Dead Quarantine by A. Rosaria Page B

like
the tough men they were when they left to find out what was going
on. They looked liked the scared kids they were. She was sure that
Jake now felt sorry for not listening to her.
    Her heart still raced and the weight of what
had happened hadn’t really registered yet. She felt as if she were
to grab on to it, panic would surge. Sam had been killed. They
could be next; they almost were. She forced her thoughts away.
Something had to be done to prevent this from happening again.
    “We have to go and tell someone what
happened here,” she said.
    “You go back and tell everybody,” Jake said.
He had regained some color. “I don't care; I'm going back to our
classroom. I'm done with this.”
    “George, are you coming?” George didn't
respond. “George!”
    “Leave him be. Can't you see he's in shock?”
she said.
    “You want to be like this?” He paused,
waiting for an answer he didn't get. “So be it, go fuck yourself,
bitch.”
    The words stung, but not as much as they
would were she not numb because of what had just happened. His
anger seemed insignificant.
    Jake walked away, not looking back.
    George sighed. “I should have never followed
him out, never should have, maybe Sam would have stayed with me.”
He looked at her with teary eyes. “Sam is dead. He killed him just
like that. Just shot him dead.”
    She grabbed his hand and pulled him up.
“Come, we need to move before that soldier comes back and finishes
the job.”
    “Thank you, Sarah. You saved us; never
expected that from you.”
    Never expected that from her? Did they
really think she didn't care about others?
    “Just follow me.”
    The first few classrooms were empty. The
first they found occupied was with a single girl sitting in a
corner, huddled in a ball, crying. She was shaking all over and
looking around wildly. She answered their questions with sobs.
Sarah asked George if he could take her to their classroom and
spared the girl the details of what had happened. She must have
heard the shots and that seemed to have stricken her; no need to
add to that by telling her that Sam had been killed.
    George was glad to comply, obviously
uncomfortable with the idea of speaking to a crowd. He greedily
accepted helping take the girl away and didn't offer to come back.
She was left to do this alone. Whatever was happening today was
beyond normal. People had to know, to prepare for whatever was
coming, and not try to leave and get shot. After a few more empty
rooms, she came upon one with five sophomores, all boys. They
listened to her story but didn't believe her. They insisted on
going to look. She barely convinced them not to, and they rejected
coming with her to her classroom.
    Something similar happened with the next
group of eight kids, though they believed her. They thought it
better to stay together in their class instead of joining people
they didn't know. It amazed her how stupid people could be or how
they took a serious situation so lightly. Maybe it was because they
had not seen a classmate's brain blown to pieces. It was something
unreal, difficult to grasp. She had trouble coping with it. The
only way she knew how was to dull herself against it, making it
something distant. She gulped down the fear that had accumulated at
her throat. She could not afford to be led by it.
    There were two rooms left. She couldn't get
to every classroom in school. Downstairs there were more and the
other wing past the principal’s office had a few classrooms, but
she couldn't get to them without being shot at. For all she knew,
the downstairs was crawling with trigger-happy,
testosterone-overdosed soldiers. The two teens still sat in the
room. The wooly haired one asked again what she was doing outside
without permission. They seemed more sensible than the others and
agreed to come over to the other classroom.
    Sarah entered the classroom next to hers.
Two seniors sat in a corner, kissing. She knew them. Melanie and
Victor, or Mel and Vic as they liked