"Children, I'm not going to lie to you..." she began.

Roger narrowed his gaze and leaned forward.

"Something is indeed going on and we're all going to need to stay calm."

A few of the girls and even a boy or two stared at her wide-eyed and blinked away some tears. For the most part, the children were putting on their bravest faces.

Lydia, a fragile-looking blonde with small wire-frame gla.s.ses, hesitantly raised her hand.

"Yes, Lydia."

"Who are those people?"

"What people, Dear?"

"The ones outside," she said and slowly raised her hand and pointed toward the window.

The collective group nodded like bobblehead dolls. Chikara stepped over to the window and was amazed to see that the entire group of people who were by the fence had now made their way onto the lawn just outside the building. Worse, they were being followed by another large group who were still making their way through the fence and across the lawn. All told, there were forty or so people milling around outside.

Straining to get a good look, she saw that something didn't seem right. There was definitely something wrong with all of them. Blank faces and gaping mouths were unanimous expressions they wore. Their gait was more like a stagger than real walking; as if they were drunk or severely impaired. Their forward motion was a result of their rocking back and forth of their body on stiff legs.

Suddenly, a small itching began at the back of her brain and she got the distinct feeling she was being watched. Turning her head slightly to the right, she caught sight of the man in the white shirt and black tie: the one with the coffee stain down his front. While the others were milling about, he was standing still and looking up at the building, straight up at the window. His gaze bore through her and he seemed to be a.s.sessing the structure as if looking for a way in. Having weighed through all of the available options, he seemed to have settled on the window of her cla.s.sroom. As their eyes met, the man suddenly looked at the ground and then back up, tracking the structure of the fire escape.

"Miss Pressfield?"

Another small voice interrupted her thinking.

"Yes, Lisa," she said and turned to look at the other girl now standing next to her. The child had shoulder-length brown hair held back by a floral headband. Her front two teeth were missing and her eyes were wide and looked wet with tears barely held in check.

"I... I want to go home," she said, her bottom lip standing out like a fleshy bookshelf. Chikara looked up and the cla.s.s as a whole was again nodding in agreement.

"As soon as I know what's going on, you can, Dear," Chikara said and she patted the child on the back of her head. "Now, please take your seat, ok?"

Again the cla.s.sroom door swung open and Helen Walker stepped into the room. The smile she'd pasted to her face was more grimace than grin, but G.o.d love her, she was trying to put on a good show.

"Miss Pressfield, can I talk to you for another moment? Please..."

"Oh, here we go..." Roger sighed under his breath.

"Surely," Chikara said and nodded to Luke. "You're back in charge, Buddy."

The boy sat up a little straighter and nodded, trying his best to put a "game face" on. Despite his best efforts though, he still looked as if he were about to cry.

Chikara followed Helen back out into the hallway and closed the door behind her.

"Ok, what's up?"

"We need you to come downstairs. We're talking about barricading all of the doors."

"You're what?!?"

"Sam Lorning, the shop teacher, pulled a television set into the Teacher's Lounge and you're not going to believe what the news is saying.

"What are they saying?"

Helen took hold of Chikara's hand and pulled.

"You'd better come with me."

"Hold on a second..." said, pulling back her hand.

Chikara opened the door behind her and stuck her head inside. As she leaned in, she reached out and rested her hand on the fire extinguisher hanging from a hook at the side of the door. The children sitting in their desks looked so small and scared. She smiled and waited for them to quiet down.

"Children, I'm going to be right back. Everything's fine. I just need to go check on when your parents can come take you home."

Inside, she felt like s.h.i.t for lying, but it was the best excuse for leaving them she could think of off the top of her head. At the back of the room, she caught a glimpse of Roger The Human Lie Detector frowning.

"Luke, you're The Man."

Just to be safe, she locked the door as she left so that the kids wouldn't be tempted to start roaming the hallways. She twisted her key in the lock, removed it from the door, and returned it to her pocket.

And with that, she was gone.

When Helen and Chikara got to the Teacher's Lounge, there was already a crowd of people inside huddled around the television. They stood in a semi-circle around the tall metal cart where the TV sat. Most of them were nervously holding Styrofoam cups with rapidly cooling coffee in them. A few held cigarettes between their fingers, but they were mostly just burning away unnoticed. Oddly, they all had the same look on their faces as the children in the cla.s.sroom.

