Shelter in Place: A short story from the world of BUNKER 12

by Saul Tanpepper

  Or other creepy-crawly things.

  Stuff something in the gap, Alli. Do it before it's too late.

  But nothing was coming in, nothing except rain illuminated by a pale, thin rectangle of light reflecting off the damp floor. She felt silly.

  The toilet flushed.

  "Sanja pooped," Rodney said, suddenly materializing beside Allison.

  "Rodney! Don't sneak around like that. You scared me."

  "Sanja pooped."

  "Why would you say such a thing?"

  "It's true. She told me she had to go poo—"

  "Okay, I got it. Stop saying that. It's not polite."

  The bathroom door opened. Thankfully, no light spilled out.

  "Did you wash your hands?" Rodney sang.

  "Yes," the girl replied.

  "With soap?"

  "Um…"

  "Never mind, Sanja. Rodney, mind your own business. Both of you go sit down on the sharing mat. Hurry up."

  "I have to poop, too," Rodney said.

  "No, you don't." She waited for him to protest. "That's what I thought. Now, please, can we just do what we're supposed to do? It's very important that we follow instructions."

  She found their hands in the darkness, grimacing at the clamminess on each of them, and led them toward the back corner of the room. She glanced once more at the front door and considered whether she should get some paper towels out of the bathroom to mop up the rain.

  "Sit down, both of you," she ordered. "Be quiet."

  "How long?" Rodney asked.

  "I don't know. Hopefully not much longer."

  "Ten minutes?"

  "I don't know. Be quiet and it'll go faster."

  "How do you know?"

  "Because I said so."

  Gah! I'm turning into my mother!

  "Miss Mullins, do you want some pretzels?"

  "I already have— Where did you get those?"

  "I found them on the floor."

  "Oh, Rodney."

  She located her handbag at the edge of the sharing mat. Its contents had been disgorged in a scattered heap. The bag of pretzels she kept for her after-school prep work was gone.

  "Just … share those with Sanja if she wants some," she told the boy, and she swept everything else back into the bag. Her fingers fumbled the lid off a small plastic bottle of hand sanitizer that she kept with her. The gel felt cool on her skin and soothed her nerves.

  The door rattled as another spray of rain lashed against it. The puddle in the entryway inched across the tiles toward the carpeting. Allison leaned her head back and hoped her other students were faring as well or better in the library. She prayed the poor librarian was holding out.

  James. I was going to call James back.

  He'd told her not to worry, but how could she not? He had known about the lockdown. What more did he know?

  She woke her cell phone and frowned to see that there were over three dozen text messages waiting for her. Were they all from James?

  He would sometimes leave her a message or two during the day—typical stuff, just touching base. MISS U or LUV U or SUSHI SHACK 2NITE?

  Sometimes her best friend from the school she'd taught at the previous year would text to see if she wanted to meet for a commiseration drink before heading home. Their favorite bar was just a subway stop up the street from their apartment building.

  And then there was her mom, who seemed completely incapable of teaching herself texting shorthand, yet had somehow mastered the voice-to-text option on her phone, which meant that her messages ran on and on and were sometimes completely incomprehensible. The phone just couldn't seem to handle her thick Southern drawl. James, who wrote legal briefs and therefore had a high tolerance for inchoate babble, found the phone's hapless attempts to transcribe the messages an endless source of amusement.

  But three dozen? That wasn't just unusual, it was alarming.

  She quickly thumbed through the list, seeing texts from her family and friends, but also from the parents of her students:

  PLZ CALL WHN U HAV CHNC

  HOW'S MY CHELSEA?

  RU SAFE?

  She was beginning to wish she'd checked her phone sooner, because the number of messages meant that something truly frightening was happening out there. She intended to respond to each of them, but for some reason the cell signal kept falling to zero.

  "Miss Mullins?"

  She pushed Sanja's hand away and shushed her.

  The more recent texts took on an increasingly alarming tone:

  LOCK YOUR DOOR PLEASE

  STAY INSIDE!

