This is the End

Part 7: The Survivors

            Hands were pulling on my shoulders, tugging me back through the doors to the band room. Tearing me away from the warm body of my girlfriend. I attempted to protest, weakly trying to shove the grabbing hands away, but they were persistent. Eventually, I was forced to let go of her body. It landed with a thud on the ground.

            I was screaming, crying, shaking in an emotion pain. For moments at a time, I was unable to breathe. I had never felt such awful, terrible pain in my life. I didn’t know that my heart could be ripped up through my throat without it actually happening. I couldn’t walk. The hands caught me as I stumbled backwards into the room while soothing voices came through my head, soft and fast.

            At one point, it felt like my heart had stopped. I gasped for air, willing my heart to continue pumping. The world went fuzzy for a while, sending me into an eerie silent world full of shadows. Then I was on the ground, gasping, as the shadows hovering over morphed into real people. My band director was there, with Afton, Devon, Maddy, and a few others. A light was flashed across my eyes.

            “He’s alive,” said Afton, heaving a sigh of relief. Her bright eyes, turned green by her contact lenses, were heavy with tears.

            “Andrew,” I moaned, “Get Andrew. He’s hurt.” All of them but Afton immediately jumped from their circle around me to where Andrew had collapsed on the floor. I couldn’t meet Afton’s eyes, not then. Instead, I looked around the band room, taking in all the suffering. Small groups of people were clustered at different points throughout the place, some crying, and some rocking back and forth in silence. Ryan and his girlfriend, Emily, were alone in a corner. Emily had a coating of blood spattered across her back. I wondered who she had watched die.

            “Trey.”

            Afton was still sitting next to me, studying me as I observed the room. She was relatively clean. The only disturbance on her pale face was a thin scratch that had long since stopped bleeding.

            “I’m so sorry. About Elise,” she whispered, “About everything that’s happened to you with this. We’ve been hearing stories from a lot of people about what you’ve been doing. It’s amazing, re—”

            “I am the reason that so many of my friends are dead!” I yelled, sitting up suddenly. “Elise, Lily, Chris, Peter, Elle, Katie, Tillman—they’re all gone! And they can’t come back.” My voice broke with those last words. Fresh tears leaked from my eyes.

            Afton pulled my into a hug, running her fingers through my hair. “You know what, though?” she asked, “You know what? You made it out alive. You brought Andrew out with you. You’re the first two people to ever get away from the M.A. You should be proud.”

            I wouldn’t be swayed. “We aren’t out. Not really, not yet. And we are never going to get out of here.” My voice became softer and softer until I was sure she could not hear me. “We are all going to die in this room.”

            “Trey, you need to listen to me,” said Afton. “If you keep talking like that, everyone is going to panic. Sure, we are all thinking it, but if you, of all people, say it out loud, we are going to have an even bigger crisis at hand. These people in here look up to you, they really do.”

            I didn’t care. I was being selfish, and I knew it, but I was in desperate need of time to mourn.

            So I sat in silence for a good while, praying. I prayed for everyone that died that day, prayed they would all go to heaven. I prayed for myself, too. Myself, Andrew, Afton, and everybody in our band room. Maybe, just maybe, we could all survive.