“It’s not fair” I murmured under my breath, staring at the water slowly pooling in my cupped hands.

  With a pained hiss, I drew it across my face, sighing as the cold brought a pleasant, but all too temporary, numbness over the fresh bruises.

  In the empty bathroom of the high school, only the sound of the running faucet accompanied my own intermittent groans.

  “It’s really not fair” I murmured once more, knuckles resting on either side of the sink to look in the mirror.

  The 18 year old man that stared back at me was a sorry sight. Covered by reddening bruises, left eye almost swollen shut and blood dribbling from a split bottom lip, this fresh new batch of hurts and pains that had done nothing to improve a face that was already not particularly handsome to begin with.

  I scooped more water into my hands and brushed them over my close cropped scalp, the slight stubble of black hair pricking my palms. Haircuts cost money I did not have, so this way, I could just take a trimmer through it and still do a halfway decent job at it.

  The embodiment of average. That could describe me.

  A mere 5 foot 8, with a build that wouldn't stand out in a crowd and a face that was an unremarkable blend of features easily forgettable the moment you turned away. My weight alone didn't really fit neatly into that mold. A little heavier than most, especially around my midsection, the result of a diet dictated more by necessity than choice.

  Cheap, store-brand and fast food were the norm, a consequence of tight finances, not a lack of self-discipline.

  The only thing that'd vaguely stand out was the shape of my body. But only if I were not to wear my two sizes too large, second hand hoodie. Years of working part-time at a construction site had left me with a sturdier frame than the average eighteen-year-old. My shoulders were a bit broader, my arms a little thicker, the kind of subtle changes that came from hauling heavy materials and long hours of physical labor.

  It wasn’t anything striking, nothing to brag about, but I carried the quiet strength of someone accustomed to hard, honest work. A day laborer’s body, built out of need, not vanity.

  “You said you’d fight back this time, Jon. Even if they put you in ER or in the fucking ground, you were gonna fight this time”.

  I snarled at my own reflection. Self-disgust welled up inside me and I wanted to put my fist through the mirror, if only to give myself the illusion of striking against the mirrored manifestation of all these fears and doubts.

  But all that would get me would be a cut hand and a few years of even more bad luck than I already had, so I swallowed the anger and redirected it where it was supposed to go.

  At myself.

  I had frozen. Completely and utterly frozen. And it sickened me.

  Every man has this fantasy : “What would I do if I faced a bear?”.

  As stupid as it may seem, it’s the kind of thing that keeps us up at night, while we imagine, plan and fantasize about our crowning moment of heroism in the face of overwhelming odds.

  The unfortunate reality is that for a vast amount of people, this is the moment when we freeze up. Unless you’re used to being in life or death situations, the cocktail of adrenaline and hormones that your body releases in such events will effectively short-circuit your body.

  It’s not something our ego would allow us to admit to, of course. We’re all the heroes of our own stories.

  But it’s the reality.

  Grim, uncompromising and uncaring of opinion.

  In my case, Andreas Henderson was that metaphorical “bear”.

  A 6 foot 5 giant of a man, crotch spawn of our oh-so-esteemed mayor, Andreas was everything I lacked. Rich, handsome, influential.

  Also a complete sociopath who had “implemented” a method of bullying into our small, provincial Texan city school, that alluded a lot more to the precursor of organized crime and racketeering than anything as mundane as simple “bullying”.

  Though that was unsurprising. A chip off the old block, Andreas was the spitting image of his old man.

  And Mayor Henderson’s “business dealings” with certain individuals of ill repute was an open secret, happily ignored by a police force too far into his pocket to make any waves.

  The fact that the good mayor approved of his son's actions, if not actively encouraged them, was the cherry on the crap sundae.

  And then there was me. Jon.

  Last name, irrelevant, since it was a name given by nurses after I was abandoned in the maternity ward by my, and I use the word loosely, mother. And a history all too typical of many orphans, bouncing from foster house to foster house, taken in by people more interested in the foster care financial aid rather than raising a child, eventually arriving at the assisted housing where I lived today.

  Instinctively I clutched at the only gift I'd ever been given. A small wooden cross dangling from my neck.

