Monday 14th March 2013 (evening)
The group of survivors from yesterday seem to have given everyone else permission to crawl out of the woodwork. Asal Amirkhani, Maya Mark and Sharnae Jones (no relation to me, Alfred Jones) came in a group. We regained the nation of Iran, the state Rhode Island and the city of London. Then in came Oscar Kirkland on his own, totally surprised to find so many of his friends alive and well, so Australia has re-joined the ranks too. Then best of all, the person I wished would come back the most returned and with company!
This afternoon I was bored out of my mind. I decided to go exploring and I roped Sadie and Luddie into the expedition too. In our school there was a network of fire exits with at least a mile of catwalks and staircases the students could use in times of siege to get to the designated safe points on the rooftops or in the basements without ever going back inside. A few feet of the catwalks had been sabotaged on every exit, just enough so that we couldn't use it- not unless you were an Olympic level long jumper or Spiderman. The fire axes were probably used – the cases that held them are empty and had a shatter of glass on the floor around them. Security must have the axes. I know it should make me feel better Security is being so thorough, but it just makes me uneasy. Or maybe they took the axes because they knew the odds of one of us students going insane and pulling a Shining is very good. Remember those vents I talked about earlier? Security hasn't touched the vents yet in a visible way. If they have the vents are still functioning.
The three of us had checked the fire exits on the first, second, third, fourth, fifth and sixth floor (the medical bay and generators and garage on 1, the canteen on 2, the provinces and states and small islands on 3, nations on 4, teachers and the matrons' living quarters on 5, Security on 6. The girls and boys are separated by a landing that gets locked so there's no straight hanky-panky.) and found the same thing every time. On the second floor we sat down by one to discuss our findings.
"At least we know Security is making an effort to keep us safe." said Luddie.
"I don't like the looks they give us," Sadie said "When they think we're not looking. Like we're something the cat dragged in. I wouldn't trust them further than I could throw them."
Which would be far. I never understood that phrase.
I was going to say something, but I was interrupted as a large panel swung open from the ceiling and smacked me in the back of the head. Being me, I was standing in exactly the right position and was exactly tall enough to be injured by the vents opening. My head spun so I thought I was hallucinating when Elizabeta Hédeváry slid out of the hole in the ceiling. Ven practically fell out after her and both of them had to help Roderich down. Liz was covered in blood, Ven's arm was bandaged up with a piece of shirt (Liz's I think since her shirt stopped at her midriff) and Roderich was shaking so hard I could hear his teeth chattering.
They didn't notice us until Sadie said "Is that a bite Ven?"
Cue another tearful reunion. I'm getting really good at them.
Sadie swung into doctor mode and gave all three of them the once over. Liz was drenched in someone else's blood but also bleeding herself from two cuts and a shallow –and unexplained- gunshot wound in her shoulder. Ven had a large gushing cut on his right arm and a smaller one on his leg turning his jeans red. Why was he in jeans instead of his uniform? Apparently the three of them had been bunking Spanish. Since Ven and Roderich are already fluent and Liz maintains she can't cram another language in her head with Hungarian, German and the Swiss German dialect, Polish, Austrian German and Italian taking up the space. Roderich was simply scared silly. Not in shock yet but it took some serious effort to pry him off me once he got a grip.
We took them over to the official medical bay on the first floor. The doctors patched up Ven and Liz and wrapped Roderich in a foil blanket. Liz looked like she'd bust out of an Egyptian crypt by the time she escaped the medical staff. She probably wouldn't have needed so much bandaging if Lili hadn't seen her. Like I said, the German is strong in her. Be warned! Enthusiastic hugs from people remotely related to the Beilschmidt family will cause pain.
It's the middle of the afternoon currently, nothing is happening, I'm tired of exploring already so prepare yourself for a huge entry.
I should explain a little bit about the school. Maybe the world will recover and I'll have to omit the secrets of the school or just burn this whole damn thing because it would be a condemning piece of evidence. Until the time I have to hand this journal over to the men in black I might as well treat it like a record, a document from the world pre-zombies.
I already said a child is taken from each nation and raised to become a leader or take on an influential role close to the leader of their birth nation. Every four years the school takes a new batch of children, or 'generations', from sets of parents who are already influential in the birth nation. We're taken to the school concealed in this godforsaken corner of Maine when we're around our 10th birthdays, raised and taught together to grease the wheels of international peace in the future. Also we are each given a field to specialise.
