Chapter Text
It had been a grim Wednesday morning nearing the end of February when the disease had broken out. Gabriella Kendrick was trying her hardest to concentrate on Mr Harris' slow drivel over the same trigonometry problem he’d been repeating every day for a couple of weeks now, but it was hard to concentrate when half of what he was saying wasn’t making any sense. She’d never really been any good at mathematics — solving for x and y or trying to find dimensions of triangles had never been Gabriella’s strong point — but even she knew whatever the old man was saying was completely irrelevant to the class. He was groaning. Grappling and scratching at his neck, his nonsense gibberish sounding pained and low pitched. She surely couldn’t be the only one who thought this was weird? Gabriella glanced around her class. There were a few boys that were standing up and walking around the class. Two girls behind her were giggling at their phones.
“Oh my gosh, did you see that freaky video on youtube?”
“You mean the scared kid? It’s rubbish, mate.”
“But it looked so real. He was crying and everything.”
“You don’t seriously believe that shit? The kid's parents were probably pranking him, or something.”
“Yeah. You’re probably right.”
Someone was lobbing glue sticks at the uneven tiled ceiling.
No one cared.
No one else had noticed their teacher and his weird alien language of gasps and groans.
Until someone did. One person. Finley Donovan. He and Gabriella had been in classes together since year seven, but hadn’t spoken to each other once. Well, except for the one time he asked her out as a dare. She’d said no, but it didn’t matter what response she gave the boy, he and his gang of “jokesters” were rolling, hysterical.
Currently Finley was sitting at the front. He used to sit at the desk behind her, but Mr Harris had moved him when he’d screamed ‘Bogies’ at the top of his lungs, resulting in his little crew shrieking like hyenas for the next 20 minutes until the class finished.
“Yo teach, this a french class or what?”
Laughter. Unsurprising.
Mr Harris froze, his shoulders visibly locking up as he faced away from the class now. Everyone was quiet, amused, watching him.
Gabriella watched as Finley nudged the girl beside him and she ripped out a piece of paper from her maths book before handing it to him. He scrunched it into a tight ball, and slung it at the back of the teacher's head.
More laughter, Mr Harris didn’t move.
Finley picked up a chewed, blue biro this time. He aimed, and chucked it.
Suddenly, Mr Harris turned around, a blank expression on his face, caught the pen in his mouth and bit down hard. There was a muffled crunch, and the class watched in horror as blue ink started to leak down the man’s chin and drip down his cream coloured dress shirt and onto the carpet.
“Sir, you okay?” Finley said, his voice rising. “I didn’t mean none of it, don’t freak out on us-“
Mr Harris lunged at Finley, and ripped out a chunk of the boy's neck with his teeth. He was an animal. A hungry, rabid animal. From where Gabriella was sitting, she could now see where Mr Harris had been clawing at his own neck, there were rips in the collar and a leaky, pale yellow liquid was oozing through the fabric. Finley screamed, as did many others. Mr Harris kept feasting, clawing and tearing chunks out of the struggling boy, now reduced to a piece of meat. No one knew what to do. What could you do in this situation? Your teacher takes the route of violent cannibalism, what are you actually supposed to do? Gabriella knew the answer. She leapt out of her chair, staying as far away as she could from Mr Harris, and ran as fast as she could in her uncomfortable, school-issued ankle boots. A lot of other kids seemed to have gotten the idea, because she could hear footsteps behind her, but she didn’t want to look back. She couldn’t. She realised then tears were running down her face. She hadn’t even liked the boy, but seeing him get mauled like that had terrified her. It would terrify anyone. You need to find Frankie, she thought, he’ll probably know what’s happening.
More people were spilling out of their classes, and more attacks were happening in different classes as she ran past. A door collapsed in front of her and she stopped herself from running right into the stumbling grown up as it tripped on the doorknob and began to violently writhe on the floor like it was something out of The exorcist. She remembered when her older brother Levi had bought the DVD of it a while back, when he was supposed to be babysitting her and Frankie, her twin brother. Instead of looking after them, he’d invited his girlfriend, Ashley, around and said they could ‘stay up and watch it or go to bed.’ Both of them stayed up, but wished they hadn’t, because the film was terrifying, and their mum had been furious when neither of them would sleep because of nightmares. Looking back on it now, it was like an episode of Peppa Pig compared to whatever disaster had begun. Gabriella recognised the seething adult on the floor as the school cleaner, Mr Peterson. He was a miserable old bastard, always complaining about ‘the state of the world now’ and trying to start fights with kids for looking at him with the wrong eye. Gabriella stared at the man for a few seconds in pure, morbid curiosity, until he grabbed her ankle, twisting her leg painfully and forcing her onto the floor. She kicked pathetically, but the man had a grip like the jaw of an Estuarine crocodile, and she was tired from running. Gabriella was soon to meet the same fate as poor Finley. She could hear the crunching of a jaw working its way through delicate flesh and bone, though she wasn’t sure if that was happening to her or if she was still hearing the sound of Mr Harris feasting on Finley. She could feel the warm, uneven breathing of Mr Peterson on the back of her leg, and then something wet and slimy sliding down into her sock. She kicked again, and this time she caught the grown up in his chin, stunning him, but this was quickly over and the pain angered him. Mr Peterson bit down hard on Gabriela’s ankle, causing her to yelp and flail more. She tried to twist her ankle free but each time the man would bite harder. She was now glad for her ugly boots, because he couldn’t get through the thick leather to her skin, but it was still a bad position to be in, restricting her movement and making her vulnerable. Other kids were just passing her, not bothering to help. If she was in their position, she’d also run, but this was making her feel weak, and she started crying again, though more out of self-pity than sadness or fear. She kicked a final time, and tried to twist around, but Mr Peterson moved away from her ankle, which was now sore, and grabbed her by the collar, dragging her upper body backwards towards him. She thought she heard the man growling, but brushed it aside as hysteria in her final moment. Her eyes closed. She cursed whatever God was sitting up there watching this happen, letting her die like this. Why had it been chosen for her to die like this? She wouldn’t even see the day she turned fifteen-
CRUNCH!
That was the sound she heard before Mr Peterson’s hand loosened on her collar and she fell forward. Gabriella caught herself before crawling away from the man, pressing her back against the wall and rubbing her ankle, stunned. The body lay flat backwards, limp. His face was almost caved in, blood pooling in the crater of what used to be his face. A boy was standing over him, holding the wrinkled leg of a table, the end soaked in blood and little pink shreds that Gabriella didn’t want to look too closely at. She was relieved, almost to the point of tears, to see that the boy was Frankie, her twin brother. They looked the same, except she was taller and he had his ash brown hair cut into a short, wavy mullet. He was looking at her now with his dark eyes, a worried expression on his face.
“Fuck, Gabby are you okay? I mean, what the hell is going on? First I’m doing science and then my history teacher smashes through the window and starts rolling around on the floor and-”
Gabriella nodded. “I’m fine, but we need to go home right now. Something really bad is happening.”
“Yeah, no shit. Let’s go. Can you walk?”
The twins set off, desperate to get home and get answers to whatever was going on.