Chapter 1

 “It’s not fair” I murmured under my breath, staring at the water pooling in my cupped hands.

 With a pained hiss,  the ice cold water splashed across my face, over the fresh bruises and within a few seconds, a temporary, pleasant numbness spread across my face.

 In the empty bathroom of the high school, only the sound of the running faucet and running water accompanied my own intermittent groans.

 “It’s really not fair” I murmured once more, resting my knuckles on either side of the sink to look in the mirror.

 The 18 year old that stared back at me was a sorry sight indeed.

 Close-cropped, nearly shaven scalp framed a face covered by purpling bruises, left eye almost swollen shut. I had never been particularly handsome, and haircuts cost money which I did not have, so keeping it at this length was easiest since I could just take a trimmer to it when it got too long and still do a halfway decent job at it.

 Average looking, of a pitifully average 5 foot 8 height, of average build and intellect, there was very little to write home about when it came to myself. Indeed only my weight was above the standard, slightly on the overweight side, especially around the protruding gut area.

Though this owed more to the limitation of the cheap, unhealthy food I could afford rather than any sort of predisposition to gluttony or anatomical issues.

 The only non-average part of me was my build. Due to having had to work part-time at a construction site to afford living, I was slightly wider in the shoulders and thicker in the arms than you run of the mill eighteen year old. Nothing exaggerated or too out of the ordinary, but I had the build of a blue collar worker, the day laborer kind.

 “You said you’d fight back this time, Jon. Even if they put you in ER or in the fucking ground, you were gonna fight this time” I snarled at my own reflection. Self-disgust welled up inside me and I wanted to punch the mirror.

A few cuts on the hand were the last thing I needed though, so I swallowed the anger and redirected it where it was supposed to go. At my own cowardice.

 I had frozen.

Completely and utterly frozen. And it sickened me.

 Every man has this fantasy : “What would I do if I faced a bear”. As stupid as it may seem, it’s the kind of thing that keeps us up at night, while we imagine and plan and fantasize about our crowning moment of heroism in the face of overwhelming odds.

The unfortunate reality is that for a vast amount of men, that is the moment when we freeze up. It’s not something our ego would allow us to admit to, of course. We’re all the heroes of our own stories. But it’s the reality.

Unless you’re used to being in life or death situations, the cocktail of adrenaline and hormones that your body releases in such events will effectively short-circuit your body.

 In my case, Andreas Henderson was that metaphorical “bear”.

 A 6 foot 5 giant of a man, crotch spawn of our oh-so-esteemed mayor, Andreas was everything I was not. Rich, handsome, influential. 

 He was also a complete and utter sociopath who had “imported” the South Korean method of bullying into our small, provincial Texan city school, which alluded a lot more to the precursor of organized crime and racketeering than any sort of “bullying”.

 Though that was unsurprising. A chip off the old block, Andreas was the spitting image of his old man. 

 Mayor Henderson’s “business dealings” with certain individuals of ill repute was pretty much an open secret, happily ignored by the police that was, for all intents and purposes, in his pocket.

 And then there was me.

 Jon. Last name, irrelevant, since it was a name given by the nurses after I was abandoned in the maternity ward by my, and I use the word loosely, mother.

 With a history typical of many orphans, bouncing from foster house to foster house, taken in by people more interested in the foster care financial aid rather than raising a child, eventually arriving at the assisted housing where I lived today.

 Instinctively I clutched at the small wooden cross hanging from my neck. 

 As much as I disliked the self-righteous hypocrisy of the day-to-day proselytizers, I’d gotten a hot meal at the local churches and food banks more than enough times to appreciate the importance of good people.

 And that little cross had been the only gift I’d even gotten in my life.

Those nuns at the orphanage had probably hoped I’d “steer me on the path to salvation” or something like that.

I believed in God, true. Just not all the folk claiming to speak for or serve Him.

Still, I’d formed a bit of a habit of holding onto it whenever I was at my lowest.

 Which, unsurprisingly, was a fairly often occurrence.

 “It is what it is. Try again tomorrow” I murmured and resumed splashing water over my hurts.

  A new sound intruded on the noise of the faucet as someone entered the bathroom.

 “Hey gopher. Get a move on will you? Teacher’s asking questions”

 I didn’t look directly at the intruder, noticing him in the mirror, and just sighed.

 “Why?”

 Benjamin shrugged, flicking his brown mop of curly hair out of his eyes.

 “Why do you think, dumbass?     

 School-related injury so you gotta sign the waiver for the nurse’s office. But don’t worry. Andreas and the rest of us already took care of most of the work. We explained to the teacher of that nasty-nasty fall you took on the stairs” he added with a snicker, theatrically tapping his knuckles against a stall door.

 “Nasty fall that. Nasty-nasty. You really oughta be more careful, gopher” 

 I just nodded. There was no point in rising to the bait now anyway. Andreas and his eight thugs had beaten me to a pulp in the middle of the classroom.

