part six: May 20 - Pine Ridge Regional School 9:30 AM

Listen to the audio version here:

Nancy Jackson suddenly stopped in the middle of her lecture to her 6th-grade students as a sharp pain sliced through her head. She winced as her hand involuntarily covered the area of pain. Funny, it felt just like she had eaten ice cream too fast. The pain eased off somewhat, almost as fast as it came, but that one spot was still throbbing dully.

“Are you okay, Mrs. Jackson?” Anthony asked with genuine concern on his cute little round face. The 12-year-old boy had not started his growth spurt into adolescence yet and still retained the cherub face of an elementary student.

“Yes, AJ, I’m fine. I think my allergies are giving me a hard time. Thank you for asking, though. How are you doing with your project?” She stepped over to glance at the boy’s computer screen, only to find it had gone blank. She looked around at the other students’ stations, only to find that all the computer screens had gone blank. She wiped the dampness from her eyes that had sprung up from the sudden sharp headache and glanced around—the digital clock had gone blank as well.

Great, she thought, did the power go out? The solar panels were working, and the lights were still on. Or have we finally just overwhelmed our old network? The school staff had complained over and over that the system needed an upgrade. The old system just could not handle the increased demands for the growing population. As the number of neural implants in the middle and high school wings grew, it was becoming increasingly difficult to maintain online service for the increasing numbers of elementary students. More than once the system had frozen in the middle of a lesson because the demand outpaced the network’s ability to handle the load. They had been promised that the district would upgrade the system during the summer break, but that didn’t help her now.

She looked at her antique pendulum clock on the wall and noticed the time was 9:28. Her old clock was slow again. There were 24 minutes of class left before recess, and then she could go down to Cindy’s office and get something to soften this headache a little bit. If the computers did not come back up, she would have to go to plan B for the lesson. She picked up the handset and tried to call Linda in the main office, but even the handset was dead.

She went to the classroom door and opened it to ask Diane in the room across the hallway if she knew what was going on. As she stepped into the hallway, she could hear the children shouting and cries of distress, which triggered that inner alarm in Nancy to rush across the hallway to Diane’s room. She glanced back at her own children; she was never comfortable leaving them alone. She glanced up and down the hallway for another adult—no one.

She dashed across the hallway and opened the door to Diane’s room to find most of the children huddled to one side, while a few of the more intrepid children were standing around Diane, who was on the floor.

Nancy quickly directed the huddled students to go to her room, then she rushed over to the teacher lying on the floor. She checked Diane’s pulse, and her heart rate seemed to be faster than normal, but Nancy wasn’t sure. Diane’s body was trembling. She lay on the floor, her body suspended in a position as if she had been walking across the room, then suddenly froze in mid-step and just fell over. It reminded Nancy of a store mannequin that had fallen over, posed to appear to be in a natural state of motion.

She repeated her directions to the students who appeared to be the braver of Diane’s children to help the others get to her room. She turned to one of the larger boys. “You’re Mike, aren’t you?” she asked. His eyes wide, he just nodded. “Would you run to the main office and get Mrs. Jenkins to come help?” Mike nodded once and, like a little trooper, stood straight and took off on his mission.

Nancy loved this age group; they were so genuine with their emotions and so hungry to please. Whenever they grasped a new idea, she’d bask in their thrill of accomplishment. She called it the “wow factor.” Their little faces would light up when they learned something that surprised or amazed them, and they would look up at her with that “OH WOW!” look on their little faces, and she would feel so much pride for them. She also felt a bit of selfish pride in herself, but mostly she felt lucky that she was the one to be there at that moment of revelation.

Nancy bent over Diane and took her hand. Diane’s hand and body were stiff, and she was completely unresponsive. Nancy could still feel a trembling vibration running through the woman’s body, as if she were having a seizure. Nancy spoke to the prone woman—her friend for six years—and reassured her that help was on the way.

Mike came running back into the room, but now that little brave face projected terror. “Mrs. Jackson, the ladies in the office are like Mrs. Hanson. They aren’t moving either. It’s really creepy, like they all turned into zombies or something.” Mike paused to take a shaky breath. “Mrs. Jackson, something else is going on in the other classrooms too. The little kids are yelling and crying. Mrs. Jackson, what’s happening?” Mike’s shaky voice was rising, and she could see he was on the brink of breaking into complete panic.

