The End Boxset: Postapocalyptic Visions of an Unstoppable Collapse (24 page)

“Oliver, you lead the way because you’re the leader, if anyone asks,” Shelly whispered.

“This is stupid. Why can’t I be the leader?” Erika asked.

“Just let Oliver do it,” Shelly said.

Oliver walked to the front of the girls and led them down the hall. “Boys and girls aren’t supposed to be different anymore,” Erika argued. “You’re, like, stereotyping.”

“Just trust me on this,” Shelly said.

They walked carefully down the hall, alongside the lockers, nearing a corner that would bring them towards the entrance of the school. Suddenly, Charlie McFarland—Mr. Wright’s prime enforcer—walked down the hall opposite the group. He stopped immediately, turned to them—rather surprised—and in no time marched towards them.

“What are you doing here?” he asked. “Everyone is supposed to be in their areas.”

A sliver of panic hit Kiya. They hadn’t even made it down the hall and were already busted. The group was silent. Shelly pushed Oliver for a reaction, but he didn’t say anything. Kiya decided that she was going to have to take the reins. “We’re just rounding up what’s left of the sixth graders so we can take them to the gymnasium. Mr. Wright’s orders,” she said.

Charlie stopped and examined them carefully. “Mr. Wright put
you
dorks in charge of the sixth graders?” he said. Shelly patted Oliver on the shoulder and nodded her head. “Well Oliver here is in charge, actually. He’s a real tough kid. But then again we’re all pretty bad.”

“Yeah, I was suspended on the first day for beating up two girls,” Erika added.

Shelly nudged Erika with her shoulder. “Well,” Erika said, “it wasn’t much of a fight. I just pulled their hair.”

Charlie’s eyes narrowed as he looked at Kiya. “So what’s your story?” he asked.

“I—uh,” Kiya started.

“She got caught smoking in the bathroom,” Shelly interrupted.

Charlie smiled. “Really?” he said. “What about you?” he asked Shelly.

“Me? I pulled the fire alarm last week,” Shelly said, remembering the false drill they had when an unidentified student pulled the alarm.

“That was you?” Charlie asked with widening eyes.

“Yeah and I’d do it again,” she added.

Charlie circled the kids, as if trying to decide to himself what to do with them. He stopped next to Oliver and slapped him on the back, causing him to flinch. “You’re a bunch of little bad asses aren’t you?” Charlie said laughing. “I wouldn’t tell it by looking at you though. Get the rest of those stupid sixth graders and head back to the gymnasium.”

They nodded their heads in agreement until Charlie walked past them towards the gym. Kiya breathed in relief. “That was too close,” Shelly whispered. “Yeah, now we
really
have to move,” Erika said.  Oliver led the way as they continued down the hall back towards their classroom. Once they rounded the corner they could see the entrance doors outside the school at the end of the adjacent hall. Things were really quiet now, but Kiya suspected that any moment they would run into someone else and be sent back to the gymnasium. “We’re almost there,” Oliver said. “I know, just keep moving,” Shelly said with her pace quickening. They had moved from a line formation into a wedge. Each of them greatly anticipated the night time air. “Screw it, let’s run,” Erika said. “No!” Shelly said. “We don’t want to bring attention to ourselves.” But it was too late; Erika started running towards the doors only twenty feet away. “Erika!” Shelly said in her best hushed voice. Erika didn’t stop running. Shelly joined her, then Oliver, then Kiya. Kiya envisioned the layout of the front of the school in her head. Outside there was as courtyard. Ahead of that there was the parent pick-up and drop-off circle and the bus loop. But there were also guard towers, three of them, she remembered. They would have to find tower three immediately. That is, if Oliver was right. But then what? 

Erika pushed the double doors open in a fury. Shelly ran after her. Oliver and Kiya followed. “Erika, stop!” Shelly called. Erika stopped dead in her tracks as the others caught up. They could see the silhouettes of the towers ahead of them and the large walls blocking out the outside room. There were guards with flashlights panning the perimeter. Kiya grew elated when she heard the sounds of people outside the walls. “Hear them?” she asked. “That’s our parents. I told you they were here.”

“Yeah, why wouldn’t they be?” Shelly asked.

“This school is going to be in a lot of trouble,” Erika said.

“Which one is tower three?” Kiya asked Oliver.

