Grownups Must Die

by D. F. Noble

  Lips quivering, Mark then poked his head out from around the aisle. He looked from Dean, to the corpse, and then back to Dean. “I’m sorry,” he said, whimpering, “I can’t do this. I can’t kill…people.”

  Dean sighed, and then took a deep breath. He gave Mark a hard look, and Dean’s face, covered in blood, must have struck a chord. “You wanna die?” Dean asked Mark. “You wanna be pulled to pieces like that kid we saw outside, Mark?”

  “No,” Mark said, and tears streamed down his face.

  “Then you better fucking fight, asshole,” Dean growled. Mark winced like he’d been slapped and then slid to the floor, tucking his knees up to his chest and burying his face. Dean took a breath. He was mad, he was volatile and felt a wee bit crazy himself, but he knew he couldn’t give Mark too much shit. An hour ago, this was just a normal day. An hour ago, they were both just kids; kids who thought about girls, and video games, and how they could hide a porno mag from their moms. An hour later and Dean was a killer. Mark was a whimpering idiot with pissy pants.

  “I might not always be around to save your ass,” Dean went on, and the words were twofold. One hand was a grim warning for Mark, and the other was the realization that most teens never really think about. That, of course, is their mortality. But Dean thought of it then. It was not some far away distant time, dying as an old man surrounded by grandchildren. No, the thought was crystal clear and brutal. It hit Dean like a punch in the stomach, the realization that he may very well die a violent and gruesome death before the day was out.

  Then, a small voice startled them both. From inside the librarian’s office, someone said, “Hello?”

  C hapter 10

  Ashes, Ashes, We All Fall Down

  “Dean!”

  “Alex!?”

  It was Alex behind the door, and as soon as the two friends saw each other, their faces lit up, and Dean grabbed Alex up in a bear hug and shook him around like a dog does a shoe. Alex had stayed after school to work on a project. Since he didn’t have the internet at home, he’d arranged things with his dad and school to stay in the library to use the computers there.

  Then the computers had gone on the fritz, and the radio Mrs. Serene was listening to turned to static. Dean knew what happened next…the librarian lost her mind and pulled her eyeballs out. Alex didn’t have to tell him, but he listened anyway. Alex, of course, had been terrified and confused. He thought at first that Mrs. Serene was having a seizure, but soon found she had murderous intentions. Alex had then locked himself in her office, and was glad to find she wasn’t smart enough to use her keys to get in.

  Even though Alex was scared, Dean could tell the kid had still kept his wits about him. Dean wished he could say the same for Mark, who had a tendency to piss and clench up in times of crisis. Mark would either cowboy up or get himself killed.

  So Dean told Alex what had happened upstairs and what they’d seen across the street in front of the church while they walked to the gym. Both he and Alex had come to the same conclusion, except Alex had worded it better.

  “It’s like a frequency went out,” Alex said, “and somehow, it’s afflicted only the adults. Yesterday—I don't know if you guys know this—SETI picked up a signal from space. They were trying to decode it. I think... I think whatever SETI found... it made the adults go bonkers.”

  “Why just the adults, though?” Mark asked.

  “What the hell is SETI?” Dean asked.

  Alex scratched his head. “Well I’ve read there’s a difference of biochemical levels between kids and adults, especially kids going through puberty. Plus I think the brain isn’t fully developed until a person is twenty-five. And SETI is a program that searches for signals in space... they're looking for alien transmissions.”

  Dean and Mark looked at each other. Aliens?

  “So everyone over twenty-five is crazy now?”

  “We’ve got no way to tell,” Alex answered. “The only thing we can do for now is survive.”

  With Mr. Ottoman’s keys, they were able to access the gym’s storage room. The boys donned football helmets and shoulder pads, and Mark switched his pissy pants out to a new pair of baseball slacks. Being shy, Mark made them turn around so they wouldn’t see him half-naked.

  “Dude,” Dean said, “nobody wants to see your fat ass anyway, just hurry it up.”

  Dean almost switched out his paper cutter handle for a baseball bat, but he had come to appreciate its devastating power and edge. Undoubtedly, a baseball bat would fuck someone up, but not like the heavy steel makeshift weapon.

