[Editors note: This entire post was written by Dirq, but he's been taken off of our possible authors so this is under my name. Other than what is written in here and a slight formatting change, this is all Dirq.]
Aaaaaand we’re back, with another thrill-packed installment of “The Last Bell.” This is where the bowel movements really start to hit the air circulator. I should warn those of you with kids in the room to send them down to their cement basement holding cells, because from here on out it’s non-stop blood, guts, and character development.
Keep in mind that this was written back in High School. Reading over it, I’ve already winced several times (for instance, when I use a variation of the word “happen” 6 times in the first 2 paragraphs), but I’ve decided not to change anything so that you can enjoy this tale in all its unspoiled, virgin splendor.
Kate leaned heavily against a wall as a shudder ran down her spine. “We come be some of the last people alive on Earth.” That statement seemed to make an empty pit appear in her stomach. It had happened – everyone’s worst fears had happened. A nuclear war, the entire world destroyed, everyone dead. It was incredible, but it had happened.
She had known it, too. She had had that horrible feeling all day long that something was going to happen. And now it had. Kate took a deep, shaky breath and looked around at the other students. They were sitting, or standing, or lying down, all thinking about what had just happened. Mrs. Italiano stood in the middle of them, looking out the window at what had once been Souderton. Her face was blank – impossible for Kate to tell what was happening.
The silence and the stillness went on for minutes. No one spoke. No one moved. After a while Kate couldn’t stand it. It was as if they were dead! She wished that someone would make a noise or turn their head, but no one did. She felt a sudden panic. They wouldn’t survive if they sat around like this. They had to do something!
“So what do we do?” Kate asked, her voice sounding unnaturally loud in the silence of the hallway. All heads turned toward her, except for Mrs. Italiano’s. She was still staring out the window.
“Mrs. Italiano?” Kate said softly.
The teacher turned suddenly, as if she had just been awakened from a deep sleep. She stared at Kate for a few moments, blinked. Kate felt a sudden feeling of worry enter her brain.
“We go back to our classroom,” Mrs. Italiano said. “We should talk… we should discuss.”
The worry retreated in Kate’s mind, but did not disappear. Slowly the class gathered together and started back in the direction of their classroom. Kate watched the faces of her classmates – some were shocked, some were close to tears, some were simply staring down at the ground. She looked at Steve Obeng, who was next to her, and saw that he was staring at something in his hands. Kate craned her neck to see.
It was a picture of Bill Cosby.
The class filed into the classroom and took their seats. Mrs. Italiano took her usual position at the head of the class. Kate looked to her left, to where the windows had once looked out over the football field. Now they were blackened, opaque. It was impossible to see anything.
“Let’s take roll, make sure everyone’s here,” the teacher said. She went slowly up and down each row, checking off names. It seemed as if the whole class was there, and then she paused. Kate, watching her closely, thought – something is wrong.
“Where are Rob and Jess?” Mrs. Italiano asked.
“I saw them in the hallway,” Liz Craig spoke up. “They started back to class with us.”
Everyone looked around, as if Rob and Jesse were hiding somewhere just out of view. Despite their best efforts, the students could not find their missing classmates.
“What should we do?” Steve Beneke asked. His voice still sounded abnormally high from the blow Jill had dealt to his gonads. “Go look for them?”
Kate volunteered to go and look. So did Dan, Dirk, and Kim. With wishes of good luck, they started out. Now that they were actually moving about with a purpose, Kate felt better. She had a direction now, something to take her mind of what had just happened. Not that any of them could completely forget.
They walked into the Knuckle and looked around. No one was there. Kate strained her eyes to listen, but there was nothing to hear.
“Where could they have gone?” Dirk asked softly.
“Maybe they went to look for other people,” Dan suggested.
Kate shook her head. “There are no other people. If there were, they would have been looking for[ us ]italby now.” She was about to suggest splitting up into teams when a terrible scream rang out. It was a high-pitched, terrified screech that echoed through the halls of the empty building and grated on the ears of the four students. Kate, Dirk and Dan clapped their hands over their ears. Kim bounced up and down, pointing toward a particular hallway.
“It came from there! It came from there!” she cried excitedly. Sometimes, Kate thought, she seriously worried about Kim Nguyen.
