Red Air

Day 0

Kalina was supposed to be taking notes when something slammed into the classroom window hard enough to make everybody look up.

A bird slid down the glass and disappeared.

For a second, nobody said anything.

Then another one fell.

Not flew. Fell.

Somebody in the back laughed, thin and weird. Ms. Bellamy stopped writing on the board. Half the class got up before she could tell them not to, crowding the windows and craning over each other to look down into the courtyard.

Birds were hitting the ground out there.

Little brown ones. A pigeon. One black bird near the bench by the vending machines, twitching like the pavement had shocked it.

“What is wrong with them?” a girl near the window whispered.

Kalina didn’t answer. Her stomach had already gone tight.

The whole morning had felt off. The halls were too warm. Teachers were whispering like they thought students couldn’t tell. The office had made two announcements already, both of them calm in the way grown-ups got when they were trying to make something sound smaller than it was.

Her phone buzzed under her desk.

She slipped it out just enough to see the screen.

Mama: How are things at school?

Kalina frowned.

Her mother did not text in the middle of class unless it mattered.

Kalina: Fine. Weird though. Birds keep falling outside.

The typing bubbles came up.

Went away.

Came back.

Then nothing.

Across the aisle, her best friend, Zaire, caught her eye and tilted his head toward the window.

The half-star at his throat flashed when he moved, catching the weak classroom light. Kalina’s matching piece sat cool against her own skin under her shirt, ordinary enough that she barely noticed it anymore.

You seeing this?

Kalina gave him a small nod.

Then something hit the glass again, and this time the girl closest to it screamed.

Everybody started talking at once.

Ms. Bellamy raised her voice. “Sit down. Sit down, all of you.”

Nobody listened.

Kalina stayed in her seat, but she turned enough to see outside. The courtyard looked wrong now. Not like school. Like somebody had thrown handfuls of broken things onto the bricks and left them there.

The intercom crackled overhead.

Static.

Then Principal Vance’s voice, clipped and too careful.

“Faculty, please keep students in classrooms until further notice. We are currently addressing a medical situation. All students remain calm.”

Medical situation.

Kalina hated grown-up words for bad things. They always tried to put a lid on the truth first.

A scream ripped through the hallway.

Not a yelp. Not surprise. A real scream. Sharp and full and ugly enough to shut the whole room up.

Every head turned toward the door.

Ms. Bellamy moved fast then, heading for it like she meant to lock it.

She never got there.

The door slammed open so hard it hit the stopper and bounced.

A boy stumbled inside with blood all over his hands.

For a second, Kalina didn’t even recognize him. Blood always looked like less than it was until you saw it somewhere it shouldn’t be.

“There’s blood,” he said.

He was breathing too fast. His eyes looked huge.

“The nurse,” he said again. “She bit him.”

Nobody moved.

Ms. Bellamy grabbed his shoulders. “What are you talking about?”

The answer came into the doorway behind him.

Mrs. Tate.

Kalina had seen Mrs. Tate a thousand times. She always smelled like peppermint and hand lotion. She kept crackers in her desk for kids who came in sick and paper cups stacked beside the sink. She talked soft, even when you were being dramatic. Especially then.

The thing in the doorway looked like her and didn’t.

Blood soaked the front of her blouse. One sleeve hung torn halfway down her arm. Her hair had slipped out of its clip and stuck to the sides of her face. Her mouth was open too wide. Her eyes were red in a way eyes were not supposed to be.

The boy in Ms. Bellamy’s grip looked over his shoulder.

Mrs. Tate lunged.

She hit him so hard both of them went down into the first row of desks. Metal shrieked against tile. Somebody started screaming again. Ms. Bellamy shouted. The boy got one hand up before Mrs. Tate’s face went down to his neck.

Blood sprayed across the side of a desk.

Kalina stopped understanding what she was looking at.

Her body knew it was bad before her mind did. Her chest had gone cold. Her fingers had gone numb. But some part of her still kept waiting for the scene to make sense.

Zaire moved first.

“Kalina!”

His hand caught her wrist and yanked hard enough to pull her halfway out of her chair.

That broke whatever had frozen in her.

The room exploded.

Students rushed the door all at once, shoving, crying, yelling over each other. Somebody knocked a chair over. Somebody else fell. Kalina grabbed for her backpack on instinct and almost lost it when another body slammed into her side. Ms. Bellamy was still shouting, but nobody was listening now. The sound coming from Mrs. Tate and the boy on the floor made listening impossible.

Zaire shoved through the crush with one hand on Kalina’s arm.

The hallway was worse.

Kids were running in every direction. A girl sat against the lockers with both hands clamped over her shoulder, blood squeezing through her fingers. A teacher backed away from a student who looked fever-bright and wrong, both palms out like words might still help. Somebody had thrown up near the water fountain. Glass shattered somewhere farther down the hall.

The smell hit next.

Blood. Bleach. Sweat. Something hot and sick and wrong.

“What’s happening?” somebody cried.

No one answered.

That was the worst part. Watching everything split apart while your brain kept trying to force it back into the shape of a normal day.

Zaire shoved open the side exit by the cafeteria and sunlight slammed over them so hard it felt fake.

