by David Rogers
“Ma’am, ma’am.” he was saying loudly as she neared him. “Ma’am, you need to get back in your car and move it.”
“My children are in these schools.” Jessica said urgently. “All three of my children. What’s happening.”
“Ma’am, move your car.” the officer said, looking rather frazzled around the edges.
Jessica clutched at his arm. “What’s happening at the schools?”
“I don’t know, but you can’t leave the car in the street like that.” the officer repeated.
“Tow it then.” Jessica said, leaving him and breaking into a run. She ignored the shout he raised behind her as she sprinted past the cruiser with its rotating blue lights, toward the swirl of red lights she could see up ahead. As she ran, she saw two fire trucks parked haphazardly across the street, their lights on. When she drew near enough to see the elementary school, she saw the parking lot jammed with more ambulances than she bothered to count, along with two county EMS trucks and a third fire truck.
There were so many rotating red lights that even the noontime Georgia sunlight wasn’t enough to wash out them out. They gave the scene a somewhat surreal glow, their flash and flicker illuminating the crowd’s faces in brief strobes of color. The crowd, almost entirely children, milled about uncertainly, marred by more than little crying and yelling and sobbing. Those adults she saw looked either confused or concerned, even the rescue personnel.
Jessica ran into the parking lot and slowed to a rapid walk, scanning around at the faces she saw, looking for anyone familiar. She saw a mass of rescue personnel at the front doors of the school, though they appeared to be struggling with people as if trying to restrain them. After a moment she saw the people they were fighting with were children, some of them kindergartners and first graders by their size. Jessica stopped in shock, watching as the children were actually pushing the adults back.
“That shouldn’t be possible.” a small corner of her mind whispered to her. Then she saw some of the children were biting, even chewing, on the adults trying to restrain them.
She watched in horror as one little girl who couldn’t be more than seven bit down on the forearm of a tall fireman and took a chunk of flesh out with her teeth. She swallowed her mouthful without blinking as he yelled and snatched his arm away from her, then stepped forward after him with blood dripping down her chin.
Jessica tore her eyes away from that horror and looked around again, then behind her as she heard a pair of fresh sirens. Two police cruisers skidded to a halt next to the fire trucks, and three police officers jumped out. They stood still for a moment, seeming as if they were trying to size up the chaos, then ran toward a firefighter that waving his hands and shouting for their attention.
She watched as the foursome consulted together briefly, the firefighter gesturing urgently at the fighting between the adults and students at the doors of the school. One of the officers shook his head and said something, but was cut off as the firefighter shook his head in response and pointed again as he said something else.
A moment later, Jessica watched as the police ran over to the mass of people at the school’s doors. She saw them reaching for things on their belts, and heard shouting. A moment later they were pointing whatever was in their hands at the crowd there. She heard three faint cracks, far too quiet to be gunshots.
Jessica recoiled in horror for a moment, then forced herself to calm down slightly. She could see the pistols were still in the holsters anyway, and then a moment later realized they must be using tasers. Not that those were much better, but at least they were less likely to kill. Jessica stared numbly at the scene as two rescue personnel yelled and scrambled back from the scrum at the door, but she saw the tasers were aimed at the children.
She supposed she should be appalled, should be something, to stand there watching three police officers firing tasers into a crowd of children. But she was overwhelmed by what she was seeing, a feeling that only got worse when she clearly saw one boy of about ten walking towards the officers with the twin prods of a taser clearly visible in his chest.
Jessica could see the officer pressing the button, and looking in confusion at the device in his hand, as the boy staggered forward. A moment later she saw the child grab onto the officer’s arm with both hands and pull himself closer.
Jessica looked away abruptly. Candice couldn’t be inside the school. Jessica arrived at this conclusion by the simple expedient of knowing if her youngest daughter was inside, there was no hope of Jessica getting in to look for her through . . . whatever that was happening.
She scanned the crowd in the parking lot again, and her heart leapt as she saw Marissa Poplar, who taught Candice’s fifth grade class, standing amid a cluster of children near the wooded edge of the parking lot.
Grimly, Jessica started making her way through the swirling crowd of kids and teachers, trying not to knock anyone over as she hurried. As she searched, she began to notice there didn’t seem to be as many students in the parking lot as there should have been.
It seemed to her there were maybe half the number that attended the elementary school present, and that was putting her closer to the edge of hysterical panic. She battered her emotions down with brutal efficiency, telling herself she had to hold it together. She kept moving through the crowd, looking in all directions.
When she was a few yards away from Mrs. Poplar, Jessica spotted Candice standing with some classmates, looking around with wide eyes and a scared expression. Jessica called, and her daughter’s head came around, her eyes searching.
“Mom!” Candice yelled, breaking into a run. Jessica watched as her daughter wove around kids and adults alike, and collided with her mother at near full speed. Jessica wrapped her arms around the girl, scarcely noticing the impact of her arrival beyond stepping back to avoid being knocking over.
“Candice!” Jessica said, hugging her fiercely. “Are you alright?”
“Mom! What’s going on? I don’t know what’s going on.” Candice asked, her normally cheerful voice thick and on the edge of sobs.
