It’s hard for me to believe that we’re the only survivors. One of the cops (I don’t know his name, there are so many around here now) asked me what I think about it all, and that’s it. I can’t believe we’re the only survivors. Four of us. Out of 4 and a half thousand.
My name’s Asia O’neal. My dad owns half the city. Not that it matters now; there’s not much left of what he owns, or of anything really. They tore it all down, with their bare hands. Bare dead hands. I’m 18 years old and I go to Richardson High School in Richardson, Vermont. I work weekends at the Yeller Drug Store.
I run track at school. Ran, I guess. I have three potential scholarships to schools outside the state , and I think I’m going to Rutgers. I always wanted to see New Jersey. My dad says it’s beautiful, if you go to the right places.
I have 6 siblings: my brothers are Namibia, Cairo, and Nantucket; my sisters are Libya, Paris, and China. China’s my twin. She lives with my mom in Michigan. So do Nantucket and Paris. We get along ok. I miss my sister a lot, especially now. Now it’s just me and my dad and Cairo. He’s not in high school, that’s why.
I don’t know where to start. That morning I had it in my brain that I was going to talk to Lawrence at lunch. He was my ex boyfriend. We went out for like two years, but then he broke up with me, I don’t know why. I had it in my brain that I would try and talk to him when I saw him in the line at lunch, which I always did. We’d only been apart for about a week, even though it felt like we’d been apart for a year or so, cause towards the end he just stopped talking to me. His friends started calling me O’neal again, instead of Asia, like they had when we were only track runners together. Maybe that was the first sign that something was up.
Anyway, when I got to school something felt weird. I can’t explain, but I had a feeling something was wrong, like out of place or something. I had a meet that afternoon, I was running the 300. I didn’t eat breakfast or anything, cause I have a tendency to bloat when I have meets. Like my body senses that I have to run and it doesn’t want me to. So I was drinking water with fiber packets in it, and protein so I wouldn’t pass out. You know Crystal Light makes those things now. They don’t have calories or anything.
I guess you want me to just tell you about ‘the incident’, I don’t know, but that’s what everybody’s calling it, and since I did this big thing and survived it, the cops and the state of Vermont and the President and the entire world wants to know how we did it. It’s simple, really. We ran. We joined with other people when we came across them. We got out of the building. Well, then we came back in the building…but that was later. First we just kind of ran out of the classroom. It was me and Gary Peterson and Yolanda Chavez, who was supposed to back me up when I went to talk to Lawrence. I guess you could call her my best friend.
Gary and Yolanda and me…and Ashley Washington, who outran me once, just once, at a meet in Denver sophomore year. She could sprint faster than anybody on the team. They ripped her arms off before they ate her. Then there was Quinn Montgomery, who always wore suspenders, every day. He would be cute if he wasn’t so pale. He was almost see-through when he turned into one of those things. It was weird; I could see his lungs. They were black, like he’d been smoking.
So anyway the…four of us…four? Yeah, there were four of us. The four of us were in Biology. It was an AP class. I’d taken Biology freshman year like everybody else but I was taking it again as an AP to try and get more points in my GPA. I had a 4.0 already but Zeta Voorhies had one too and if I didn’t do something to raise mine she would beat me and get valedictorian when she graduated with us in June. She was a junior. You know what, since I didn’t finish the class, and since there’s no graduation, what happens to our grades? Do we transfer schools or…? I have to ask that cop (what is his name?) about that. That’s kind of important now.
Biology was with Coach Pensky, at 10:00; he was always eating something, even though he always told us we couldn’t eat in the class, especially when there was a lab in progress. He was eating a burrito once when we were doing a lab with gas and some like hot sauce fell onto a burner and exploded with a really cool green flame. It was pretty cool, everybody was laughing. He was the easiest AP teacher ever. I would’ve passed with flying colors if he hadn’t died so I could’ve just finished the class.
Wow. I shouldn’t have said that. I’m sorry.
The announcement came over the PA system that we were having a lockdown, and everybody was pissed off cause we were talking about anatomy and Coach had promised we’d be watching a video about STD’s, and that they showed genitals. One of the boys cursed at the PA when the annoucement came. It was pretty funny.
So we all went to the back of the room and when the lights went off the phones came out, like an automatic reaction. Phones and ipods and everything just came out, and Coach was hapy because we were all actually being quiet like we were supposed to, but that was only because we were texting and listening to music. I was talking to Daniel, who was friends with Lawrence. They had the class after that together, and I wanted him to text me and tell me if Lawrence showed up or not.
I don’t know whatever happened to Daniel. Although I’m guessing he died too. He never texted me back.
We were sitting there a long time and people were like falling asleep, some of them. Some of the others were started to get worried, and were asking Coach a bunch of questions. We heard feet running outside a few times, and that made everybody more nervous. After like fifteen minutes, right before the bell was supposed to ring for class to end, another announcement came on and said we were about to be evacuated from the building because of a fire or something. It was the vice principal Ms. Lincoln on the system, she sounded really scared, and Yolanda grabbed my arm and told me I had to stay with her because she didn’t like fire. I told her I would, and when we all took our things and left the class, we were excited because we’d get out of some class time and stand outside where it was warm.
We were excited.
We were so stupid.
Some boys started singing when we got out in the halls and headed where we knew we were supposed to when we had a drill. The alarm finally came on, and it was really, really loud, crazy-loud, piercing my ears. Yolanda held my arm and some kids asked her if she was OK. She couldn’t talk. She got really pale, which was weird to see, because she’s so dark, being Mexican and everything.
There were a bunch of people-a bunch of people-in the hallway and we were suddenly backed up, like traffic, and Quinn said he was Closterphobic, so this tall guy lifted him up, like into the air, and he breathed like he’d just been underwater. It was funny, until some people screamed, and Quinn started yelling for the guy to put him down, and suddenly all anybody wanted to do was go the other direction out of the hall. We didn’t ask questions. We just turned and ran the opposite direction. That worked out for us cause we were at the back of the group. Yolanda kept asking me what was going on, like I was supposed to know. Quinn’s eyes were really wide like he’d seen a ghost or maybe something worse.
The big guy asked him what he’d seen, and Quinn didn’t answer him until we split off, Yolanda still attached to me, Gary and the big guy with us, and Ashley too. So there were now five of us. We ran right back inside the classroom and turned off the lights and locked the door. Yolanda was crying. She was really scared. Ashley was on the landline. She said there was no signal. The big guy tried using his phone, I think he was calling the police. I don’t know for sure.
We kept asking Quinn what he saw, what did he see, what did he see? The big guy had to threaten his life to get him to spill it.
They jumped on them and started eating them, he said. They started eating them. Holy carp, you guys. Holy flying carp.
