Nothing.
Just the silence that moved between the destroyed buildings and abandoned cars.
There was only one explanation. I must be dreaming. Or maybe the drug thing. I’d believe anything but what I saw. I simply had to wake up and this would all be over. But what if it wasn’t? I felt fear, real soul-crushing fear, for the first time in years.
I greedily reached for the door behind me and stumbled back into the school.
Back to Scary Carrie.
I couldn’t deal with her in that moment. Maybe not ever. I pushed past her, heading back to the janitor’s closest. I hoped to find some sort of answers there. I tried to ignore how wobbly my legs felt and how my hands had started to shake.
“Where are you going?” the girl called out. Her voice sounded hoarse. Unused. Rusty.
I walked on ignoring her.
“Hello! I’m talking to you! You won’t find anything that way except the janitor’s body!
I kept on walking. Maybe I’d seen it wrong. Maybe he wasn’t dead.
“Why don’t you stop by Principal Jones’ office while you’re at it? You’ll find him and his family in there. All dead by the way,” she called after me.
“I’m not talking to you,” I called over my shoulder.
“Well, usually I would be all for your Neanderthal antics, but I take it you looked outside. I figure we best get talking.”
“Shut up. I can’t hear myself think!”
“Mr. Jones is way worse than the janitor by the way. Much more bloody. And his wife...well, she has a gunshot wound in her head. It matches the ones her children have. Looks like he did them in before whatever finished him off.”
I was going to get sick. I walked faster. There was no way any of this could be true.
No way.
A dream.
A dream.
A dream.
Scary Carrie latched onto my arm and pulled me to a stop.
“You think this is a dream?” she asked. Had I said that aloud? It was obvious she was hoping it was a dream too. Of course she was.
“Wow. This is a dream. It’s your dream.”
Suddenly, it made sense. She was some kind of witch. Just like the Carrie I named her after. I caught a showing of Stephen King’s Carrie on one of my uncle’s movie channels when I was little. The nickname came to me the next day when this girl, whose real name I couldn’t recall, told the teacher that another student and I had pushed her down.
I never touched her.
Witch.
When I told my friends about the movie, I got major points for watching an R-rated flick. Bonus points for the nickname. It did rhyme after all. I left out the part about hiding every crucifix featured in my uncle's strangely religious-infused décor. .
“Excuse me?” Scary Carrie exclaimed, interrupting my walk down memories-that-freaking-suck lane.
“You used some spell or herb or some voodoo crap to pull me into your dream.”
This had to be it. It was just as easy, if not easier, for me to believe in some hocus-pocus crap than believe I blacked out and missed the apocalypse.
“You think when I dream that I fantasize about you? Really? The same boy who spent the first twenty minutes of health class debating with Richard if Die Hard was considered a Christmas movie or not?”
It did take place during Christmas.
She didn’t have to be so damn snarky.
I pushed the air out of my mouth through my teeth. “You can deny it all you want, sweetheart. Hell, maybe that’s part of your thing. Play hard to get and make me chase you. I don’t know. Nor do I care. I just want you to wake up. I’m not really down for being part of your 'make the boy I hate love me' fantasy.”
“Stop. You’re turning me on,” she replied, dryly.
“This isn’t funny,” I exclaimed.
It had stopped being funny the moment it began to feel real—the moment I saw my home looking like a damn set piece from some indie war flick.
“Do I look like I’m laughing?”
I shrugged dismissively. “You’re not really emotion girl. Hell, this is the first time I’ve seen you with your hood off in years. Maybe this is what amused looks like on the face of the heavily sedated.”
She rolled her eyes. “As much as your wit just keeps me enthralled, I’m going to find out what the hell is going on here.”
Carrie moved past me and headed towards the door. But I no longer wanted to be alone because if this wasn’t a dream I was in trouble. We both were. I didn’t need to see the decomposing body of my principal or his family to understand that.
Somehow the whole world had disappeared.
And we were stuck.
Together.
I reached out and grabbed Scary by the elbow. In the quickest of movements, she pushed me against the locker with a strength I thought impossible for a girl outside of those weird body-building infomercials that came on in the wee hours of the night.