Jessica shook her head and squatted down in front of Candice so she could see her better. “I don’t know. Are you alright?”
“I’m okay Mom.” Candice said, her eyes bright with a film of gathering tears.
Jessica looked her over quickly. The jeans and blouse from this morning were intact, not even smudged with dirt, and she couldn’t see any blood or sign of injury on her youngest. Jessica brought her gaze back up to the girl’s face and forced a smile she really didn’t feel. “Don’t cry, you’ve got to hang in there for me, okay? Can you do that? We need to go over to the high school and find your brother and sister, and I’m not leaving you here alone.”
“Okay.” Candice said with a sniff.
Jessica smiled again, knowing it surely didn’t look natural, but it was the best she could manage by way of reassurance. Sirens out on the street caused her to look in that direction, and she saw three more police cars speed past the fire trucks. She stood up and had to step on a renewed surge of panic that threatened to spill out of the small space within herself she’d allotted for it.
The high school was in that direction, the direction those police cars were going. Based on what was happening here, she couldn’t even begin to imagine what was going on at the high school that police were roaring through a school zone, with the street cluttered with rescue vehicles and personnel and . . . victims . . ., so fast. She couldn’t afford to panic, she had to find her kids.
“Come on.” Jessica said, taking Candice by the hand and heading for the street. She threaded through the crowd, refusing to look in the direction of the doors where there was a lot of shouting. Some of it sounded like men and women in pain, and most of it was edged with a frantic note she knew rescuers tried to avoid as a matter of professionalism.
“Mom, why are those kids doing that?” Candice asked in a loud, nervous voice.
Jessica shook her head and kept walking, keeping a firm grip
on her daughter’s hand. She knew where Candice was looking, what she was asking about. “I don’t know. Stop looking.”
“But–”
“Watch me, or watch where you’re walking. Don’t look over there.” Jessica said firmly, using the best Mom voice she could muster at the moment. She felt something in her right hand, and looked down to see her car keys. She realized she’d left her purse in the car, then dismissed it as irrelevant. The keys went into her pocket, and she continued threading through the parking lot.
As they reached the sidewalk and turned right toward the high school, it occurred to Jessica someone should be challenging her, stopping her, from walking off with a child in tow. There were procedures, even in the middle of a school emergency and evacuation. Especially during an emergency.
But no one stopped her or even seemed to notice, and she wasn’t sure if she was grateful she didn’t have to argue with someone, or angry that it was possible to show up at a scene like this and simply leave with kids. She shook the thoughts off and kept walking, staring anxiously at the other school. She had Candice, that was all that mattered as far as she cared about the elementary school for the moment.
The road here dipped for another hundred yards, then rose again and climbed the hill as the high school’s property began on the left. Past the fenced athletic fields, Jessica could see the lights of more rescue vehicles, most of them the red of fire and medical, but with some blue for police as well.
Some of the fire trucks were visible, parked in the street as with at the elementary school, but by the reflections of emergency lights coming from behind the school buildings she could tell that parking lot was crowded as well.
She walked quickly, forcing Candice to half trot to keep up. Jessica maintained a tight grip on her daughter’s hand, completely unwilling to let her go. Candice didn’t protest the pace, merely clutched at her mother and stayed at her side. As the two of them started up the hill from the bottom of the shallow valley, Jessica began to hear voices from the high school parking lot.
She concentrated as she walked, and began to resolve them into shouting, yelling, and some screams. Her heart lurched within her again, and she had to dig deep to hold the still swirling panic at bay. There was no good reason for that much commotion to be going on ahead, and it frightened her.
Two blocks had never seemed to take so long to cover, and every step brought the aural chaos closer to clarity, but finally Jessica reached the high school and glanced repeatedly in both directions on the street before hurrying even faster across it. Candice had to break into a jog to keep up with her mother as they went over to the high school, but still didn’t utter a single word of complaint.
Jessica slowed back to the fast walk as they stepped back onto the sidewalk once more. They rounded the corner of the last building that was in the way of what was happening in the main parking lot. Jessica stopped in horrified shock at the scene revealed there. It was . . . chaos incarnate. Utter madness. A complete shambles.
People, students and adults, were everywhere. Many were bloody, and those who weren’t looked frantic, panicked, and some were beyond that, all the way to fully terrified. The noise was incredible now that she was in a direct path to those generating it, without the buildings blocking it. Hundreds of voices shouting, screaming, and yelling; some in pain, others in terror, and a few isolated souls trying vainly to bring order to the mass of disorder.
The largest clump of people was also the closest to her, gathered off to the right, on the very edge of the parking lot away from the entrance, next to the sidewalk. It seemed to be about half students and half teachers. Many were sitting, most of them clutching at wounds that stained their clothes and skin bright red.
Jessica saw a lot of the injuries were on arms, but she saw bleeding legs and torsos as well. A few clutched at their heads or necks, red seeping and welling out around their fingers. What she didn’t see were nearly enough medical personnel tending to them; there were over a hundred, maybe even as many as two hundred, people in that group, but she only saw three rescuers tying to help them.
