Apocalypse Before Finals by Julie Steimle (electric book reader txt) 📕

Jonathan closed his eyes, feeling his knees become weak. Brian looked up at the ceiling, his eyed burning with tears in the cracks. He swallowed the growing saliva in his throat and clenched against the inevitable force of death. Under his breath, he started a prayer. The whole class seemed to hold their breath, wincing, moaning and covering their faces. Girls and boys alike had begun to weep.

"What is going on here?" a calm, proper Irish-sounding man said from the doorway.

Brian ventured to look down, and Jonathan managed a peek.

The blue-suited soldier at the head of the room flushed proudly as he bowed to this new green uniformed man who stood as if he were someone important. This new man was paler than death, with icy blue eyes and platinum blonde hair. He had angular features and a sharp nose. Both seemed like ghosts, or demons.

"Dural Korad! A pleasure!" Their new 'instructor' then glanced back at the two students at gunpoint. "This? Sir?" The blue-suited man then laughed proudly. "Well, I am teaching. Making an example of these two rebellious spirits here. I will be done shortly."

Brian clenched up and closed his eyes tight. Jonathan's eyes popped open though, staring with disgust at the blue-suited man and his amused calmness at murder.

The green uniformed man stepped into the room magnanimously and waved the soldiers back. "That will have to wait, Dural Hren. I wish to speak with this class. Then you can do what you like."

The blue-suited solider frowned, yet he bowed submissively and stepped out of his superior's path. Brian felt the cold metal slide away from his face. The soldiers at Jonathan and Brian's side lowered their guns to the boys' navels. He blinked, opening his eyes. His heart still beat against his ribcage, yet he heaved breaths of relief, thanking God he had another moment to live.

The frosty-eyed green-uniformed man named Dural Korad walked to the center of the room. He lifted up a familiar picture in a cheap black frame.

"Do any of you know this boy?"

Everyone in the class gaped at him, disbelieving the question. Trembling with continued fear, they let their eyes flicker onto the picture, though most dared not to see it, afraid that they would know the boy and well. Dural Korad moved the picture over so Darren, and then Brian and Jonathan could see it. Brian drew in a sharp breath and Jonathan's mouth gaped open more.

It was a picture from the sports trophy case - a photograph taken of last year's state wrestling champ from the chest up. Of course everyone knew him. Jeff Streigle was infamous after all. In the picture, Jeff had his characteristic grin. However, no one said a word.

Dural Korad turned toward Brian. "You know him."

It wasn't a question.

Brian stared back at the man in green. This man was perhaps five-seven, in his thirties, with shrewd eyes and a clear white complexion. He then glanced at the blue uniformed man with the smug face and sandy hair. Both men were whiter than white for normal Caucasian skin... which oddly enough reminded him of Jeff and Zormna, whom he had always thought were way too pale. This Irish man could easily be their kin... or at least Zormna's. The reality of this sent strange notions into Brian's head. He glanced at Darren who was shaking so violently that the boy looked likely to pee his pants.  

"Answer me!" Dural Korad snapped.

Brian blinked. "Uh, we all do," he said. "He's the state champ wrestler. Everybody knows him."

Dural Korad looked back at the apprehensive class. He then nodded to himself with a weary sigh.

"So he's become popular?" The man laughed. It was a cold laugh that made them all fill sick. With dark amusement, the man then gazed again at the room and said, "You are his classmates. So you should know him well. I want to know where he is. I do not see him here. Yet according to your computer records, he should be here in this room at this very hour." The People's Military officer walked over to their teacher. "Where is this boy now?"

Mr. Dallas trembled as he answered. "Absent."

Dural Korad smirked mockingly. "Absent? When did he leave?"

Their teacher shook his head. "No. He didn't come in today. You can check the rolls." He pointed at them on the desk to the officer to make it clear he wasn't hiding Jeff.

The green uniformed man narrowed his eyes shrewdly. "I see." He didn't even look at the roll. He then turned back to the room. "I will give you the count of three for you to tell me who his friends are, or," he smirked and drew out his weapon. Pressing a button, he then placed it at Mr. Dallas's head, "You will be without an instructor."

The class was again silent, but everyone's eyes turned toward Brian and Jonathan, knowing full well whom Jeff's friends were. The dilemma was whom would they choose to die - Mr. Dallas, or Brian and Jonathan.

"One..."

"I'm his friend," Brian stepped forward, not even believing his daring. He was dead anyway.

"So am I." Jonathan joined him.

Darren whimpered in the corner.

Dural Korad peered at both boys shrewdly. He smirked. "You are just saying that to get out of being shot."

Brian sweated heavily as he swallowed. "You are going to shoot us anyway for knowing Jeff. So what difference does it make?"

The green suited man blinked. "Brave words. Perhaps you are his friend. He was always a cheeky rat." He then turned and looked at Jonathan. "What about you?"