“Look out,” Erika said, jumping behind a large stone barrier. One of the guards from the nearest tower moved the beam from his flashlight towards their areas. The other children followed and ran behind the barrier, just missing exposure. “They get flashlights while we get lanterns?” Erika asked. They each took a moment to catch their breath. The next course of action was unclear. “There’s too many of them,” Shelly said. “We’ll never get to the tower in time.” Her comments drew silence from the group.

“We’ve come this far,” Erika said. “We have to go for it.”

“So we split up. If everyone but Oliver runs away from tower three, we’ll distract them,” Kiya said.

“It worked with Mark Nelson,” Erika added.

Kiya’s face soured to the remark. The guilt was still there.

“You understand?” Shelly asked Oliver. “You run to the tower and open the front gate. We’ll distract them. But don’t mess it up.”

Oliver nodded. “We can do this,” Erika said.

Mrs. Crabtree had finished discussing matters with Mr. Brown, who himself had a conversation with Mr. Wright about the problems with keeping the children in the school overnight. “He’s lost his mind,” Mr. Brown said bluntly. “Then again, I always thought he was a bit strange.”

“Tomorrow morning this will all be over,” Mrs. Crabtree said. Mr. Brown nodded and went back to his cot with the rest of the children. Her class had been served dinner for the night, and she hoped that they would just fall asleep so that tomorrow they could put the day’s unpleasantness behind them. She felt certain that Mr. Wright was going to lose his job for this. Whatever
this
was.  As she made her way to the class, Thomas approached her.

“We’re missing some students,” he said.

“Who?” she asked.

“Shelly, Erika, Kiya, and Oliver. They’re nowhere to be found. I saw Mark talking with them earlier, so we asked him what he knew.”

“What did he say?” Mrs. Crabtree asked.

“He told me that they were planning to escape. They musta’ run off when him and Greg got into a fight.”

“Oh no,” Mrs. Crabtree said placing her head in her hands. “This is bad.”

“Yeah, I know it’s bad. Mr. Wright said they had armed guards outside the school.”

Mrs. Crabtree clutched onto Thomas’s shoulder. “We have to find them,” she said. “Take Anthony and Carlos—
not
Greg—and go find them,” she said. Thomas nodded. “I’ll be right here, don’t take too long,” she added. Thomas walked away and signaled to Anthony and Carlos to follow him. Mrs. Crabtree scanned the gymnasium desperately, looking for any sign of the students. She watched as Ms. Foley, the vice principal entered the gym, looking worn and tired. Ms. Foley noticed her first and walked over to converse.

“How's everything going?” she asked Mrs. Crabtree. 

“We’re doing our best given the circumstances,” Mrs. Crabtree answered.

“I know how you feel. I’ve just came back from the cafeteria and the auditorium. Everyone is so exhausted. It’s been a hell of a day.”

“You know Mr. Wright isn’t going to get away with this,” Mrs. Crabtree said.

Ms. Foley looked to her with surprise. “He’s only following official school protocol in the event of an emergency. Granted, this is a very hard pill to swallow, but several terrorist attacks have been verified around the country.”

“This still isn’t right. Even you can realize that, right Mary?” Mrs. Crabtree said.

Ms. Foley studied Mrs. Crabtree carefully then responded. “Sometimes the hardest decisions to make don’t appear to be right at first,” she said.

“If you’ll excuse me, I'm going to check on my class now,” Mrs. Crabtree responded, walking away.

The children stood with their backs to the barrier, ready to make their move. Nothing was clear, certainly not the darkness that awaited them outside the school. Shelly was still trying to convince them of the legitimacy of her plan. “All I’m saying is that we pull a diversion, just like before,” she said. “When Oliver opens the gate we run for it.”

“I never took you for a daredevil before, Shelly,” Erika said.

“It’s the only way. Am I right, Kiya?”

“Let’s do it,” Kiya said with a head nod.

“Wait,” Oliver said, holding his arm out.

“What is it?” Erika asked.

“I’m trying to remember which one is tower three,” he said.

Erika slapped her hand against her forehead. “Oh great,” she said.

“Oliver, you have to be sure of this,” Shelly said.

Oliver peeked around the barrier, looking at each tower. To the left, he was certain, was tower one. It had a railing around the top, like the others, where a guard was pacing.

“It looks like they have real guns,” he said. “I can see them.”