"If there's no activity where you live," the warm voice of the anchorman was saying, "stay indoors and barricade all means of entrance. This is the Emergency Broadcast System for the greater Columbus, Ohio area. We repeat, lock all doors and windows and remain inside. Bicentennial Park is no longer considered a secure area. Please avoid all areas which would normally attract large numbers of people such as sports stadiums, shopping malls, and all downtown locations. You should proceed as quickly as possible to the areas which are being repeated in our bulletins. Further, please follow all directions given you by any and all military personnel. There have been reports of looting in most downtown areas. Please... do not attempt to travel. Even though you may believe that your loved ones require your a.s.sistance, you must remain where you are, or-if you are not safe-in one of the rescue stations. By all means, be wary of any and all people who appear disoriented or confused."

"These people are a.s.sholes," Jim Rhodes, the fifth grade science teacher said. He was a short, balding man with a small patch of hair encircling his head. The light overhead shimmered off of the barren landscape of his skull.

Chikara thought to herself that if anyone could know an a.s.shole on sight, it was Jim. Those types could smell their own.

"Ssshh..." Sandy Kirklash, the second grade teacher from the first floor hissed. "We can't hear what they're saying with you talking."

"All right. All right." Irritated, Jim looked away.

"Sssssssshhhhh!" the group hissed as one.

The scene on the screen changed to some recorded tape from an earlier news conference. The camera shook as it was being adjusted, but the image soon settled down. A stoic black man in a business suit stood before a podium and was talking to a room full of reporters. "I'll take your questions one at a time, please," he said, his eyes looking sad and bloodshot.

A male reporter's voice was heard. "Are we dealing with some kind of contagion? Is this something man-made?"

The man looked down and in a weary tone, said, "It's too early to tell. From all accounts, it is not something of a natural origin."

A woman's voice came next, "How does it spread? Is it airborne?"

"Airborne is likely, but we simply do not have any way of knowing at this time."

"Could it have anything to do with the recent re-entry of the orbiting s.p.a.ce station?"

"We don't know. At this time, we are open to any and all possibilities."

The first male reporter broke in and asked, "Is this an act of terrorism? Is it a military concern?"

"While we do not think it is an act of terrorism, as the phenomenon is occurring across the globe, it has been made the highest of priorities for the military."

"Sir, are these people alive?" asked the woman.

The man sighed and, as if he were wearing the weight of the world on his shoulders, whispered, "It would appear not."

"What do you think we should do?" Sandy asked, her voice shattering the silence of the room. The teachers looked at one another and silently shook their heads.

"This is just crazy," Josh Giorda, another teacher said. He'd come onboard about the same time as Chikara had. He was young and, if you asked most of the female members of the staff, pretty darned cute. "I mean, really... 'Dead bodies walking around'? It's like a bad horror movie."

"I'm telling you... It's probably all bulls.h.i.t," Jim said over the rim of his cup.

Abruptly, the Lounge door swung open and Princ.i.p.al Borden entered, looking frazzled. His shirt collar and tie had been pulled open and his face was awash with stress. He cleared his throat before speaking.

"Ladies and Gentlemen, I'm going to need your attention, please."

Someone lowered the television volume a bit with the remote and they all turned to face him. Fred the Letch looked like s.h.i.t. His eyes were red and his skin had grown as pasty and white as a fish's belly. He was obviously out of breath and you could tell by looking at him that he was barely holding it all together.

"We're going to need to barricade the entrances and exits to the building. The police have contacted me and said that the threat being reported on the news-as ludicrous as it may sound-is very real."

He looked around the room and, just for a moment, they all saw the first glimmers of panic set in deep within his mind. He quickly spoke again to hide it.

"We'll split into four groups, each going to one of the four entrances into the building. Josh, since Jessie has stopped answering his radio..." A sudden distant look pa.s.sed over his face like a cloud. "I don't know, maybe he decided to leave once he saw those things outside," he said distractedly, almost as if he was talking to himself. Just as quickly, he came back to the now and continued his thought. "I'll need you to head over to the access doors in the bas.e.m.e.nt and make sure those are locked and secure."

The group looked to one another and began exchanging nervous chatter.

"People... People... We need to stay focused on this. This is no joke," he said, his voice cracking minutely. "We have more than just ourselves to worry about here. We have the children."

The soft sound of the television filled the ensuing silence.

"I understand you're having a difficult time killing these things, Chief," a reporter asked.

"Just shoot them. Shoot them in the head," the voice of an exhausted man in a police uniform responded. "They seem to go down permanently when you shoot them in the head."

Chikara felt an errant and indistinct sense of deja vu.

"Then, you gotta burn them. Beat 'em or burn 'em. They go up pretty easy."

