the pool. With luck, we'll at least have something ready for... well, maybe in time for the next baseball season." He rolled the blueprints and basked in the small chuckle this raised from the other men.
He was feeling pretty good until one of them waved at him, and then pointed. "Hey, Xander!" he said. "Isn't that your ex?"
He squinted, shielded his eyes, and looked in the direction indicated. He caught only the briefest glimpse of a woman standing some distance away under a shady tree, and then only a thin puff of smoke marked the spot where Anya had stood.
"No," he said, lowering his hand. "She doesn't live here anymore. Uh, excuse me." He unclipped his ringing phone from his toolbelt and lifted it to his ear. "Yello!"
__________
"Xander! The school's going crazy and we're getting out of here. I can't get through to Buffy."
"Dawn? Wait, whoa, whoa, what?" Xander put down the blueprints, nodded to the others, and walked a little ways away from the tarpaulin. "Slow down and tell me what's going on."
He listened, nodded, and then took off for the front door of the high school at a run.
__________
"Dawn!" Carlos had moved around to the back of the phalanx and opened one of the classroom doors. "You'd better come see this."
She maneuvered over to where he was, the group shifting to follow her, and looked inside.
The room was empty.
"No, wait, this is--my friend Karen has French in here," one of the girls spoke up.
"Look at the desks," someone else moaned. The desks were old-fashioned, like something you'd expect to see in a one-room prairie schoolhouse, and the American flag in the corner didn't have enough stars.
"This can't be good," Dawn murmured.
The lights began to flicker. The phalanax backed away from the empty classroom and began to run as a mass toward the front door.
__________
Xander charged up the main steps and banged through the entrance. His toolbelt and the long-handled ax he'd had the presence of mind to grab from the supply shed promptly set off the metal detector, and a shrill scream began sounding through the empty halls.
He waited, looking from side to side, expecting any second to see Dawn appear on the run.
She didn't.
He flipped his phone open. "Dawn?"
"Yeah!" she answered. "What's that noise?"
"The metal detector. I'm at the front door. Where the heck are you?"
Dawn's eyes widened. She turned to look at the same door in question. "I'm... at the front door."
Xander sucked in a breath. "That can't be good."
More howls and shrieks, even louder this time, filled the air in Dawn's location.
"What the heck was that?" Xander yelled. Even with the sirening metal detector in his ears, he'd heard the sound loud and clear over the phone.
"I don't know!" Dawn screamed back.
"What are we waiting for?" one of the students yelled. "Let's go!" The pack broke, and everyone ran for the door.
Before they could reach it, though, it blew open as if forced from the outside, and... Buffy ran through.
Phone to her ear, eyes wide, Dawn gaped. It was Buffy, and it wasn't. It was a younger version of her sister, who ran past her full tilt without even seeing her. As if one or the other of them wasn't really there.
And then, hot on her heels, came the snake, smashing through the timbers of the door and filling the hallway. The students swarming the door were knocked aside like ninepins. And then... it was gone, and the hall looked normal again.
Shaken and scattered, the students all looked at each other. The unspoken question was clear: Did we really just see that?
"Dawn? Dawn? Are you there? What's happening?"
Xander's faraway voice brought Dawn back to Earth. "Yeah, I'm... we're okay. I think. Wait a minute." She watched as a boy she didn't know slowly got to his feet and pushed the now-closed door back open. A dull red light poured in through the portal, and the students shuffled forward to get a closer look.
The view through the open door was no longer recognizable as Sunnydale.
It was dark outside. A rocky plain stretched as far as the eye could see, dull red sand, empty of any kind of vegetation. Dim flashes, like black lightning, lit the sky.
The group shrank back as a single body when flickers of movement appeared on the horizon. As if something -- or an army of somethings -- was crawling steadily toward them.
"We're not in Sunnydale anymore," Dawn said slowly. She felt horribly calm, or maybe just too frightened to panic anymore. "The door goes somewhere else, and... it looks bad, like--" Spike's voice came back to her then, the dead, dragging tone of despair. This is Hell, do you understand? "...like hell or something. There are... there are things out there. A-And I think ghosts, too. I saw Buffy. Like, younger." And Spike, too. "And a giant snake."
"Stay where you are!" Xander shouted. The claxon still sounding in his ear was doing nothing for his composure. He wanted to run, to help, but there was nowhere to go and nothing to see. The building was empty. He'd been doing construction long enough to know the feeling of a totally deserted space. Wherever Dawn was, it was defintely somewhere else.
