"Are you going to the game today after school?" An innocuous question for an innocuous place. The bustle of children throughout the halls flowed like cars on a street, adhering to an unspoken agreement of traffic. Speaking of local gossip, politics-- or whatever would pass for such a concept amongst the student body--and test scores for those whose teachers deemed it so. The screeching of rubber soles on tile, and the varied pitches of the students talking to one another, drowned out even the most suspicious noises being made... just behind the wall.

  Abandoned and forgotten, the rays of a vibrant sun have never met the inside of this room. Its undisturbed cases for many an instrument sit behind layers upon layers of dust and grime that have embarked on a campaign to become omnipresent within the room over the years. Its walls, once covered in the irregular three-dimensional wavey patterns of foam, now sit partially exposed; The adhesive decaying over the years and loosening to the point of failure. And it was in this dark, isolated room that an ugly hiss began to dominate. A stream of orange sparks flood into the stale air, kicking up dust the with its very creation. The sparks, however, did not remain stationary, attempting to graph out a rough circle on the floor, completing the circumference. Like a demonic ritual the area within the circle soon gave way, revealing a bright sketch of the circle. The silence soon dominated again as a hand of blackest pitch gripped the floor, then another joined it, and soon the figure of a shadow emerged from the hole. And soon that figure was joined by another. The first moved to get a view of the door, while the other moved to kneel before the opening and was handed a black duffel that he set down to his side. Three more soon joined the original bag, moved up against the wall opposite the supervised door, as another hand grabbed the edge. The second moved to grab the hand and heaved, another being rising from the circle. Once more, a hand grabbed the edge, and the two moved to help it spawn another of their kind. Now there was four beings inside the old dusty room, with the three looking down into the from which they came, before they huddled around the bags. Shirts, pants, belts, socks, and shoes were retrieved along with backpacks, books and pencils.

  The halls are empty now, the once ajar classroom doors of teachers now firmly shut under lock and key, and even the janitors have left, their cleaning done for the day. The school is dark, its bowels devoid of staff and students alike. A door swings open. A metalic squeak breaks the silence.

  The school bell rings, the students pour into the classrooms and gyms, and the teachers will begin their lectures. The halls are busy once again with the sound of students buzzing, the clomping of their shoes and the sound of metal lockers slamming bringing life back into the school, exchanging tranquility with familiarity. The bell rings: the halls are full, and the school roars with conversation. The bell rings: the talk sputters to a simmer, and the hallways still. The bell rings: and the halls... they stay simmering. The classrooms are silent; not one voice, not one grumble, nor one mumble. The tranquility turns surreal.

  "This is The Federal frequency Emergency broadcasting system-" The silence is broken--the stillness... has fallen. The students scream. Students--yelling, begging, running, talking, screaming-- scatter, the teachers following soon. Chaos is seen in every corner, every room, and every walkway. Faculty running, not caring where or from what for nobody knows, and nobody could. But amongst this circus of stampeding bulls and cows are four, smartly dressed students: backs to each other, eyes on the doors. They remain still, the crowd bashing against them with pure fear yet they hold. They hold against the crazed, scared students in their attempt to escape--to break free from whatever they could not know, as was For-warned. A bang reverberates. The crowd quiets. The four no longer hold their diamond formation; aligned in a rank, and weapons free. Three scatter, one drops. Shot after shot rings out--the crowd roars back, ten times the panic--bullets ricochet and the crowd, again, falls silent. The three no longer hold their rank, now in a wedge pushing through the crowd. The point man stops, he turns, and is gunned down. Before the crowd stirs, the two begin to sprint, weaving and shoving their way through the crowd. Theirs an uncanny scream that... it reverberates in a screech and pitch so alien its tone shifts every other note, in one cohesive way. The cry was as uniform as it was abrupt and erratic. A shot is fired, a bullet ricochets, and the crowd resumes their fever. They grow more violent now, they are punching and kicking, they are screaming and moaning, they are running and unresponsive. They do not react, only act, not knowing more beyond their mind. A squelch is heard, two becomes one, and the crowd intensifies.

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  The day has grown long, for there is no night. The school turns and roars at every hour now, no quiet reprieve from the madness--no calm, only storm. A lone man kneels in the only quiet place left to be found: a hole in a quiet room, black with foam on every wall. A finger hovers on a device in his hand. He grabs it and moves to stand. The man is no longer alone. There is a button on the device, and there is another, larger, device within each of the four bags. A beep is heard, and silence is brought back, roaring from its heavy oppression. The Four, now one, and then... there were none.

  "Hey, have you seen the graves?" a student, Toby, asks.

  "No?" another, Janet, asks in turn.

  "I don't know." came the response, "But they certainly weren't there yesterday."

  "Who are the graves dedicated to?"

  "No clue, but, after school, we should check em' out."

  "Yeah..."

  "Oh, come on! We can't just leave something like mysterious graves that, apparently, no one knows anything about!"

  Janet's eyes narrow, but he's cut-off before he says anything.

  The bell rings and students go to their classes, teachers begin their preambles, and the administrators type away at their keyboards. The bells ring, the children chatter, and the teachers repeat. And by the end of the day, nothing has changed the rhythm of school. Beating like heart, its veins become filled with the students it teaches. Its classes are the cells from which oxygen enters its body; teachers, the lungs that supply that oxygen; administrators, the braincells that coordinate the whole apparatus. Almost as if it were...

  The last bell rings, the excited murmurs spread through the school. Vehicles rev their engines and take their occupants away, while others walk and some stay. eventually leaving two figures, on a field, with the company of the dead.

  "FE - 324... FE - 724... FE - 024..." Toby murmured before turning to the other figure, "FE-?"

  He lowers his head, shutting his eyes.

  "We should go." Janet says quietly, "I- this isn't what I thought it would be..."

  The two, heads bowed, skulk away into the night, back to their homes and families. Another, lone figure shuffles closer the graves. He looks at the triad of graves, him too dipping his head, before turning to face the retreating backs of the kids. He checks his adjusts his pants, having to loosen the belt to tuck in his shirt. He tightens his shoes and fixes his socks. On his back, a backpack sits, filled with random books and pencils. He faces the school--now still, now silent--then, he makes to follow the pair. Away from the school, away from the empty classes, away from the teachers, janitors and administrators. All the empty halls and lifeless rooms; all the gyms, closets, and restrooms. Step by step, thirty-inch by thirty-inch, until the school vanishes from site.

  "This is The Federal frequency Emergency broadcasting system; if you are viewing this recording, then you must stay calm. We have detected, with the most accurate possible information and reasoning, that the viewers of this message are likely in direct and immediate danger. There is nothing to be done but hunker down, and weather out the storm. An Enforcer will be activated to assist the endangered civilians immediately..." The agent tuned out the rest of the broadcast, it wasn't important. He'd heard it millions of times and he knew it now, word for word, period for period. In his hands, a report. He'd read it--word for word, line by line--and memorized every dot, comma, and period. He breathed in a shaky breath, shallow and released one just as unsteady.

  "They were good men..." "Good, good men." he doubled over, and sobbed into his hands before pulling himself back.

  "Forever eternalized." he read an memorized, word for word.