  Those poor old nuns at the orphanage had probably hoped It’d “steer me on the path to salvation” or something like that.

  Sure, I believed in God, true, and had gotten a hot meal at the local churches enough times to appreciate the value of good people. But "salvation" and all that self-righteous stuff was a luxury you didn't have in the slums.

  Still, I’d formed a bit of a habit of holding onto it whenever I was at my lowest.

  An all too often occurrence.

  “It is what it is. Try again tomorrow” I murmured and resumed splashing water over my hurts.

  A new sound intruded on the noise of the faucet as someone entered the bathroom. Boots on tiles and a thin chain ringing off a belt.

  “Hey gopher, get a move on, will you? Teacher’s asking questions”

  I didn’t look directly at the intruder, and just sighed. A voice I knew all too well. Benjamin, one of Andreas’s thugs. The lanky, skinny prick that carried his boss’s “words” and “demands” with as much authority and gusto that a cowardly little lapdog could muster.

  “Why?”

  Benjamin shrugged, flicking the brown mop of curly hair out of his eyes.

  “Why do you think, dumbass? School-related injury so you gotta sign the waiver for the nurse’s office. But don’t worry. Andreas and the rest of us already took care of most of the work. We explained to the teacher of that nasty-nasty fall you took on the stairs” he added with a snicker, theatrically tapping his knuckles against a stall door.

  “Nasty fall that. Nasty-nasty. You really oughta' be more careful, gopher”

  I just nodded. There was no point in rising to the bait now anyway. Andreas and his eight thugs had beaten me to a pulp in the middle of the classroom.

  The other classmates knew that.

  The people outside the classroom know that.

  Hell, even the teacher knew that.

  But no one would do a single thing about it.

  Not when dear old dad was on the fast track to the Governor's office. Not when the entire police force was on his payroll. And definitely not when every crook and sleazeball in the city were on his speed-dial.

  Mayor Henderson was untouchable and as such, Andreas was untouchable.

  “Shoulda’ paid Andreas, man. You know how he gets when you gophers try to skimp on the protection tax” Benjamin carried on as I piled on more water over my face, if only to stop him from seeing the small, malicious smirk on my face.

  Telling Andreas where to shove his tax had been a pitiful little win, but it was still mine.

  It had almost made getting my proverbial teeth kicked in, worth it.

  Almost.

  “He’s calling all you gophers to meet at the old school building tonight, by the way. Your little stunt, telling him you ain’t gonna pay no more, he didn’t like that. Not one bit” he carried on, moving close to where I stood.

  “Can’t let you gophers get all uppity. So, your tax gonna grow. Your duties gonna get increased. And it’s all thanks to you, smart ass.” he chuckled, clapping me on the shoulder mockingly.

  I grunted as he grabbed at the exact spot where Andreas had stomped on, and closed my eyes.

  Gopher duties : Everything from food delivery and school work duty for Andreas’s group, all the way to carrying whatever they needed carrying and getting booze and smokes for them.

  All on top of a protection tax, the around forty of us gophers from different classes were, for all intents and purposes, indentured servants.

  And everyone pretended like it didn't happen.

  The other classmates for fear of being targeted.

  The teachers for fear of being sacked, or worse.

  It is what it is. No different than the last three years. Do the same thing I'd always done. Tough it out.

  “Hard day ahead, then?” I snarked back, taking my eyeglasses off the sink edge and placing them gingerly around my broken nose.

  “HAH” Benjamin snorted “Oh man you got no ide…”

  The floor beneath us shifted, a subtle tremor at first, almost imperceptible, like the faintest quiver, a shiver running through the ground. Subtle, slight, but enough to make Benjamin clamp his mouth shut.

  "What the? Earthquake? The hell was tha..." he began, looking around, only to be immediately interrupted.

  The shock of force struck us like a freight train, launching both me and Benjamin on the tiles, followed by a thunderous, all-encompassing *crack*, as if the world itself had just snapped open. The windows and porcelain sinks exploded in a symphony of breaking glass and piercing shards, spraying in every direction like the shrapnel of a claymore.

  And my world became one long scream.