And with that, they set to it. There was some disagreement early on as they broke into groups, but for the most part, they accepted this new reality without complaint. Chikara went with Helen, Jim Rhodes and Ross DeChamp, the fourth grade P.E. teacher, and headed off toward the East Entrance. Not a lot of conversation took place en route. They were all lost in their own uncertainties. Whether it was worry over their own families, loved ones, or pets, no one said much of anything. They just walked down the corridors in hurried silence, pa.s.sing several closed cla.s.sroom doors. From inside, several sets of small, scared sets of eyes looked out, their lashes wet with tears.

When they arrived at the doors, Chikara took a second and looked outside through one of the wire mesh-laced windows. There were several more of those people milling about now. At one point, she thought she recognized Sam Theroux, the owner of the nearby bodega. His gla.s.ses were gone and his features were contorted into a perpetual sneer, but sonofab.i.t.c.h it sure looked like him. It wasn't until he turned to face her full on that she noticed one of his eyes had been torn out.

"Oh. My," she whispered. "G.o.d."

"What?" Helen asked as she quietly turned the key in the locks and carefully wound the length of chain DeChamp had brought along through the door's push-bars. For some unspoken reason, they'd decided to go about their business as silently as possible. It was as if they all instinctively knew that too much noise would undoubtedly mean getting the attention of the people outside. She slipped a padlock through two of the links and snapped it shut. For good measure, she pulled gently on the door to make sure it was tightly closed.

Off to one side, Jim Rhodes stood with his arms crossed indignantly.

"Nothing," Chikara answered. "Never mind."

"Let's get back," Jim said, looking up and down the hallway with a hint of nervousness. He'd been looking through the window on the other door and had not liked what he'd seen. Not one bit. He'd also seen Sam, thus his face had abruptly turned white and a good portion of his bl.u.s.ter evaporated.

As they turned away from the door, Jim and Chikara exchanged looks that spoke volumes and those volumes said the same thing: 'We're in a bubbling vat of s.h.i.t here.'

Hurrying back down the hallway, they'd not gone more than a dozen steps when they were brought up short by a loud banging sound from the direction they'd just come. Through the window, they all saw Sam's distorted face pressed against the slim pane of gla.s.s. His lone eye glared at them and his mouth dripped long strands of saliva. Apparently, he'd seen them as much as they'd seen him. Immediately, Sam banged his fists against the door again and again. His hands rained down against the metal in an insane drumming rhythm which echoed down the empty corridor. As one, the group took another step backward. From where they stood, they could see the double doors shaking in their frame. Sam had obviously been joined by more of those people outside and they were all now pounding with him in earnest.

"We should get back to the Lounge," Ross DeChamp said, his voice sounding small and scared in the large hallway.

"Yeah, no s.h.i.t," Helen murmured and her words echoed hollowly in the emptiness of the corridor.

When they got back to the Lounge, they met up with two of the other groups, who each had variations of the same incredible story. As the group talked, Chikara couldn't help but feel her gaze being pulled toward the ceiling. It had seemed like a long time since she'd left her cla.s.sroom and she felt compelled to get back there. The kids were probably scared s.h.i.tless by now after they'd no doubt looked out the windows and seen G.o.d-only-knew what.

As the teachers continued talking amongst themselves, she quietly slipped off and headed back down the hallway to the stairs.

Midway up the stairway to the second floor, Chikara stopped.

She was sure she'd heard something coming from the hallway at the top. At first it sounded like the screech of a rusty door being opened against its will. Slowly, she took another step. Then another. As she reached the last step, she stopped yet again.

Abruptly, an unmistakable shriek echoed down the hallway just outside the stairwell.

Without another thought, Chikara ran up the rest of the stairs and down the hall and as she got closer to her cla.s.sroom, she heard the scream again. This time she was able to pinpoint its origin and to her dismay it was, without a doubt, coming from inside her room.

Those last few steps seemed as if they were being taken in slow motion; like in a dream when, no matter how fast you tried to move, it was never fast enough.

She reached out and quickly unlocked the door. Grabbing the doork.n.o.b and twisting it, she pushed the door open with all of her might and rushed inside.

"Say," Helen interrupted the other teacher's conversations, holding up her hand. "Hey, shut up, w.i.l.l.ya?

Having now gained all of their attention, Helen looked around the room and then back to the Lounge's closed door.

"Did anyone see where Chikara went?"

The group shook their heads and looked stupidly up and down at one another.

"Maybe she went to the bathroom," Jim Rhodes said.

"Jim..." Helen rolled her eyes and walked off to go look for her. "You really are an idiot."