  Mark wanted to use a hockey stick, but Alex had pointed out that unless he sharpened the end like a spear, the weapon would hardly be useful. “You might be able to hit someone with it, but I doubt it would stop them, especially not a full-grown man.”

  So Mark did just that. He took his pocket knife and began whittling it down. It was actually a damn good idea, Dean thought, and since they weren’t on any time schedule, they had Mark whittle two more. They used jump ropes to make slings for the new hockey spears; that way they could strap them over their back if need be.

  Alex thrust his spear out like a Spartan and turned and smiled at Dean and Mark through his football helmet. “Kind of exciting, isn’t it?” Alex said.

  “What!?” Mark scoffed. “This is scary as hell! You’re crazy!”

  Alex shrugged. “Think about it this way:” he said, “we’ve been dropped right into a complete Darwinian experiment. Survival of the fittest. The lines are clear: it’s us against them, and we’ll need to use every strength we have. We’ll have to use brains and speed to compensate for the lack of strength. We are witnessing evolution, right here and now. It’s kind of amazing.”

  Mark shook his head. “ What about our parents? What about all the kids getting killed?!”

  Alex dropped his grin. “People die every day, Mark. We will all eventually die. But if you really need a positive outlook…” Alex’s grin returned. “Think of this. School’s out… forever.”

  Dean laughed at the cheesy joke, but Mark was not amused.

  “That’s not funny,” Mark said. He looked at them both like they were mad and asked, “So what’s next, huh?”

  Dean and Alex looked at each other. “Tree Top,” they both said in unison.

  “Tree Top?” Mark asked. “What's that?”

  “A place out in the woods where we hang out,” Dean said. He turned back to Alex. “Do you think Jake's home?”

  “I hope so,” Alex replied. “We talked earlier at lunch. Said he was heading out there. We were all supposed to meet up tonight.”

  “Then we go there,” Dean said.

  “What about Caleb?” Mark asked.

  “What about him?”

  Mark nervously looked back and forth between Alex and Dean. “You’re just going to leave him here?”

  “He’s a fucking douche,” Dean remarked. “What do you want me to do, force him to come? That won’t work.”

  Alex spoke up. “Strength in numbers, though. We should at least give him a chance.”

  Dean sighed. He didn’t like Caleb. The guy was a liability (and so was Mark, for that matter). Fuck it, Dean thought, maybe Alex is right.

  “Fine,” Dean said. “Bring an extra bat and helmet for him. We’ll go ask him. I want to get out of here before it gets dark.”

  ***

  “What the fuck, Caleb!?”

  Dean, Mark, and Alex caught Caleb with his pants around his ankles—literally. Worse yet, Jessica’s shorts had been pulled off and discarded, her panties lay tangled around her knees, and for the first time in the three boys’ lives they got a crystal clear view of a real-life vagina (actually, a dead girl’s vagina). Jessica’s corpse still laid face-first in a puddle of blood, but her legs had been spread apart; the boys gawked at her girl parts and looked away, ashamed. Their eyes turned to Caleb, who was blushing and backing away from them.

  Caleb was awkwardly trying to pull his pants up over his blood-soaked p
ubescent erection and fumbling with his smart phone simultaneously. It was obvious what he’d been doing, there was no mistaking it. Disgust boiled inside Dean, and before he knew it, he was rushing towards Caleb.

  “You sick fuck!” Dean roared and kicked Caleb square in the nuts. Foot impacted testes, testes squashed against the pelvic bone, and the air rushed from Caleb’s lungs through his vocal cords in a soprano squeal of pain. Caleb’s knees buckled and he crumpled into a fetal position. His ass hung out exposed, and the boy clamped his pulverized genitals with both hands.

  Rage—terrible and inexplicable anger—surged through Dean, and much like kicking a field goal, Dean punted Caleb in the face. The kick was vicious. Front teeth were shattered. The lips surrounding those teeth split wide open, and Caleb’s head rocked back on his shoulders hard enough that one could have sworn his neck had just snapped.

  Dean raised the paper cutter above his head. He meant to end Caleb then, meant to snuff him out like the creepy little insect he was, but Mark collided with Dean and the two boys toppled to the ground.

