The B Gene

by Carlos Hardy

  “Nice to see you too.” Caleb says as he walks over. Bree withdraws from her fixation of snapping photos through the window.

  “Oh, sorry. This place has it all.” Bree offers a light hug before noticing Jaylen in the adjacent room, and her focus shifts. Her greeting is dull at best.

  “Jay,” she calls out to him. Jaylen rolls onto his side.

  “Hey,” he says faintly.

  “So, we excited or what?” Bree removes the camera from around her neck as Caleb nervously covers his chest with his arms.

  “Yeah, sure.”

  “My journalism classes start in a week. Look out Oprah, Bree has arrived.”

  “Can you two keep it down please? A brother is tired.” Jaylen yells from his room.

  “Oh please, laying on your ass is the most work you’ve done all year.” Bree replies.

  Caleb again tries to approach her. “So Bree, tell me—”

  “Let’s talk later,” she interrupts. “Too much to explore.” She grabs Caleb by the arm and jets out through the door, slamming it shut behind them.

  “What about me?” Jaylen yells out. After a long stretch, he rises from his bed and walks over to the window. Whatever storm Caleb was talking about has escalated. Thunder cracks the sky as raindrops begin to fall. Jaylen notices a student rushing across campus.

  “Sucker!” He shouts to no one in particular. “You should have stayed in your room.”

  He looks towards the large oak tree at the helm of the dorm, right outside the window. Jaylen tracks the student from the parking lot as he rushes towards the dorm, all while the rain begins to come down heavier. While the student makes a beeline for the grass, he runs behind the oak tree. Jaylen waits for him to emerge on the other side.

  Where did you go? He thinks, tapping his fingers on the window seal. He maintains an unblinking gaze on the tree. Dude, where did this douchebag go?

  Jaylen rushes downstairs through the halls, emerging outside and heading for the oak tree. He runs around it, looking at every which angle the kid could have run towards. There’s nothing but wide open space, and he isn’t in the tree. Jaylen turns in every direction. “That shit’s weird.”

  Chapter Three:

  Arrival

  A few hours after their arrival at the university, Bree continued to drag Caleb around. She brings him to the center of the student union, the ultimate on-campus spot. Most students chose to lounge about and watch early morning talk shows before class, others caught up on necessary reading before heading down the hallowed halls. The union building offers a small eatery, and the exterior is engraved in quotes from some of the greatest civil rights leaders.

  Bree kneels down while grabbing a shot of each famed building, her admiration visible on her expression. Caleb can’t help but think that it’s adorable as she points from building to building in sheer excitement. Students stop and stare at the eccentric girl as she photographs everything in sight. Caleb, in the meantime, feels the creeping sense of boredom take him over, and he’s ready to depart.

  “So, did you get your shots? I’m kind of hungry.” He prods

  Their afternoon is interrupted by massive dark gray clouds emerging from the heavens above, unlike any storm Caleb had ever seen before. Bree lifts her camera in an attempt to get a shot of the abnormality, but it stalls unexpectedly.

  “Why won’t it let me take pictures? This is state-of-the-art technology.” She whines.

  “Your settings are probably off,” Caleb offers, noticing her voice lift.

  “This is a brand new camera.”

  The wind quickly picks up as a flurry of dust rapidly floods the sky. Every student around them immediately began parading towards their dorms in frantic crowds. Bree tries to take another photo of the clouds, but to no avail.

  “Hand me your phone,” She requests, gesturing with an open hand. “I left mine in my bag.”

  Caleb reluctantly forks over his phone. She uses the camera to try and take a picture. Nothing happens.

  “That’s weird,” Bree says harshly. She quickly notices a caramel-colored girl rushing past her towards her dorm and stops her. “Hey, hey, do you have a phone?” The girl rushes past her.

  Caleb snatches his phone away. “What the hell?” He asks, flipping the phone over in his hands. “You broke my phone.”

  “No, something weird is going on.”

