Yesterday
We made it to the school, though I have no memory of how I got there. I must’ve walked in a haze. Once there, I’d expected something wrong. Evidence of a riot. More bodies. Blood smeared on the walls. But there was nothing. The American flag rustled in the wind and we were alone.
We opened the main double doors—they weren’t even cracked—and walked inside. The hair on my skin stood at attention and I gazed down the hall, waiting for movement. Any sign of an ambush.
I saw the ghost of myself walking to my locker, racing from class to class, backpack slung over my shoulder. All the worries in my head. Worries I didn’t even remember. I wanted to tell her like the Ghost of Christmas Future, don’t waste your time. Nothing matters. Run from here as fast as you can!
It was so quiet. No bells ringing or snatches of laughter. A school was not meant to be that silent. Without noise, it was a tomb.
Dirk said to Theo, “Give me your belt.”
“Why?”
“I’m gonna lock this door. And then when we’re good and ready, we’ll let ’em in.”
Theo reluctantly did as asked and Dirk tied the door handles together. Our plan was basic: rest, recover, and prepare.
I followed them as we walked the scuffed linoleum halls, our footsteps echoing softly. We passed a wall of Student of the Year photos from years gone by and I thought how lucky they were to be anywhere but here. Mr. and Ms. Social Studies, Science or Math Student of the Year, we could’ve used your expertise to MacGyver us out of here. We rounded a corner and I laughed to myself. We were the hall monitors now. I would’ve loved to see the look on a teacher’s face when I asked ‘Where’s your hall pass?’
Room by room, Dirk entered, rifle at the ready, clearing the space. He was mimicking all the footage he saw of soldiers doing the same thing. He lived for this. The classrooms were normal. Empty chairs. Lessons half-finished on the chalkboard. The unmistakable scent of too many people in too small a space.
We couldn’t do this for the entire school. There were too many rooms, and I told Dirk as much. “Adults could hide in one room and then sneak into another and we’d never know.”
“We’re not doing the whole school,” he said. “Just this wing. And then we’ll close it off at the other end.”
So room by room, we searched. In one of them, Dirk shimmied open a teacher’s desk drawer.
I asked, “What are you doing?”
He flipped through some folders, emerging with a sheet of paper. “Bingo. The answer key.” He had a huge grin as if this theft was the culmination of a life’s dream.
“Who cares?” I didn’t think we were going to be taking any tests for a long time.
Dirk finally saw the absurdity of it, but he still couldn’t let it go, and I sensed that he finally got that our lives were a thing of the past. Whoever we were—Dirk, Ruthie, Max, Theo, they were only names. Names given to us, branded by our parents.
Dirk read, “Find the area of segment of a circle whose angle is 130 and its radius is 10cm.” He added ruefully, “I would’ve aced this test.”
That’s when I realized I was in Mr. Scronce’s math room. I hadn’t noticed before. Not that I should have. One class looked so much like another.
I approached his desk. There was a framed photo on it. Did I never notice? Or did he put it here recently? I turned it around.
It was of him and my mother someplace in Oregon. Wine tasting. Fields of lavender grapes surrounded them. Glasses clinking. My mother looked genuinely happy. Happier than she ever was with my father. I’d never seen the photo before. I never stood behind the desk to see it.
Mr. Scronce loved my mother, I saw that, and I had a pang of guilt because of how I behaved, the strife I caused.
Theo was by my side now. He didn’t know what to say.
I stood where Mr. Scronce stood, looking at the class from his point of view. All the faces that must’ve stared back at him. I looked to see where I sat, next to the window. His desk was angled away and where I sat was out of his sightline. I wondered if it was on purpose.
I asked Theo, “What do you think happened to him?”
He looked out the window. “Probably died out there.”
I couldn’t tell if I felt remorse or relief.
Theo placed the photo back on the desk and gently guided me out of the room.
It took us a couple hours to check every room, closet, and nook. Every once in a while, I thought I saw movement from the corner of my eye, only to turn and see nothing. It was maddening.
Our wing was secure. Locked double doors near the front and closed fire doors near the back.
“Weapons,” Max said to Dirk. “You said we could get weapons.”