  “Get the fuck off me, Mark!”

  “Stop, Dean! You can’t kill him!”

  “Why the fuck not!? Get off!”

  “You fucked him up, okay!? Don’t kill him!”

  “You fat fucking ginger, Mark! Get off! You saw what he was doing!”

  “Calm down, Dean!”

  Dean freed a hand and reached up through Mark’s football helmet face guard and delivered a poke to Mark’s eye. Mark grunted, and it was enough for Dean to switch his weight and push the fat kid off him. Dean scrambled to his feet and found Alex standing there, holding the paper cutter. Dean and Alex’s eyes locked for barely a second, and Alex handed the weapon to Dean. When Dean turned back, he found Mark crawling over Caleb’s body, hoisting his hockey spear in Dean’s direction.

  “Stay back,” Mark growled. “You’re outta control! Haven’t you killed enough people today!?”

  Dean swiped at the spear, trying to knock it loose from Mark’s grasp, but the kid swayed it out of the way and took an unsuccessful jab back at Dean.

  “Now you wanna fucking fight!?” Dean stepped back, watching Mark with red boiling in his vision. “You wanna protect this fucking creep? He was fucking a dead girl, Mark! Fuck’s wrong with you, dude!?”

  For a fat kid, Mark moved quickly and got to his feet, standing over Caleb’s unconscious body. He yelled, “Fuck you, Dean! You’re a goddamn bully! You’re a murderer!”

  “I saved your life, fat ass!”

  And then Alex stepped between them, both of his hands up. “Guys,” Alex said, “both of you take a step back, okay? Dean, I’m with you on this. What Caleb did was fucked up, but killing crazy adults is one thing; killing a kid, that’s different. Let’s just leave, okay?”

  Dean squinted at Alex, then shot a fiery look back at Mark. “If we leave Caleb alone, if we let him go, what happens if he finds another girl? What if the next girl is alive? What do you think he’s going to do? Have a fucking tea party? I don’t think we should let him walk out of this room.”

  Still, Mark didn’t budge. Dean could see the kid was trying to work something out in his head, but he kept his hockey spear up and ready to strike. Dean was furious, but the rage was dwindling. He couldn’t begin to understand why Mark would protect the sick bastard.

  “That’s what we’ll do, then,” Alex said. “Let’s lock him in here. We’ll take the body out in the hall where he… can’t do stuff to it.” Alex looked back and forth between them, negotiating with his eyes.

  Dean had half a mind to sidestep Alex and beat Mark’s ass, but was it worth it?

  “Fuck it,” Dean said, and took a step back. “And fuck you, Mark. Alex is right. We’ll take Jessica out of here and lock this fucker up. Then I’m gone. Fuck this place. You wanna stay here, fine, cuz’ you’re not coming with me.”

  Mark said nothing. He only stood, coiled like a spring. Dean walked to Jessica’s corpse, and with a grimace, he pulled her panties back up and grabbed her ankles.

  “Wait,” Alex said, “let me help.”

  They dragged her then, her bloody face squeaking across the tile and leaving a trail of gore. Once in the hall, Dean unlocked a classroom catty-corner to Mr. Ottoman’s and they pulled her corpse inside. Dean yanked the blinds off a window and draped them over her body.

  Dean knelt beside her body and whispered, “I’m sorry, Jessica. You didn’t deserve this.”

  Then from the window came Alex’s startled voice, “Dean…”

  ***

  Dean had turned porcelain white. Both his and Alex's blood ran cold in their veins; even though their heartbeats fluttered like a hummingbird’s, it felt as if ice water coursed through them. From a second floor window, with Jessica’s body draped with window blinds behind them, they looked on with wide and terrified eyes.

  This view opened up to the high school’s commons. The basketball court, the track and football field, empty. And there, on the street behind a chain-link fence that separated school property from the city street, a herd of adults paced, walking shoulder to shoulder and in a line, as if they were penguins on a march to a breeding ground. They dragged mutilated bodies of children behind them. Some bodies they couldn’t see, for they were in bags or wrapped up in blankets. The blood gave it away as to what they contained. Other bodies were being dragged along in plastic laundry baskets, others pulled along in little red wagons, and older kids—which were heavier—were piled in wheelbarrows. Bloody limbs hung from them, lifeless arms and legs, and entrails (slippery pink noodles at this distance) trailed along.

