by Jeff Olah
April hung up the phone and walked to the oversized bay window in her master bedroom. The home she had purchased eight years ago with Mason was supposed to be her dream home. Instead, it now reminded her of how hard she had been on him and how much she had let her father influence those bad times.
Thinking back to the better memories they shared, she remembered that they had decided on this home in particular because it overlooked not only the elementary, but also the middle and high schools. She persuaded Mason that if they stuck to the budget she outlined, they could literally watch their son grow from kindergarten to high school. She was sure her being overprotective did nothing to help their marriage. Mason would constantly let her know she needed to “loosen the reigns,” especially since Justin was only a few months shy of his fourteenth birthday.
She desperately hoped Mason would arrive soon as she was freaked out after watching the news all day and talking to dear old dad.
“I guess we were spared,” April said aloud as she looked out the window surveying both campuses, half trying to convince herself that she had nothing to worry about. No frantic people running around; in fact, the area seemed overly calm.
April made her way downstairs and into the kitchen just as the phone rang. She was sure it was Mason with some sort of an update, although upon checking the caller ID she noticed the call was coming from Justin’s cell.
“Hello?” she quickly answered, trying to sounds as if she had not a care in the world.
“Mom, something weird is happening.”
“What’s going on?”
“All the teachers and staff were called to an emergency meeting and they haven’t been back to the classrooms. It’s been almost an hour now.”
“Where are you?” April said.
“I walked out into the gym because the rest of the school is too loud. The other students are kind of just running around the halls. Mom, some of my friends are saying that there is a war that was started.”
“Justin, I think they’re just trying to scare you.”
“Well, what IS going on? Why are all the teachers gone? Why haven’t they come back?”
“I’m sure it’s nothing. Just go back to cl—”
“Mom they’re coming back, I gotta go.”
April set the phone down and leaned back against the counter. She wanted Justin home and had to talk herself out of walking across the street to get him. She knew it would embarrass him and probably her as well.
April decided she would head back to the bedroom and sit at the window and watch, that way she could ease her mind and at the same time she would be ready to move if anything changed.
Even before she reached the window, April could see both parking lots start to fill with cars. Knowing there were no performances going on at the middle school today, she knew what was happening.
These parents were just as alarmed at the events of the day as she was; they were just less concerned with what the other parents thought of them.
“Screw it.” Deciding she didn’t care either, she dialed Mason again to let him know she was headed to the school to bring Justin home. She figured he could help her pack a few things and as soon as Mason arrived she would try to convince him that her father had some insight and they should heed his warning and head out of town.
Mason’s phone went to voicemail once again. April typically would have just hung up, although she wanted him to know where she was if he got here before she got back.
“Mason, it’s me, there is some weird stuff going on over at the school. I’m going over to bring Justin home. If you get here before I get back, the front door will be unlocked … Please hurry.”
Before heading out, April grabbed the television remote and powered it up. She promised herself earlier that she would not watch any more coverage; however, she wanted to be sure there wasn’t any new information.
Most of the network stations were now off the air. April flipped through the last of the local stations and came upon a disturbing feed that was playing on a loop showing a crowd of deranged people stampeding two middle aged women trying to get into the grocery store. She had to turn away and instantly hit the off button before she witnessed another second.
“What in the world is happening?”
April’s father was a great man, sometimes too great for Mason to even stomach. He knew April loved him, but he also knew their marriage would continue to be an uphill battle as long as her father continued to add fuel to the fire.
Putting that aside, Mason knew better than to doubt this man. He knew April’s father was some sort of military big shot; he just had no idea what kind. He figured it was better not to ask as it would have just led to some sort of discussion about why he couldn’t measure up … it always did.
Mason dropped the phone into his backpack and headed for the exit. Walking down the row of treadmills, he made sure to turn down the lights in each section of the club. Rounding the corner and making his way out, Mason nearly tripped over the front desk chair as he couldn’t believe the events taking place in the parking lot.
Through the giant glass windows that made up the front entrance of the club, Mason was horrified at what he was seeing. The club members and employees that had left only moments before were being run down and attacked by these savages that seemingly came out of nowhere. People were running, falling, and literally being torn apart by these things.
One of heavier men who only ten minutes before walked out the front door in a hurry to get to his car and vacate the area was now in a flat out sprint back toward the facility. He missed the step up onto the curb, went down hard, and slid face first into the glass entrance. The closed doors acted as a dead end for this man as three of those things were on him in seconds.
Mason’s first reaction was to head toward the door and offer some sort of help, although the huge glass wall thirty feet in front of him was offering the only line of protection for him at this point. What kind of help was he going to offer anyway? These things seemed to be much stronger and looked as if they were literally feeding on anyone who came into their line of sight.
