"Yes, Carolyn?"
"Is everything ok? Are we in trouble? The Principal said we have to stay after school."
Chikara looked up at the class and saw an assortment of small worried faces looking expectantly at her.
"No," she said softly. "No, everything is fine. He just said there was some problem with the road; perhaps a traffic accident of some sort."
"Miss Pressfield?" said a small Japanese boy named Yoshi who was proving himself day by day to be the clown of the class.
"Yes, Yoshi?"
"Uh… I’m scared."
Chikara looked around the room and a good portion of her kids were nodding their heads up and down aggressively in agreement.
"Oh, Yoshi," she said and walked over to pat him on the head. "There is absolutely no need for that…"
As she spoke, she turned her head for one last look outside. Across the soccer field, she saw that the rest of the group of people were now following the man with the stain on his shirt through the fence and slowly making their way toward the school. She mused that maybe they were some of the children’s parents who’d heard about whatever was happening on the roads and had come to fetch them. Even as the words were formed in her mind, somehow she knew that wasn’t the case. Feeling her stomach becoming uneasy and electric, she stepped away from the window.
Abruptly, the classroom door opened and Mrs. Walters from the fourth grade class next door poked her head in. The woman was older than Chikara and stockier. She had obviously dyed blonde hair set in a style that made her look a bit like a "biker mama." Her clothes more or less confirmed the assumption. She smoked like a train and the throaty, coarseness of her voice and heavily lined face were evidence of that. Since arriving at Ridgeway, she’d come to be the closest thing Chikara had to a friend amongst the staff.
"Chikara," she said, her voice trembling just a bit, "may I speak to you a moment?" She roughly jerked her head back the way she’d come. "Out here… in the hall."
"Ladies and Gentlemen, please open your free-reading books and sit quietly for a bit while I go speak with Mrs. Walters." She turned toward a boy with a bowl haircut at the front of the class. "Luke, you are in charge while I am gone. Please see to it that everyone is
reading
."
She walked toward the door and said, "And please… don’t worry. I’m sure this is all nothing to be concerned about."
As Chikara came through, Mrs. Walters stepped back. She nervously looked up and down the hallway while waiting for the door to close behind her.
"What’s going on, Helen?" Chikara asked, trying to follow the other woman’s gaze.
"Something is
up
, girl," was the only answer given.
"What? Wait. What are you talking about?"
"Did you hear that letch Borden?" she asked. She’d long been complaining about the Principal and his "hands on" approach with some of the female staff. "Well, he was lying…"
Chikara looked at her confusedly.
"About ten minutes ago, I was talking to Phyllis in the office," Helen continued. "She said that Fred got some kind of frantic call from the police just prior to him making that announcement over the PA."
"The police?" Chikara asked, unbelieving. She took a quick glance behind her and peered through the small window set in the door. Predictably, the children were not reading but rather, talking amongst themselves excitedly.
"Yeah!" Helen shook her head up and down excitedly; eyes opening wide enough to show the whites around the irises. "Phyllis said that right after the call, Frank got on the radio and called Jessie, the new janitor, and told him to start locking the doors that lead into the building. After a few minutes, she said that Jessie stopped answering his radio. Weird, huh? She didn’t hear much else, but after that, Frank’s tone changed… He just sounded
really
freaked out."
"Wait… That makes no kind of sense. We’re supposed to…"
"I know! We’re supposed to always keep those doors open during regular school hours."
"Surely, Phyllis misunderstood."
"That’s what I asked her. But she said she heard him talking to the janitor plain as day. I’m heading down to the office now to see what I can find out. I just wanted to tell you what was going on before I went."
Chikara rubbed a hand over her face in an effort to make sense of it all. For some reason, the image of the people gathered outside flitted across her mind’s eye. When her attention came back to the moment, she saw Helen looking around nervously and wringing her hands.
"God, I need a smoke."
