Durham's Blue Light

This story was originally published on Medium.

2 and a half years ago...

It's interesting to see how my writing has grown since then.

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Malik led the way for his friends down the sidewalk. Even though he wasn’t the only one who knew how to get where they were going, he still felt like he was the best one to lead. He knew the shortest path to the party and his no nonsense stride in his walk would help the group to get to the party as soon as possible.

He was excited Simon was visiting them again. It had been a few months since Simon had been to their school. And the last time Simon was there, Brandon wasn’t around, and Nolan was sick. Now, they had all four of them together, marching down the sidewalk, backpacks snug on their shoulders, on a mission to party.

It’s not like they were those types of kids that partied every day or even every weekend. But they were 19. Of course, it showed up somewhere on their top 10 hobbies list. And they had all been working so hard with all their classes… they needed to blow off some steam tonight and have a good time.

“Did you bring vodka?” Nolan asked Malik.

“No, I got the vodka.” Brandon said.

“I got a bunch of beers.” Malik informed him. He pulled his backpack up tighter, almost in response to his own information. “Did you bring anything?”

“Just some green.” Nolan pulled a baggie of weed from his pocket with a smirk. Before Malik’s eyes widened too much, he stuck it back into his pocket.

“All I got in my backpack is a change of clothes.” Simon said in his usual goofy way that made everyone chuckle. He had a little extra goofy in him what with the alcohol already in him. “But I realized I brought a blue shirt that looks almost identical to the blue shirt I’m wearing now. So, when I change tomorrow, I might look like I’m wearing the same clothes.”

There was more laughter from the group. Simon looked at Brandon in his bright red Red Sox shirt. Brandon noticed.

“So, Brandon…” Simon grinned.

“You’re not getting this, Simon.” Brandon said through a chuckle.

“What else do you have?” Malik asked Simon, eyeing up his backpack.

“Just my clothes really. Oh, I have a hat!” Simon remembered.

“Ah, then you’ll look totally different.” Malik said with slight sarcasm.

“Oh well, I’m just excited to be here.” Simon said swinging his arms around like a little kid. He bumped his arm into the back of Malik who turned and playfully shoved back. Malik then returned his eyes ahead. These guys were fun, but they’d take all day to get to the party if they weren’t led by someone with business on the mind like Malik.

He kept his no nonsense stride going, knowing everyone would follow suit. He looked straight ahead, hearing everyone quicken their pace to keep up. The sidewalk stretched on ahead of them, winding through the campus. Far ahead was the main road that cut through the campus. On the other side laid their destination… the party.

From behind, Malik heard a big metallic “clomp!” And then from Simon’s mouth, a devastated, “Oh no!”

Malik spun around and Simon stood right next to a large metallic pole with a button on it. The button labeled, ‘HIT BUTTON FOR HELP.’ The silent blue light flashed at the top of the pole.

“What did you do?!” Malik was furious.

“I was swinging my arms and I accidentally hit the button…” Simon was looking around frantically. “But, it’s not like we’re doing anything, it’s alright…”

“No, it’s not alright!” Nolan cut him off. The blue lights on campus were intended for girls worried about strange men following them. They were extremely efficient and excellent to have on campus. Police response time to any given light was 45 seconds or less. However, that wasn’t excellent in this case. “Malik’s got beer, Brandon’s got vodka, I got weed, we’re all drunk!”

And of course, they were all under 21.

Malik and Nolan didn’t hesitate a second longer and took off running along the path. Malik noticed for a moment that Simon and Brandon were frozen in their places, looking around for answers.

“Run, you guys!” He yelled out. He didn’t wait any longer and sprinted as fast as he possibly could. He could hear Nolan next to his side.

Malik and Nolan followed the sidewalk, they stretched their legs as far as the could, they pushed off with every ounce of power with every single step. Malik felt his quads burning as he pushed himself as hard as he could. They kept heading along the path they were already taking.

“Eric’s is right up past the intersection!” Nolan called out, pointing to the intersection ahead. They were getting close. If they could just get across that road, they would surely be fine.

A cop car screeched around the intersection just then and barreled down the road towards them. The cop car screeched to a halt just several yards in front of them.

“Through the cafeteria!” Malik yelled out, pointing to the cafeteria, just ahead to their left. He and Nolan quickly changed their course and sprinted up the steps to the doors of the cafeteria.

“Hey, you two!” They heard call out behind them.

