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students, the dead classmate. The lockdown. Her fear was intense; Lucy gnawed on her bottom lip until she tasted blood.
    Her time was up.
    The voices approached. To run to the door now would risk exposure. To wait would risk abandonment. She ducked into the closest classroom, grabbed the handle and shut the door without making a noise. Then she reached for her phone. It blinked with three unread messages. Amidst the panic she had not felt the phone pulsating in her pocket.
    The first was a cryptic message from her mother:
    “ Not what we expected. Please come home. Please come home. NOW .”
    The second was from Ethan:
    “ Mom needs me. She called. She was frantic. Bawling. Screaming. Going home. Taking Anna. We will come back for you. Sit tight. ”
    The third was from Salem:
    “ My family is dead. They’re all dead. It’s the end of the world. ”

CHAPTER FOUR

    Lucy collapsed against the door.
    She closed her eyes and listened as the footsteps reached her and then passed her without incident.
    When she opened her eyes, she cried out and then flung her hand over her mouth.
    Splayed outward in the center of the classroom was another body. A man. His green Levis crept up to his mid-calf, exposing pink and gray argyle socks. The acidic smell of vomit wafted from his direction. Dried blood pooled on the floor, it had trickled down from the twisted mouth, opened wide as if in protest. His skin was yellow and waxy, and his eyes glassed over with a thin film, giving them the appearance of having cataracts.
    Lucy knew that she was looking at Mr. North: Senior English teacher, recently married, advisor to the chess club. He was young and funny and impeccably dressed—a combination that added up to an adoring fan club of bright-eyed girls. She turned her head and then she saw the other bodies. A girl, head on her desk and a boy right next to her. And more. Six people altogether.
    Some looked like they had sat down and fallen asleep, but others were a twisted mess of limbs and clothing.
    She shook her head. A scream caught in her throat.
    Lucy dialed her house number on her phone and hit send, but the phone beeped angrily at her. She dialed again. It beeped. Her screen flashed an angry All Circuits Busy message. Busy. Busy. Busy.
    Lucy stuck the phone in her pocket and stood up; she gathered up her white shirt and pulled it over her nose and mouth—the futility of this act was not lost on her, but Lucy didn’t know what else to do. She pushed her anxiety away and focused as best she could. Was this related to the dogs? What was happening? Would this happen to her? Had it happened to her family? Where was Ethan? Would he really come back? The questions flooded her brain, and ran in a loop, like a clip playing without stop.
    Staying in the room with the dead was not an option, and it was not a fear of the bodies, but a fear of what killed them. Lucy peered out into the hallway and discovering it quiet, left the room with her bag hoisted up on her shoulder. She rounded the corner toward the social studies hall and froze.
    Scattered up and down the long hallway were more dead students.
    Like the ones before, many of these victims had thrown-up prior to collapsing. They bled from their eyes, noses, and mouths; under the bright florescent lights of the high school, their skin took on a green tint. For the first time, Lucy noticed that one boy was covered in hives. The sickness did not bother her, but the smell was overpowering. While Lucy was certain from her biology classes that decomposition wouldn’t begin for hours or days, these bodies already seemed to bloat and smell like decay. Frozen in the hallway, she watched one boy, eight or ten feet away, and waited to see the subtle movement of his chest—waited to see his breathing resume.
    This is what she did during movies after key characters died. She ignored all other dialogue and just watched and waited to see if she could spot the imperceptible movement of life. A short