  Ears ringing with the deafening sound, I instinctively folded my arms over my head as glass and porcelain rained down in a hailstorm of debris. The floor trembled beneath me, vibrations sending tiny flecks of plaster falling from the bathroom ceiling, dusting me in a gritty shower.

  Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.

  I didn’t know what had happened. Earthquake? Explosion? Some kind of attack? A thousand possibilities spun through my mind, each more impossible than the last, while the chaos around continued, relentless.

  All I could do was huddle on the floor, folded in a foetal position, desperately trying to shield my head.

  Time seemed suspended.

  A minute stretched into what felt like hours, every agonising second spent waiting for the entire damn building to come crashing down on me.

  And then, as suddenly as it had started, everything stopped, the thunderous roar replaced with a deathly silence, and the beginning chorus of people screaming.

  Slowly, I pushed the plaster bits off me, patting myself to make sure no glass or shards of porcelain had struck my body. The last thing I needed was to snag something and gut myself with a sharp edge. Fortunately, my loose hoodie and jeans had stopped most of the “shrapnel” and I had suffered had been a few extra bruises and superficial cuts.

  A cough and cuss made me turn to the right where Benjamin lay buried underneath a thin coating of plaster and debris.

  “What the fuck?” was all he could say as I pushed enough of it off him to be able to get up.

  “What?” I asked, my ears still ringing ferociously from the explosion.

  “What?” he yelled back “I said, what the fuck?”. His own ears must have been as badly impacted as mine.

  As soon as I patted myself down, clearing the remaining dust and gravel off, I rose from the floor and beelined it towards the window.

  I had to see, try to get a clue as to what had happened.

  “I think it was a nuke or something. We’re far enough away that only the shockwave hit ...” my words caught in my throat.

  Outside, so much was wrong that I did not know where to even begin.

  Because all that I saw made no sense.

  There was no more city to speak of. At least, not as far as I could make it out.

  Our school was perched on a small forested cliff on the outskirts, so we should have been able to see the entire city line from the windows. But all that was in front of us now, about five miles away from the building, so tall it cut the clouds and so wide it seemed to encircle us, was a solid wall of sickly pale mist.

  Patches of fog covered the landscape, small explosions burst in the distance and monumental shards of stone and granite had speared out of the earth impaling upwards like miniature hillocks.

  All around us, throughout the school, the sound of panicked screams and cussing was growing.

  “What in the…” Benjamin gasped as he joined me at the window.

  “What happened? What in the absolute fuck happened?” he carried on, voice growing more and more histrionic with every word. The ringing in my ears had subsided, but not enough to hear the rustle of clothes as Benjamin rounded on me, hands wrapping into the collar of my hoodie.

  “WHAT THE HELL HAPPENED GOPHER?” he roared in my face, pupils reduced to pinpricks of fear.

  “How the hell should I know?” I bellowed back at him. The reaction seemed to snap him out of his panicked state.

  He let go and shoved me into one of the stall doors, then immediately began pacing back and forth, fiddling with his phone, all stuttered words and panicked breaths.

  “Alright. Alright. We gotta call the cops or something. This is…” he mumbled to himself, dialing 911. After a few seconds of holding the phone to his ear he cussed, arm up as if to slam the phone down.

  “Dammit. FUCK. No signal, not even a tone, NOTHING”

  I didn’t bother focusing on the hysterical man. Something else caught my attention. A sound. A loud, staccato buzz, growing louder with every passing second.

  Moving back to the window I looked straight down.

  The forested area behind the school had grown thicker, as if the plant life had bloomed and multiplied. The trees were taller, there was more grass and vines, large patches where green mossy growths had blanketed the bottom portion of the school wall like gangrenous wounds.

  But it was the movement that made me shudder.

  Several misty pockets had separated from that titanic pale wall and were converging on the school building from the forest. This wasn't some trick of the eyes or wind pushing it towards us. The mist was moving, fast and with intent, beelining towards the building as if ...alive.

  And the noise was only growing.

  I tried focusing on the closest ones but the pocket of fog or mist or whatever, was far too dense to see through. It didn’t help that the left lens of my glasses had shattered and that right one had cracked.