She glanced one last time at Diane, stood, and quickly crossed the room to the frightened child. “Show me.” She reached out and took Mike’s hand and led him out into the hallway.

She hadn’t noticed the sounds of children in panic, but now the cries of frightened children reverberated down the long hallway. Her students stood staring out the door of her room, looking out at her with fear and concern on their faces. “Stay there!” she told all of them as she let go of Mike’s hand and quickly jogged to the next room. As she opened the door, she was met with the same scene she had just witnessed in Diane’s room. She quickly instructed those children to go into her room. Nancy dashed across the hallway to the next 5th-grade room, only to have the scene repeated.

What the hell is going on? She looked down the hallway to the lower grades—4th, 3rd, 2nd, 1st, and the kindergarten rooms. She felt panic grip her. She could hear the cries of the frightened children issuing from all of those rooms.

Nancy turned to see some of her students were now standing in the hallway. “Sarah, Allie, and Hank, get all the coloring supplies and paper out of the back cupboard and take the materials to the cafeteria. Joe, Jeff, Sarah, Noah, and Larry, come with me. The rest of you help the others gather the materials and go to the cafeteria.” She looked at the children she had called into the hallway with her and started to the next room. She opened the 4th-grade room to see crying children, then ushered them into the hallway and told them to follow Larry to the cafeteria. She repeated this process at each of the next rooms, trying to hurry to get to the youngest children as fast as she could. At each room, she gathered the terrified children and sent them off to the cafeteria with one of the older children.

She turned to see that more of her students had followed her down the hallway to offer their help. “Noah, Mary, could you get out the milk and cookies and serve the kindergarten children first?”

“Sure, Mrs. Jackson. No problem.” The two took off at a run for the cafeteria.

With the last of the classrooms emptied into the cafeteria, she ran to the office to find help. Just as Mike had reported, all the secretaries and the school principal, Mrs. Jenkins, were in that same frozen seizure state as her fellow teachers. Nancy grabbed the office phone, but again, just like her own classroom phone, the main phone line was dead too.

She turned back to the door to go to the cafeteria and found Mike waiting for her.

“Listen, Mike, I need your help. I need all of you older students to watch the younger children who are scared.”

“Mrs. Jackson, I’m scared,” he said, looking up at her, his eyebrows and voice rising with his alarm.

She smiled at him and continued. “Mike, I have to go check the middle school wing. I need everyone to stay right here until I can get back. Can you do that?”

The boy looked at his feet and nodded. “Yeah. Will you be back soon?”

“Mike, I’ll be back as soon as possible. I will not leave you.” She realized that the youngster was afraid she would not come back and would end up like the rest of the adults in the building, leaving them without someone to take care of them.

Mike turned to walk back to the cafeteria, and Nancy took off at a jog toward the middle school wing.

As soon as she pushed the doors open into the middle school wing, she ran to the office and grabbed the phone as she scanned the prone bodies of the office staff. Racing down the hallway, she found a group of 7th and 8th graders clinging to each other. She recognized four of the children from her class last year. A tall, thin, red-headed girl, Madeline, turned and threw herself into Nancy’s arms.

“Mrs. Jackson!” Maddie cried. “Everyone has become zombies!”

Nancy patted the girl’s back and gently pushed her away so she could speak to her face-to-face. “I know. So far, I’m the only adult that has not been affected by whatever this is.”

The two other girls started to cry, and Nancy reached out to the distraught girls. “Listen,” she told them, sweeping her gaze around and making eye contact with each youngster, willing each to be calm. “I need your help. So far, you’re the oldest students I’ve found that I can depend on to help me.” Nancy watched the children to gauge their response to her request. She knew at least three of the students had been class leaders last year. They were good, solid, dependable youngsters who could be counted on to step up and take control. But that had been under normal classroom circumstances, and this was something completely out of the ordinary.

All five of the young teenagers nodded solemnly, nervous tension etched on their faces.

