Dead Advent: New World Order (Book 1)

Chapter 6 - Crossing paths with the enemy

Ruby and I waited with bated breath for Marcus to reveal his escape plan. His brows furrowed in deep thought and he seemed to be fumbling for words, but then he gave up and grabbed a piece of paper and began to draw instead. My eyes followed his fingers as they moved across the paper and sketched the layout of the school in scribbly uneven lines. At a certain point, he marked a cross on the paper, indicating our room.

"All right, so this is us over here." He jabbed a finger at the cross and me and Ruby nodded fervently.

"This is the plan. We head down the corridor towards the west side fire escape. And then, we keep going up until we reach the roof."

"Up?" Ruby's eye brow shot up questioningly.

"Yes, up."

"Shouldn't we try to get to the first floor and out the busted entrance door?"

"Gee, that's a great idea because no one would have thought of that!"

Ruby bit her lip in shame. It was rare to see her dumbfounded and talked down like that.

"As I was saying… Right now, this building operates on a steam-fuelled central heating system with the boiler room underground. Thing is, it used to run on a hydronic heating system that circulates hot water throughout the building in a closed loop and relies on the use of gravity to keep the water flowing… You know, the hot water rises just like hot air…"

"Yeah yeah." I urged him to carry on, barely registering his commentary on the history of the dormitory's heating network which I had absolutely no interest in.

"It was a pretty screwed up system as the pipes blocked up a lot, and it was a lot of trouble to bleed them out, so when they decided to revamp the building, they got rid of it and installed the one that runs on steam instead… Gosh, its really hard to dumb it down for you guys…" Marcus scratched the back of his head exasperatedly.

"Just get to the plan, Marcus!"

"All right all right… anyway, the school management only got as far as draining out the water tank on top, after which the space was pretty much forgotten and nobody's been up there in years, excluding me, of course."

I suppressed the urge to ask him what could he possibly have to do in an abandoned boiler room, deciding to leave the question for later when we weren't on a run for our lives.

"In that very room, there is this gigantic tube that's big enough for us to fit through and leads all the way down. I have no idea what the school wanted it to be, but I figure it must have been some sort of unfinished air duct… or a rubbish chute."

Ruby wrinkled her nose and pursed her lips in distaste at the mention of the rubbish chute. Even I wasn't too keen, but it seemed like the only option left and compared to waiting around miserably for our deaths, I definitely wouldn't mind a little dirt.

My own thoughts surprised me when I realized that I was actually planning on living. Seconds ago, I had been ready to welcome death with open arms, but now that some sort of actual, solid plan was coming into fruition, the stubborn part of me kicked in. I couldn't give in to my circumstances, not now while a light was starting to shine down on my path. That would be a total disgrace, and I would die ashamed. I had to go down fighting;  it was the only way I could see myself go. My life has been full of abuse and neglect and while some have withered from the scars, I had emerged from them time after time just like a phoenix from ashes, ever so ready to take on the world again. Maybe the lessons I've learnt from the past no longer apply to the new devastated world now, but I was more than willing to take my chances.

I smiled to myself, and my resolve to survive etched into stone.

"The boiler room is the only way you can enter into the chute. The chute opens up into the underground sewers. I never entered the sewers, but I'm pretty sure they would eventually lead us to the surface."