No Flesh Shall Be Spared

more closely, it looked more like they were simply standing and staring at the school from behind the cyclone fence.

At the far end on the right, she noticed the man she’d seen earlier. He wore a black tie and looked as if he’d spilled something (coffee, maybe?) on his white shirt. The dark stain splashed across his chest and down the front of his pants. His manner seemed agitated as he ran his hands obsessively over the wire, but his eyes remained fixed on the school. Seemingly by accident, he found the break in the fence which allowed entrance to the school’s grounds from the street and he hesitantly took a step through.

A light tugging at her shirt sleeve brought her back to the classroom. She looked down and saw a young girl with long black hair parted in the middle looking up at her with a questioning gaze.

'Yes, Carolyn?'

'Is everything ok? Are we in trouble? The Principal said we have to stay after school.'

Chikara looked up at the class and saw an assortment of small worried faces looking expectantly at her.

'No,' she said softly. 'No, everything is fine. He just said there was some problem with the road; perhaps a traffic accident of some sort.'

'Miss Pressfield?' said a small Japanese boy named Yoshi who was proving himself day by day to be the clown of the class.

'Yes, Yoshi?'

 'Uh… I’m scared.'

Chikara looked around the room and a good portion of her kids were nodding their heads up and down aggressively in agreement.

'Oh, Yoshi,' she said and walked over to pat him on the head. 'There is absolutely no need for that…'

As she spoke, she turned her head for one last look outside. Across the soccer field, she saw that the rest of the group of people were now following the man with the stain on his shirt through the fence and slowly making their way toward the school. She mused that maybe they were some of the children’s parents who’d heard about whatever was happening on the roads and had come to fetch them. Even as the words were formed in her mind, somehow she knew that wasn’t the case. Feeling her stomach becoming uneasy and electric, she stepped away from the window.

Abruptly, the classroom door opened and Mrs. Walters from the fourth grade class next door poked her head in. The woman was older than Chikara and stockier. She had obviously dyed blonde hair set in a style that made her look a bit like a 'biker mama.' Her clothes more or less confirmed the assumption. She smoked like a train and the throaty, coarseness of her voice and heavily lined face were evidence of that. Since arriving at Ridgeway, she’d come to be the closest thing Chikara had to a friend amongst the staff.

'Chikara,' she said, her voice trembling just a bit, 'may I speak to you a moment?' She roughly jerked her head back the way she’d come. 'Out here… in the hall.'

'Ladies and Gentlemen, please open your free-reading books and sit quietly for a bit while I go speak with Mrs. Walters.' She turned toward a boy with a bowl haircut at the front of the class. 'Luke, you are in charge while I am gone. Please see to it that everyone is reading.'

She walked toward the door and said, 'And please… don’t worry. I’m sure this is all nothing to be concerned about.'

As Chikara came through, Mrs. Walters stepped back. She nervously looked up and down the hallway while waiting for the door to close behind her.

 'What’s going on, Helen?' Chikara asked, trying to follow the other woman’s gaze.

'Something is up, girl,' was the only answer given.

'What? Wait. What are you talking about?'

'Did you hear that letch Borden?' she asked. She’d long been complaining about the Principal and his 'hands on' approach with some of the female staff. 'Well, he was lying…'

Chikara looked at her confusedly.

 'About ten minutes ago, I was talking to Phyllis in the office,' Helen continued. 'She said that Fred got some kind of frantic call from the police just prior to him making that announcement over the PA.'

'The police?' Chikara asked, unbelieving. She took a quick glance behind her and peered through the small window set in the door. Predictably, the children were not reading but rather, talking amongst themselves excitedly.

'Yeah!' Helen shook her head up and down excitedly; eyes opening wide enough to show the whites around the irises. 'Phyllis said that right after the call, Frank got on the radio and called Jessie, the new janitor, and told him to start locking the doors that lead into the building. After a few minutes, she said that Jessie stopped answering his radio. Weird, huh? She didn’t hear much else, but after that, Frank’s tone changed… He just sounded really freaked out.'

'Wait… That makes no kind of sense. We’re supposed to…'

'I know! We’re supposed to always keep those doors open during regular school hours.'

'Surely, Phyllis misunderstood.'

'That’s what I asked her. But she said she heard him talking to the janitor plain as day. I’m heading down to the office now to see what I can find out. I just wanted to tell you what was going on before I went.'

Chikara rubbed a hand over her face in an effort to make sense of it all. For some reason, the image of the people gathered outside flitted across her mind’s eye. When her attention came back to the moment, she saw Helen looking around nervously and wringing her hands.

'God, I need a smoke.'

'Well, if you learn anything,' Chikara said, looking back over her shoulder at the door to her classroom, 'come back and tell me, ok?'

The older woman nodded briskly and gently touched her friend’s arm reassuringly. With that, she hurried away, her heels clicking against the hard tile floor.

Chikara took another look up and down the hallway and then pulled open the classroom door. As she stepped inside, twenty-three pairs of terrified eyes snapped up to look at her. The kids were obviously frightened, their initial anxiety having escalated to an almost full-blown panic. Kids have always instinctively known when adults were lying and, as a result, grown-ups were not to be trusted. They’d all heard the worry in Mrs. Walter’s voice and in Chikara’s absence it had fanned the flames of their unease.

Chikara tried her best to smile as she walked toward her desk at the front of the room, but then she caught sight of Roger at the far end of the room. The little boy (with his Dumbo ears and large round glasses) was a human polygraph. The kid could smell bullshit a mile away. He’d caught on to her early in the school year when she’d tried to tell the children about Santa Claus. She decided, given everything she’d been told, that honesty would be the best policy.

'Children, I’m not going to lie to you…' she began.

Roger narrowed his gaze and leaned forward.

'Something is indeed going on and we’re all going to need to stay calm.'

A few of the girls and even a boy or two stared at her wide-eyed and blinked away some tears. For the most part, the children were putting on their bravest faces.

Lydia, a fragile-looking blonde with small wire-frame glasses, hesitantly raised her hand.

'Yes, Lydia.'

'Who are those people?'

'What people, Dear?'

'The ones outside,' she said and slowly raised her hand and pointed toward the window.

The collective group nodded like bobblehead dolls. Chikara stepped over to the window and was amazed to see that the entire group of people who were by the fence had now made their way onto the lawn just outside the building. Worse, they were being followed by another large group who were still making their way through the fence and across the lawn. All told, there were forty or so people milling around outside.

Straining to get a good look, she saw that something didn’t seem right. There was definitely something wrong with all of them. Blank faces and gaping mouths were unanimous expressions they wore. Their gait was more like a stagger than real walking; as if they were drunk or severely impaired. Their forward motion was a result of their rocking back and forth of their body on stiff legs.