Chapter Two
After a few hours, Arthur woke up from his sleep. Almost immediately, he knew something was terribly, terribly wrong. As he rubbed his eyes and looked around the room, the first thing he noticed was that no one was there. The room was empty. The next thing he noticed was that it looked like a hurricane had just run through the room. Desks were overturned. Papers and pencils lay on the floor. Even Mr. Ratburn's desk, which was bigger than all the others, had fallen over. Arthur wondered what had happened here to make everything look like this. Then he heard a gasp from the corner of the room and turned to look at its source. In the far corner of the room Francine and Muffy were huddled together, clearly frightened. He had just noticed them for the first time and they had just noticed him waking up.
"Arthur, are you okay? Can you understand me?" asked Francine. Muffy and Francine nervously waited for a reply as Arthur stood up from the desk he had fallen asleep in.
"Yeah, I'm okay," replied Arthur. Arthur looked around the room one more time. "What happened here?"
"It was bad Arthur, really bad," said Muffy. Then she started to cry. Francine put her arm over her shoulder to comfort her then looked at Arthur and motioned him to come towards them. Arthur walked to the corner of the room and sat down with them.
"What happened here?" Arthur whispered as he sat down next to Francine and Muffy.
"Don't go towards the windows," whispered Francine. "The others outside might see you. We can't let that happen. Be very quiet. If any of them find out we're in here, who knows what might happen to us."
"You need to tell me what happened," demanded Arthur.
Francine took a deep breath. She looked as though she were planning her words carefully. Arthur could tell she was having trouble describing what had happened. Finally, she spoke.
"Like Muffy said, it was really bad," whispered Francine. "I'm sorry for not waking you earlier, but in the rush no one noticed that you had fallen asleep and afterwards when we were hiding here, we didn't want to risk getting up and bringing you to our hiding spot. We might have been seen through the windows. Now that I think about it, if any of them had looked, they would've seen you and come in here anyways…" Francine trailed off.
"I forgive you for not waking me up, just please tell your story," whispered Arthur.
"It all happened so fast. Not long after you fell asleep, Arthur, we all heard a terrible scream coming from somewhere in the building. Oh Arthur, I can't even describe it to you. It was the most horrifying thing I have ever heard in my life. It sounded like, well, I really don't know how to describe it. It was high-pitched, like the one Binky made, but so much worse. Well after that Mr. Ratburn ordered us all to get down under our desks. We all waited for something to happen. We heard the door shake like someone or something was trying to get in. We were all so scared. Finally, he burst through the door, Binky I mean. Apparently he had escaped from the principal's office. Arthur, I swear there was blood dripping out of his mouth. He ran into the room and tried to attack everyone. Then everyone tried to get out in a mad rush to escape. That's why the room is all messy like this. Muffy and I were so scared we hid in the corner hoping he wouldn't notice us. Binky must have not noticed you either because you were asleep. I don't know how you managed to not wake up after all of that but somehow you managed to stay asleep. Anyways, we've been hiding here for around half an hour. We've heard a few screams since that whole thing happened. Arthur, I'm really scared."
Arthur struggled to take Francine's story in. It was unbelievable. He couldn't believe that this had happened, on the last day of school of all days. Just one more day, and they would have been out of here. But now they were stuck here, with Binky on the loose.
"What do you think happened to him?" asked Arthur. "What could have made Binky act that way? And whose blood was dripping from his mouth?"
"I don't know the answer to any of those questions," replied Francine. "Honestly, I have no idea what's going on. I think it's best we just stay here for a little while."
"What if he comes back here?"
"Then I honestly don't know what we'll do. We'll try to escape I guess. But I don't want to think about that right now. I just want to stay here until help comes."
"You think help ever will come?" Arthur asked incredulously. "They've quarantined us here! We're not going to be leaving anytime soon!"
"What does quarantine mean?"
"I'm not exactly sure," replied Arthur truthfully. "I think it means trapped. I heard Mr. Ratburn using it when we all looked out the window and saw the cops surrounding our building. Speaking of cops, do you know if they're still there?"
"I'm not sure. I haven't looked out the window since we all saw what was out there. I don't know when they'll let us out. They haven't announced anything since they told us to stay inside. Maybe they're gone by now. Then we could leave." Arthur could tell that Francine didn't really believe they were gone.
"I guess that's a possibility," replied Arthur, though in truth he knew such a thing was too good to be true. "Maybe someone should crawl over to the window and check and see what's going on out there."
The three of them sat in silence for a few moments, none of them really sure of what course of action to take. Finally, Francine piped up again.
"I'll go to the window and check," Francine said nervously.
"No, I'll go," said Arthur. "You stay here with Muffy." Arthur could tell that Francine was grateful that Arthur was taking the risk.
As Francine huddled with Muffy in the corner of the room, Arthur slowly crawled across the floor to the other side of the room where the window was. He made sure he didn't do anything that would make any noise. He didn't want Binky or anyone else gripped by the sudden madness to come into the room and find all of them. Arthur shuddered at the very thought of it, but he knew that he had to reach the window and see what was outside before he did anything else.
As Arthur approached the window, yet another feeling of dread gripped him. He had the sinking feeling that not only was there still cops outside, but there were more of them. He had the feeling that the situation had gotten much, much worse. He finally reached the window. The shades were down. He hesitated before pulling the shades up, but he knew he had to find out what lay beyond the window. Taking a deep breath, he drew the shades up and looked out. What he saw horrified him.
Unfortunately, he had been completely correct when he got the horrible feeling that the situation outside was worse. The situation was much, much worse. There were dozens more cars surrounding the building. The police officers holding guns had been replaced by men in full protective suits. Arthur could tell this was now well beyond Elwood City's police force. The military was here. Arthur quickly lowered the shades and slowly crawled back to the hiding spot where Francine and Muffy were.
"I couldn't see what was out there, the window was too high," said Francine. "What's the situation?"
"It's much worse," replied Arthur. "It's not just the police out there anymore, the military is here too."
"Oh my God," said Francine. Then she started to weep uncontrollably. Arthur tried to comfort her, but to no avail. Now both Francine and Muffy were crying, and Arthur didn't know what to do to comfort them.
"Francine, Muffy, please listen to me," said Arthur as he put both of his hands on their shoulders. They both looked up at him, their faces soaked with tears. "Guys, listen to me. I promise you that everything is going to be alright in the end. I promise you that we are going to get out of this alive." Francine and Muffy both sniffled, but they both seemed to be listening to him. Arthur was relieved that they both trusted him. They were going to need to trust each other if they wanted to live through this ordeal.
"What should we do now?" asked Muffy. It was the first time she had spoken in a while.
"We're just going to wait here," said Arthur. "We're just going to sit it out. I say we wait here until something happens that forces us to leave. This is a good hiding spot, why leave it unless we have to?" Francine and Muffy both agreed with him, and they all huddled together, all of them wishing they were somewhere else.
They had decided to stay hidden until something happened that would make them leave their hiding spot. Unfortunately for them, they wouldn't stay hidden for very long.