a short story by Jacob Ryckman
“Hello?” the girl asked, slowly walking through the abandoned hallway. “Is anyone there?” A light flickered a way’s away, but offered no response.
She had gone to use the bathroom when the power went out at school. It wasn’t anything unusual, though; the school was old, and power outages happened at least once a month now. The protocol was that teachers were supposed to lead the students into the halls, where the emergency lights would still be on to provide some illumination. Yet…why was nobody in the halls?
Shuddering from the cold (the heaters never worked, even during a cold October day such as this), she continued on her way to her classroom, hoping maybe she would encounter someone. The flickering light was starting to really bother her now.
Something shattered behind her, a sound that pierced her earlobes like a gunshot. Spinning around, she cried out, “Who’s there?” Nothing. One of the hanging clocks had fallen, its frame snapping in half. Curious, she walked over to it and knelt, examining the broken machinery. The hands were frozen in place at the time when it had fallen: 1:17. Wait a minute…that couldn’t be right. She checked her watch: 11:32. That’s what she thought. But why…
She suppressed a small gasp. That was her classroom’s room number. A quiet hissing noise sounded from behind her. Panicked, she bolted from the spot, tossing the clock in the direction of the noise. Someone shouted in pain but she kept running. She had to.
Finally, she arrived at her classroom. As was to be expected at this point, it was empty. But there were clear signs that something had forced everyone to leave. Desks and chairs were overturned. Papers were strewn across the floor. The teacher must have been writing on the blackboard, for a math equation was only half-finished. Absentmindedly, she walked up to the board and finished it, even solving the problem. She didn’t know why she was doing it; it just felt right. It felt…normal. After finishing the problem on the board, she turned back to the ravaged room and noticed something in the corner. A pool of liquid. Holding her breath for what else she would find, she continued forward…and proceeded to vomit. Shoved into the corner of the room, as if someone had been trying to hide it, was a terribly mangled corpse. She didn’t recognize the person, not any more. The clothes were shredded to ribbons, the skin as well. It was missing an arm, but the wound at the base of the shoulder was not clean, instead appearing as if the arm had been yanked from the body. Puncture wounds marked the chest, and the head…the head looked as if it had been partially eaten.
“Oh god.” She spun around and saw a boy her age standing in the doorway to the classroom, staring at the corpse. “Oh god, I knew something funny was going on, but…but…murder?”
She realized she recognized the voice. “You were the person earlier. You were hissing at me.”
“I was trying to get your attention without…well, without getting anything else’s attention. My name’s Eric. You have a good throwing arm, by the way.”
“What do you mean by ‘anything else?’ Do you know what’s going on?”
“Yeah. At least, I think I do. I thought I saw these weird bugs in the hallway when the power went out, so I ducked into a bathroom. When I heard you in the hall, I tried to get your attention. We should probably try to get out of here before we end up-” His sentence was cut off as something grabbed his ankles and knocked him to the ground, dragging him out of the classroom. “No! Run!” He suddenly began screaming in pain, followed by a grotesque chewing sound. A moment later, he fell silent.
She ducked behind a desk, her eyes wide with terror as something entered the classroom. The boy had not been wrong: the creature was very bug-like. Its body was small, only standing at two feet max. The body was shaped like that of a cockroach, oval with a hard shell on top and fleshy underbelly. It walked on eight legs, like a spider, scuttling its way into the classroom. Its head, however, was nothing like anything she had ever seen. It reminded her of the tyrannosaurus rex in those Jurassic Park movies, only it was like it had three jaws which opened in a triangle formation, revealing rows of small, sharp fangs. The eyes were very serpentine, as well, intelligent and glowing. The creature entered the room and paused, its snout low to the ground. A moment later it was joined by another creature which was covered in blood.
“How long will it take for the grubs to grow in him?” the first creature asked in gravelly English.
“Not long,” the other responded, “With the number of hosts we have gathered here today, we will soon number in the thousands.”
“And has a new queen been selected?”
“Yes.” The creature turned and stared directly at her. “She is among us.”
Shrieking, she picked up a chair and threw it at the creatures. It struck one of them, knocking it into the wall, and she bolted, running from the room as fast as she could. The other creature grabbed at her ankles and she fell headfirst to the ground, inches away from the now shredded corpse of the boy she had encountered moments earlier, his face locked in an expression of pure horror. Screaming, she kicked back at the creature, stunning it, then got up and continued running. She didn’t know where she was going. She didn’t know where the creatures were. She just knew that she had to get away from them.
Tears streaming down her face, she burst her way into the gymnasium, only to freeze in horror. The gym was no more than a crater now, a crater crawling with hundreds of the hideous creatures. They all turned to her and froze, staring at her. The corpses of nearly everyone in the school lay in that crater, small white orbs writhing inside their open ribcages. The door opened behind her, and she knew that the two creatures she had encountered earlier were in the gym now. Slowly, she turned and faced them.
The creature grinned, a cruel, horrid grin. “My queen.” It lunged. She screamed.
Jacob Ryckman 