“You sure there ain’t anything or anyone in the building?” Ken warned, looking on suspiciously with his sweat dripping from his head. We walked and ran for miles before finding this school, a possible safe place now decrepit and dreadful against a familiar backdrop. Walls still standing up and strong, roof from the front looks fine although yet to be examined. It’s the school that we pass always, on the way home from the Jupiter mall in Mom’s car and on our bikes. Signboard missing, but sure about the Maple International School with the fancy courts that Mom would say on repeat, school for the rich children and their mollycoddling maids. Our 23rd day alive since Bermuda happened, vile giant creatures had arrived and took the towns, animals, families, my parents.. everything sped by fast and gone. We don’t know the nature of these lifeforms, their actual names or where they came from, at least the both of us. All the TVs and radios had wires fried when the circle moon broke into a triangle, its center still moon-like but different and diabolical this time. The neighbour who died saving us a meal and a shelter on our 10th day, only said it was the Bermuda calling out monsters. There must be an explanation somehow on Bermuda. What martian sick shit Bermuda could tear us all apart?
Ken and I saw them black wispy figures with smoky dark hands taking away Mom and Dad when we ran for cover and our fearless and protective parents had thrown us into the sewers, so we were able to make it out. How they died flabbergasted, not gonna say further, or think about it anymore, or overthink and weep silly again. Ken in denial blamed Christ, cried 2 weeks in and still had more grief to settle for grievance. Seeing as I was older, I had to be collected, firm and decisive to act on behalf of us. There’s no way we could ever mend the loss. Taking care of my messy brother after all that we’ve been through is the code I live for now. I’ve kicked his bullies and jailed their gangs before, but this IS the ultimate. Surviving the future ahead without adults, little food, sleeping in turns, the stench, clueless. We didn’t have enough on us on several occasions so both of us passed out walking and hiding and then woke up walking again, a long shot away from home.
“We have to enter, to get food. There might be showers working too.” I told Ken while pushing away barricades blocking the institution’s front porch, some broken and some not, but all the same stained in blood. “We could go in, might be a fortress.” The school’s perimeter fences had a part of it toppled over for us to sneak in so we just needed to push through the main entry where the lock broke but wouldn’t open.
Something was holding those double doors fast behind, so we took a severed section of a barricade and pushed against it. The attempt failed and the door wouldn’t budge. “Go harder and faster, it might work.” Ken murmured, hurrying to grab another long, heavy clunk of steel. Nodding, I held up both hands on the other end to support it at the back. “OK, let’s push it a few times, it might give”. For two kids not even 18 years of age I admit, we were clumsy teens, uncoordinated and cared far less. After the 5th try, our clonk worked a wonder and one door collapsed behind its entrance, the other still standing but splintered. We backed away, puffs of dust and dirt hazing at a distance till we could see the opening at the doorway, clear to get in. Funny, we dashed in like kids. It was a decent sized building, larger than the houses we found earlier, and it had many rooms. Classrooms.
“Hey, should we seal the entry?” I called out to Ken. “Oh yeah, good idea.” Then he took the hammer and some nails we had in our bag (we were lucky to have found them in the home we sought refuge before we got here days ago, packed them in our large backpacks meant for backpacking). Ken rummaged a tiny pouch for the nails, pulled the hammer out, taking out pieces of broken wood he found and lifted them to board it up nicely.
I ran fast to the canteen, Ken ploddingly trailed behind. Pulling the knob and going in, my consciousness sank. I stood wobbly, shaken by damages I couldn’t believe. Dining tables were wrecked, lights fell onto severed floor tiles with pieces of glass shattered all over the left of its side entrance. The ceiling seemed to be ripped at its edges apart, leaving daylight casted over the floors below. I swung open the kitchen doors and the refrigerator was lying horizontal over broken tiles and a pile of debris. “Supplies” was written on one inner door I found. Going through it had bags of flour on a metal shelf. One bag had spilled out its contents over the floor with dirt and slime.
“Don’t touch that opened one”. My brother cautioned to me. “Contaminated yes?” I dragged the spilled flour bag over to one corner. Then I found something else there. At first, I didn’t think it was what it was, when I saw a torn box that had a sticker flipped upside down with handwritten random numbers on it. Didn’t seem like it had anything within. Still, any box could mean stuff we could use, so why not? I flung the box wide open and saw another smaller box in it. That was a box containing 12 smaller packs of Chocolate biscuits, 3 in a pack. 12! Expires a year later, which must be new. Now this was more practical than flour, we might not have water and salt to make bread or an edible. It should taste averagely good and weigh us down on the road.
I gestured over to Ken and pointed to the biscuit box. “Take these, not the flour. We don’t need extra baggage.” As though Ken could read my mind and knew what I was talking about, he rushed over to peek into the box. Right away, he slipped out a lopsided IKEA bag from his backpack and gathered the biscuits for us. I went ahead and pulled open the refrigerator door but it had nothing in it. We sighed together when our eyes met, empty and disheartened. There wasn’t anything else handy we could find there, after all the food cabinets and storage shelves have been checked. Ken popped into a classroom and got out, shaking his head. He did that for the classroom next door too.
Most of the stuff we saw and went through stunk pretty bad, mixed together with our terrible body odour craving to be treated. Not wanting to waste further time, we made our way to the toilets at the hallway and found ourselves a shower stall that still had some clean water coming through, though no heating. The flow of water stopped almost as soon as we had finished washing up, Ken fully dressed while tying his shoelaces. An immediate thump followed, quaking the floors and there was a loud crash coming from the hallway.
“OMG quuick! Get dressed!! Something’s coming!” Ken cried out, grabbing all our things. Loud, accelerated thuds from what seem like colossal footsteps sent shockwaves through the air and our actions hastened with the approach. My head was spinning. Putting on my pants, and reaching for the shirt, a blast came through, ripping walls and toilet bowls and the impact flew us to the back of the room. We huddled against each other, bracing silent and petrified. Tears were flooding away our senses and our bodies were at this moment pinned down by nerves. The black wispy ones appeared, this time raging and bigger than we saw, a monstrous arachnid organism scuttling its limps, rapid prods striking massive holes into the grounds of the toilet, smaller holes around caving in. We clung to the remaining walls, rolling about opposite directions to get away but it was lurching at us. The hairy legs compress a beckoning of dark lingering wisps, separating itself from parent to child, sandy string curling into and wrapping taut around our necks. The choke was impetuous and intense. All struggling and screaming had dissolved into a mute, my windpipe about to explode, body turning blue. I knew I was dying, my brother too.
I love you Ken.. An illuminating bright flash, keen to a sun ray exposure blurred my vision and, a second shot back to reality brought it closer to a sight like it was calling out to me. There I saw the pounding heart of the Bermuda beast.
To be continued.
- Vander