“What are they going to do, shoot us?” Erika said laughing.

In the center, nearest to the front gate was tower two. It was fitted with a guard as well. And to the farthest right was tower three. That was the tower Oliver remembered, to the best of his memory, being taken to. He sat there for an hour as Deputy Willis called his parents. He observed a security master board that controlled the front gates. There were also security monitors that observed the footage of the various security cameras placed throughout the school. Only this time things were different. There was no power to operate anything. In such an event the front gates were to be locked manually. So in this case, they would most likely have to be unlocked manually. But how? Oliver did his best estimation. There appeared to be one guard per tower. And in each tower the guard was placed atop the outside railing. With any luck, the lower floor of the tower was unmanned. Having gotten his thoughts together, Oliver looked to the group. “I’m pretty sure that tower three is over there,” he pointed. “Are you guys ready?” The children nodded and prepared to make their diversionary tactic a reality.

“Erika, you go left,” Shelly said. “Kiya, you go towards the center.”

“What about you?” Erika asked.

“I’m going to make a diversion from here,” she said.

“Oh give me a break,” Erika said.

“Hey. I told you I
can’t
get caught. This is as far as I go.”

“That’s bullshit,” Erika said kicking the dirt.

“Okay, enough!” Kiya said.

“On the count of three,” Oliver said.

Mr. Wright sat at his desk jotting some notes into his journal under the flickering light of his nearby lantern. He felt strangely in control of the day’s bizarre event. The thought of a dead parent was weighed increasingly upon him, plus the fate of the teachers locked in the vault. But, he felt, no one could understand. No one, he felt, would understand the sacrifice necessary to protect the children from the outside world. His journal for the day made repeated references to the
divine
fate that had brought him to this point. It was something, he believed, that he had been preparing for his entire career. In each instance of every school shooting there had been mistakes made by the faculty to underestimate the horrors of the outside world, until they were right at the doorstep of the school. No, there would be no dead children at his school. He was going to preserve their livelihood and their futures, thus preserving the future of society in the process. But now it was about time to make his rounds throughout the school and make sure everything was going as planned. As he closed his journal, a banging on his office door caused him to jump.

“Who is it?” he shouted.

“It’s Thomas. I need to talk to you.” Mr. Wright opened his desk drawer, threw the journal inside, closed the drawer, and stood up. He groaned as he made his way to the door. Once opened, Thomas got right to the point. “We’re missing a couple of sixth graders,” he said.

“What the hell are you talking about?” Mr. Wright asked, annoyed.

“Four sixth graders from Mrs. Crabtree’s class. We looked everywhere.”

“Did you check outside?” Mr. Wright asked.

Before Thomas could answer the muffled sound of a gunshot sounded. Mr. Wright’s eyes widened. “God no. I told you to keep watch and you couldn’t even follow those simple instructions!” he shouted.

“I tried! I don’t know how they got away,” Thomas said.

Mr. Wright grabbed Thomas by the arm. “Enough,” he said, “to the courtyard. Let’s go.” Mr. Wright ran out of his office towards the front of the school with Thomas running behind him.

“They’re shooting at us!” Erika shouted as she sprinted to towards the gate. The sound of the gun shot drew gasps and ensuing outrage from the crowd outside the school. Kiya ran the opposite direction right into the light of one of the guards. She was temporarily blinded, but made her way to tower and out of the range of the flashlight. She peeked around the tower and noticed that the gun shot had come from the guard in tower three. It was Deputy Willis. But his weapon wasn't pointed at them. He had only shot into the air as a warning shot. They hadn’t made it far, before they were noticed. “Halt!” Deputy Willis shouted. He moved his flashlight around frantically trying to spot them. The other two guards were following Erika with their lights. “Stop right there!” they shouted. She ran fast as her legs could take her towards the front gate.

Oliver made it to the tower door. It was opened so he ran right in. Utter darkness met him inside, with the increasing footsteps of Deputy Willis coming down the stairs to the bottom. Oliver looked to the switch board where—of course—there was no power. He scanned the board quickly, searching for the button that would unlock the gates. A failsafe switch that could operate without electricity. His eyes darted across the board. There were so many buttons and switches. It looked like the soundboard in a recording studio. Pressed for time, Oliver switched every switch and pressed every button that was before him. Deputy Willis was near. His footsteps grew louder with each hurried step.