  A bolt of lightning crackles through the darkening sky. Heavy winds ramp up, causing them to sway uncontrollably. In an attempt to stabilize herself, Bree grabs onto Caleb’s waist and shields herself against the intrusive winds. Caleb tries his best to keep his footing, but his balance slips away. He stumbles and plunges to the ground, hearing Bree yell through the wind.

  “Are you okay?” She shouts over the howling, and does her best to help him back to his feet.

  The wind intensifies further as the ground starts to violently shake. Caleb reclaims his footing, and notices the colossal statue of Martin Luther King nearby. He grabs Bree by the hand and pulls her towards it. “Let’s go!” He shouts as they barrel towards the statue.

  “This had better be Jesus coming back!” Bree yells. Caleb notices a thin trail of blood seeping from her eardrums.

  “You’re bleeding!” Caleb shouts.

  “What?”

  “Your ears!”

  Bree dabs her ears. Noticing the blood, she frighteningly covers them up, and releases a horrifying screech. In the distance, from what she can see through the dust, several students lay lifelessly on the campus lawn, each covering their ears. Humming breaks through the howling of the wind, forcing them into the fetal position.

  “What is this? What’s going on?” Caleb tries his best to shield Bree from the onslaught of wind. The blaring hum intensifies, and she can’t help but peek out from the safety of the statue.

  A blare emits from somewhere beneath their feet. The bottom of the statue slowly severs, tearing from its foundation. Several nearby buildings violently shake from their foundations, but remain upright. As a historic military base, most buildings were built on the campus decades ago. These extraordinary edifices were reinforced to withstand harsh climate conditions. Smaller monuments fly through the wind, crashing to the ground and back into the air. The sky is pitch black, only lightning emanating from the shadows produce any light.

  Above them, a glowing green outline of a circle sits quietly above the university. Panic-stricken, Bree and Caleb stand in an open area, their demise inching closer. They glance around the scene: trauma everywhere, nothing but death and destruction. They hold onto one another with every morsel of strength they can muster, as a piercing voice breaks through the chaos.

  “Over here, over here!” The voice somehow reaches through the barrage of wind and crashing, reaching Caleb’s ear. He turns, spotting a white male in his sixties standing in the doorway of what was left of the union building. He uses the door as a shield from the wind, beckoning the two of them over.

  Caleb grips Bree’s hand tighter. “We’ve got to keep moving, come on!”

  “I can’t see!” She exclaims, covering her eyes with her forearm in an attempt to shield herself from the dust.

  “I’ll guide you!”

  They rally to reach the door. As Caleb grabs the door handle, the white male is viciously propelled towards the back of the room. Bree and Caleb use what’s left of their might to close the doors against the surge of wind, and their breathing finally settles.

  Terrified and shaken, they each back away from the door. Bree glances through the reinforced glass doors into the eye of destruction. She frantically shakes, her eyes glued to the devastation outside. She clutches one hand inside the other in an attempt to ease her shaking.

  Caleb rests his palm on the glass, his eyes searching for the source of it all. “What in the hell is happening?” His mouth gently quivers, his eyes slowly lifting towards the revolving dusky clouds dancing in the sky. His belief in what he’s seeing is lost f
or the moment.

  “You see that?” Bree quivers, inching closer towards the glass door. She hysterically folds her arms against her chest, trying to stay calm, but the ability eludes her. Large rocks begin rolling against the side of the building, shattering on impact. Every wall around them brutally shakes as several students in the hallways are being thrown from side to side. Caleb and Bree cautiously back away from the door.

  She glances up towards the dark cloud as the hum settles. The strange green glow starts to fade, as the floor beneath their feet begins to vibrate. Their bodies slowly thrust towards the double entry doors of the building, trying their best to break free. In this moment, it appears as if they’re in a struggle with fate, and losing.

  “Caleb, are you seeing what I’m seeing?” Bree asks, their faces pressed against the glass doors. Bree struggles to removes her camera from her neck, followed by another failed photograph attempt.