Outside wasn’t better.

Students poured into the parking lot in panicked streams. A girl in a cheer uniform was pinned on the pavement by two teachers while she thrashed and snapped her teeth at them. A man in the lot was yelling into his phone. Sirens screamed somewhere beyond the school, more than one, maybe a dozen.

Kalina bent over for half a second, hands on her knees, trying to pull enough air into her lungs.

It felt too thick.

Zaire straightened beside her and looked around fast. “You okay?”

“No.”

“Good. Me either.”

The answer almost sounded normal. That helped more than it should have.

A girl from their history class grabbed at both of them, crying so hard she could barely speak. “My cousin’s at the elementary school,” she said. “He’s over there.”

“My brother too,” another classmate said. “He’s only six.”

Kalina looked up.

The elementary school sat a few blocks away past the old laundromat, low brick building, chain-link fence, bright painted murals on the walls. The thought of little kids still inside while this was happening made something sharp turn over in her stomach.

“We need to go home,” somebody said.

“We can’t leave them.”

“Are you crazy?”

“They’re babies.”

Kalina looked at Zaire.

He didn’t make a speech. He just looked back at her, jaw tight, and she already knew what he was thinking. That was the thing about knowing somebody that long. Sometimes the whole conversation happened before either of you opened your mouth.

He was going.

“Damn it,” Kalina muttered.

Then they ran.

The group held together at first, cutting through the laundromat lot and hopping the low fence behind it. Somewhere nearby, a woman was screaming a name over and over. A car alarm had started going off and didn’t stop. A stroller sat in the gutter with one wheel still spinning.

By the time they reached the elementary school, chaos had already gotten there first.

Parents crowded the doors, pounding on the glass, trying to get inside. A teacher with blood on her sleeve was shouting for everybody to get back and being ignored. Children were crying somewhere inside. The fire alarm was screaming.

They pushed through with the crowd.

The noise inside hit all at once.

The fire alarm. Children sobbing. Teachers yelling class names. Feet slapping tile. Somebody praying too loud. The smell of floor cleaner and pencil shavings buried under blood.

A little girl sat on the floor in front of the cubbies wailing for her mama. Another child ran past with one sock on and no shoes. Construction-paper letters still hung on the walls like the building hadn’t gotten the news yet.

“Split up!” one of the classmates yelled. “Find your people!”

Everybody scattered.

Kalina stayed with Zaire because that felt like the only thing in the world that still made sense.

They moved down the lower hall, passing open classroom doors and terrified clusters of kids. Somewhere to their left something heavy crashed.

Then came the screaming.

Not the general roar of panic this time. A tighter sound. One room. A group of children all screaming together.

Zaire swore and ran toward it.

Kalina ran after him.

The classroom door at the end of the hall stood half open. Inside, eight or nine little kids were jammed against the cubbies in the corner, climbing over each other in terror. A woman lay on the floor near the reading rug, one hand pressed to her stomach. A teacher was on top of a small boy, pinning him down.

Her face was buried against his shoulder.

Blood soaked the front of his Spider-Man shirt.

“Hey!” Zaire shouted.

The teacher jerked up.

For one second the whole room seemed to sharpen into pieces.

Blood on her mouth. Eyes gone red and wrong. A strand of hair stuck to her cheek. The little boy under her screaming so hard he sounded like his throat was tearing.

Zaire hit her from the side.

Hard.

She slammed into a low bookshelf. Picture books and bins of blocks exploded across the floor. Kalina lunged for the little boy, got both hands under his arms, and dragged him back while he kicked and sobbed.

“Window!” Zaire shouted.

There was one big classroom window facing the side yard.

He grabbed a child-sized chair and swung it hard.

Glass burst outward.

The kids screamed louder.

“Come on,” Zaire said, voice suddenly sharp and steady in a way that cut through everything. “One at a time. Move. Move.”

And somehow they listened.

That was what would stay with Kalina afterward. Not just that he moved. The way he made terrified little kids obey him by sounding like certainty when nobody else in the room had any left.

He climbed halfway through the broken window first, then turned and started lifting children out. Kalina passed them over one by one. A girl with pink beads hanging loose from one braid. A little boy with a bloody lip. Another child who had wet himself. The Spider-Man boy last because he was shaking too hard to stand on his own.

The teacher was already dragging herself up again.

Kalina shoved a low table into her path. It only bought a second.

She climbed through the window after the last child and landed hard in the grass outside, pain shooting up both knees.

The side yard was a different kind of chaos.

Parents vaulting the fence. Teachers dragging sobbing kids. Sirens somewhere too far away to help. The classmates who had come with them were already scattering, finding who they came for or realizing they couldn’t.

Zaire crouched by a cluster of kids near the side gate, trying to herd them together.

“This way!” he yelled. “Stay with me!”

Kalina pushed toward him.

A woman slammed into her shoulder hard enough to spin her. A man grabbed one of the little girls from the group and nearly knocked two others down doing it. Somebody shouted there were more coming through the front. The crowd folded in on itself and broke apart at the same time.

“Kalina!”

She turned toward Zaire’s voice.

