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

 "And why is it bad that she's a princess?" Mark asked.

Brian nodded along with Jonathan and the boy they didn't know.

"Politics." Jennifer shook her head. "Religion. I told you, I don't know. There's some kind of prophecy about the end of the world, depending on who you ask - like my parents, who just... Ugh. You know? And Jeff knows stuff that Zormna doesn't even know, so she definitely couldn't tell me. Besides, they have a whole lot of laws that say emigrants are not supposed to talk about where they are from. Zormna was supposed to enforce that law, and my parents kept the law. Honestly, I really just believed I was from Ireland until Zormna came along and accidentally changed everything."

Jonathan laughed, scratching his head. "Todd's a Martian."

"I'd rather not be called that." Jennifer glared at him. "We're Americans."

"Accidentally?" Brian murmured.

Jennifer met his gaze. "She never meant to get any of us involved in her mess, as she calls it. Their plan was to leave here at the end of the school year. They never expected this invasion. At all. To her, such an idea was ludicrous. It was why she hated that sci-fi alien stuff so much."

"And Jeff laughed at them?" Brian lifted his eyebrows.

Chuckling weakly, Jennifer nodded.

Mark nearly laughed - but he leapt back instead, thumping against the brick wall behind them because the bushes in front of him parted abruptly. A strangely dark-haired, light blue-eyed man near their age had thrust his head in. A grin quickly split across on his face. "I find them!"

Jessica swatted him with her sketchbook, screaming.

"Ow!" The young man pulled back.

Brian shoved to get out of the bush, swinging to hit the intruder - but a hand seized his bound wrists. He looked back to take on this attacker, but saw Darren.

"It's ok. He's a friend," Darren laughed. "In fact, he's a good friend of Jeff's and Zormna's."

Brian relaxed his arms.

Darren let go.

The rest of them climbed out of the bushes. Happily anxious, the young black-haired soldier grinned much like Mark, bowing and laughing while talking in broken English through an extreme accent. Like all Arrassians, he was exceptionally pale, but his red hair was so dark that it was practically black, especially against his green suit. His hair was cut very similar to Jeff's - long on the top, short on the sides, yet it was thinner than Jeff's pitch black mop. This soldier wore it slicked down neatly to the side almost in a Hitleresque fashion, which they found creepy.

"You is all hurt. We fix. We fix," the young man said laughing with relief. He gazed at Brian, then at Jonathan, and then to Mark, tending at once to their cuffs. He removed the metal clamps, collecting them loosely on his wrist. He then looked to Jennifer as the other soldiers tended to the rest of the group, helping them to the nearest table which they immediately righted. The soldier bowed politely to her. "You is Jennifer. Correct?"

She flushed with a timid nod, her freckles blending in.

Jessica and Joy peered at her, watching. Lisa shivered, looking around herself. Her eyes set on the teachers who had been in hiding and were now hesitantly being drawn out by the soldiers with assurances that they meant no harm.

The soldier bowed lower to Jennifer. "Alea Zormna say many thanks for you." He then turned to the boys. "Which one is Brian?"

Brian flushed, glanced at his friends. He raised his hand. "I am."

Extra delighted, the boy then shook his head sadly. "I is to say sorry for Alea Zormna and Jafarr. He say you call him Jeff. Correct?"

Brian blinked, shrugging. "Yeah."

The soldier looked confused for a second but shrugged it off. "Correct. Then Zormna say, she is sorry she can no go to dance with you. She must go fight war now."

Joy laughed, quickly slapping her hands over her mouth to stifle it. Standing beside her, Jessica swayed there. Mrs. Ryant rushed up to them, whispering for assurances that they were ok. As Jessica and Joy nodded, the other teachers followed a little more carefully toward the group.

Brian broke into a dazed laugh, the idea of Prom now so silly. "No problem. I can see why that would stop our date."

The young soldier then patted Brian's arm. "No feel sad. She like you, and Alea Zormna no like most boy. Not romantic. She no like Jafarr many year." He then laughed again, the sound as rich as honey to their ears. "Is good thing they friend now."

Mark snickered at the soldier's broken English, but the soldier didn't seem to comprehend it... which was probably good as the young man was heavily armed, and probably as skilled as Zormna was.

The soldier then spoke more seriously to Brian. "Oh, but Jafarr tell me say he is very, very, very sorry he no can take sister, yours, to dance...."

Brian and Joy shared a look.

"...He say he try keep promise but no can leave Zormna. Hope you understand, he say. Distant cousins they are, he say. He vow I tell you." The dark-haired boy looked sympathetic. "I is sorry too. Alzdar tell me you and Jafarr is good friend, but you no can trust him now."

"Alzdar?" Brian echoed, blinking.

The soldier nodded. "Yes. He too is friend your."

Jennifer laughed, stepping near him. "He means Alex, Brian. Jeff always called him Al."

In a sing-song voice, Jessica murmured while sitting down on the nearest bench, "...you can call me Al..."

The art teacher shuffled next to her, whispering questions. Both he and Mrs. Ryant listened ravenously to Jessica's answers. The other teachers leaned in.