  Caleb turns towards the older man, shouting for help. It’s no use: the man is trapped underneath a table, helplessly watching as the doors burst open wide. Bree and Caleb are fixated on the gentle storm in front of them as a bright white light circles through the clouds. It’s beautiful and daunting all at once, as if it had consumed the previous gray clouds. The bodies of several students begin to float towards the open cloud, the outlining of their corpses illuminated with a white-green glow. They float slowly and peacefully into the unknown, disappearing without a trace.

  Chapter Four:

  The Student Union

  Three hours passed, doing little to calm their nerves as they thought about their fellow coeds disappearing in an instant at the might of the storm. They were barricaded inside the lobby beneath the student union cafeteria. Tables were flipped over, paintings shaken off the walls, and a trail of glass shards piled up near the double door entryway.

  One quick look around, and Caleb could see that there were about fifty students in total. Emergency candles dot the room, giving them just enough light. Students frantically attempt to call their loved ones on their cellphones, only to find that the storm has killed all outbound reception. Across the wall, a few tech-savvy students attempt to get a cracked flat screen television to work, but to no avail. For the past hour, several students tried removing a few gigantic cooper letters from the threshold of the staircase leading to the cafeteria. The severe vibrations from the storm forced the hefty LU letters from the wall.

  In the corner of the room, a group of Islamic students audibly pray. While they do their best to keep it quiet, their soft chants aggravate a few of the nearby Christian students.

  “Will you shut up already?” One of them barked. The group of Islamic students don’t abide. Instead, they chant louder,

  By the front of the room, Caleb relentlessly paces across the floor. He nervously bites his fingernails, chewing them down to the nubs for the better part of an hour. His gaze darts around the room frantically, to the door, to the windows boarded with planks of spare wood. Thin shards of light trickle in, adding to his anxiety. He could hear the cyclone raging outside.

  Caleb wipes away beads of sweat pooling on his forehead. This day, one that should have been among his proudest, has been morphed into something far worse. Attempting to hide his chattering nerves, he sits on the floor, tearing a sliver of the nearby curtain. He removes his shoe, and begins methodically cleaning every spec of dirt from it that he can find.

  Bree stands on the other side of the room, her camera in hand as always, snapping photographs of the chaotic scene unfurling around her. Some of the students in the back of the room frown aggressively, and she’s unfortunately wasted a perfectly good shot by including their bleak expressions.

  Professor Green rests uncomfortably on the floor, shirtless and scuffed, a bandage wrapped around his abdomen. Rescuing Caleb and Bree from the clutches of the cyclone didn’t come without a price. He sits quietly, letting silence flood his mind, breathing heavily just to stay alive.

  Bree approaches him, lowering her camera. She could only imagine that he wouldn’t want a photograph to remind him of when he was at his lowest. Professor Green removes his bulky glasses, disheveling his gray mane.

  “I knew this day would come,” he mutters under his breath.

  Bree inches closer towards him. She kneels down to listen more closely.

  “What are you talking about?” She asks softly.

  Professor Green adjusts himself, attempting to find some sort of comfortable position to angle his body. Sharp pain shoots through his body as he shifts onto his side.

  “The government. They knew all along,” he offers.

  “I’m not sure I understand,” Bree sighs.

  “I believe that you do.” Professor Green lifts himself up, his teeth clenching from the utter pain writhing through him. “You saw it with your own eyes.”

  Bree tries, but the words won’t come. She’s speechless, her eyes darting around the room to make sense of her memories. They were the same words her uncle once spoke, words of one of his famous end-of-the-world speeches.

  Professor Green limps his way over towards the boarded windows, his weak movements garnering attention from the students.

  “What did I see, Professor?” Bree asks, uncertain if her words were even loud enough for him to comprehend.

  “They’re here,” he says, his fingers tapping on the rotting wooden plank. “And they aren’t leaving without a fight.”