Then bodies cut between them.

A sobbing little boy latched onto her arm by mistake and she had to wrench free without throwing him down. Somebody crashed into the fence hard enough to rattle it. Another group of children bolted in the wrong direction.

By the time she got a clear line of sight again, Zaire was gone.

Not hidden.

Not ten feet away.

Gone.

Swallowed.

Four

Kalina: I’m heading home. Meet me there if you can.

She stared at the message a second too long.

Then she sent another.

Kalina: Please text me back.

Nothing came.

A child screamed somewhere to her left. Somebody else shouted about buses. The world had no center anymore.

Home, she thought.

Get home.

She ran.

The walk back should have taken ten minutes. It took longer because everything around her kept proving the world had already changed. A pickup truck sat in the street with both front doors open and nobody inside. Groceries were scattered across a driveway, milk leaking white into the concrete. A woman crouched beside a body on the sidewalk and looked up when Kalina passed with a mouth red enough to make her stomach drop.

Kalina ran harder.

When she reached her block, the houses looked wrong in the way familiar things always do once terror moves in. Front doors hanging open. Curtains thrown wide. A tricycle on its side in the Crosses’ yard. The mail truck idling down the street with nobody at the wheel.

She fumbled her key once, twice, then got inside and slammed the front door so hard the frame shook.

The house still smelled like itself.

Laundry detergent. Wood polish. The fish her mother had fried the night before.

That nearly broke her.

She threw the deadbolt. Then the chain. Then the bottom latch her father always forgot.

Only then did she look at her phone.

Two missed calls from her father.

One voicemail.

Her heart shot into her throat.

She hit play.

Static flooded the speaker first. Then her father’s voice, thin and urgent.

“Kalina, listen to me. Go straight home. Do not stop anywhere crowded. Stay inside. Lock the doors. Do you hear me? Lock everything. We’re trying to get out, but if we can’t, you stay put. Don’t open that door for anybody unless it’s me or your mother.”

Static swallowed the rest.

Kalina called him back immediately.

Voicemail.

She called her mother.

Nothing.

She texted both of them in one thread.

Kalina: I’m home. Please answer. What is happening?

A reply came from her mother, delayed, timestamped several minutes earlier.

Mama: Stay inside. Do not let anyone in unless it’s us. If anything feels wrong, don’t wait. Lock down and stay quiet. We love you.

Kalina read it twice.

Something about it felt wrong. Not the fear. The shape of it. Like her mother was warning her around something instead of about it.

She started to type back.

Then she heard the scream.

Child-sized. Sharp. Close.

Kalina lunged for the living room window and pulled the curtain back just enough to look outside.

Eden Cross was running down the middle of the street.

Barefoot. Pink shirt twisted at one shoulder. Braids half out. Face wet with tears. She looked so small in the wide middle of the road it almost made no sense.

Behind her came her parents.

Not running.

Charging.

Mr. Cross had always moved with an easy, loose-shouldered slouch, one side lower than the other from an old football injury. Mrs. Cross laughed loud enough for the whole block to know when she was on her porch. Kalina had seen both of them a thousand times through that window carrying groceries, arguing about bills, calling for Eden to get inside.

The things chasing her wore their bodies like badly fitted clothes.

Mr. Cross’s mouth and chin were red. Mrs. Cross’s blouse was soaked dark down the front. Their movements were too fast, too jerking, too hungry. There was no recognition in them. No pause. No parent left.

Eden looked back once and stumbled.

Kalina didn’t think.

She ran.

The front door flew open so hard it slapped the wall. Kalina flew down the porch steps and sprinted into the street. She caught Eden just as Mrs. Cross lunged.

Her fingers closed around Eden’s wrist.

“Come on!”

She yanked Eden sideways. Mrs. Cross’s hand caught nothing but air and the edge of her shirt.

Kalina dragged Eden toward the porch. Eden’s bare feet slapped wrong against the pavement. Mr. Cross made a sound behind them like a growl dragged through broken glass.

The porch steps felt too far away.

Kalina shoved Eden ahead of her, hit the front door with her shoulder, and slammed it shut behind them just as something heavy crashed into the other side.

The whole house shook.

Eden screamed.

Kalina threw the deadbolt, then the chain, then the bottom latch with fingers that nearly slipped off the metal. Another impact hit the door. Then another.

“Help me,” Kalina gasped.

Eden was crying too hard to move at first. Kalina dragged a dining chair over and jammed it under the knob, then shoved the narrow entry table across the foyer. Eden finally caught on and put both trembling hands against the side of it. Together they pushed until it wedged hard.

Something scraped down the other side of the door.

Then the pounding started.

Heavy. Rhythmic. Wrong.

Kalina backed away with Eden clutched against her side.

“My mama,” Eden sobbed. “My daddy, my daddy…”

Kalina could barely breathe herself. She stared at the shaking door, then at the little girl she’d just dragged through it, then at the phone still in her hand with her parents’ messages burning on the screen.

No mother. No father. No Zaire.

Just her.

Outside, one of the things wearing Eden’s parents hit the door again.

Inside, Kalina tightened her arms around Eden.

And held on.