Nancy spoke calmly to them, trying to telegraph a confidence she herself did not feel. “I have all of the lower-grade children in the elementary wing in the cafeteria.” She watched the teens’ faces and let that sink in. “I need you to go down and help my 6th graders watch the younger children while I check out the rest of the building for anyone else who can help. Can you do that?” she finished.

All five of the teens silently nodded, indicating that they would help. Nancy smiled weakly at the children. “Okay, I want you all to go to the cafeteria and help take care of the younger children in that room until I get back. I need to hurry now, so go on, I’ll be there as soon as I can.” She watched their retreating backs and turned to enter the next classroom. Now not only was a teacher in this frozen state, but the students were too. Many of the children were frozen at their stations, suspended in a gesture or staring at a blank computer screen.

Nancy gave one last glance around the room and hurried to the next.

She continued her sickening rush from room to room, finding the same scene in each one—frozen students and teachers, all immobilized, seemingly in whatever activity they had been engaged in at the moment this occurred.

Nancy turned to walk into the last middle school classroom. Please, please, let me find at least one more adult for these children—for me. As she opened the door to the final 9th-grade room, the scene that met her wrenched out the sob she had been holding in. She was so glad she had sent the children to the cafeteria. Everyone in this room was frozen too. They’re just babies, why! she silently screamed. She shut the door and went on.

Nancy tried to keep up her jog as she entered the high school wing. She opened the door to a science classroom, scanning around the room through tear-blurred eyes at the same scene. She shut the door in a robotic motion and systematically moved to the next room. The tears were now flowing freely down her face. There was not one unaffected child in the high school classrooms.

Nancy paused, leaned on a wall for a moment, and considered not checking all the rooms in the high school portion of the campus, but decided someone had to at least witness what was happening. She worried constantly about the children in the cafeteria, and yet she was driven to go forward.

She scrubbed the tears off her face with her sleeve and pushed open the door into the main office, finding the secretaries at their desks, frozen in place. She shut that door and continued down the hallway, trying to remember which way to go. She had come here for meetings four or five times a year and basically knew her way around. She swept her gaze up and down the hallway and saw students on the floor. They had been struck down during passing time between classes.

She looked around and started to turn to leave the building when she heard a door slam. Nancy spun around toward the sound, calling out, “Hello! Who’s there?”

At first there was only silence, then: “Hey! Where are you?”

A lanky, sandy-haired teen came running around the far corner and stood there staring at Nancy. He raced down the hall, his face showing relief and panic. “Are… are you a teacher?” he gasped, as he slid to a stop in front of her, his voice high with emotion.

“I’m Mrs. Jackson from the elementary building. What’s your name?” she asked, forcing herself to sound as calm as she could.

“I’m Tim, Tim Nelson. Everyone is like zombies here. What’s going on?” He nearly shouted as his emotions found an adult outlet to communicate his terror. “I was starting to think I was the last person alive. Everyone is like, not dead, but they don’t move. I can’t get anyone to talk or respond—nothing. We were going to B period, and everyone just stopped—some dropped, some sort of twitched, and then fell. Hell—uh, sorry—I thought I was in some gang flash spoof. I started to tell everyone the joke was old already and to get up, but they just lay there and wouldn’t move.”

Nancy let him talk himself out. She recognized that he needed to release his pent-up panic and thought again about all the children back in the elementary building. At least now she had a semi-adult to help, and the existence of this healthy teenager eased a tiny mote of her own panic.

She let Tim talk on until his voice started to level out. When she could hear him start to calm down a bit, she broke in.

“Listen, Tim? Here’s what I know: I’m the only adult, so far, that has not been affected. Whatever this is has not affected children under the age of 12. I’ve sent all the elementary children to the cafeteria while I’ve searched for others who are not affected.” She paused and let that sink in. “Have you seen or heard any other person in the building?”

“No,” he breathed. “I’ve been running around looking in rooms, calling. The phones don’t work, my cell’s dead, the nurse, the secretaries—NO ONE. Everyone is… is whatever that is.” He pointed at the students lying in the hall. His volume had increased until he was nearly shouting again.

Nancy needed to calm this kid down. She needed to lean on him heavily for help. “Listen, Tim, there’s over 180 children over at the elementary building, and you and I are the only adults.” She elevated him to adult status, hoping to get him to step up, to get him ready to take on the responsibility she was about to force on him.

