Genesis (7 page)

It took a moment for Ken to figure out what had changed.  Longer than it should have, in fact.  The darkness had become an audible force, a seething surf that pounded against his ears and deafened him to everything else.  So he very nearly missed what was happening.

And what was happening was
silence
.

Or no, not silence.  There were still screams and cries and whimpers.  Sounds of pain and misery.

But the howling, growling cries of predatory rage were gone.  Like the kids and teachers who had been afflicted by the hideous transformation had simply disappeared.

Was that possible?  Ken tried to reach through a dark-sodden memory, tried to pinpoint the moment when the snarling sounds had ceased.  Was it gradual?  Sudden?  Did it sound like they’d run out of the building?

He couldn’t be sure.  Couldn’t remember.

Memory was a funny thing.  It could make you remember your first kiss with fondness, even though it was a travesty of bumped noses.  It could make you remember your baby’s birth with love, even though it resembled a charnel house.  And now, when Ken needed his memory to function with sharpness and clarity, it was apparently playing hard to get.

Not cool
.

He debated only a moment about what to do next.  Because in that moment, even the cries and whimpers disappeared.  He had no idea what that could mean – surely the
wounded
couldn’t have run out of the place, could they? –
but
knew it was probably bad.  If for no other reason than because anything good happening at this point seemed highly unlikely.

He couldn’t stay here.  Couldn’t remain in the comforting cocoon of darkness.

Ken didn’t let himself think about his decision.  Just reached below his face and felt for the edges of the nearest tile.  He intended to pull the edges up a few centimeters, enough to peek around and get an idea what was happening without being spotted.

Adrenaline betrayed him.  His jittery fingers ripped the corners of the tile upward so hard he banged himself in the face with the tight square of recycled mineral fibers.  He tasted salt and copper in his mouth.  Almost grinned at the irony of giving
himself
a bloody lip in the middle of a city-wide apocalyptic event.

But didn’t.  Because he looked down.

Faces.  Lots of them.

Ken almost screamed, but managed to bite back the sound.

Kids, teachers.

Standing, sitting, some splayed out full-length in pools of blood.  Others sat on top of what looked to be their own internal organs, as though they were playing the world’s strangest game of King of the Hill.

As Ken watched, several of those with the worst wounds closed their eyes and slumped.  Their chests stopped moving.  They were dead.  They
must
be dead.

The rest, though….

They were staring straight at him.

A moment later – an eternally long moment in which he was certain he had at least three separate heart attacks – Ken realized that they weren’t staring at
him
.  They were just staring
up
.  Staring at the ceiling.  And he just happened to be
in
the ceiling.

Their eyes were rolled back, the way Matt Anders’ eyes had been right before he went
bugnuts
crazy and attacked Ken.  Only the whites showed, not even the tiniest traces of iris visible.

Their mouths were open wide, like they were straining to catch invisible rain.

They were all panting, and Ken realized that they were breathing in sync.

In-out-in-out-in-out-

(Two students slumped, blood loss too great to live….)

-
in-
out-in-out-in-out….

For some reason, the synchronized respiration made Ken feel like this was a nightmare.  People going crazy
en masse
was one thing.  That could actually happen, right?  Mass hypnosis, too much MSG, everyone holding their cell phones too close to their heads while Googling porn on the internet… there could be an explanation.

But
breathing in harmony
?

Then he remembered the way Matt’s eyes had snapped back into place.  How the boy had gone from normal to killing rage in the space of seconds.

Don’t do this, Ken.

There’s no other way.

There’s gotta be
something
.

But there wasn’t any other way.  He could stay up in the ceiling and die like a rat, cowering and waiting for larger predators to hunt him down, or take his chances now.

He dropped down to the hallway.

Into the midst of the quiet monsters.

Quiet.  But for how long?

When Ken dropped down, he found himself between a girl who looked remarkably unscathed, and one of the school’s security guards – only distinguishable by his yellow jacket with “SECURITY” written across it in bold black letters.  The guard’s face was mostly gone, nothing but a single unmarred eye in the midst of raw red meat that looked like it was already suppurating.  The man’s cheekbones poked through the mangled tissue of his face.  The air he breathed whistled in and out not only through his nostrils but also through flapping holes in what was left of his cheeks, through broken bones that allowed free access to his sinus cavities.

Ken didn’t move for a moment, frozen not by the awesome damage that had been done to the man, but rather by the single unharmed eye.  It seemed almost profane, to have a part of him so perfect in the midst of such destruction.

He suddenly remembered a scripture from his childhood:
If thine eye offend thee, pluck it out and cast it from thee.

Then he realized that shock was sinking in again.  That his brain was making connections that weren’t necessary, that weren’t even
there
.

Move.

Move.

MOVE
.

He turned.  Took a step.

And knocked into another student.