He figured there must be at least a hundred of them outside. While trying to come up with an escape plan, Mason knelt behind the desk not only to get out of sight, but also to block his view of the atrocious scene that lay before him. He had seen enough and needed to clear his head.
Mason needed to get to April and Justin; if her father was right, it had to be sooner rather than later. He looked back around the side of the desk and the focus of the mob had moved away from the parking lot and grown closer to the building. There had to be a dozen or so bodies pressed up against the glass while being torn apart.
He knew Tom kept a revolver in the locked cabinet under his desk. Mason got to his feet and made a break for the office. This time the crowd saw him and started pounding against the glass like a riot at a heavy metal concert. Mason slid into the office and behind the desk. “Not good!” He noticed the drawer open and the gun missing. Tom must have grabbed it on his way out. The pounding continued to escalate until there was a gigantic crash and Mason knew they were now inside.
Knowing his only option was to run; Mason grabbed his bag from the floor and noticed the revolver just outside the office. It must have fallen out of Tom’s bag as he left in such a hurry.
Mason could hear the pounding footsteps getting closer as he grabbed the gun and continued to sprint toward the staircase at the back of the building that led to the roof. There was no other way out. Mason feared he would be trapped inside and eaten alive.
As he reached the stairs, the horde was only yards away from him and closing in fast. Mason refused to look back as he knew that would slow him down. As he pushed himself up the stairs with his legs he also used the handrail to pull himself toward the top in an attempt to move that much faster. Mason feared he would trip or miss a step and that would be it.
He didn’t want to die here on this staircase. As he reached the top, he prayed the e
xit wasn’t locked. He looked back and was pleased when he realized he had put some distance between himself and the deranged crowd. As he glanced over his shoulder before reaching the door, it looked as if those things were falling over each other to get up the stairs first.
Thankfully, the door to the roof was unlocked. As he burst through the door and onto the rooftop, Mason was momentarily blinded as the sun had broken through the clouds and was now drying what little rain had fallen.
As his sight became clear again, he twisted from side to side taking it all in. Every area, as far as the eye could see looked like a war zone. There were fires covering large parts of the city, car alarms sounding every few seconds, and screams of terror filling what little silence there was.
“What is this?” he said aloud.
Mason remembered the vacant furniture store to the right had closed six months ago and might still be untouched as he couldn’t see any turmoil coming from that direction.
As the crowd reached the door to the roof, Mason put his head down and sprinted in the direction of the vacant store.
“This may have been a terrible idea.”
The distance he needed to jump now appeared much farther than he remembered. He knew if he didn’t clear the large space between the two buildings that he would fall the thirty plus feet to the ground below and at the very least break his legs and become food for these monsters.
With only twenty feet before the edge and adrenaline coursing through every ounce of his body, he could actually feel their footsteps coming from behind.
Mason dug in to increase his speed and with his last step he launched himself over the gap.
4
April tossed the phone on the bed, grabbed her shoes, and ran down the stairs before heading to the front door and making sure it was unlocked. She knew from looking out the window that the walkway on the left side of the house was clear and a direct line to the entrance of the school. She decided to go out the back door and walk over instead of taking the car as there was no chance of driving into the parking lot anytime in the next few hours.
Walking through the yard and out the side gate, April looked back and saw the neighbors gathered in the street, obviously discussing the events of the day. They motioned for her to come over and she yelled back in their direction, “I’ll be back in a few minutes.” She didn’t want any company for her trip to the school and back since they’d slow her down.
The area outside the school looked intimidating to April. She pushed ahead and ran across the two lanes of traffic that led to the school. She watched as angry parents screamed all sorts of obscenities at one another from their halted vehicles. Out of frustration, one man even got out and kicked the door of the car in front of him. These people were not going anywhere and April was glad she had decided to walk.
A large group formed outside the entrance to the school where teachers and staff members were trying to account for each student leaving. A few of the parents attempted to exit the area without checking their children out and were met with a stern faculty member guiding them back toward the office. One overly aggressive mother refused to bend to their demands and hurried her twins into the car, only to be blocked by the biggest teacher April had ever seen. This is not helping to speed up the process, she thought.
April realized that if she followed their rules, she wouldn’t get to see her son for at least an hour and that wasn’t going to work. She stopped for a moment, looked around, and noticed the left side of the school where students were exiting the rear of the gym to the field. Since the entire mob was focused on the entrance, she decided to head in the direction of the escaping students.