  DONT OPEN UR DOOR

  CANT GET THERE KEEP TOMMY SAFE PLEASE!!!

  DONT TOUCH ANYONE

  TELL RODNEY MOMMY AND DADDY LOVE HIM AND DONT GO OUTSIDE

  She read them all, each and every one, and by the time she came to the last, her hands shook so badly she could barely hold the phone.

  What the hell is going on? Why isn't anyone telling us? What was the principal doing out there?

  The phone on her desk suddenly started squawking, startling her with its raucous off-the-hook angry-bird cry.

  "I'll fix it!" Rodney shouted, and he jumped up.

  "No! Wait—"

  Objects crashed to the floor as he ran to find the receiver.

  "Rodney!"

  The intercom crackled and the voice of the school secretary, Mary, came on just as the phone noise stopped. Rodney let out a triumphant shout: "I fixed it! Miss Mullins, I fixed it!"

  "Attention, teachers, staff," Mary said. She sounded tired, and more than a little frightened. "The lockdown is still in effect. We apologize for not communicating sooner, but the power was out. We've been able to start the emergency generator."

  That's why Barden was out there.

  A phone rang in the background. Someone answered it.

  "A state of emergency has been called," Mary relayed, "and we have been advised that the conditions outside are highly unstable. All roads have been blocked, and parents are unable to pick up their children. Consequently, we must extend the shelter-in-place order past normal school hours."

  "Miss Mullins?"

  "Shh, Sanja. I need to hear this!"

  "Unfortunately, we are unable to provide any more information at this time. All citizens have been ordered by the Department of Emergency Services to remain inside. As a reminder, it is district-wide policy during a lockdown procedure to shut all curtains or blinds. Maintain silence as much as possible. We have also been told not to, under any circumstance, open any door, not for parents, not even for your own family, until the lockdown has been officially lifted."

  "Why?" Sanja asked, her voice hitching. "I want my mommy."

  Allison didn't answer. She was concentrating on the telephone discussion in the background. As a result, Mary's warnings flew past her like driven snow, pelting the skin of her consciousness but leaving no lasting impression other than a vague chilling effect. It was the other conversation which froze her to the core.

  Principal Barden is dead? But I just saw him!

  Her knees buckled, and she sank to the floor.

  Maybe I heard wrong.

  Yes, that had to be it. Maybe the speaker had said that Principal Barden was … was ….

  In bed?

  Or maybe they said the power was dead. That made more sense.

  "The safety of your students is your highest priority," Mary concluded. "It is your only priority. As soon as new information becomes available, we will update you."

  The intercom static clicked off.

  "Miss—"

  Something hit one of her windows, rattling the pane. It was harder than wind and bigger than raindrops. It squeaked as it rubbed over the glass.

  "I heard something," Sanja said.

  "It's just the storm," Allison whispered. She pushed herself back to her feet. "Rodney! Come back here right now!"

  A shadow crossed over the door's threshold, lingered for a moment, then passed on. Ice flushed through All
ison's veins.

  "Here I am!" Rodney shouted, and he grabbed her arm.

  Allison screamed.

  * * *

  An hour passed before she managed to calm herself down enough to call James. Her mind had simply shut down. The kids clung to her sides and kept quiet through the entire ordeal, as if sensing her terror.

  Her first attempt to dial resulted in nothing but dead air. The second returned her to the home screen after a few odd clicks. She stared at the phone, wondering if she'd misdialed or accidentally disconnected. Her hands trembled badly and her eyes refused to focus.

  He answered right away the third time: "Alli? Oh, thank heavens! It's about time."

  "About time? Do you have any idea what I've been going through? My phone's been on and you haven't called—"

  "I did! Honey, what do you think I've been doing since we got cut off? I haven't been able to get a call out anywhere!"

  "What's happening, James? I'm scared."

  "Honestly, I don't know. I've been stuck here in the damn office. The partners left about an hour ago, followed by the junior lawyers."