"Well, if you learn anything," Chikara said, looking back over her shoulder at the door to her classroom, "come back and tell me, ok?"
The older woman nodded briskly and gently touched her friend’s arm reassuringly. With that, she hurried away, her heels clicking against the hard tile floor.
Chikara took another look up and down the hallway and then pulled open the classroom door. As she stepped inside, twenty-three pairs of terrified eyes snapped up to look at her. The kids were obviously frightened, their initial anxiety having escalated to an almost full-blown panic. Kids have always instinctively known when adults were lying and, as a result, grown-ups were not to be trusted. They’d all heard the worry in Mrs. Walter’s voice and in Chikara’s absence it had fanned the flames of their unease.
Chikara tried her best to smile as she walked toward her desk at the front of the room, but then she caught sight of Roger at the far end of the room. The little boy (with his Dumbo ears and large round glasses) was a human polygraph. The kid could smell bullshit a mile away. He’d caught on to her early in the school year when she’d tried to tell the children about Santa Claus. She decided, given everything she’d been told, that honesty would be the best policy.
"Children, I’m not going to lie to you…" she began.
Roger narrowed his gaze and leaned forward.
"Something is indeed going on and we’re all going to need to stay calm."
A few of the girls and even a boy or two stared at her wide-eyed and blinked away some tears. For the most part, the children were putting on their bravest faces.
Lydia, a fragile-looking blonde with small wire-frame glasses, hesitantly raised her hand.
"Yes, Lydia."
"Who are those people?"
"What people, Dear?"
"The ones outside," she said and slowly raised her hand and pointed toward the window.
The collective group nodded like bobblehead dolls. Chikara stepped over to the window and was amazed to see that the entire group of people who were by the fence had now made their way onto the lawn just outside the building. Worse, they were being followed by another large group who were still making their way through the fence and across the lawn. All told, there were forty or so people milling around outside.
Straining to get a good look, she saw that something didn’t seem right. There was definitely something wrong with all of them. Blank faces and gaping mouths were unanimous expressions they wore. Their gait was more like a stagger than real walking; as if they were drunk or severely impaired. Their forward motion was a result of their rocking back and forth of their body on stiff legs.
Suddenly, a small itching began at the back of her brain and she got the distinct feeling she was being watched. Turning her head slightly to the right, she caught sight of the man in the white shirt and black tie: the one with the coffee stain down his front. While the others were milling about, he was standing still and looking up at the building, straight up at the window. His gaze bore through her and he seemed to be assessing the structure as if looking for a way in. Having weighed through all of the available options, he seemed to have settled on the window of her classroom. As their eyes met, the man suddenly looked at the ground and then back up, tracking the structure of the fire escape.
"Miss Pressfield?"
Another small voice interrupted her thinking.
"Yes, Lisa," she said and turned to look at the other girl now standing next to her. The child had shoulder-length brown hair held back by a floral headband. Her front two teeth were missing and her eyes were wide and looked wet with tears barely held in check.
"I… I want to go home," she said, her bottom lip standing out like a fleshy bookshelf. Chikara looked up and the class as a whole was again nodding in agreement.
"As soon as I know what’s going on, you can, Dear," Chikara said and she patted the child on the back of her head. "Now, please take your seat, ok?"
Again the classroom door swung open and Helen Walker stepped into the room. The smile she’d pasted to her face was more grimace than grin, but God love her, she was trying to put on a good show.
"Miss Pressfield, can I talk to you for another moment?
Please
…"
"Oh, here we go…" Roger sighed under his breath.
"Surely," Chikara said and nodded to Luke. "You’re back in charge, Buddy."
The boy sat up a little straighter and nodded, trying his best to put a "game face" on. Despite his best efforts though, he still looked as if he were about to cry.
Chikara followed Helen back out into the hallway and closed the door behind her.
"Ok, what’s up?"
"We need you to come downstairs. We’re talking about barricading all of the doors."
"You’re
what?!?