Malik and Nolan ran out of the slight veil of the dark night air and right into bright lights, illuminating the public area. It was a risk, but quite possibly worth the reward. There were hundreds of students there that they could hopefully disappear within. Malik and Nolan never looked back, they just sprinted right through the crowd of students. They skipped step after step, pumping their legs as they climbed the 50 or so steps to the top and busted through the doors of the cafeteria.

“Out the back!” Malik immediately yelled.

Nolan was lucky to have Malik’s business approach here. He knew the exact perfect route. Nolan followed Malik as Malik led them through one side of the cafeteria, past the area where most of the students congregated, past the food stations and along a path rarely traveled, and right out some double doors near the back.

They burst out the doors and kept their pace up. Directly ahead and to the left was a thick tree line that grew thicker and thicker the more you ventured in. Malik and Nolan pushed through thick, sharp branches of trees, cutting and scraping and slicing their arms and necks and faces. They pushed through, huffing and puffing. They got about 100 feet deep into the wooded area. Ahead was one incredibly fat tree, wider than the two of them standing shoulder to shoulder. They dove behind it and slid to their knees.

They stopped, crouched, and tried to catch their breath. They were breathing so heavy they were sure someone would hear them. Malik held his finger up to his lips. Nolan tried to calm his breathing. He breathed slowly through his nostrils, taking in so much air, and then slowly pushing it out. They waited silently. Silence was the only thing to accompany them. After a couple minutes of quiet Nolan pointed back to where they came from, suggesting they head back out. Malik shook his head.

They waited another 30 seconds. Nolan was getting antsy. He pointed back out towards the cafeteria. Just then, a twig snapped in the distance. Then, branches were swatted at. More branches were struck, the sound closer. Footsteps thudded on the dirt, pounding closer and closer. The pace quickening. Coming right towards them! Malik and Nolan crouched lower… and held their breath.

*******

Simon felt the throbbing in the back of his hand. He let out a devastated, “Oh no!”

He looked to the button on the pole he had just struck. He looked to the top of the pole and saw the flashing blue light. After Malik and Nolan and Brandon all screamed and yelled and they tried to figure out what to do… Malik and Nolan sprinted off down the sidewalk.

“Wait!” Brandon yelled out. “Let’s go into the dorms!”

“Run, you guys!” Malik yelled out from ahead as he sprinted farther away.

Simon was ready to follow after Malik and Nolan but looked to Brandon to see what he thought they should do.

“We should go into the dorms, come on!” Brandon took off up a staircase to his left and into a courtyard that was boxed in by three separate giant dorm buildings. Simon followed him up the stairs.

Brandon sprinted across the courtyard to the far wall. Simon followed across the lush green grass that still shone beautifully in the dark sky and the slight moonlight. Brandon reached a door and slammed into it. He pulled his key card out and scanned it. Nothing. Simon ran up next to him. Brandon scanned it again. Nothing. They looked through the square window in the top half of the door. They couldn’t see anyone inside.

Brandon rushed over to another one of the three dorm buildings. Simon followed. He heard sirens in the distance. He grew anxious. He watched helplessly as Brandon tried to desperately scan his key card on another door to only fail once more.

“Shit!” Brandon was defeated. “Maybe we should just hide!”

Simon looked out into the courtyard. A giant square, all grass, perfectly even, and just a couple bushes scattered around.

“No way! There’s nowhere to hide!” Simon started running back towards the sidewalk, the sirens growing louder. “I’ll go left, you go right! It’ll confuse them!”

Simon galloped across the courtyard and towards the sidewalk, squinting, searching for where exactly the sidewalk was. It was dark and he was disoriented. And then, he fell right off the side of the courtyard and slammed face first onto the sidewalk. He forgot they had taken stairs up and went right off a five-foot cliff.

Simon groaned from the pain and peeled his face off the pavement. He got up and saw two police officers getting out of a car right in front of him. He leapt to his feet and took off to the left.

“Hey, wait!” He heard a cop call out, but he never dared look back.

He never dared slow down. He pushed on, running faster than he ever had in his life. He ran down the sidewalk, having no idea where he was going. He hardly knew the campus. He could hear footsteps rapidly thumping behind him. He cut to his left up a grassy hill. He ran by a building on his left. He shouldered past two random students. He ran past a building to his right. He didn’t know if anyone was still behind him, he couldn’t hear anything over the pounding of his feet and the pounding of his heart. He pushed on. Another huge building was up to his right. A lot of lights shone down from it, so he avoided it. He ran to the left of the large building and pushed on down a dark and grassy alley to the side of the building.

The wafting smell of something savory entered his nose. He sprinted through the night, unable to see much of what was in front of him. A couple of old benches to his left. An eerie all-white sculpture of a thin man crouched forward. Was he near the art building? Does that help him at all? Does he know where the art building is in relativity to anything else on this campus? Didn’t someone say that Eric was in the art program here? Would his place be near it?

