The Explosion

Chapter 2

She awoke to silence. Silence and what felt like a spike pressing painfully against her back. Groaning, she rolled to her left and winced as she fell to the floor with a clatter that rang out loudly in the eerie classroom. Lily tried to ignore the pounding in her head as she opened her eyes and looked around. All of her classmates were lying, sprawled around the classroom, some on top of each other, some on their own and some stuck under various items of furniture. Lily now realised that she had been in a pile of chair and desks; chucked into it after being separated from Zoe. Zoe! She now frantically leapt up and searched around the room. "Zoe?" She whispered and then wondered why she was whispering. "Zoe!" She then shouted. The chair! There is some dark hair! She thought as she ran over and cleared a chair from a boy whose arm was twisted at an unnatural angle. Lily backed away in shock. She wanted to check if he was okay but her mouth felt dry and her voice cracked when she tried to talk. She reached a hand up to the locket around her neck. She ran her fingers along the intricate pattern that was carved into the golden heart. Zoe had one exactly the same. On the back was written, "Z & L" and beneath it was the word; "Inseparable."

They were inseparable. They always had been. Lily closed her eyes. How had this happened? What had happened? She would figure that out later. She had to find Zoe. Chairs were thrown and desks were shoved aside but finally, after pulling apart a tower of a mix of the two, Lily found what she had been looking for. "Zoe!" She exclaimed as she knelt down next to her, running her pale hand through Zoe's shoulder length, black hair.

Zoe stirred as her head was gently lifted up onto Lily's knee; her dark brown eyes squinting in confusion. "What..." She stopped talking to sit herself up to a kneel. "What happened?"

"Goodness knows," Lily replied, "but we have to check that everyone is okay!"

The two girls spent the next ten minutes hauling furniture off their classmates and waking them up. They were beginning to think everything was okay until someone said, "Um, guys?" Everyone's eyes turned towards Elisa; the girl who had been thrown to safety by the teacher. "I think there is something wrong with Mrs Finch. She isn't waking up!" Straight away, two boys ran over and turned her onto her back, one of them pressing their ear against her mouth. They waited there, all standing in silence for what must only have been thirty seconds but felt like an age. Finally, the boy who had been checking if the teacher was breathing stood up, his face looked shocked.

"She's dead," he whispered, just loud enough for everyone in the room to hear.

An eerie silence spread across the room but it was soon broken by a girl who Lily presumed was in the year below who yelled, "Our teacher is dead!" and then disappeared back through the doorway to scream her lungs out to the children in the next classroom.

Someone said something about their parents and headed to the door but stopped themselves just before leaving the classroom. Their friend walked over to them and put a hand on their shoulder. "Jen? What is-" But she too looked out into the corridor, obviously seeing what was wrong. Jen's legs buckled beneath her and her friend caught her mid-fall, dragging her away from the doorway so that the corridor could not be seen. Lily and Zoe shared a glance at each other and held each other's hand tight, making their way to the corridor. And there it was.

Bodies. Children's bodies. Not many, but maybe five children, two boys and three girls, lay dead in the corridor. "Are we sure they're..." Zoe began but stopped herself. Of course, they were. Everyone who was going to wake up had already done so.

"We need to leave," Lily said steely. "Now." So, without further ado, the two girls ran from the school, passing through crowds of scared girls and boys and through empty corridors, and bolted out onto the street where a parade of cars, some burned, some crashed, some upside down, and much more, were chucked down the roads as far as they could see. "I have to find my mum," Lily announced. "Now."