"Just stay calm. Sit tight, and I'll--" His throat closed up. He had no idea what to do. He grabbed at the only course of action he could think of. "I'll get Buffy."
To be continued...
Ah, well. I'll just keep posting here when I get the chance. So, a little Halloweenish scare reading for you -- part the third of my as-yet nameless fic, a BtVS Season 7 redux.
3. CAN'T RUN, CAN'T HIDE
Cornered by the milkshake machine, Buffy kept a smile frozen to her face as manager Lorraine delivered the anticipated lecture.
"I have to tell you, I'm really disappointed in you, Buffy. You've been showing such improvement lately, and I'd hate to see things go back to the way they were when you first started here. With the absences and excuses--"
"But, I--" Buffy bit her lip. "I'm sorry. I'm not trying to make an excuse. I just... it's my sister. There was school, and--"
"I know. I have family too. I have two daughters in day care right now. But as an adult, you have to figure out how to manage your time and be where people need you when they need you." She sighed. "Look, I'm not trying to be the bad guy here. But you have to understand. If you want to keep this job, I need to know that I can count on you."
__________
"Buffy, will you PLEASE pick up!" Dawn shouted into the cell phone. "This is me calling, and it's definitely an emergency, and I need to talk to you right now! Dammit!" She snapped the phone closed and ran a hand through her hair in frustration.
"Excuse me? What do you think you're doing?"
Dawn looked up. Her entire class was staring back at her. It was her teacher who had spoken. He was poised by the chalkboard, paused in the midst of writing a sentence.
He coughed politely and added, "By the way, there's actually a no cell phones on campus policy--"
"Are you serious?" Dawn interrupted. "What do you think is going on here? With the screaming, and freaky noises and the--" As if on cue, she was interrupted by an ominous groaning sound that seemed to be coming from inside the walls. "Look. We have to get out of here. I don't have time to explain everything right now, but monsters are real, this school is cursed, and unless you want to stick around and find out what it's like inside a horror movie, we really should go. Now."
"You mean leave the school?" one of the students asked.
"You have a better idea?" It was starting to freak Dawn out the way the whole class was just sitting frozen at their desks, paralyzed like a herd of deer framed in oncoming headlights.
The walls gave out another unearthly groaning sound. This time it was echoed by some of the students, who hunched at their desks like they could somehow shrink away from it and hide.
Twenty pairs of eyes turned toward the teacher. He hadn't yet moved from his position at the chalkboard, but now he shrugged, put down his chalk and dusted his hands.
"Class dismissed."
__________
The class followed Dawn into the hallway which, for the moment at least, looked entirely normal. Nonetheless, the group huddled close together and shuffled forward at a slow, deliberate pace, rather like a Roman phalanax. Dawn, at the formation's apex, seemed to have been confirmed as the leader -- no one attempted to get in front of her, not even the teacher.
"Should we tell people in the other classrooms?" This from the boy standing at her right elbow, the one who'd been sitting across the aisle from her in class. "I'm, uh, Carlos, by the way."
"Dawn," she answered. "Yeah, we probably should. Oh!" She hooked her chin in the direction of the nearest classroom and fished in her purse -- it had suddenly occurred to her that Buffy wasn't her only option for help. "Go ahead and tell them we're leaving and why. I'm gonna try another call." She opened the phone and pressed the speed dial for Xander.
__________
Outside on the sunny school grounds, Xander and about ten more construction workers were clustered under a yellow tarpaulin. A payloader was already at work digging in an area marked out for the new swimming pool, and a few other workers could be seen surveying the grounds and stringing pegs to mark out the edges of the soon-to-be new athletic field.
Brandishing the blueprints, hardhat tipped back on his head, Xander put on an ingratiating smile. He had discarded the suit jacket and put on his toolbelt and workshirt, but he was still a little self-conscious about his new status as foreman. He didn't want the rest of the guys not to like him. Not when his work was about all he had anymore.
"Okay!" he addressed the group brightly. "So, here's where we're at. We are a little behind schedule right now, but if we can get the bulldozers to work over here--" He gestured to the blueprints. "--and get the area graded and leveled, we can turn that section over to the groundskeepers for seeding and start working on the pool. With luck, we'll at least have something ready for... well, maybe in time for the next baseball season." He rolled the blueprints and basked in the small chuckle this raised from the other men.
He was feeling pretty good until one of them waved at him, and then pointed. "Hey, Xander!" he said. "Isn't that your ex?"