Let me see…Luddie has mathematics and mechanics because his brain is pretty much wired for it, Sadie is a doctor and knows his way around at least nine different types of doctor-ing (I made a new word), Bella is being trained in politics like me, so we basically have to specialise in a bunch of field and be great talkers, and I think they just picked chemistry for eleven-year-old Audrey's special field. Let's see how many more people I can remember: Kiku is in mechanical design, Ivan is a politician/sociologist in the making too, Ven is a historian (and a young Da Vinci, he can draw like a boss), Sadik is almost a fully certified doctor), Roderich is a translator, Heracles is a politician (who knows how he could make any progress through the red tape when he sleeps about 18 hours a day), the Baltic kid Eduard is a computer technician/hacker, the second Baltic kid Toris is in child support and psychology (a personal nanny who can double as a shrink for the stressed parents) and I don't know what the other Baltic kid Raivis does. Mostly he shivers and dives out of Ivan's way.
Peter is being trained to be the leader of his country/small oil rig a few miles of the coast of Felixstowe, England, and I have no idea what Suzy does. He'll probably be one of those guys in suits who stand behind politicians looking scary to deter assassination attempts. I don't know…Antonio is has the ass of a bullfighter and the career of a pending politician too. Hell all of us are politicians! The ones who aren't are the minorities. It's no wonder we squabble so much.
So yeah, the World Academy. That's what we are. A truckload of kids from different nations, provinces/states, islands, republics blah blah blah blah…brought up together to further the cause of world peace. The theory is that if very powerful people within two different nations have been friends from their early childhoods it will be easier for nations to interact civilly and avoid international problems. I think it's a great idea. I miss my parents and brother like HELL but it'll be worth it if we can help hurry world peace on.
My generation includes most of the guys I listed up there except for Raivis and Audrey of course. Raivis is 15. The rest of us are 16. In my closest group of friends Luddie is the youngest at 2 months into his 16th year and Kiku is the oldest being born in December. His next birthday will probably be celebrated in midst of zombies, or maybe we'll be so focused on surviving we'll forget. What about my next birthday? I might forget how old I am if I live long enough.
Dunno how long I want to live in this. If I lost my friends I think I might throw myself at death. These people are my family, my friends and there is probably a future husband among them. I'm separated from my blood-related family. Sometimes I feel like killing them all in the most brutal, creative way I can imagine, then roll in their blood and do a victory dance stark naked under the full moon. But I also love them. Families act this way. If I lost just one of my people it would stay with me for the rest of my life. Even one of the people I'm not brother-bonded with like Toris or Maya or Ahmet, their faces would be on the inside of my eyelids every time I shut them. If I lost Antonio or Bella or yes, I will admit this, Ivan, it would emotionally destroy me. Kiku I don't even wanna think about. As far as I'm concerned he's immortal.
I read about these characters in books and films who have continued on after having lost all they had and all whom they loved and who despite it all are marching on into the night. I know I couldn't do it. What would be the point anyways if your whole world had been ripped away? What's the point in a search for a new one? I wouldn't want a new world. I would want my old one with all its comforts and discomforts and weird quirks back. The idea of leaving this school as a lone man, possibly with a rifle strapped to my back and a gun at my belt and a fuzzy beard growing is just disgusting- I don't want to be a lone action hero! I wanna be the hero with my loveable cast of compatriots and sidekicks. The people who make up these stories centred around a single figure of inexhaustible bravery and resourcefulness with a plan to get out of every problem thrown at them are just make believe. Dumb make believe. I mean shit - no one could do it on their own. I've barely been making it along surrounded by my people.
Lately I've been having the worst nightmares of my life. One re-occurring dream haunts me the most. I'm standing in a big black expanse surrounded by my friends, all dead on the floor covered in blood with glassy eyes and ripped apart in the worst ways possible. Sometimes the way they've been torn up changes a little. But their eyes are always trained on me accusingly. I look down at my hands and my hands are red and my fingers are scraped to the bone. I can't move, I can't scream, I can't look away.
They say if you have the same dream repeatedly it will become true.
A/N: It's getting darker and darker as it goes along. If you can't handle depressing situations very well you'd be better off finding different, happier fanfic to follow because there's not much brightness from here and on out. People are going to be killed, mutilated, suffer from clinical depression (the proper type, not the type that is banished by meeting some great guy and making love), have to kill their friends, be beaten up, hurt, separated, betrayed and drenched in blood. This whole fanfic will be drenched in blood. Sorry. As a writer I have this habit of beating my characters to the bloodiest piece of pulp I can manage in words. Have a good one anyways, laters.