  Miopic as I was, I couldn’t make out any details further than a few feet.

  “No Internet either” Benjamin snarled behind me and I rounded on him.

  “We gotta go. Find the teachers”.

  Benjamin stared at me, his own face slowly falling into a horrified grimace that mirrored my own.

  “Was it an attack? Did we get… I dunno, terrorist bombed or...?”

  I shook my head.

  “I know as much as you do. But the air-raid sirens didn’t go off. And those trees and mist aren’t… I mean… That’s not what a nuke or a bomb would do….”

  Whether it was the look in my eyes, the stutter in my voice or the infectious panic on my face, it didn’t matter. Because Benjamin, normally brash, arrogant, mocking Benjamin nodded furiously, all pretense of control gone and shoved his phone back into his back pocket.

  “Yeah… yeah, yeah, let’s go. We gotta fucking go” he stammered, his voice almost drowned out by the screams and cussing coming from the lower floor.

  Without wasting any more time, we ran out of the bathroom and into the herd of teens and young adults pushing and elbowing their way towards the stairs.

  Most seemed shaken but otherwise unharmed, save superficial cuts and bruising, but every now and again I caught glimpses of people that had taken a bad hit and either limped or held red rags to their heads or limbs.

  It was pure pandemonium, screams and shouts overwhelming even the teachers trying to yell over the crowd.

  “Listen to me. Everyone. Form an orderly line and make your way to the courtyard. Like the fire drills” Headmaster Williams bellowed out, swinging his arms out for attention.

  The obese man elbowed his way through the crowd until he reached the front and turned to face the panicked teens and young adults.

  “Orderly line. Orderly line dammit. We practiced this” he roared again, face red and jowls shaking with the effort, trying to establish some sort of order.

  “Help those that can’t walk on their own and follow me”.

  With that, Headmaster Williams turned and made his way towards the main stairwell. I joined the rest of the group and followed, Benjamin still right beside me for some reason. All around people were asking questions, trying to make phone calls or connect to the Internet for any sort of clarity.

  The part that worried me was that even with the tumult and noise of this panicked group, I could still make out the screaming and buzzing coming from the ground floor.

  The screaming was different down there. Louder. More primal.

  And we were heading downstairs. Should I speak out? Should I go through the fire escape?

  Fear and panic however, had taken the words out of me and screwed my mouth shut. All I knew was that I should put my trust in the Headmaster’s lead and the tried and true fire drills. When something happened we were all supposed to make our way to the courtyard, it was that simple.

  But it never really is that simple. Not in real life.

  As soon as Headmaster Williams stepped into the stairwell, his movement came to a sudden halt, face twisting in an expression of raw, unrelenting fear. His eyes widened, his mouth opening as if to say something—but the words never came.

  He was frozen, caught between flight and fight, staring at something unseen, his body stiff with terror.

  What I had thought was mist, burst out from the stairwell, in a spasm of violent motion.

  It wasn’t mist. Or fog. Or smoke.

  It was a swarm.

  A seething mass of bloated, albino flies, each the size of a human head, surrounded by a fine powder, like the spores of fungi.

  The swarm was so thick, it became a blanket, a living cloud that engulfed him, and the buzzing, a high-pitched, relentless hum that hit my eardrums like a physical force, making the air vibrate with the fury of their flight.

  Almost loud enough to deafen the man's scream.

  Almost.

  But not enough.

  Before he could even react, the swarm fell on him, pouring over his face, his arms, like a wave of vermin. A shroud of twitching, pulsating, chitinous bodies.

  Then the blood began to spray. Ribbons of red painted the floor, the walls and ceiling as Williams thrashed and wailed, arms flailing, uselessly batting at his own body, scream raised to a fever pitch, but still not enough to cover the sound of chitinous mandibles ripping into meat.

  With grotesque suddenness his scream stopped, cut short as one of the albino monstrosities burrowed into his mouth, replaced with the crack of bones and the tearing of cheeks being ripped open.

  We watched the grotesque display in stunned, silent horror and only when Williams fell face first in a pool of his own blood, did our screaming start.

  And the swarm fell on us.