Selena grunted loudly as she slammed her axe into the thick vines covering the door to the school. A small bead of sweat dripped down the side of her face as the morning sun began to heat the air around her.
"Almost got it," She said, whacking the vines again.
"There!" She shouted cheerfully, as the vines split and uncovered the door.
"Come on, let's take a look around," She said, pushing the double doors open and calling Eden to follow. They followed closely illuminating their flashlight and gulping softly.
"What do you think is in here?" They asked, shining their light along the walls and reading classroom numbers.
"I don't know, but I assume military-based schools have to have some sort of non-perishables somewhere," She said, shrugging.
"That makes sense. I guess," They replied. The two of them scanned the artwork on the walls from the younger grades as their footsteps echoed through the vacant hallway. There were all sorts of colorful banners and flags scattered across the wall, most of them accompanied by essays and student pictures commending them for some sort of good work.
The classroom doors were also nicely decorated some with flowers and doodled suns others with poorly drawn animals. Eden stepped closer to one of the doors peeking into the classroom from an open window beside it. What they saw left them frozen.
"S...Selena?" They uttered.
"Yeah?" She replied, looking back at a distraught Eden standing frozen by the door. She walked over softly and approached the window cautiously.
"Everything okay?" She asked, placing her hand on Eden's shoulder.
"Look," They replied, pointing in the window. She peeked in slowly and curiously. In the room, close to thirty husked bodies sat at the small desks. All of them besides the teacher standing beside the chalkboard were small kids. They all had vines growing from their goo-covered orifices. Their eyes were replaced by thick green sprouts that wrapped around their heads while smaller vines bunched up and grew out of their mouths.
Selena watched in horror confused and nauseous.
"What the fuck, are those...Kids?" She asked horrified at the view in front of her.
"I think I'm going to be sick," Eden said, covering their mouth and turning away.
"Why weren't they on lockdown?" Selena asked, confused. She looked at the whiteboard to see if she could find any reason these people weren't prepared for the blast. "Addition and subtraction" was written neatly at the top of the board with a few simple equations below it.
"Jesus, I don't think they had any idea what was about to happen," She said, as her stomach curled loudly.
"How wouldn't the most secure school know about a pending attack?" Eden asked, calming the urge to vomit.
"They were learning math. Nobody is running or hiding. The teacher's expression is smiles and excitement. That isn't the face of a person who knows they're about to be cooked where they stand," She said, looking at the teacher's face.
"What the hell is going on here?" they asked, confused.
"Let's find the middle and high schoolers, maybe they were better prepared," Selena suggested pointing toward the stairwell.
"Why would they be prepared but not the kids," Eden asked.
"This may sound morbid, but teens have a higher chance of survival. Maybe they were just giving the kids a normal last day," She said, hoping she was wrong.
"That's awful,"
"Well, I never said I agreed with it, it's just a theory," She said, making her way to the stairwell. The stairwell door was ominous even with the sun shining in through the small windows near the ceiling. Vines slithered across it slowly leading down to the floor. Selena gripped her axe one more time firmly in both hands throwing it over her head and slashing downward. She cut through the thick vines in one swipe watching them fall to the floor. They oozed a green thick sludge before shriveling up and collapsing to the ground.
"In we go," She said, pushing the door open gently. The smell of the rubber-covered stairs brought a sense of nostalgia to her mind as she took her first step. She thought of the sea of kids sprinting and walking beside her as she climbed the never-ending stairs to her final class at the end of the day. She wondered what the kids here felt like when they looked out the window and saw the menacing blue beam of light spanning across town and making its way to cook them where they sat.
Did they feel it when they were consumed or was it instantaneous and painless? She wondered, hoping for the sake of all of them that it was the ladder. With each step, she took she hoped she wouldn't see a child face to face running down the stairs hoping to escape the impending doom that was about to take place. The smell of window cleaner and floor wax was loud the closer they got to the second floor. It smelled like it had just been cleaned even though it probably was cleaned the day of the attack.
Eden trailed behind Selena, who was lost in her mind with scenarios and questions. They, however, felt numb, no tears would swell in their eyes and no sinking feeling would gather the courage to drag the pit of their stomach through their lower intestine. They felt terrible knowing that the kids in this building along with countless others died and probably didn't know what was about to happen, but they couldn't force themself to feel anything other than numb.
All they could do was chalk it up to shock and adrenaline but even that didn't ease the feeling that they were a shitty person. As they both thought to themselves and were trapped in the feelings they felt individually time seemed to slow, the relatively small staircase felt like an eternity-long journey filled with emotional traps they kept stumbling into. Then suddenly the journey came to a halt as the door that led to the hallway that connected the middle and high school classrooms was now in front of them, staring them down menacingly as if they were prey being stalked by a beast lurking in the shadows.
"Here we are," Eden uttered softly.
"Seems that way," Selena said, placing her hand along the push bar and pressing it firmly. The door opened quietly and slowly as it ripped through the vines on the other side keeping it closed. On the other side, the scene was horrific and far worse than they had expected. Husked students froze in time as they were running for the door with teachers following behind them. All of them now sprouting vines from their faces and now their fingers. The worst sight was directly in front of them, just a few steps from the stairs.
A male teacher crouched down on the floor, his eyes sealed tight, and in his arms was the young boy he had attempted to shield from the blast. The boy's face seemed oddly at peace, his eyes were open staring at them as they walked in the door, and a slight smile on his face. Eden stumbled backward, the numb feeling was gone and replaced with an overwhelming feeling of sadness. Selena felt sick to her stomach staring at the sea of kids trying desperately to escape the inevitable.
"What the hell happened here?" Eden asked, through the tears flowing down their face.
"They d...didn't know," Selena replied, reaching down and pulling a note being held in the small child's hand.
Your mom is on her way. Were the only words written on the small yellow note?
"He was going home, he had no idea what was about to happen until it was too late," Selena said, dropping the note to the floor.
"The threat wasn't taken seriously until it was too late," She continued, angrily.
"They left us to die," She finished.