He looked at her with that deer-in-the-headlights stare, and she could see him working through what she had just said, slowly dealing with the information. As Nancy watched, Tim’s facial expressions went from panic to concern, and she started to realize just how lucky she was. She remembered Tim from 6th grade. He had been one of Diane’s students—one of those amazingly good kids who would step up and do whatever he could to help.

“Mrs. Jackson, what about my parents?” Tim asked.

Nancy looked at the boy sympathetically. “I don’t know, Tim. I haven’t been outside the building.” She looked down the hallway. “Here’s what I need you to do: I need you to help me take care of those younger children while we try to figure out what is going on here.”

He took a deep breath and asked, “Okay, what do you want me to do?”

She placed a hand on his shoulder. “I need you to go over and be the adult in the room. I’ve been gone far too long, and I was ready to turn around and leave this building when I heard you slam that door down there.” She pointed down the hallway.

Tim nodded, looking less panicked. “Alright,” he said, “I’ll go over and take care of the little kids.”

“I need you to be calm and try to keep them calm. I left the 6th graders and a few 7th and 8th graders in charge of the younger children, so expect to walk into some form of chaos. I told some of the older children to find cookies, milk—whatever they could find—to give the little ones a snack and keep them busy. I’m sure they have finished doing that by now and are starting to feel alone and very anxious. I’ve been extremely nervous about getting back there, and finding you is a lifesaver.” She continued, “I want you to go over there as fast as you can and take charge. Tell the children I’ll be there soon. I must go through the building and be sure there is no one else like you or me. Can you do that?” She looked Tim in the eye and saw him stand a little straighter.

He just nodded and said, “Okay.”

“Thank you,” she returned with a weak smile, when a thought came to her. “Tim? Do you have an implant?”

Tim looked surprised. “No. What’s that have to do with this?” Then it dawned on him. “The whole net crashed?” he whispered. Then his eyes went wide. “Oh, wow. That means you don’t have an implant either?”

Nancy gave her head a quick shake. “No, mine are disconnected.” The implications of what a total net crash could mean started to register in Nancy’s mind. “Go,” she told Tim. “I’ll be there as soon as I can.”

“You promise?” he asked sheepishly.

Nancy looked at him, seeing the fear of a little boy in his face. She put both hands on his shoulders and looked him in the eye. “I promise, I will come straight over as soon as I see that there is no one else able to respond here.” She forced a weak smile for him. “Go. I’m really worried about those little ones—they need an adult, fast.”

He gave one more nod, then turned and started to run down the hallway and out the door.

Nancy quickly walked and jogged through the building, stepping around the prone bodies on the floor, calling out and listening for any sound of any other person. She looked in each room, hoping for just one of those bodies to come to life, straining her ears to find one more person—anyone. But the building remained deathly silent. There should be the sounds of students laughing and talking as they passed from class to class, not this smothering, unnatural silence.

With Tim gone to care for the children, she began to think beyond just the next few hours. How was she going to take care of all these children if this was real and went on for more than a few hours? What was going to happen to all the students and adults frozen motionless? If they did not come back to motion soon, how long could they live without food and water?

The gravity of the situation flooded over her, and she stopped and swayed, gripping a door jamb, then started to cry. All these children and people would just lay here and die of starvation, and there was not a thing she could do about it. She had to take care of the lives she could take care of, and there would be nothing she could do for the victims. Victims of what?

Anger flooded over her. Was this some super virus? Didn’t that at least take time to develop? And didn’t it affect mostly just a certain age group? The internet crash theory was starting to make even more sense. She let herself cry for a moment and released some of the fear and panic that had been threatening to overwhelm her. After a few final sniffs, she straightened up and quickly hurried on. She did not have time to mourn what she couldn’t change.

Maybe there would be help down the road. If she could get the children to the fire station down the road, they could get a 911 call out from there and get some help—and some damn pills for this damned headache.

Nancy hurried back to the cafeteria, her panic about leaving the children alone decreasing with each step closer to the room. She had always been overly anal about her responsibility to her students. But this was one of those “emergency” situations that no one had trained her for. Hell, no one had been trained for this kind of situation. What the hell was actually happening?