“The shop room,” he said.
“Let’s go, then,” I said.
“Wait.” Dirk thought. “Somebody’s gotta stay here. To make sure no one comes while we’re gone.”
“That’s not happening,” I said flat-out.
“Listen, Ruthie, we just spent two hours making sure this place was empty. If we all leave, then someone could just waltz right in—”
“We’re not splitting up.” We’d survived as a team and I found I unconsciously moved closer to Theo and Max.
Dirk said, “We’d never know if someone came.”
“Then let them come! We’ll all have weapons anyway. Unless you want to hand over your gun and stay here by yourself?”
“Over my dead body.”
“Then there’s your answer.”
I’d never taken shop class, but I counted the steps it would take me to get there. I knew these walls by heart. Long halls, classroom doors ajar. I didn’t want to be in the front of the group, and I didn’t want to be in the back. Being in back made me think someone could reach from behind me, and I constantly felt as if someone was behind me, their eyes boring into my head. Instead, we walked four abreast the width of the hall, dashing past open doors.
Then we heard it.
Movement from within a classroom.
I swear I saw Dirk lick his lips as he readied his gun. He went all Captain America, saying, “On three. One, two,” and before I could argue because I wasn’t ready to fight, he said, “Three!”
He barged inside, a commando of one.
I didn’t know what to expect, so it took me a second to realize what was making the noise. A bird. Some kind of black bird banged against the window, wanting desperately to get out.
Dirk let his rifle go slack. “A bird?”
We stared at it fluttering, frantic and tired. I wondered how it got in here in the first place. I cranked open one of the windows, about to walk away when Dirk asked, “What are you doing?”
“What’s it look like? Giving him a way out.”
“You can’t just leave the window open. Someone could sneak in.”
“They might break in. You know how many windows this place has?”
“Yeah,” he said. “But at least we’d hear it. Like an alarm. Give us time to react.”
I hated to admit Dirk was right. But I was watching that damn bird and it kept banging into the windows, freedom seemingly so close. It reminded me of us. Trying our best to figure out what to do and stopped over and over again by some invisible force. For all I knew, the bird thought the universe was stacked against it. Maybe it was a lesson I needed to remember: none of this was personal.
Still, I couldn’t keep watching that bird hurting itself. “The window stays open.”
“That makes no sense.”
“Once it flies out, I’ll close the window.” Every time I tried to shoo the bird, it kept flying away, everywhere it seemed, but out the window.
“I’m not waiting for this,” Dirk said.
“Just let it go, will you?”
“For a stupid bird?”
“Yeah,” I said, “for a stupid bird.”
Dirk shook his head and then lifted his rifle. I saw his finger move and then I heard the shot. Almost simultaneously, the bird exploded like a beaten piñata, the window behind it shattered, and we all had our hands over our ears. Damn, it was loud.
Max yelled, “What the hell?!”
I screamed, “Why did you do that?! You wasted a bullet for what? A bird?”
“Yeah,” he said mocking me, “for a stupid bird. Makes as much sense as you wanting to save him over saving us.”
I couldn’t believe it. I was seeing red. I was literally seeing red, my ears rang and I could feel a vein throbbing in my neck. My head felt like it was in a vice. “Someone could just climb in now, they wouldn’t even need to break it.”
“I’ve got three more bullets for whoever comes first.”
I’d seen so much death and yet there was something about the bird lying on the floor that killed me. It was never a part of this. It had nothing to do with it.
Max said, “Now anyone in here knows where we are.”
“They knew as soon as we came through the main doors.” He moved toward the hall and saw that we weren’t following. “Are we getting weapons for you guys or not? ’Cause I’m pretty well set.”
He didn’t wait for a response and left. I stood my ground for no other reason than to protest uselessly for one second. Then I walked out.
One hundred and fifteen steps later, we arrived outside the shop room. The door was closed. I cupped my hands and peered through the window. Inside, the lights were off and it was impossible to see. I caught the scent of my own breath, hot and stale.
“What do you think?” Max whispered.
“Can’t tell,” I said.
“No need to whisper,” Dirk said loudly. “I got this.” He quickly opened the door and stormed the room.
Not again, I thought.