He sprinted completely past the building to his right and into a bit of a clearing. He wasn’t sure if he could hear anyone behind him. And suddenly… the woods! Immediately in front of him!

Oh, bless your soul, New Hampshire towns and your abundance of thick wooded areas around every turn. He galloped into the woods, pushing through branches, swatting at twigs and leaves and anything smashing into him. He sprinted forward blindly, Mother Nature smacking him in the face repeatedly. He powered through, unsure if anyone saw him head into the woods. He just kept pushing past every piece of nature in front of him. His right foot caught a rock and he plummeted to the ground.

He laid there for a moment. Face in dry leaves. Palms pressed on the ground; sharp sticks pressed against his palms. Nothing. Then, the rustling of leaves in front of him. He froze.

“Simon?! Where’s Brandon?!”

He looked up. It was Nolan and Malik hiding behind a tree.

“I went left. Brandon went right. We should… we should text him and tell him to meet us somewhere.” Simon went to reach for his backpack and realized it was no longer on his back. “I don’t have my phone!”

Malik shushed Simon. They stayed still for a moment. In the far distance the laughter of kids was heard. But nothing but silence in their immediate vicinity. Simon got up and joined them behind the tree.

“I’m going to text Brandon and tell him to meet us here.” Nolan whipped his phone out. “We’re safe here for now. Who knows how long the cops will be poking around.”

“I’m going to text your phone, Simon.” Malik said taking his phone out. “Maybe someone got your backpack, and we can have them meet us later.”

Simon nodded, feeling helpless yet again. He couldn’t do anything.

Nolan stared at his phone.

“Text him again.” Simon suggested trying to help in any way possible. “He usually has his phone on vibrate so he doesn’t always see it right away.”

“Oh, good point. I’ll send him a lot of texts.” Nolan said, typing away text after text. Instructing Brandon to go to the cafeteria and out the back and into the woods.

Simon looked to Malik who had already finished texting.

“We only need to text your phone once.” Malik said. “If someone finds it, they’ll see the message.”

They stayed there for a couple minutes. No response from anyone on either phone.

“I think you should text my phone again.” Simon said to Malik. “What if someone just grabbed my backpack and doesn’t realize there’s a phone underneath all the clothes.”

“Alright.” Malik tapped away at his phone, sending out another text to Simon’s phone. “How long do we wait here?”

They all looked at each other. No response. They looked around the woods, squinting through the thick trees. They could see some movement outside of the woods, but they were unable to make out just who it was. They crouched lower. They waited.

*******

“Oh no!” The exclamation from Simon’s mouth with devastated tones threw everyone into a flurry.

Brandon couldn’t believe what Simon just did. He hit the damn button. Malik and Nolan took off running down the street but that was exactly where the cops would be coming from. Brandon tried to get their attention, but they were too far gone. He urged Simon to follow him into the courtyard. Brandon raced towards the dorm buildings and Simon followed behind him. He hoped Malik and Nolan wouldn’t run into the cops, but he just had to focus on getting himself and Simon to safety right now. They would just hide out in some dorms.

Brandon ran to one dorm building and tried scanning his key card on a door and it failed. Panicked, he tried again. Failed again. He rushed to one of the other three buildings and tried another door. No use. Brandon then realized that his key card wouldn’t work in any dorm building other than his own after 10 P.M. And lucky him, it was 10:04. He glanced back to the road, thinking if he would be able to make a run for it, back the way they came. Could he make it to his dorm in time? They had already wasted precious time running up into this courtyard and trying to scan in through doors. And the response time on the blue lights was said to always be 45 seconds. How accurate was that? Should he just assume it is accurate? If so, there wouldn’t be enough time to run back out to the road.

Simon yelled something about running to the road and he would go left, and Brandon should go right. He took off running like a madman and his backpack flew off into the grass.

“Wait, Simon! Let’s hide!” Brandon called out, but Simon was already too far off.

Brandon saw the cop car pull up in front of the courtyard as Simon was racing right towards it. Brandon ducked behind one of a couple lonely bushes in the courtyard. He laid still. There was a commotion in the street, yelling, then silence.

He waited quietly, so nervous.

Then, he heard footsteps in the courtyard. They moved slowly through the courtyard. Meticulously. Cautiously.

The footsteps were closing in on him. Flashlights beamed white light; the light danced across the grass. He heard two cops talking as they scanned. They began to cover the entire courtyard, bit by bit, inch by inch.