Jonathan went even whiter. Yet he said, "I've known Jeff for two years now, and I'll stick with Brian."

The soldier almost smiled. His cold eyes raked over them as he shook his head. "You are either two fools or telling the truth." He then leered at them. "I'll figure you are telling the truth. Jafarr Zeldar - the boy you call Jeff - is a criminal. Did he tell you that?"

The name Jafarr rang in Brian's ears the same way Zormna had said it all those months. The rest was a shock.

Brian's face flushed as he lifted his chest. "We heard he was once part of a gang, and he had once been arrested."

Dural Korad smirked. "Really? Him in a gang? No doubt he didn't tell you where he came from."

Brian shook his head. "He only said something like Chicago or St. Louis."

The green uniformed man laughed louder, the sound painfully mocking. He nodded to the soldiers holding Brian. "Take these two out in the hall and hold them for me. They'll do."

The armed guards shoved the two teenagers out the door with their guns, forcing them into the locker-lined hallway. The hall itself was vacant, giving off the cold feeling of a prison corridor. Brian and Jonathan both could see that each classroom door had a soldier stationed outside it.

Dural Korad bowed to the blue uniformed man. "Thank you, Dural Hren. I will leave you to your teaching now."

A mite disgruntled, Dural Hren sighed and bowed to his superior. But the man did an abrupt double-take toward Darren when he spotted the last boy still trembling in the front of the room. "Dural Korad," he ventured, before his superior could leave.

"Yes?" the green uniformed man said, turning back.

"Perhaps you should take this one too," he said, gesturing toward Darren. "He seems to have knowledge about the People's Military that no Parthan rat would have. I found it highly irregular."

Dural Korad gave the whimpering Darren an assessing glance. "Well, he doesn't look like a candidate for Zeldar's confidants, but I'll take him if you wish."

Dural Hren bowed again. "Thank you, Dural Korad. I wish you would do that."

The head PM nodded. The two soldiers at Darren's side shoved him forward. He stumbled across the room, almost unable to walk if it were not for his terror at angering the soldiers. Rammed ahead at gunpoint, Darren trudged into the hall then tumbled forward to where Brian and Jonathan were being detained. All eyes watched the weeping, weak-kneed, shaking, Darren Asher, the miserable weirdo get taken out into the hall and the door close behind them. Mr. Dallas and the rest were left facing Dural Hren, the People's Military officer, and three armed soldiers.

The class recoiled in their seats.

Dural Hren smiled. "Good. Now we can begin lesson one. First, repeat after me: I am a citizen of the Arrassian protectorate...."

[1]Dural Hendron! Our missing men! Look!

[2]She is a Tarrn! Alea Zormna is a Tarrn!

[3] Put them down!

[4] "Talk like that again, and I'll kill you"

[5] "You there! Stop!"

How people treat you is more of a reflection of how they see themselves than how they see you.

Brian, Jonathan, and Darren were taken upstairs to the fourth floor. There the soldiers shoved them into a small dark book-filled classroom where Mrs. Ryant usually taught accelerated English and Special Ed during the sixth and seventh hour. It was not a typical classroom. It was full of circular tables with simple cheap orange plastic chairs. An old wooden desk stood at one end of the room, and an even smaller office was at the other end behind a locked door. The soldiers forced the boys to stand at attention along the bookshelf at the front of the room with their arms lifted over their heads while they waited for their military leader to arrive.

Dural Korad strolled into the room over the low pile carpet and beckoned only three other soldiers to enter with him. He set his picture of Jeff on the nearest round table and sat down in a chair across from the teens. He crossed his legs, leaning back. He looked them over with a surveying glance, giving Darren the least of his attention. Korad at last spoke, assessing the boys. "How long have you known Jafarr Zeldar?"

Jonathan blinked, thinking he had already answered that question.

Brian glanced at Jonathan and made a face. "Two years?"

Dural Korad saw his look. "Do you know who he is?"

Brian rolled his eyes. "Well, you said he was a criminal." His tone forgot his fear and related his irritation at the new questions.

The PM nodded. "Do you know where he is?"

Both boys shook their heads. Darren whimpered. Brian tried not to look at Darren. Somehow he felt that that boy alone had something to fear from these strangers, so much more than he did.

"I don't believe you," the People's Military officer said, his eyes narrowing like knives.

"Well, it's the truth," said Brian. "Jeff, or Jafarr, or whatever his name is, he takes off sometimes without telling us. Today he was just gone."

Jonathan nodded vigorously. "Yeah, just gone."

Dural Korad stood up, stepping close to Brian's face. "Do you know who I am?"

Darren whimpered again.

Brian's breathing went shallow. He stuttered but managed to reply, "Uh... uh.... H...He never...never said anything about you."

The ghost-white man smirked. He turned to pace the floor for a good lecture. "I am the new head of the