 The other classmates knew that.

The people outside the classroom know that.

 Hell, even the teachers knew that.

 But no one would do a single thing about it. Not when his dear old dad was on the fast track to the Governor's office. Not when the entire police force was on his side.

Hell, I’ve been on this road before, I knew what was happening.

  “Boys will be boys” he had said three years ago when I had formally made a complaint to both the headmaster and the police, causing Mayor Henderson to be called into the school chancellery.

 The following night I got “mugged” in a very “unfortunate coincidence” on my way home.

 The sky-mask wearing “muggers” had curiously enough taken nothing from me, but made it a point to beat me enough that I landed in the ICU for 3 weeks. Four busted ribs. A fractured shin. Several knife cuts. And more bruises than could be counted.

The message had been sent, and Mayor Henderson, ever the consummate politician, had made it a point to pay my hospital fees in a genius maneuver of good publicity, painting himself as a bleeding-heart philanthropist, rather than the psychopathic corrupt politician that had sent his cronies after me in the first place.

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 Credit where credit’s due, Andreas’s old man was the kind of smart slime-ball that could turn everything in his favor.

 “Shoulda’ paid Andreas, man. You know how he gets when you gophers try to skimp on the protection tax” Benjamin carried on as I piled on more water over my face, if only to stop him from seeing the hate written all over my face.

 “He’s calling all you gophers to meet at the old school building tonight, by the way. Your little stunt, telling him you ain’t gonna pay no more, he didn’t like that. Not one bit” he carried on, moving close to where I stood.

 “Can’t let you gophers get all uppity. So, your tax gonna grow. Your duties gonna get increased. And it’s all thanks to you, smartass.” he chuckled, clapping me on the shoulder mockingly.

I grunted as he clapped my shoulder, striking the exact spot where Andreas had stomped on, and closed my eyes.

Gopher duties : Everything from food delivery and school work duty for Andreas’s group, all the way to carrying whatever they needed carrying and getting booze and smokes for them, all on top of the monthly protection tax, the around forty of us gophers from different classes were, for all intents and purposes, indentured servants.

 And everyone pretended like it didn't happen.

 The other classmates for fear of being targeted.

 The teachers for fear of being sacked, or worse.

 The police because they were on the Mayor’s and his mob associates’s payroll.

 The many disadvantages of a small, provincial city. One person with too much influence.

 “Tough day ahead, then?” I snarked back, taking my eyeglasses off the sink edge and placing them gingerly around my broken nose.

 “HAH” Benjamin snorted “Oh man you got no ide…”

 Several things happened all at onc.

 A titanic krump like the world cracking in two echoed out from outside the campus, every window and porcelain sink bursting in a shower of shards, the shockwave slamming both me and Benjamin on the floor.

 My ears rang and I folded my arms over my face as glass and bits of porcelain showered over me like a hailstorm, and the floor trembled and vibrated, bits of plaster falling from the bathroom ceiling.

 The chaos carried on, and it was all I could do to guard my head against the debris.

 Had it been an earthquake?

 A nuke?

 A thousand and one thoughts swiveled in my head while I lay there.

 After what must have been no more than a minute but had felt like hours, the floor tremors stopped.

 Slowly, I pushed the plaster bits off me, patting myself to make sure no glass or shard of porcelain had struck my body. The last thing I needed was to push something away and gut myself with a piece of glass.

  Fortunately, my 2 sizes too large second-hand hoodie and jeans seemed to have stopped most of the “shrapnel” and all I had gotten had been a few superficial cuts.

 A cough and cuss made me turn my head to the right where Benjamin lay buried underneath even more plaster.

 “What the fuck?” was all he could say as I pushed enough of the debris for him to be able to get up.

 “What?” I asked, my ears still ringing ferociously from the explosion.

 “What?” he yelled back “I said, what the fuck?”. His own years must have been as badly impacted as mine.

 As soon as I got enough of the plaster out of the way, I rose from the floor and beelined it towards the window.

 I had to see, try to get a clue as to what had happened.

 “I think it was a nuke or something. We’re far enough away that only the shockwave hit ...” my words caught in my throat.

 Outside, so much was wrong that I did not know where to even begin.

 And all that I saw made no sense.

 There was no more city to speak of. At least, not as far as I could make it out.

Our school was perched on a small forested cliff on the outskirts of the city, so we could see the entire city line from the windows.

But all that was in front of us, about five miles away from the school building, so tall it touched the sky and so wide it seemed to encircle us, was a solid wall of sickly pale mist.

Pockets of fog covered the landscape, small explosions burst in the distance and monumental shards of stone and granite had burst out of the earth impaling upwards towards the sky like miniature hillocks.

 All around us, throughout the school, we could hear the panicked screams and cussing of people.

 “What in the…” Benjamin gasped as he joined me at the window.

 “What happened? What in the absolute fuck happened?” he carried on, voice growing more and more histrionic with every word. The ringing in my ears had subsided but not enough to hear the rustle of clothes as Benjamin rounded on me and wrapped his hands into the collar of my hoodie.