As she walked briskly, trying to be inconspicuous, April pulled her cell phone out of her pocket and sent a text to Justin. Where are you? I’m coming around the back of the school through the gym. April continued to get closer to the rear entrance, and upon looking back found to her delight that she had gone unnoticed. Justin’s text came through just as quick. I’m at the door to the library. The office is a nightmare.
April reached the entrance to the rear of the gym as the few inventive kids continued to pour out. One of them looked over at her as they passed in the doorway.
“Hey lady, I wouldn’t go in there; it’s a ZOO!”
“Yeah… You should see the front.”
April fired off a reply to Justin as she made her way across the gym floor. Meet me in front of Mrs. Wood’s classroom and we will leave from there.
She knew the classrooms and halls would be nearly empty, as all the students were pushing toward the front entrance and there would be no chance of getting through that crowd anytime soon.
Justin hopped down from the table he was sitting on, slung his backpack over his shoulder, and started toward the hall that led to his math class.
The office admin, without even looking up, yelled at him through the crowd. “Excuse me Justin, where do you think you’re going?” Thinking quickly he answered, “I dropped my math book just around the corner. I’ll be right back.” She seemed to buy his excuse as she continued whatever it was she was doing on her computer and waved him on.
Justin turned the corner and, once out of her view, ran down the hall toward his math class, noticing he was the only one in this wing of the school.
Making her way out of the gym and into the long hallway that led past the locker rooms and into the rest of the school, April remembered Mrs. Wood’s class being down the third hall.
She thought back to the last time she was this deep inside the school and figured it was last year’s open house where she learned Justin was in the top five percent of students in the district academically. Justin was the type of student that thrived on doing well, although he would never tell a soul as he hated the attention it brought. Justin would rather that no one knew just how brilliant he really was. He liked the friends he had and feared he would be labeled as a freak for being so smart.
April was happy to discover that her memory served her right and she had chosen the right hallway. As soon as she rounded the corner she could see Justin down at the end of the hall sitting on a folding chair, peering down at his phone. She waited until she was a little closer and didn’t have to yell, so they wouldn’t alert anyone that they were here before she said, “Hey, you ready to get out of here?”
Justin looked up. “Mom!”
April immediately ran over to Justin, threw her arms around him and said, “Let’s go.”
“Uh Mom… Some of my friends are texting me that people are getting really hurt down at the front of the school.”
“I don’t doubt it; there must be a few thousand people out there,” April replied.
“No, they said people are REALLY hurting each other; they said some people may have even been killed.”
“I’m sure nothing like that has happened, but I’ll bet most of the people stuck out in that mess wish they hadn’t all tried to come at the same time.”
“Look at the photo Billy just sent me.”
Justin turned his phone so April could see the image. She almost let out a shriek as the horror of what she saw startled her. It was a blurry image although she could tell it was one man ripping the flesh from another man’s neck with his bare hands.
She kept her composure so she wouldn’t frighten Justin. “Come on, you know he’s playing with you. I’m sure that is a photoshopped picture from the internet.”
“Mom, I don’t think it is; we can’t get online here at school, it’s blocked.”
“I’m sure there some sort of an explanation…”
As April was trying to calm Justin, they heard a low rumble that built into what sounded like a stampede heading in their direction. Justin looked at April just as a massive crowd rounded the corner toward them.
It appeared they were being chased, although it wasn’t quite apparent what they were running from until a few grimy, disheveled, homeless looking men took down the school’s security staff at the rear of the crowd, even a
fter being shot more than once.
These men were covered in blood and seemingly on a mission to destroy anything they came into contact with. They literally pulled the three security guards apart limb by limb until there was nothing left of them. They then turned their focus on the rest of the crowd.
As they grew closer, Justin froze in place. April grabbed his hand and pulled him backward into the classroom, knocking them both to the floor.
Justin scrambled to get to his feet and looked at his mother in horror.
“Mom, what are those things?”
Continue with the story here…
About the Author
Jeff Olah is the author and creator of the best-selling series The Dead Years, The Last Outbreak, and The Next World. He writes for all those readers who love good post-apocalyptic, supernatural horror, and dystopian/science fiction.
His thirst for detailed story lines and shocking plot twists has been fueled over the years by stories from Cormac McCarthy, Ray Bradbury, and Stephen King. He also has a difficult time tearing himself away from character-driven dramas like The Walking Dead, Breaking Bad, and LOST.
Jeff is addicted to reading, writing, and lifting weights. He lives in Southern California with his wife, daughter, and ten-year-old Chihuahua.
Connect with Jeff:
JeffOlah.com
Facebook.com/JeffOlah
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