Before I understood what was happening, I heard a scream. “Wait! Wait!”
Dirk was shouting. “Put it down! Put it down!”
By now, I was inside the room, and I flipped on the lights.
Dirk stood, rifle ready, his eyes zeroed in front of him, aiming at a girl I recognized as she held a can of spray paint.
“Put it down!” Dirk said.
“You first.”
It was so silly. A can of paint against a gun.
Cindy. Cindy Cox. That was her name. It wasn’t hard to remember, not with the way boys made fun of it. Behind her, about ten other students stood ready, armed with screwdrivers and wrenches and other odds and ends they’d scavenged from here. They’d used a corner as a bathroom, and the smell wafted through the whole room.
“Cindy,” I said. “It’s okay.”
Cindy looked at me, unsure. “Then tell him to put his gun down.”
“Dirk,” I said. “Please.”
He scanned the students, then lowered his rifle. There was a moment when no one moved, and then we came together. They talked at once, like we had spoken to Kensom Daniels, wanting to know about the outside. I learned they’d been holed up in the school ever since the outbreak. Staying inside these walls while a hurricane battered the world.
They were like us. No longer students. Survivors.
They asked again, “What happened out there?”
I paused; they still might have had hope. They had time to live an illusion. I didn’t want to crush them. I debated whether I should tell them the truth, when Dirk blurted, “It’s a war zone.”
I wanted to slap Dirk. He could’ve waited. He could’ve given them a few more precious seconds of peace.
They were limp and some sat down, letting the weapons slide from their hands.
Dirk regurgitated the worst of what we’ve been through, almost with pride. As if he was special because he survived. He told war stories, seemingly daring them to one-up him. I got nauseous just listening, replaying the events in my head. He finished with “I even had to kill my own dad.”
They knew it was bad. But they had no idea how bad.
“Not that it helps,” I said, to change the topic, “but I think I know why it’s happening.” I shared my theory of animal behavior infanticide due to the oil spill.
“You’re right about one thing,” one of the guys said in the back. I think he was a freshman. “It doesn’t help.”
“Why are you here?” another asked.
“Same as you,” Theo said. “To get weapons. Rest.”
“And then to fight,” added Dirk.
The group looked at each other, concerned. The freshman said, “Fight? Why don’t we just wait here? Cafeteria’s stocked with food to last a few weeks. We can hole up. This place is like a bunker.”
We’d had the exact debate on the ledge, but we had no food. I never thought about the cafeteria. That changed everything.
Dirk could tell what I was thinking. “You all can hole up here, waiting, hoping, praying. But I’ve seen what’s out there. I’ve seen what they’re capable of. And they’re not going to wait. We either take the fight to them or we die like cowards. And if none of you helps me, then you’re dead to me right now.”
I think he’d watched too many war movies. Strike that. He did watch too many war movies.
He moved to a freshman girl and asked, “What do you have?” Inspecting her weapon, he said, “Not bad. Let me see you work it.” She swished a saw blade back and forth like a sword. “Good,” he added. “Make sure to go for soft tissue. The throat if you can.”
One by one, he went down the line like a general inspecting his troops and amazingly, they seemed to like it. I think they were just happy to have someone tell them what to do. Whether it was peer pressure or not, everyone down to the smallest freshman stood in line, their backs just a little straighter. Dirk approached a guy holding a weed whacker of all things. Dirk stood in front of him and pressed the battery-operated button and a thin plastic nub whirred.
“This,” he said, “will give you some distance, some time, but it’s only gonna cut skin and not much else.” He looked around, saw a short metal bar and handed it to him. “Here. Bash ’em in the head.”
I recognized a girl from band. She’d played the flute, her fingers like little tap dancers moving up the instrument. Now they held a metal wire as a garrote.
There was no dissention. Just a small platoon taking shape. Transforming into something dangerous. Something unimaginable.
We’d lived our lives as students, you’re-the-smart-one, and you’re-the-funny-one, but we didn’t really know—and would never know—who we truly were until something shocking happened, something that shook us out of our shared walking sleep. Something that made our old lives seem so far away, almost not real, but like some memory of a dream you could barely recall.
I wondered, what did that make me?