In ninth grade world history, Mr. Helcos demonstrated the Socratic method by asking me, "What is honor?" When I shrugged and answered doubtfully, "Helping society?" he turned to Heidi. "So what, then, is honorable conduct?" After she responded a moment later with, "I have no idea," he shot question after question around the class, which led us into a debate about when cheating is okay, or if torture is successful, or what exactly the term art means in the twenty-first century. Mr. Helcos ended the discussion by heaving a satisfied sigh that came from deep in his beer belly. "The Socratic method is supposed to help us reveal our own truths."
My own truths. My own truth then was that the Socratic method was kind of stupid because if you failed a test, you failed a test, and that was a fact. My own truth this morning was that I was going to go to school and get a B on a biology test and go to a food truck with Heidi after school to work on our science fair project (the toxicity of metals in dental amalgram fillings). There was nothing subjective about that.
My own truth in the middle of my school hallway was also a fact: the world was ending.
Heat heat heat. That's all there was. It ripped through my skin and dug right down to the bone, made my nerve endings jump to life. My vision filled with white; a trilling, high-frequency ring rocked my skull. Then the ringing ended, and sounds came back in snapshots of a slowed-down world:
The snap of my head against the tiled floor. Heidi's shriek right beside my ear. Heavy footfalls over the crunch of broken glass. Mutilated voices.
Sensations came back, too, and the scene rushed in just as quick as it slowed down: dark, bulky silhouettes waded through the remaining stars that dangled in front of my eyes. My glasses pressed hard against the bridge of my nose. The unbearable heat faded away to an uncomfortable tingle. My fingers swiped against something wet as they brushed against the floor, I kicked my legs to get them working again, my jaw worked to form the words, Heidi, are you okay?
I felt distant from all of it.
One of the bulky figures hauled me to my feet.
"Up you get," growled a man's voice. He pulled me so close to him that I could see the sweat beading on his waxy skin and the fever-brightness of his eyes.
He yanked me in the direction of the cafeteria. I coughed smoke from my lungs and twisted backward to look for Heidi—she wasn't there...just scary big men and women wielding guns larger than my body and a catastrophe of smoke plumes and shattered glass.
My captor jerked me around and pushed me through the cafeteria.
Emotions hazed, blurred into a muddy mosaic that left me too numb to cry out.
The cafeteria was a different world than the one I left five minutes ago. Invaders stampeded through the maze of tables, hauling students up by the arms and shoving them into the middle of the room. I bit down hard on my lower lip, held my glasses by the bridge to keep them from tumbling off my face, and exhaled.
Stay calm, stay—
A gunshot exploded through the cacophony. I jumped and turned my attention to the far side of the cafeteria. The invaders had taken at least a dozen teachers, lined them up, and pointed guns at their heads.
My own truth, a truth devoid of any subjectivity, was everyone's reality: teachers were being executed before our very eyes and it was not like a horror movie where you can pause, slow down, or mute right before the slasher scene happens. The executions happened fast, onetwothreefourfive, and the shots made the ground vibrate. Blood splattered over the wall behind the victims, darkened the clothes of the invaders, and ran in bright red rivers past the tables. I closed my eyes when an invader pressed the muzzle of his weapon to the sixth teacher in the line: Mr. Helicos. Crack.
My captor let go of my arm, and I stumbled into the apocalypse that used to be a high school cafeteria: overturned tables, smashed food smeared across the floors and walls, blood spatter on the southernmost walls right next to the lunch ladies' station where the twelve teachers were shot down, a crowd of crying, trembling, gasping teenagers. Screaming and gunshots and commands and the clatter of tables and the thud of bodies.
In the middle of the chaos, a voice bellowed, "LISTEN UP!" and the words were unmistakably spoken through a microphone. I whirled around to see the speaker standing on top of a table, a wireless headset wrapped around his abnormally large head. He sported a soft jawline tufted with salt-and-pepper stubble and chapped lips that were split and bleeding down the middle. His eyes were hungry in the ageless, destructive way one might see on lions or sharks. He could have been twenty-seven or forty-nine.
"Shut up!" he snapped, his voice all gusto and zeal. He fired a shot from his rifle into the ceiling.
The ceiling cried plaster.
Everyone shut up.
"Where's Heidi?" a taut voice asked into my ear from behind. It was Markus. I turned around and wrapped my arms around his neck. He smelled like cafeteria mashed potatoes and sweat and smoke, but beneath all that was the indescribably familiar smell of Markus. His familiar smell made it a little easier to breathe.
