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

The word Martians continued to make her classmates stare at her.

The headmaster laughed. "If you take a Tarrn-lover's perspective. The Lennas brought in the new age. Prosperity came because of them."

Jennifer peeked back at the guard as he stood smugly at the side. She wondered - were Zormna and Jeff truly gone? There had been so much more that she knew about them. Certain hopes. A prophecy which Jennifer had not quite wrapped her mind around. And yet, everybody in Jeff's house was counting on Zormna and Jeff to fulfill this outlandish belief. And if it were true, then Jennifer hoped Jeff's interpretation of the prophecy was the correct one. Her parents had believed that Zormna would end the world as the last Tarrn. Jeff was insistent that Zormna would save it.

"It is all well that you should know this," the man's rude mutterings interrupted her thoughts, "but what did the rebel, Zeldar, tell you?"

The others didn't have a clue what he was getting at.

"Jeff?" Jennifer knew exactly whom he was talking about. "He was the one who told me the story about the Lennas."

Everyone gaped again.

"Jeff Streigle? He's not one of them is he? He has black hair! He's from Chicago!" one boy exclaimed. The boy had shared the same PE class as Jeff.

The headmaster smiled knowingly. He immediately pulled out Jeff's file, showing it to them. This one was scribbled all over with remarks from the Martians. An enormous printed note of warning from the head soldier there was stuck inside it. However they couldn't read a word of it.

"His name is Jafarr Zeldar. He is a criminal terrorist, an escapee from our prison. Black hair is a rare genetic trait among our people, but it is not considered a refinement. He has black hair because he is a Seer Class half-blood."

Her schoolmates recoiled.

But Jennifer only frowned. "Jeff is not a terrorist."

Dural Kelz thrust the paper into Jennifer's face. "Look at the record, Lenna. He is a criminal. He has stolen ships, harmed People's Military officers, and worked with rebels. That makes him a terrorist."

Jennifer merely glared at him.

"Dural Korad will catch and execute him, and that will be that," the headmaster said.

A laugh escaped from Jennifer before she could stop herself. She looked like Zormna in that moment. "You can't catch him. Nobody can but Zormna. She told me herself."

The headmaster slapped her across the face, spit flying at he shouted. "You are a traitor!"

Jennifer clung to her stinging cheek. "No, I'm not! I'm an American! I was born here. I'm not some Martian...rotten....High Class what's-it!"

He struck her again.

Her classmates screamed. If those soldiers had not been there shoving guns into their sides, they probably would have pounced on the headmaster. Instead they helplessly watched, flinching.

Jennifer trembled violently while the man shouted over her, his words telling her under no circumstances would such traitorous thoughts be tolerated. Leaving Jennifer crouched on the floor, weeping, he turned his eyes to her schoolmates. They pulled back.

He put his hands behind his back and peered at them - not down, as he was shorter than all of them, but certainly down his nose.  "From this moment on, you will be separate from those others. You will receive your elite training as Arrassian citizens. And all of you," he said glaring down at Jennifer, "will learn to respect your caste." He stepped back behind the principal's desk.

"Take them to the nurse station to receive their family crests. That will be all," he ordered the soldiers.

The butt of a gun shoved into Jennifer to make her stand. She stood up with difficulty, shooting one more glare at the headmaster before going out the door. Together, all of the eight students were forced out of the room and down the hall. They all dragged their feet, staring at the guns, the floor, the others' backs, anything else in their miserable thoughts, until they were standing outside the nurse's office in a line.

The school nurse whimpered on the other side of the door. A angular looking man with auburn hair stood next to her with a machine that looked a cross between a soldering iron and a needle.

"Name?" he asked.

The teenager almost spoke, but the soldier next to him read off his Martian family name. "Yiiaz."

The soldier then shoved the boy forward into a chair in the middle of the room.

"Roll up your left sleeve, young man, and accept your family crest," the sharp man said, lifting up the machine with needles.

Rupert fainted.

[1] "What class are you?"

The worst pain is watching someone else in pain.--anon--

The first day of invasion by the People's Military of Arras ended with a tense silence all over the world. Not one first world nation had been left untouched. Though, a number of third world nations hardly knew it was happening at all. Those with the technological capacity to retaliate against the invasion force were squashed at their sources. And only the cities. Small rural towns were below the notice of the Arrassians. However, the people in the cities who did fight were killed instantly. There was no mercy. There was no amnesty. There was no other way allowed except to submit to the new authorities. It was a slaughter worldwide.

