Eliot Strange and the Prince of the Apocalypse

13) Back to School

East Central High School is not as Steven and I remember it. Flowers planted out front are trampled and bags of garbage are scattered in the parking lot. Broken windows and spray painted words that designated the school cafeteria as "Feeding Center #47" remind us of what happened here. The list of rules, including: One meal per person, Stay in line, Residents must show ID - oddly remind me of the good days - when there was food to stand in line for. The good 'ol days - before the war for what little was left ended in massacre. A massacre that we still don't talk about.

It doesn't take long for people to turn on each other.

The parking lot outside the cafeteria unnerves us both, so we decide to enter from the rear of the building where there are less signs of what went wrong the day of the massacre. One of the rules of the forces in charge at the time was - no looting, and this is the reason we are hoping there might still be some stashed food inside the building. That and the fact that most of the residents of our town are gone now and the blood stained parking lot, still stained because of the number of people killed there on the day of the riot, deters even the bravest soul.

We step cautiously over the dark red stains in the parking lot as if we will wake the dead who are long gone. I use a skill my dad taught me that has proven to be quite useful in the end times. I jimmy the lock on the outside door to the science wing, and we enter the hall. Our steps echo even though we have on tennis shoes because we are walking through papers and boxes and chairs and strewn school supplies. The hallway looks like a pack of juvenile delinquents have been here, and they had their fun wrecking the school.

"Dammit," says Steven who must be thinking like me that the school has already been searched.

"Watch your mouth young man," I say. "Smell that?"

Steven nods his head. We know the smell of decaying flesh. Someone is dead in here. It smells so rank there may be more than one dead someone inside.

"Closed door," says Steven pointing to a classroom door on the left as he turns the handle. "Locked."

I stand on my tiptoes and peer through the tiny window. I see a scene that I can add to my already bulging portfolio of horrors I will never forget. It's just another scene from the end of the world that will haunt my dreams until I am gone too.

This scene is a family. I am guessing Mr. O'Malley, since that is what the nameplate on the door says, and maybe his wife and two children. I didn't have him in class; he was new to our school. I heard he was odd and different and cool, and all the kids liked him.

The family looks like they are having a picnic at the lab table, only they are all dead. The smallest girl has a look of surprise and pain on her face that tells me she was not in on the plan. The older girl is on the floor like she was stopped cold in her tracks running away. I see the chemical on the lab table. The skull and crossbones symbol on the bottle tell me that it is not something normally served at a meal.

I must have stared at the scene for longer than I thought because my toes are cramping when Steven says, "What is it? Let me see."

"No."

Steven must know something is really bad because he says, "OK," and then when he sees the look on my face he adds, "Thanks."

"Let's go to the other wing," I say.

When we round the corner we are relieved to see that there is no sign of ransacking in the halls, although when we peer into the open doors we do see signs that the rooms have been searched. At least the someone who beat us here has not destroyed the rooms. It looks like they were searching for food too.

"Dammit," says Steven again.

"Boy, I am going to wash your mouth out with soap when we get back home."

"Let's go to the history hall," says Steven, "Maybe they didn't get that far."

"Ok, but we need to be careful. They could still be here."

We walk past the office area where it looks like someone left a sink running. Everything is damp and smells moldy. Next, we go past the teacher's lounge that is predictably gutted because now there are no rules, and every teenager in America is going in there, no matter what the sign says. "No Students Allowed" did not stop us before, and it certainly will not stop us now.

We go up a few steps and round the corner to the stairs that lead to the history wing. We are happy to see that the doors to the stairs are closed and chained with a combination lock. Steven grins at me and uses the bolt cutters we brought for the occasion to defeat the chains on the doors. It takes a lot of noise and some time, but we are becoming experts at getting into locked spaces. We are in.

"Mother," says Steven as we step into a hall that has probably not seen a human being since the last day of school.

"Don't say it," I say.

"What? I was going to say motherrrrr....lode."

The hall floors are still so shiny that it looks like the custodian, Mr. Smitty, spent his last day on the job polishing them with a rag and some spit.

"Smell that?" asks Steven taking a deep breath. "Smells like my old school. Smells like axe spray and hair gel. Smells like teen spirit." He inhales loudly again. "Race you to Mr. Ramsay's room.

We ignore the sign that says: "Stay to the right. No running!" Steven slaps it as we run by and, just that fast, we are back at school and there are no rules. 

The students are running the asylum today.