The boy they did not know huffed at Jennifer. Lisa looked confused.

Brian shook his head, thinking about the brothers. "I should have known." He then turned to the soldier and asked, "Is Jeff, I mean Jafarr, your friend, really?"

The soldier nodded happily. "Always. Our mothers friends. We is friends as babies. He sent me to find you. Make sure you is alive. Healthy. Not hurt."

The Pennington boys breathed in that message. Jeff really had been their friend. He wasn't just jerking them around and using them.

"Then you will see him?" Brian asked.

The soldier nodded again.

"Can you tell him a Dural Korad came looking for him?"

"Dural Korad?" The young soldier then swore in his tongue.

"I see you know him," Mark commented, looking the soldier over for scars. There were none that he could see.

The soldier did nod, briskly. "Know. Hate." He then glared as if imagining the man standing before him. "Dural Korad know Zormna is Tarrn?"

All of them shared looks. The teachers in the cluster watched and listened silently, though one of the soldiers drew Coach Baker to the side with the gravest of questions, gesturing to the smoldering heap full of bones on the lawn. Mr. Humphries joined him.

Darren shook his head. "Not last time we knew."

"He know soon anyway. All know soon." The young soldier with dark hair shook his head, heading back toward the ship.

As he went, the dark haired soldier talked directly in his language to the man speaking with the teachers then spoke with another cluster of soldiers, apparently as one with authority though he did not seem to be a senior ranking officer. These men spoke no English, but they carried cases and opened them on the righted picnic tables, pulling out what looked like bandages and liquid in bottles. They beckoned each of them forward, tending to the nearest person first.

"Hey!" Brian called out, watching the soldier go. "You didn't tell us your name!"

The dark-haired soldier looked back and laughed, rubbing his neck. "So sorry! I is Anzer Dzhon Niizek! I return. You no worry. Jafarr and Zormna send me to you. Make sure you is no hurt. I sorry you is. But at least not dead."

"At least not dead?" Kevin muttered in disgust.

Jessica swatted him with her art pad. "Yeah. You could have ended up like Stacey Price or Coach Hicks."

"Was Coach Hicks the one handling Jeff's anger management sessions?" Jonathan murmured to Mark.

Mark shrugged wearily, shaking his head.

The boy they did not know also shrugged.

"How come you got dragged out?" Mark snapped, looking back at him. "Who are you?"

The guy shrugged again. "Steven Kroger."

Jessica bopped Steven on the head with her notebook then stepped up to a medic who was opening up a case and beckoning to them. "He told those slime balls that his name was Adam Arbor when someone named all of you as 'Zeldar's' friends."

Brian and the rest stared at Steven while each of them were taken by the medics to the table to have their wounds treated.

"Holy cow, why?" Mark gasped, trotting along to take a seat.

Steven shrugged again, but Jessica said, "To be obnoxious - especially after it was his fault that Adam got knocked unconscious. They were both being idiots."

Ducking down, Stephen muttered, "Adam and I are buddies. What of it?"

"Is Adam alive?" Brian asked.

Jessica nodded.

Jonathan peered at Jessica. "But how did you end up - ?"

Jennifer cut him off. "Jessica's Zormna's good friend."

Smirking back, Jessica shook her head. "That's not why." She then opened her notebook. Inside were all her sketches of Zormna and other classmates, including one charcoal sketch of Jeff staring off in the distance, clearly another he had not posed for. It wasn't as classic as the bigger one, but she captured him perfectly, including the look in his eyes and his scars. "They found out that I drew a number of pictures of those two, and they put things together. They decided to execute me because I said I thought Jeff was hot."

One of the medics lifted his head. He chuckled, shaking it.  

"Not the wisest thing to say, considering," Brian murmured as the medic drew him to the table. The medic then carefully and painfully peeled off his charred t-shirt and few bandages so he could treat his wounds.

However, Jessica shrugged with a fanciful sigh while sharing a look with Joy who averted her eyes, not saying anything. It was their one shared opinion.

"Are they really distant cousins?" Lisa murmured out loud, her checkup complete. She wasn't hurt at all. A vindictive classmate had turned her in that very day when Lisa had made an unwise comment that Jeff didn't seem like the criminal type. 

"That would explain them running around together all the time," Mark said, a little hopeful.

But Darren snorted.

They stared at him.

"He's her bodyguard," Darren explained.

They looked to Jennifer who shrugged, then nodded. "Distantly related in this case means... I don't know, hundreds of thousands of years ago."

The soldier near them nodded, whispering in, "Ten thousand years back. And believe me when I say this, very few are comfortable with Alea Zormna running around with Jafarr Zeldar."

He then gestured for the next person to sit still for him so he could treat their wounds.

"Anger is only one letter short of danger."

 - Eleanor Roosevelt -

Anzer Dzhon Niizek, Jafarr's friend and soldier under the direction of Alea Zormna Clendar and Alea Salvar Desbah of the Zeta district (of whom he was an active member), took his charges back to their homes as his other officers led the evacuation of Pennington High. The freeing