As his arms squeezed me back, I whispered, "They got us on the way to the library. Some kind of flash bomb. I lost her."
"I lost James too," he said, pulling away from our embrace. His fingers found my hand; both of our palms were sweaty.
The man atop the table lifted his weapon. "Raise your hand if you want to die in the nukes that are about to shatter South Carolina in three hours and twenty-two minutes."
Nukes?
"Neither do I," snarled the man after a stunned second of silence. "So you're all going to comply and let us herd you into the buses waiting outside. We're going to take you to a fallout shelter, and if we pass any adults on the way, we'll shoot them in the head. When we do that, you're not going to scream, or we'll shoot you in the head. Nod if you understand."
Fallout shelter.
We nodded.
"Good." The man flicked his wrists outward in an authoritative gesture, and the other invaders swarmed into the middle of the cafeteria, herding us into two straight lines.
I was gutted, gasping in the haze of being walked out at gunpoint by masked people who just shot a dozen teachers. Tears were right behind my eyes but I didn't let them leak out. I couldn't, because that truth was still my own: I will not cry, not right now. I will not cry in the middle of the end of the world.
I didn't loosen my grip on Markus's hand or stop scanning the crowd for Heidi or James as the invaders led us into the bus lot. The regular school buses were like ghost ships, every window shattered, the tops dented, the bright orange paint slashed by crude silver marks. There were nine black coach buses lined up on the curb, where matching gold symbols glittered at us like evil little monsters on their faces. It could have been a deformed bird or a deformed rat or a very large cockroach, and its familiarity struck me like a slap. Where had I seen it before?
"Before we load you all," shouted Headset, who had strapped his rifle to his back and now held a tablet in his gloved hands. "I'm going to call out a list of names. If your name is called, step off the curb and onto the road. We'll do another call when we get to the fallout shelter and if we find out you didn't answer your name, we'll shove you outside before the bombs blow and you can vaporize with the rest of the world."
The word bombs turned my stomach inside out.
Headset read the names off of his tablet in alphabetical order: José Arzaldua, Skylar Atkins, Caroline Babbett...it was haunting to hear those names, because I knew nearly all of them. They were the names I'd spent the past three-and-a-half years in high school with, and the rhythm was familiar. I'd heard versions of this list from freshman orientation roll call to end-of-year awards to the millions of things that needed to get done for graduation in June. When Headset called Heidi Hirez and no one stepped forward, Markus tightened his grip on my hand. I pressed my body into his side. Twenty names after Heidi, James's name was called. No one stepped off the curb. I exhaled.
The list went on and on and on, name after dreadfully familiar name, and every second in the cold sunshine grates against the last second. Headset called Markus's name; my name was called directly after it, and Headset ended with Marie Zenn. Headset then tucked the tablet into a large pocket on the inside lapel of his puffer jacket and barked, "If you're still standing on the curb, congratulations. You're going to be a fraction of the kids left alive in the next three hours. The rest of you can rot."
"Assholes!" José shouts. "I don't understand—"
"We were given a list of people who are eighteen or are going to turn eighteen this year," replied Headset with a shrug. His lips were pressed into a thin line. "You're no use to us."
Shock set in hard and rolled over me in a frigid shower of shivers. They were just going to leave the senior class here?
I was still standing there, rooted in my spot next to Markus on the asphalt, as the invaders marched into the crowd left on the curb and loaded them single-file onto the buses. The girl behind me spat a colorful string of curse words. The kids to my left were crying and trying to hold themselves together. Markus whispered under his breath, "This can't be happening, this can't be happening."
I stood with my class and watched as my own truth exploded and poisoned every square inch of me with its own brand of carcinogenic radioactivity: the invaders left us here to die.
Two minutes later, the buses took off.
There was nothing any of us left on the curb could do about it.
Markus let go of my hand and pulled his phone out of his back pocket. He shoved it in my hands and mumbled, "I saw this before the invaders showed up."
It was a news article, similar to the one my family and I received this morning. I scanned it, raking my teeth over my bottom lip:
The CORPALARKI bioterrorist organization is breaking into day cares, schools, institutions, and hospitals.
Senators, House Representatives, and cabinet members have taken claim as part of the CORPALARKI organization and have shut down the Capitol Building and the White House.'
National Guard members were sent out by the president to get everyone they can into Washington D.C.'
Fallout shelters protected by the National Guard are facing overcrowded conditions.'
The president is unavailable for comment at this time.
I handed the phone back to Markus, shaking and numb.