The People's Military of Arras had taken key places first: military bases, government buildings, and police stations. After that, they had conquered educational establishments--though they ignored the elementary, primary and nursery schools. They only focused on those who could and would fight back. And more, they focused on detaining the youth of the first world nations. Controlling them in their schools was key to their plan. It was how the PM mind worked.

Brian, Mark, Jonathan, and Darren slept on Mrs. Ryant's classroom floor that first night. They were cold and sore and hungry. Once or twice they had tried to break out of the room; the first time through the window--looking for drainage pipes and fire escapes--but the drop was quite a ways down from their fourth floor window and there was nothing to shimmy down or cling to. They had decided to attempt the old movie style climb-through-the-air-vents tactic. But when they examined the vents at the top of the room, they realized that they could only fit their heads inside.

"It's a shame we can't squeeze through keyholes," Darren murmured as he climbed off the plastic, orange school chair, still staring at the air vent.

The other boys glanced sideways at him and shook their heads. It came naturally to them in spite of the fact that Darren had been right all along about Martians existing. In fact, Darren being right made him all the more infuriating. The lanky boy sighed and leaned on the bookshelf, shivering down towards the floor in the darkness.

Mark's stomach gurgled. He clenched it.

Brian's stomach answered his, and he tried to ignore it.

No one had fed them.

They all slept fitfully in the darkness until the morning.

They didn't hear the thumping on the table the first time. Jonathan shot up after the second thump on the table. Mark shivered, clutching his arms close to his body when the table thumped the third time. He blinked his bleary eyes open. Brian sat up and rubbed his blistered side, then regretted it as it bled again.

A white-blond-haired man with evil looking eyes stood over them. His expression looked evil anyway. He thumped his hand on the table once more, waking Darren now who jerked up, yelling, "I don't know anything!"

The man smirked at him then waved his hand over his shoulder, rising with an arrogant swagger. The boys barely registered the men that came at them, shoving guns into their faces and dragging them off the ground. The men in blue suits forced them at attention, driving their blistered backs against the bookshelf. The white-blond-haired man walked in front of them, inspecting each boy militaristically. It wasn't Dural Korad, though he was just as ghostly pale as that man.

"So you are Zeldar's friends," he said with his hands behind his back.

Brian's face tightened, and Jonathan tried to look away at the ceiling. Mark glared at the man though and nodded pertly. The man smirked at him. Darren stared at the floor, lips pressed together.

"Do you know who I am?" the man said with a smug grin.

All four boys shook their heads and said "No."

He nodded promptly. "I am your headmaster, Dural Kelz. Now you know who I am." He then turned to his soldiers. "Take them."

Immediately the soldiers grabbed the boys and drove them with the points of their guns and glowing sticks out the door into the fourth floor corridor. The halls looked more stark and bare than they ever had under the added glow of those Martian weapons, and more so still now that they were empty of students. The headmaster marched ahead of them, leading them down the hall to the stairs. They walked down all the flights to the bottom floor listening to the echo of their feet, much like traversing the tombs of King Tut. It was as if the school had been vacated ages ago. Leading the boys through the first floor corridor towards the school cafeteria where they could hear the murmur of the classmates, the soldiers pushed them away from the cafeteria doors, and into the entrance of the drama room where there usually was a small space in front of their stage and a removable dividing wall.

The soldiers shoved Brian and the other boys up the stage steps after the white haired man--too forcibly for Mark, who tripped on the step, painfully smacking his kneecap on the hard wood. The guards rammed their guns in his side and jerked Mark up by his hair, tossing him again onto his feet. They roughly pushed him to join the other boys who were now standing on stage at the side, just barely in the shadow of an old scrim used in the last play. The crimson, velvet curtains hung wide open. From their vantage point, the boys could gaze out at open cafeteria full of every student in the entire school.

So many faces. So many eyes. Brian looked out especially to see if he could find his brothers and his sister. Unfortunately, he could barely see anything beyond the first three rows. The rest was in darkness. Their classmates stared up at them with terrified expressions on their worn, exhausted faces. All of them must have slept in their classrooms, and on what? They probably had less space than they did. And on tile.

Stiff guards in blue stood at the end of each row. Brian recognized his Calculus class sitting together on the far left side near the aisle. His teacher had bruises on his face, but he was yet alive.

Dural Kelz, the self-proclaimed headmaster, walked to the center of the stage with a sharp trot and nodded magnanimously to the crowd.

"Welcome, my students!" he said. "I trust you slept well."

A dissatisfied rumble swept through the crowd, but no one dared to speak out.

"Today is a demonstration and a lesson," Dural Kelz announced with defined pride. He gazed back at Brian and his group a moment, but then turned his