As she hurried down the hallway of the elementary wing, she glanced into the classrooms again as she passed each open door. There was still no change.

She hurried on and started to hear the sound of children’s voices. It sounded as if they were playing. The scene that met her as she entered the double doors to the cafeteria was of Tim orchestrating a game of Simon Says.

Nancy wanted to cry. This kid was a treasure, and the younger children flocked to him like village children had followed the Pied Piper. She watched for a few minutes, letting the children enjoy this opportunity as long as they could, because when it started to sink in that their friends and, in some cases, siblings were not going to join them, the tears would start to flow.

Nancy needed to get help; she needed to find out what was going on. Maybe she could postpone the moment by getting a very early lunch. Maybe this bad dream will end.

Tim looked up and waved. She gave him a wan smile and nod. Smiling was the last thing she felt like, but she had to put on a good front for the children. She needed to keep them calm as long as she could, until she could figure out her next move.

She walked over to Tim and told him she wanted to walk down to the main office and see if there was any change, then assured him that she’d be right back. Tim nodded and went back to coaching the game. The children surrounded him with expressions of hero-worship on their little faces.

Nancy took a deep breath and walked down the hallway slowly, pushed the office door open, hoping to find things back to normal, but the scene had still not changed. She checked the phones and computers again—still nothing. Okay, Nance, get over it. It is what it is, and you just need to deal.

First: stall. Feed the children lunch. She looked at the clock: 10:00. So, they would have a very early lunch—that would kill another half hour or more. If nothing came up, she would walk the group to the fire station.

What would she say when they started with their pleas for their mother, siblings, or to go home? She could only deal with one thing at a time, so she decided to wait for each dilemma to occur, then deal with it as it did.

The fire station was about two miles down the road toward town. Nancy decided to tell the youngest children that they were going on a field trip to the fire station to see the fire trucks, and that’s why they were having an early lunch. The older children would know that this was just a way to keep the smaller children calm, but she knew that this was just one more way to avoid dealing with the nightmare that was evolving around her—and that this was not an isolated situation. She feared that the truth would be that this was more widespread than just this one little country school.

Nancy had Tim and the older children help organize the process of setting up some tables. She went into the kitchen and started to find something for lunch. She and Tim had to move the ladies who had been in the process of preparing the lunch for the day. As she and Tim picked up the first woman, Denise, the feel of the stiff vibration that ran through the woman’s body nearly caused Nancy to drop her. They half-carried and half-dragged the three women to the staff room as gently as possible and tried to prop them in chairs around the lunch table.

“I wish we could take care of everyone somehow,” Nancy said to Tim.

“I don’t see any way of doing that, Mrs. Jackson. Not with all those little kids to take care of. I was getting pretty nervous waiting for you to come back. I started to wonder what I would do if I had to take care of all of them. What if something happened to you and you went zombie on me?” Tim said, looking solemnly up at Nancy.

“Tim, I told you and I mean it, I will not abandon you or those children—not by my own choice. I cannot guarantee that whatever has happened to the other people won’t happen to me, but as long as I have a choice, I will be right here with all of you. Understand?” She looked him straight in the eye to convey the absolute sincerity of her promise.

The boy nodded, and Nancy put a comforting arm around his shoulders and gave him a reassuring pat. “You know, Tim, let’s not call the victims zombies. They really aren’t. For now, let’s keep that quiet.”

They started to take an inventory of the foods available for lunch. They found some bread and sandwich ingredients, and the children helped themselves to more milk.

During their impromptu lunch, the next situation Nancy had dreaded started: the lament of “Where’s my brother or sister?” Soon it would be, “I want my mommy.”

Nancy put on her best “everything is fine” face and announced that they were having lunch early so the whole group could go to the fire station. The youngest of the students responded to this news with enthusiasm, and some of that excitement telegraphed through the group. Even some of the older children showed some interest, and for the time being, their worries were deflected from the unusual circumstances of the moment.

Nancy asked Tim to walk down the hallway and shut the classroom doors so the youngest children would not see the other teachers or students still sitting or lying where they were when the event occurred. As soon as Tim returned, they all filed out of the cafeteria and down the hallway to the side door, then out onto the sidewalk that would lead them to the fire station.