The classroom was no longer a place of boring assessments; it had become a slaughterhouse.
Mr. Henderson never stood a chance. When the first massive rat lunged from the vent, he swung his heavy wooden chair with a strength born of pure desperation.
The wood splintered against the creature's mutated skull, but the monster didn't even flinch. It latched onto his arm with serrated teeth, the force of the impact slamming the teacher against the chalkboard.
Before he could even draw breath to scream, two more shapes blurred from the same vent. The rhythmic, confident clicking of his shoes on the linoleum was silenced, replaced by a wet, frantic struggle that ended far too quickly.
Adrenaline surged through Ryan like a cold, buzzing wire, but it couldn't numb the visceral horror of the scene.
"Go! Get out!" Ryan yelled, his voice cracking as he broke the other students out of their frozen states of terror.
They scrambled over desks and bolted into the hallway, but they weren't alone. Screams echoed from every corridor—high, piercing shrieks that confirmed the rats had infested the entire school.
"The exit! Now!" Ryan shouted, grabbing Sam's hoodie to keep him moving.
They sprinted toward the heavy double doors and burst out into the afternoon air.
They expected the relief of the open sky, but the world outside had turned a bruised, sickly purple.
A massive, undulating cloud was roiling in from the north, blotting out the sun. It moved with a terrifying, synchronized intelligence, shifting like a school of predatory fish.
As the cloud descended, a metallic screeching tore through the air, vibrating in Ryan's teeth.
"What are those?" Sam whispered, slowing down as the scale of the swarm paralyzed him.
They weren't birds. As the flock broke the treeline, Ryan saw them: the size of vultures, with oily feathers clinging to translucent, vein-streaked skin. Their beaks were elongated and serrated like steak knives, dripping with a thick, yellowish bile.
The first strike was silent. A creature dove like a stone, sinking its talons into the shoulders of a boy standing by the water fountain. He didn't even have time to yell before three more swarmed him. In seconds, the grey concrete was stained a vivid, sickening crimson.
Ryan's breath came in ragged hitches. Watching that boy vanish under a flurry of leathery wings felt like a physical blow to his stomach.
"Run!" Sam screamed, but the parking lot had become a killing field.
To stay outside was to be picked apart; to stay inside was to be hunted in the dark.
"Back inside!" Ryan yelled, skidding on the pavement.
"Inside is better than this!"
They lunged back through the doors, slamming them shut and leaning their weight against the glass. Outside, the screeching grew louder as the birds began to peck at the windows.
Inside, the rhythmic skitter-click of the rats echoed from the end of the dark hallway.
Trapped between the teeth of the earth and the talons of the sky, they ducked into a nearby janitor's closet and threw the door shut.
Inside the cramped darkness, a sick, hollow feeling settled in Ryan's chest. Just minutes ago, his biggest worry was a math problem. Now, the world was a butcher shop.
He felt a flash of nausea as he remembered the sound of Mr. Henderson's chair splintering.
It was the sound of safety breaking. Mr. Henderson was the adult—the one who was supposed to know what to do—and he had been snuffed out like a candle flame. Ryan's mind kept replaying the image of the teacher's shoes, once so rhythmic, now still.
Distant screams filtered through the door, feeling like needles under his fingernails. He wanted to wake up from this vivid nightmare.
He regretted leaving the house; he even regretted his secret wish for powers like the ones he'd seen on the internet.
He had spent so much time reading novels and wishing to be part of something "great," thinking he was the main character. Now, looking at his shaking hands, he realized how terrifyingly real this was.
I should have helped.
I should have done something, a voice hissed in his head. But he had run. Was he a coward?
He looked at Sam, whose face was a mask of pale shock. Seeing his friend like that sparked a different kind of fear—a sharp, protective spike of electricity.
The suffocating terror began to harden into a jagged resolve. The world of bus schedules and video games was dead.
"Should we call the police?" Sam's low, terror-filled voice broke the silence.
"Right, yes, we should," Ryan replied, hurriedly pulling out his phone.
He dialed 911, but the line just kept ringing—an endless, hollow tone.
"Use your phone to keep calling 911," Ryan commanded, his voice steadier now. "I'm calling my brother. We can't stay in here forever."
"Daymon? Daymon, pick up!" Ryan hissed into the receiver.
"Ryan? What's going on?" his brother's voice crackled, sounding distorted but grounded.
"I'm at the school. There are... these things. Rats the size of cats and birds that are—just please, you have to come get us! We're trapped in a janitor's closet near the math wing."
"I'm coming," Daymon's voice went flat and serious. "I'm already in the truck. Hang on, Ryan. Do not leave that room until I get there."
"Watch out for the birds; it should be hard to miss."
"Okay, just stay on the phone just in case something else happens. Put me on speaker if you want."
As if jinxing them, a rhythmic scratching started at the base of the closet door.
Scritch. Scritch. Scritch.
"They found us," Sam whispered, his eyes fixed on the door.
But the danger wasn't just in front of them. A heavy thud sounded from above. The plastic cover of the ceiling vent groaned, then shattered.
A mutated rat, its fur matted with grime and its eyes glowing with a hungry, amber light, tumbled onto a shelf of cleaning supplies.
It hissed, baring teeth that looked like rusted nails.
"Grab something!" Ryan yelled, his hands frantically sweeping the dark shelves.
"What's going on?" Daymon yelled over the phone in a panic.
But Ryan or Sam had no time to reply or listen to Daymon.
Sam gripped a heavy, rusted pipe wrench, while Ryan snatched a long-handled floor scraper with a sharp metal blade at the end.
The rat lunged, a blur of gray muscle. Sam swung the wrench, catching the creature in the ribs with a sickening crack, but it barely slowed down.
It snapped at Ryan's leg, its teeth grazing his jeans.
With a shout of pure survival instinct, Ryan thrust the floor scraper forward. The sharp edge caught the beast in the throat.
It thrashed wildly, knocking over buckets and mops, before finally going still in a pool of dark, foul-smelling blood.
Both boys stood over it, gasping for air, their hearts hammering against their ribs.
"Ryan, the door!" Sam pointed.
The scratching had turned into a frantic gnawing. A jagged hole appeared in the bottom of the door, and a snout poked through, sniffing the air. They didn't have much time; more were coming.