  "Left? Then why are you still there?"

  There was a pause. "It's …."

  "What, honey?"

  "I was going to leave, but I … couldn't. It's a mess out there on the streets."

  "On the streets?" She could hear the terror in his voice. "Honey, what is happening?"

  "I said I don't know! The roads are blocked, cars are piled up everywhere, people are running around— were running around. Things seem to have calmed down a bit over the past two hours, but … I'm looking outside now. The power's off everywhere as far as I can tell."

  "Can you see the school?"

  "Not through the rain. Everything's hazy. People are walking around like they're in some kind of a daze. Others are lying down in the middle of the street."

  "Lying down? Are they—“

  dead

  “—hurt?"

  "We're too high up to be sure, honey," he said, exasperation tightening his voice. "With the rain—and now it's getting dark—I can't see much. I heard gunshots earlier. I think they were gunshots."

  "I haven't heard anything."

  "The school walls might be blocking the sounds. Or the shots came from farther away. I think I can see something burning off in the distance."

  "Burning? But—"

  "Have you heard anything, Alli? Like on the radio, I mean. Local news. We're totally blacked out here. Tried the internet, but it's been spotty at best."

  "I haven't had a chance to listen to the radio," she blurted out. But the truth was, she hadn't even thought to check. The room had a television. They got a few local stations over the airwaves. And she could access the internet on her phone. "We're not supposed to turn anything on."

  "So you have power?"

  "The school has a generator. Besides, I've got kids to watch."

  The children beside her stirred. Sanja was dozing, and Rodney had found the modeling clay.

  He's probably rubbing it into the sharing mat. It's going to be ruined.

  But they were quiet, occupied. She didn't want to rile them.

  "What have you heard?" she asked.

  "Just what I've been able to pull off the web, whenever I can connect. Everyone's to stay inside, shelter in place. It's some kind of medical thing, a virus, they think."

  Her eyes flicked obsessively to the gap beneath the door. "Is it airborne?"

  "No, doesn't seem to be. But it's affected everyone."

  "Everyone in the city?"

  "Everyone everywhere."

  "What?" she said, choking back a gasp.

  "Miss Mullins," Rodney said. "You have to be quiet. It's the rules."

  "Yes, I know. You're right. I'm sorry." She stood up and moved away from the children before bringing the phone back to her ear. She cupped her hand over it so the kids wouldn't hear. "Honey, what do you mean everywhere?"

  "Everywhere everywhere, hon. I don't know. There hasn't been anything new on the feed in a while, but what is there suggests this thing spread quickly. It's all over the place. All over the world!"

  He sounded about as close to panic as she'd ever heard anyone come.

  Bioterrorism?

  "How can that be?"

  There was a muffled explosion in the distance. It might have been thunder, except the storm hadn't been electrical. It's a transformer, she thought. A transformer somewhere got wet and blew.

  But then there came another, louder and close enough that she could feel it through the floor. A car alarm somewhere began to bleat.

  "That was a big bomb."

  "That wasn't a bomb, Rodney."

  "I said boom, Miss Mullins. Did you think I said bomb?"

  "James?"

  She pulled the phone away from her ear. The log showed that the call had terminated. There was no signal, not even a flickering.

  "James, are you there?"

  "I said boom," Rodney grumbled unhappily, and settled back onto the carpet with his clay.

  * * *

  She couldn't understand how there could be no internet.

  No phone, okay. That she could see. Land lines were notoriously vulnerable to disruption. And if the towers were down, then she wouldn't be able to call or connect to the web. But the school still had power. The Wi-Fi was still on, and she knew for a fact that it was delivered by cable, which should be more reliable. She could even log on to it.

  Problem was, there seemed to be nothing on the other end to connect to. All of her links and searches gave her the same HTTP 404 - PAGE NOT FOUND error.

  She'd never felt so isolated in her life. Even with the children huddled tight against her, she felt incredibly alone.