  Caleb’s nervous eyes lock onto Bree, standing by the door with a shocked expression on her face. “How long have they been here?” She asks. Bree hits the record button on her camera. She taps on the camera’s mic hoping that it is working properly. Surprisingly, it begins recording. Everyone begins to stare. “Who are they? What are they?”

  Professor Green rakes his short gray locks from his face, attempting to lean against the wall with some sense of dignity.

  “What did you see?” He asks, and Bree comes unhinged.

  She slowly backs up, her mind drifting to a few hours ago. The professor’s delicate tone calms her, and she begins to let it all out.

  “They were floating,” she said. Professor Green moves closer towards her.

  “Who?” He asks.

  “The students,” she says, causing Professor Green to turn away.

  “How are we getting out of here?” Caleb interjects. Green attempts to comfort his back again, losing his balance and sliding to the floor.

  “I’m fine,” he insists as Bree tries to help him up. “I’m okay.”

  “What’s his problem?” Caleb whispers into Bree’s ear.

  “That’s what I’m going to find out.”

  Moments later, the students are hoping to rely on Tony Fields, the football captain. Tony is about six-foot-three with bulging muscles. He attempts to remove the copper letters from the stairwell, using all of his strength as a few students come by to help.

  They’re able to remove the letters and dash up the stairs, only to find that the doors leading to the cafeteria are locked from the inside. As the students release a sigh of defeat, sitting on the floor nearby, the doors explode open.

  “I thought you guys would never get here,” Jaylen exclaims, a fork and knife in his hands. “There’s plenty of food for everybody. Just don’t touch the turkey meatloaf. It’s poison.”

  Everyone quickly rushes up the stairwell and inside as Jaylen yells down the staircase. “Cal, up here bro,” his voice echoes as Bree and Caleb make their way to him.

  “How did you get in here?” Caleb asks.

  “I got hungry, so here I am. Facts.”

  Jaylen points up to the cracked skylight, showcasing a swirling vortex of gray and darkened clouds. That gentle humming sound remains steady.

  “Yo, this storm is bananas,” Jaylen exclaims. “I mean, what a day to gain your independence.”

  “I don’t think it’s a storm,” Bree calmly interjects.

  “Wind, dust, water: classifies as a storm to
me.”

  Caleb grabs Jaylen by the arm and pulls him over to the side. His voice lowers as he shields himself from the view of the other students.

  “We saw something,” he explains.

  “Who or what did you see?” Jaylen states rather loudly, oblivious to the gesture of keeping things under wraps. Bree grabs his other arm as the two usher him into a nearby room.

  “Could you keep it down?” Bree whispers. “Do you want to cause mass hysteria?”

  Jaylen throws his arms to the sky, sporting a sarcastic grin. “I don’t know any of these people. Who cares?”

  Caleb turns the flashlight function of his phone on, and closes the doors. They move to the center of the room, hovering over the thin angle of light. Caleb struggles with the truth, understanding the absurdity in it all.

  “How do we put this…” He begins.

  “Are ya’ll really going to drag this out? Shenanigans I tell ya.”

  “Jay, chill. They were floating.” Caleb says rather grimly.

  “Who was floating? Why? Where?”

  Bree’s tone gets sharp; she can’t take much more of this. “We saw university students magically, mysteriously - whatever you want to call it - ascending in the clouds.”

  Jaylen takes a step back, his eyes darting from Bree, then to Caleb. “Cal, this isn’t funny,” he says, his voice finally calm. “She’s in on this, huh?” He points towards Bree. “Always trying to get that attention, right Bree?”

  “Look you immature short-ass cretin, I have no reason to lie.” Bree says. The moment intensifies. This isn’t the first time Caleb has had to step in between two friends.

  “Who are you calling short?”

  “You!”

  “Guys, chill. We have bigger problems, and they’re not going away.”

  Jaylen is nose-to-nose with Bree. “Apologize,” he mutters, but Bree clutches her hip with her palm.

  “I will not,” she exclaims definitely. She rolls her eyes towards the ceiling. Her rage pours into her unforgiving words.