"
"Sam Lorning, the shop teacher, pulled a television set into the Teacher’s Lounge and you’re not going to believe what the news is saying.
"What are they saying?"
Helen took hold of Chikara’s hand and pulled.
"You’d better come with me."
"Hold on a second…" said, pulling back her hand.
Chikara opened the door behind her and stuck her head inside. As she leaned in, she reached out and rested her hand on the fire extinguisher hanging from a hook at the side of the door. The children sitting in their desks looked so small and scared. She smiled and waited for them to quiet down.
"Children, I’m going to be right back. Everything’s fine. I just need to go check on when your parents can come take you home."
Inside, she felt like shit for lying, but it was the best excuse for leaving them she could think of off the top of her head. At the back of the room, she caught a glimpse of Roger The Human Lie Detector frowning.
"Luke, you’re The Man."
Just to be safe, she locked the door as she left so that the kids wouldn’t be tempted to start roaming the hallways. She twisted her key in the lock, removed it from the door, and returned it to her pocket.
And with that, she was gone.
~ * ~
When Helen and Chikara got to the Teacher’s Lounge, there was already a crowd of people inside huddled around the television. They stood in a semi-circle around the tall metal cart where the TV sat. Most of them were nervously holding Styrofoam cups with rapidly cooling coffee in them. A few held cigarettes between their fingers, but they were mostly just burning away unnoticed. Oddly, they all had the same look on their faces as the children in the classroom.
"If there’s no activity where you live," the warm voice of the anchorman was saying, "stay indoors and barricade all means of entrance. This is the Emergency Broadcast System for the greater Columbus, Ohio area. We repeat, lock all doors and windows and remain inside. Bicentennial Park is no longer considered a secure area. Please avoid all areas which would normally attract large numbers of people such as sports stadiums, shopping malls, and all downtown locations. You should proceed as quickly as possible to the areas which are being repeated in our bulletins. Further, please follow all directions given you by any and all military personnel. There have been reports of looting in most downtown areas. Please… do not attempt to travel. Even though you may believe that your loved ones require your assistance, you must remain where you are, or—if you are not safe—in one of the rescue stations. By all means, be wary of any and all people who appear disoriented or confused."
"These people are assholes," Jim Rhodes, the fifth grade science teacher said. He was a short, balding man with a small patch of hair encircling his head. The light overhead shimmered off of the barren landscape of his skull.
Chikara thought to herself that if anyone could know an asshole on sight, it was Jim. Those types could smell their own.
"Ssshh…" Sandy Kirklash, the second grade teacher from the first floor hissed. "We can’t hear what they’re saying with you talking."
"All right. All right." Irritated, Jim looked away.
"Sssssssshhhhh!" the group hissed as one.
The scene on the screen changed to some recorded tape from an earlier news conference. The camera shook as it was being adjusted, but the image soon settled down. A stoic black man in a business suit stood before a podium and was talking to a room full of reporters. "I’ll take your questions one at a time, please," he said, his eyes looking sad and bloodshot.
A male reporter’s voice was heard. "Are we dealing with some kind of contagion? Is this something man-made?"
The man looked down and in a weary tone, said, "It’s too early to tell. From all accounts, it is not something of a natural origin."
A woman’s voice came next, "How does it spread? Is it airborne?"
"Airborne is likely, but we simply do not have any way of knowing at this time."
"Could it have anything to do with the recent re-entry of the orbiting space station?"
"We don’t know. At this time, we are open to any and all possibilities."
The first male reporter broke in and asked, "Is this an act of terrorism? Is it a military concern?"
"While we do not think it is an act of terrorism, as the phenomenon is occurring across the globe, it has been made the highest of priorities for the military."
"Sir, are these people alive?" asked the woman.
The man sighed and, as if he were wearing the weight of the world on his shoulders, whispered, "It would appear not."
"What do you think we should do?" Sandy asked, her voice shattering the silence of the room. The teachers looked at one another and silently shook their heads.