  They played word games and math games and told jokes and riddles until they were left with nothing but Rodney's potty humor, and even then she let them continue for a little while, at least until she worried there might be reprisals if their parents ever found out. She told them stories from memory, and when that stopped holding their attention, she played them music from her phone, keeping the volume turned down so that Rodney had to concentrate hard to hear it, which helped to keep him quiet.

  The world outside disappeared as day turned into night. And in the silence that replaced the receding storm, she began to hear other noises—water running through pipes, eerie scratching sounds in the walls, the disembodied voices of children in neighboring classrooms, crying, shouting. She sympathized with her colleagues, knowing that they were burdened with dozens of children to entertain, to keep calm, to feed and discipline. Allison felt guilty at how grateful she was for only having her two. She couldn't imagine having thirty.

  They had more than enough to eat, what with all of the unopened packages of chips and fruit bars and loose cookies they'd scrounged. They rescued half-eaten sandwiches and uneaten fruit from the absent children's lunchboxes. For once, she didn't care about germs, as long as Sanja and Rodney were happy. At least they wouldn't have to scavenge through the trashcans, like she knew the other teachers were probably being forced to do.

  It'll be over soon. The police will come, and it'll be over. Or the military will arrive to take us all to a big shelter somewhere.

  She told her kids their parents would come for them as soon as they could. She didn't know when, but she said it wouldn't be too much longer.

  With night came the most difficult part of her watch. The children became restless. They were bored and scared and missed their families. They wanted their pillows and stuffies and nightly routines, which Allison could not give them.

  Finally, they drifted off to sleep on the sharing mat covered in the coats that had been left behind. Soon after, the ruckus in the adjacent classrooms also faded away. True quiet descended upon them.

  Lulled by the soft metronomic rhythm of the clock on the wall, Allison began to drift off.

  Tap. Tap tap.

  Tap tap tap.

  “Anyone there?”

  She jerked upr
ight, her senses on high alert.

  “Hello? Can anyone hear me?”

  She pushed herself to her feet and scrambled over to the opposite wall, toward the source of the voice.

  "Rosa?"

  Rosa McBroom was the fourth grade teacher next door. Her voice sounded hollow coming through the vent.

  "Alli?"

  "I can barely hear you."

  "I don't want to wake the kids. I had one who kept trying to run outside. I was about ready to strangle …. Anyway, they're finally asleep. How are you holding up?"

  "Me? Fine." She didn't tell Rosa that she had only her two to contend with. "I just hope we get paid time and a half for this."

  Rosa laughed quietly, but Allison detected a hint of hysteria in it. "Roger called during lunch," she said. "Right before we went into lockdown."

  "So you knew this was coming? You had advance warning?"

  "Five minutes, if you call that advance."

  "I tried James afterward, but we kept getting disconnected. The cell signal comes and goes. What did Roger say?"

  "Before the power went off, the news was calling it some kind of unknown pathogen, maybe viral. Same thing on the internet. Whatever it is, it's extremely contagious."

  "Like the flu? I thought they had that under control. And we've all gotten our vaccines, so—"

  "Not the flu. Something worse. They said it has a hundred percent casualty rate and it affects you in less than an hour. Not even the flu was that bad."

  Allison frowned. "If it's a virus, then why do we have to keep our blinds shut? It doesn't make sense."

  Rosa didn't answer right away. Allison sensed that she was holding something back, and she pressed her to share. "Roger said the people who catch it lose their minds. They go …. He said they go feral. That's the word he used. If they see you, they attack. Sort of like rabies. He said that's how it spreads."

  "How? By … biting?" Visions of the zombie apocalypse crossed her mind. James was a huge fan of the genre and binge-watched all the usual shows, no matter how gory, but she didn't care for any of it.

  "We were cut off before he could say how," Rosa said. "And my phone's dead and I don't have my charger with me. And the classroom phone is—"

  "Dead. I know. Mine, too."

  Both women were quiet for several seconds. Finally, Rosa asked, "How's your cell phone?"