Brandon was sweating. He held his breath and tried to remain silent. It was painful how slowly the cops were moving. Time stood still.

The cops sent the light from the flashlight behind one bush and inspected behind it. They found nothing. Brandon sunk lower behind the bush.

Brandon’s phone buzzed in his pocket. It buzzed loudly as it was pressed against his belt buckle. Panicked, he reached into his pocket and grabbed it. He held it tightly in his hand in order to silence the buzzing. It stopped. Please God, let Brandon get no more messages or calls. He blindly tried to move his fingers around the phone, searching for the off button.

Then, a buzzing sounded from somewhere else. It was coming from in Simon’s backpack, laying out in the open just a couple feet from Brandon! The cops were still scanning the courtyard, about 25 feet from Brandon, near one of the other bushes. They were facing the other way, so Brandon reached out, snagged Simon’s backpack and pulled it close to him. He gripped it tightly in his arms as he heard Simon’s phone buzzing. A slightly muffled melody was playing through Simon’s clothes.

The cops reacted to the sound and stopped. They looked around and splashed the light of their flashlights across other parts of the courtyard. Brandon clutched the backpack tightly, hoping to be able to muffle the sound more. The lights from the flashlights stretched across the grass and moved closer to the bush Brandon was hidden behind.

The melody and the vibrating stopped from inside the backpack. It was silent again except for the soft crunching of the grass underneath the cops’ feet as they moved closer to Brandon’s location. Their flashlights continued to wash over the entire courtyard, section by section.

They moved closer to Brandon. He held his breath. And then his phone buzzed again in his pocket! He jammed his hand into his pocket and gripped his phone tightly. The cops stopped for a moment. They made no noise. Brandon’s phone buzzed again. He clutched it so tightly in his hand he thought he might snap the phone in two.

“Do you hear that?” One cop whispered.

“Where’s it coming from?” The other cop responded.

Brandon’s phone buzzed again. He was squeezing his phone so tightly, sweat was dripping from the inside of his palm. He winced, he ducked his head down, he hunkered down in his spot, trying desperately to stay quiet and stay out of sight.

He looked through the bush and could see the feet of the cops about seven feet away from him, moving towards his bush slowly. He looked away, back towards the dorm buildings… a good 30 feet from him. The footsteps of the cops crept closer and closer to him. The light from the flashlight came closer and closer to touching him.

The door to one of the dorms slammed open. The cops were taken off guard for a moment and jerked their heads and their flashlights towards the door. Brandon took the opportunity to sprint towards the open door. Two confused students were exiting, lights shone right into their eyes. They stopped in their tracks and Brandon ran right at them. He pushed past them and ran into the dorm building.

“You in the red! Stop!” Brandon heard one cop call out from behind him.

He raced into the dorm building and ran down a long corridor. He heard the sound of cops’ footsteps and cops’ busy belts and keychains jingling loudly behind him. They were inside. They were following him!

Brandon turned sharply down a hallway to his left. He raced down the hall, footsteps behind him around the corner. He sprinted towards the end of this hallway, footsteps now trailing behind him. He tried to gage his whereabouts. He approached an intersection in the hall where he could go left or right. He decided if he went left, there should be an exit at the end of the hall. He cut to his left and sprinted to the end of the hall… dead-end.

There was only a door to his right. He burst through it. An empty communal room. Absolutely no one in there. Not much furniture. Nowhere to hide. Nowhere to go. There were small windows in the back, close to the ceiling. Brandon raced to the back and flung his arms towards the windows, popped them open, lifted himself up and tried to squeeze through them. He realized he couldn’t fit. He could barely get his head out.

“Damn it!” Brandon plopped back to the floor. He could hear the cops running down the hall from behind the closed door, moving closer and closer to him. He was trapped. There was nowhere to go.

Simon’s phone buzzed inside his backpack.

Brandon’s eyes widened. He opened the backpack in a hurry. He removed Simon’s hat and blue shirt.

*******

Officer Murtagh and Officer Fraser raced down the hallway. They realized it was a dead-end. There was only one door to the right. The kid in the red shirt had to have gone in there. They burst through the door to find one kid in the middle of the room, blue shirt, baseball hat, confused, eyes wide, looking back towards an open window.

“Did you see a kid in a red shirt come in here?!” Officer Murtagh shouted.

“Yeah!” The kid shouted. “He just ran in and then flew through those windows!”

“Damn it!” Both officers echoed.

They turned around and raced back out the room and headed back the way they came in. They hustled through the halls and ran back outside, continuing their search for the kid in red.

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