  “Jesus,” Dean whispered. “Where are they taking them?”

  Alex pushed his glasses up on his nose through the face guard of his football helmet. He didn’t turn from the window when he simply said, “I don’t know.”

  Dean thought for a moment, looking out over the migration. “If they’re all going to the same place, maybe we can sneak around them?”

  Alex didn’t look so hot; his chipper candor had somewhat faltered, but he cleared his throat and said, “Yeah. I don’t think staying in town is such a good idea. A gun seems very reasonable right now.”

  “You got that right. We better get moving. We’ve got a few hours before it gets dark.”

  “How close is your house?”

  “Five, maybe six blocks from here,” Dean replied, and turned from the window. Seeing Ottoman go crazy, and the janitor, then the librarian, that was one thing. Seeing dozens of them all working together…that was hard to digest. The whole town—maybe the whole world—full of them, full of murderous and psychotic grownups… it made Dean think.

  And as if Alex was reading Dean’s mind, he said, “Maybe evolution was a bad way to put it earlier. Maybe this is extinction, Dean. Maybe this is the end of the world.”

  ***

  Dean and Alex secured a backpack each and made their way to the school's lunchroom. A few strikes from Dean’s paper cutter handle and the Plexiglas fronts on the two vending machines—one filled with soda, the other with snacks—and they had more sugary supplements than their bags could carry. They ate a quick meal of snack-cakes and downed a soda each in silence, and then rummaged a couple of butcher knives from the kitchen.

  A nervous energy crackled through Dean. Part of it was the sugar, and part of it was because he knew they were about to step out into a nightmare. Even though most of the adults didn’t have eyes—judgingfrom the ones they’d seen—they somehow could still find and kill children. None of it made sense. Maybe whatever had made the adults go crazy, maybe it had enhanced their others senses, maybe it gave them some psychic power, or maybe they could just smell children and track them that way, like hounds.

  They didn’t have a clue, him or Alex, and they were just going to have to do it the old fashioned way: trial and error. They made for a side entrance of the school, having discussed that since the grownups were all moving towards the center of town, they would, of course, go the oppos
ite direction. Mr. Ottoman's key ring also had keys for a car. The plan was simple: Get to the parking lot. Get to the car. Get the fuck out of town.

  At the door, Dean asked, “You ready?”

  Alex nodded and raised his hockey stick, with its handle end sharpened to a spear point. “Yeah, I’m ready. If I shit my pants, Dean, don’t hold it against me.”

  Dean forced a strained chuckle. “If you shit your pants, your underwear will hold it against you, not me.”

  Alex squinted a bit, and then the joke hit him and he grinned back. “You’ve got a point.”

  “Here we go,” Dean said and opened the door.

  The street was empty before them, and Dean stepped out, cautious like a mouse. Then, from beside him, he caught just a glimpse of hands reaching out. A grownup was there (sneaky fucking bastard), waiting outside the door against the wall, waiting for them in particular, Dean thought.

  Before Dean could turn to fight, the eyeless psycho—a man in a bloody t-shirt and jeans, with a thick goatee—had wrapped him up in a bear hug and pulled Dean to the ground in a sloppy tackle. Dean yelped and fell hard on his back. The air whooshed from his lungs from the weight of the man and the collision of hard concrete. Dean caught a glimpse of the psycho raising something that glinted in the sun. The grownup sat square on Dean’s chest, pinning him down. Fingers clenched the face guard of Dean’s football helmet firmly in place. Dean knew then that the psycho had a knife. Dean was a dead man, he knew it. He felt shit getting ready to explode from his anus like old faithful, when suddenly, a sharpened hockey stick jutted forward into the man’s throat.

  It wasn’t pretty, for the spear sank into one side, tearing a bloody gouge—which spilled red, sticky blood over Dean’s chest and face—and poked out the other. It went in and came out in a second, with blood jetting out like a faucet from the entrance and exit wounds, and Dean caught a glimpse of Alex, hopping back from his attack, preparing to jab again.