Sweeping her gaze across the haphazard scattering of fire trucks, ambulances, and police cruisers in the parking lot, Jessica saw more people milling about them. There were firemen and paramedics digging in the vehicles for supplies and gear, she saw several police men sitting in cruisers with injuries of their own, and several more officers pulling things out of the trunks of their cars.
One officer turned from his vehicle with the long, black shape of a shotgun in his hands. As she watched numbly, the officer jacked the slide on the foregrip and hurried towards the school buildings. She couldn’t imagine what was going on that would bring so many firemen and paramedics so soon, that needed a shotgun. At a school. It was absurd.
Biting her lip she looked in the direction the armed officer was going. It was hard to see clearly past all the rescue personnel and vehicles, she could only catch bits and pieces of what was happening. There seemed to be a lot of fights happening, knots of rescue personnel struggling with students like she’d seen at the elementary school. And there seemed to be a lot more emergency responders who were injured.
But unlike down the street, here the conflict was not restricted to the entrance. It had spilled out of the school and was happening outside. And here, the students were not aged five to eleven. These were children as old as seventeen and eighteen, many of them well into, or done with, their full adult growth. Jessica knew from her own son, and some of his friends on the football team, that some of the ‘children’ were taller and stronger than some adult men.
Jessica closed her eyes tightly and allowed herself one brief moment where she just breathed, gathering her willpower and cramming the fear further down within herself. Then she opened her eyes and turned to Candice, who was staring with wide, unblinking eyes at the scene.
“Candice.” Jessica said, too focused to be proud of how calm she made her voice sound. Her daughter didn’t respond, and Jessica squeezed and shook her hand sharply. “Candice!”
The girl’s head jerked, then turned and looked up at her mother. The ten-year-old’s face was pale, and Jessica could tell she was close to, or already in, some stage of shock. She had to hope Candice could hold it together long enough for . . . whatever was about to happen to be finished.
“Sweetheart, listen to me. No matter what happens, you hold my hand and don’t let go. You stay with me. Do you understand?”
“Yes.” Candice said after a moment, her voice faint.
“Yes what?” Jessica pressed, needing to be as certain as she could that Candice was tracking and had heard and understood. “What are you going to do?”
“Hold your hand.” Candice repeated.
“And?” Jessica prompted.
“Stay with you.”
Jessica smiled, and though she tried, she really tried, to make it reassuring, she knew it probably came out as more of a grimace. “That’s my brave girl. Okay, come on.”
She started for the group of people on the edge of the parking lot, feeling Candice staying close at her side. She swept her gaze across the crowd for any familiar faces as she approached Jessica was hoping to see one of the teachers she knew, but honestly she would settle for any familiar face, including any friends of Joey or Sandra.
Her eyes lit upon Mrs. Jordan, who she remembered from Sandra’s class schedule as her English teacher. Joey had been in her class when he was in ninth grade.
“Mrs. Jordan!” she called, changing direction to make for the teacher. She called again, then a third time, and finally the teacher’s head came around. Her eyes, her face, showed she was nervous, and she seemed to be shaking, twitching, as she finally focused on Jessica and realized she was the one calling to her.
“Mrs. Jordan.” Jessica said as she got close enough to talk without having to yell. “I’m Jessica Talbot, Sandra and Joey’s mother. What’s going on? Where are my kids?”
The teacher blinked, and Jessica saw she was hol
ding her left elbow, though she didn’t see any blood. She waited, then tried again. “Mrs. Jordan, hello?”
“Yes?” the other woman said quietly, and Jessica had to suppress a frown.
“What’s happening?”
“The . . . students.” Mrs. Jordan said, still in that quiet voice. She sounded dazed, in shock, and Jessica had to steel herself to patience as she waited for the words to come out in ones and twos. “Started . . . acting strangely . . . biting people . . . hurting . . . wouldn’t listen . . .”
“Have you seen Sandra?” Jessica asked when the teacher’s voice trailed off. She tried to think back to the class schedule. “She’s in your second period, English.”
“Don’t . . .” Mrs. Jordan was staring blankly at her, and Jessica realized the teacher wasn’t going to be much help.
She turned away and started circling the group. Her eyes lit on a very pretty girl with long blonde hair, and she surged forward, jerking at Candice’s arm. “Alicia! Alicia!”
The girl turned, and she saw Jessica. Her face was stained with tears, and Jessica saw blood on the sleeve of her dress, centered on a torn flap of cloth just above her elbow. Alicia hurried forward and flung herself at Jessica, who reached to hug her son’s girlfriend with one arm, the other still holding Candice’s hand.
“Mrs. Talbot!” Alicia said, sounding half hysterical. Jessica could feel the girl squeezing on her, hard, as she buried her head in Jessica’s shoulder. “Oh my God!”
“Alicia.” Jessica said, patting her on the back. “Alicia, I need you to tell me what’s going on.”
“Oh my God!” the girl repeated. “It’s horrible.”
“Alicia!” Jessica said sharply, summoning her Mom voice. “Talk to me. What’s happening?”
“People are acting strange.” Alicia said without releasing Jessica, which she was fine with for the moment since the girl had her head right next to Jessica’s. It made it easier to hear her through the noise in the parking lot.
“Strange how?”