They hurried in the direction that Kim had indicated. Kate wondered what could be happening. The scream continued, cutting into Kate’s brain. She wished that it would stop, but it just kept going and going like the Energizer Rabbit.
“Down here!” Kim exclaimed, and they rushed into the third floor B Wing.
Kate skidded to a halt, and the others did likewise behind her. For a moment she felt she would be sick and she had to turn away. Then she mastered herself and turned to look down the hallway once again.
Jess was kneeling on the floor in the middle of the hallway. Around her was a pool of blood. Blood was splattered on the walls and the ceiling. There was blood all over her clothing.
Kate took a step forward. Jess was cradling something in her arms which she was rocking back and forth as she sobbed softly. When Kate saw what it was, she thought she would be sick all over again. Jess was cradling Rob’s head in her arms.
Where the rest of his body had gone, Kate couldn’t say.
“What’s wrong?” Dan asked. He stepped forward, was what was wrong, and said, “Oh,” very softly. Dirk bit his lip and said nothing. Kim was silent, but she was hopping up and down on her heels like a nervous kangaroo.
Kate reached down and touched Jess’s shoulder. Jesse went on sobbing and cradling the head in her arms. Kate saw that Rob’s face was twisted in horror and agony. She quickly looked away and said to Jess, “We have to go back to the classroom.”
Jess didn’t seem to hear her.
“We have to get back,” Kate said again, more urgently. “We have to.”
Jess didn’t hear. She slid away from Kate’s hand, into the pooled blood on the floor.
Dirk stepped forward and whispered to Kate, “Looks like she’s lost it. What happened to Rob?”
“Mountain lion?” Dan suggested. The others looked at him quizzically. “What?” Dan demanded. “Don’t you watch the news? It’s happened before.”
Kate shook her head. So one of them was already dead… and how he had died they didn’t know. The only person that could tell them now was Jess, Kate realized. And she wasn’t talking to anyone.
“Jess…” Kate began, but then saw it was useless to try. Jess was trying to fix Rob’s hair and wipe some of the spattered blood out of it. “Let’s go,” Kate said to the others. Slowly they turned and walked out of the hallway. Kate couldn’t believe it. What had happened? It was horrible… to be one of the last people on Earth, to have survived a nuclear blast, and to die so horribly.
It wasn’t the end Kate would wish for.
They walked back through the Knuckle, heading for the classroom. They wondered how they were going to tell the rest of the class what had happened.
“I’ve never seen a dead body before,” Kim said, making it sound like seeing a dead body was a desirable thing.
“Actually, all you saw was a dead head,” Dirk corrected. “There was no body. So you still haven’t seen one.”
“Dirk, that’s horrible!” Kate exclaimed, stopping and turning around. “How can you say that?”
Dirk stared at Kate as if he didn’t know what she was talking about. “How can I say what?”
Kate shook her head. “Never mind. I just don’t see how you can be so… casual about someone who just died!”
“I’m not being casual,” Dirk protested. “I’m just trying to lighten the mood.”
Kate didn’t answer. Things were just too horrible at the moment to comprehend. She had to be alone someplace, she had to think. But she couldn’t be alone, not if the thing that had killed Rob was still in the school. A horrible fear hit her – what would happen to Jess? She was all alone up there. Maybe they should go back…
But if something could tear a human head off a human body in a few seconds, there wasn’t much four students could do about it. They would have to tell the class what had happened and think on it. But Kate still worried about Jess.
None of them ever saw Jess again.
It was later in the day. They had told the class about what had happened, but there was not a strong reaction. Everyone was still too in shock from the destruction of their world to worry about the death of one of their own… yet. Mrs. Italiano had told everyone to remain calm and sit quietly – she would think of what to do next. But Kate, watching the teacher, wasn’t filled with confidence. Mrs. Italiano was sitting on a desk at the front of the room, muttering to herself and occasionally thumping a fist into her thigh.
Kate was starting to think that everyone had gone a little crazy.
Have I gone crazy? Kate thought to herself. How would I know? She didn’t feel crazy, but then again insane people probably didn’t realize that they were insane. Kate hung her head and closed her eyes. She wanted to sleep, wanted more than anything in the world to drift away and rest. But sleep wouldn’t come. She kept thinking…
What if I go insane? What if I’m crazy?
Softly, so that no one would hear, Kate Rutt began to cry.
Pete
Clint
mshanker