He squinted, shielded his eyes, and looked in the direction indicated. He caught only the briefest glimpse of a woman standing some distance away under a shady tree, and then only a thin puff of smoke marked the spot where Anya had stood.
"No," he said, lowering his hand. "She doesn't live here anymore. Uh, excuse me." He unclipped his ringing phone from his toolbelt and lifted it to his ear. "Yello!"
__________
"Xander! The school's going crazy and we're getting out of here. I can't get through to Buffy."
"Dawn? Wait, whoa, whoa, what?" Xander put down the blueprints, nodded to the others, and walked a little ways away from the tarpaulin. "Slow down and tell me what's going on."
He listened, nodded, and then took off for the front door of the high school at a run.
__________
"Dawn!" Carlos had moved around to the back of the phalanx and opened one of the classroom doors. "You'd better come see this."
She maneuvered over to where he was, the group shifting to follow her, and looked inside.
The room was empty.
"No, wait, this is--my friend Karen has French in here," one of the girls spoke up.
"Look at the desks," someone else moaned. The desks were old-fashioned, like something you'd expect to see in a one-room prairie schoolhouse, and the American flag in the corner didn't have enough stars.
"This can't be good," Dawn murmured.
The lights began to flicker. The phalanax backed away from the empty classroom and began to run as a mass toward the front door.
__________
Xander charged up the main steps and banged through the entrance. His toolbelt and the long-handled ax he'd had the presence of mind to grab from the supply shed promptly set off the metal detector, and a shrill scream began sounding through the empty halls.
He waited, looking from side to side, expecting any second to see Dawn appear on the run.
She didn't.
He flipped his phone open. "Dawn?"
"Yeah!" she answered. "What's that noise?"
"The metal detector. I'm at the front door. Where the heck are you?"
Dawn's eyes widened. She turned to look at the same door in question. "I'm... at the front door."
Xander sucked in a breath. "That can't be good."
More howls and shrieks, even louder this time, filled the air in Dawn's location.
"What the heck was that?" Xander yelled. Even with the sirening metal detector in his ears, he'd heard the sound loud and clear over the phone.
"I don't know!" Dawn screamed back.
"What are we waiting for?" one of the students yelled. "Let's go!" The pack broke, and everyone ran for the door.
Before they could reach it, though, it blew open as if forced from the outside, and... Buffy ran through.
Phone to her ear, eyes wide, Dawn gaped. It was Buffy, and it wasn't. It was a younger version of her sister, who ran past her full tilt without even seeing her. As if one or the other of them wasn't really there.
And then, hot on her heels, came the snake, smashing through the timbers of the door and filling the hallway. The students swarming the door were knocked aside like ninepins. And then... it was gone, and the hall looked normal again.
Shaken and scattered, the students all looked at each other. The unspoken question was clear: Did we really just see that?
"Dawn? Dawn? Are you there? What's happening?"
Xander's faraway voice brought Dawn back to Earth. "Yeah, I'm... we're okay. I think. Wait a minute." She watched as a boy she didn't know slowly got to his feet and pushed the now-closed door back open. A dull red light poured in through the portal, and the students shuffled forward to get a closer look.
The view through the open door was no longer recognizable as Sunnydale.
It was dark outside. A rocky plain stretched as far as the eye could see, dull red sand, empty of any kind of vegetation. Dim flashes, like black lightning, lit the sky.
The group shrank back as a single body when flickers of movement appeared on the horizon. As if something -- or an army of somethings -- was crawling steadily toward them.
"We're not in Sunnydale anymore," Dawn said slowly. She felt horribly calm, or maybe just too frightened to panic anymore. "The door goes somewhere else, and... it looks bad, like--" Spike's voice came back to her then, the dead, dragging tone of despair. This is Hell, do you understand? "...like hell or something. There are... there are things out there. A-And I think ghosts, too. I saw Buffy. Like, younger." And Spike, too. "And a giant snake."
"Stay where you are!" Xander shouted. The claxon still sounding in his ear was doing nothing for his composure. He wanted to run, to help, but there was nowhere to go and nothing to see. The building was empty. He'd been doing construction long enough to know the feeling of a totally deserted space. Wherever Dawn was, it was defintely somewhere else.
"Just stay calm. Sit tight, and I'll--" His throat closed up. He had no idea what to do. He grabbed at the only course of action he could think of. "I'll get Buffy."
To be continued...