He knew this one.  It was a freshman he had in one of his classes, a kid named Ethan Miller.  A good kid.  He looked like he’d been bitten, staring up with white eyes at the nothing above him.

Ethan snapped at Ken, teeth clicking together a few inches in front of Ken’s nose.  Ken had to swallow a scream, and was sure he was going to die; sure that everyone must be coming out of whatever creepy trance/fugue had bought him this little time.

But no.  The kid went back to his upward stare, mouth open and panting, and Ken realized that the boy probably hadn’t been trying to actually bite his teacher.  At least, not purposefully.  It looked like this was more of an instinctive reaction, an animalistic response to unwelcome stimulus.

So don’t touch anyone
.

He looked down the hall.  Fifty feet to the nearest stairwell.  Then down two flights of stairs and at least another hundred feet before he got to an exit of any kind.

And there were kids and staff
everywhere
.  All of them face up, panting, mouths open.  Some wounded, some whole.  All ready to pounce and bite if he touched them, and God only knew when they could return to their rampages.

Maybe they won’t.  Maybe they’ll just fall down.  Go unconscious.  Die.

But he knew that was wishful thinking.

And he knew that Maggie and the kids weren’t going to get any closer to him if he stayed here and waited for the things around him to start moving again.

He took a breath, and started his slow movement through the hall.

Once, when Ken was a teenager, he played a game of
Jenga
at a party.  The first person who lost – a girl who had had a bit too much to drink – removed her t-shirt.  Strip
Jenga
was born.

The rest of the kids in the circle thought it was a great idea.  Particularly since the inebriated girl seemed hell-bent on getting naked.

Ken, however, hated it.  Hated the idea of a game that was supposed to be just plain-
ol
’ fun turning into something where he might end up baring himself in front of peers.  Any titillation he might have felt at the idea of ogling partially naked girls nearby was completely lost in the embarrassment he was already feeling, both for the wasted girl beside him and for his future self.

Now, pulling himself through spaces far too small for his frame, he found himself desperately wishing for those days.  Strip
Jenga
was eminently preferable to Death Pick-Up
Stix
.

Every time he got too close to one of them, the student- or teacher-thing he was near would snuffle.  Its breathing would momentarily fall out of lockstep with the unified panting of everyone else in the hall.  Its mouth would close, its teeth would grind.  Ken would freeze, unsure whether it was better to remain motionless or inch slowly away.

As soon as the person – or the thing that
used
to be a person – looked back to the ceiling, he would keep on going.  Inch by painful inch.  Trying not to smell the coppery scent of blood, the musky odor of urine and feces that seemed to be everywhere; that pounded at his nose and made him want to vomit again.

He slipped.  His hands went out, heading straight for a girl who stood ramrod still in the middle of the hall.  For a moment he had the crazy thought that if he fell on her, if an adult
male
teacher fell hands-first against a barely post-pubescent girl the way he was going to, a lawsuit was a certainty.  Then reality asserted itself.  Lawsuits weren’t an issue.  His survival was at stake.

He had the barest instant to force his body to one side.  His back twisted unnaturally, and he felt something twinge in his spine.  Pain ran up and down the length of his left leg.

He wanted to scream.  Instead he just grunted, and even that sound was mostly swallowed.

He didn’t understand anything that was happening.  Didn’t know what would make the things around him go crazy again.  Sound?  Smell?  Psychic emanations?

He just didn’t know.

He didn’t know
anything
.  Other than that he had to get to his family.

He half-slumped against another bank of lockers.  Tried to convince himself that the sticky wetness he felt against his hands and cheeks where they pressed into the metal were nothing more than wet paint.

He focused on the pain in his leg.  He had hurt himself lunging out of the way of the student.  Whether it was a bad injury, something that would fatally slow him down or not, he couldn’t say.  All he knew was that his left leg throbbed, then alternately sent spike-shocks of pain rippling from his pinky toe up to his hip.

He pushed himself away from the lockers.  He knew he had to keep moving.  Knew that if he let himself stop to “rest,” there was every likelihood he wouldn’t be able to start moving again.

He took stock of his position.  Still in the midst of a frozen explosion of mayhem, still surrounded by people he had once known but whose humanity had mysteriously disappeared.

He was ten feet from the stairs.  More importantly, maybe twenty kids and two adults clustered between him and the top of the steps.

Snap
.

Like they were all part of some twisted remote system, every single mouth of every single person slammed shut.  Their teeth clicked together audibly, and Ken didn’t think he’d ever heard anything so terrifying.  Not even the sounds of the wounded, the dying, the
transforming
students and faculty competed with that single massive crack of thousands of teeth coming together in a single instant.

And one by one, the things started dropping their chins, looking down from whatever invisible sight had held them fast.  Their eyes swung back into view.

They shook their heads as though confused.

Ken ran.