 “WHAT THE HELL HAPPENED GOPHER?” he roared in my face, pupils reduced to pinpricks of fear.

 “How the hell would I know?” I bellowed back at him. The reaction seemed to snap him out of his panicked state. I had never raised my voice to any of Andreas’s group.

 He let go of my hoodie and pushed me into one of the stall doors, then immediately began pacing back and forth, fiddling with his phone.

 “Alright. Alright. We gotta call the cops or something. This is…” he mumbled to himself, dialing 911. After a few seconds of holding the phone to his ear he almost threw it on the floor.

“Dammit. FUCK. No signal, not even a tone, NOTHING” 

 I didn’t focus on the hysterical man as something else caught my attention. Moving back to the window I looked straight down.

 The forested area behind the school had grown thicker, as if the plant life had bloomed and multiplied. The trees were taller, there was more grass and vines, patches where green mossy growths had blanketed the bottom portion of the school wall.

 But that wasn’t what had caught my attention.

 It was the sound. A loud, staccato buzz.

 Several misty pockets had separated from that titanic wall and were converging on the school building from the forest, moving in ways that they should not move. They moved too quickly and with intent, beelining towards the building as if alive.

 And the closer they got, the louder that buzzing sound got.

 I tried focusing on the closest ones but the pocket of fog or mist or whatever it was, was far too dense to see through it. It didn’t help that the left lens of my glasses had shattered and that right one had cracked. Miopic as I was, I couldn’t make out any details further than a few feet.

 “No Internet either” Benjamin snarled behind me and I rounded on him.

 “We gotta go. Find the teachers”.

Benjamin looked at me.

“Was it an attack. Did we get… I dunno, terrorist bombed or?”

I shook my head.

 “I know as much as you do. But the air-raid sirens didn’t go off. And those trees and mist aren’t… I mean… That’s not what a nuke or a bomb would do….”

 The look in my eyes must have been something serious. Because Benjamin, normally brash, arrogant, mocking Benjamin nodded furiously and put his phone back into his back pocket.

“Yeah… yeah, yeah, let’s go. We gotta fucking go” he stammered, his voice almost drowned out by the screams and cussing coming from the lower floor.

 Without wasting any more time, we got out of the bathroom and made our way into the herd of teens and young adults pushing and elbowing their way towards the stairs.

 Most seemed shaken but otherwise unharmed save superficial cuts and bruising from where ceiling plaster had struck them, but every now and then i caught glimpses of people that had taken a bad hit and either limped or held a rag to their head trying to staunch the flow of blood from a gash to the skull.

 It was pure pandemonium, even with the teachers trying to yell over the crowd.

 “Listen to me. Everyone. Form an orderly line and make your way to the courtyard. Like the fire drills” Headmaster Williams bellowed out, swinging his arms out for attention.

The obese man elbowed his way through the crowd until he reached the front and turned to face the panicked teens and young adults.

 “Orderly line. Orderly line dammit. We practiced this” he roared again, trying to establish some sort of order.

 “Help those that can’t walk on their own and follow me”.

 With that, Headmaster Williams turned and made his way towards the main stairwell. I joined the rest of the group and followed, Benjamin still right beside me for some reason. All around people were asking questions, trying to make phone calls or connect to the Internet for any sort of clarity.

 The part that worried me was that even with the tumult and noise of this panicked group, I could still make out the screaming and buzzing coming from the ground floor. And we were heading there. Should I speak out? Should I go through the fire escape?

 Fear and panic, however, made the choice for me and I continued walking along with the others. I put my trust in the Headmaster’s lead and the tried and true fire drills. When something happened we were all supposed to make our way to the courtyard, it was that simple.

 But it never really is that simple. Not in real life.

As soon as Headmaster Williams reached the stairwell, he stopped, his face locked in a horrified grimace.

While not at the front of the group I was still close enough to see.

 All he managed to do was turn and scream as a pocket of fog billowed out from the stairwell and engulfed him. This close I could see what I had heard, my own face mirroring the headmaster's expression.

It was no mist, or fog, it was a cloud of buzzing, clicking insects. A swarm of bloated, albino flies, each as big as a human head, spewing some sort of powder off their wings with every flap, dense enough that it had formed that misty blanket around them.

 They swarmed around and over Williams in a mass of ripping, tearing mandibles, the cacophony of buzzing and insect chirping so loud it hit my eardrums like a piercing needle.   

 Ribbons of blood flew as the man flailed uselessly and opened his mouth in a blood curdling shriek. A shriek that never came,

One of the flies shot straight for it and tore inside his mouth.

Even above the cacophony of noise, I heard the sound of the man’s cheeks tear wide open, his jaw bone snapping and the haunting noise of flesh rupturing.

 We watched the grotesque display in stunned, silent horror and only when Williams fell face first in a pool of his own blood did the screaming start.