A Variety of Vermin

By four o’clock, Kris is clean out of fucks to give. It’s the Friday preceding spring break. There’s no aftercare today, no other underpaid employees to push her last few kids off on. The parents either forgot or don’t care. Kris reckons she’s absolved of any obligation to keep them from running wild in the rain.

Drizzle thrums against the awning, echoing through the open corridor. Kris leans against the classroom door frame, eyes scanning the blacktop. On a campus built for three hundred students, the play yard is eerily empty with just the three. Her hand itches for her whistle as her first graders kick and skip and stomp in the puddles. But maybe a weekend spent with a scrub brush and the Oxiclean will serve as a reminder to parents not to be late for pickup.

“I have a theory,” Kris announces.

“Bounce it off me.” Antonia’s low, satin-smooth voice resonates from the earbud hidden beneath the locks of Kris’s bun.

“I’ve deduced a foolproof way to tell kids apart.”

“Always impressed me that you can memorize the names of thirty-five goblins.”

Kris’s lips turn up at the corner. “I mean, predict their personalities. Their temperaments.”

“I’ll bite.”

“You watch how they treat worms washed out by the rain. Firstly, you have lifeguards. They pluck the little guys up and stick ‘em back in the grass.” Kris’s eyes fall on Dylan, the smallest kid in her class. He’s crouching, rolled up like a pill bug at the field’s edge. He plucks little pink strings off the ground, studies them, and settles them gently in the lawn.

“Hope they wash their hands,” Antonia muses.

“I make sure they do. Next, you have the ostriches.”

“The what?” Antonia’s laughter rumbles in Kris’s ear.

“The avoiders. The ones who bury their heads in the sand.”

Ava skips along on a jump rope and into a puddle, stumbling out of her rhythm. Her buckle shoes kick arcs of dirty water into the air. She stops and peers over Dylan’s shoulder, only to leap back with a shriek when he lifts the worm in his hand. She dashes away, rope abandoned on the wet asphalt.

“They might feel bad for the worms,” Kris continues, “or they might think they’re icky. But they don’t care enough to do anything about it.”

“Oh! Let me guess.” Delight soaks Antonia’s voice. “Last, we have the crushers.”

Kris hums, eyes flickering to Tristan as he stomps around with a big red bouncy ball clutched between his hands. He stretches it overhead and taunts, “Oh Dy-laaaaaaaaan!”

When Dylan turns around, Tristan slams the ball down on a wriggling worm. Kris flinches. The impact sends the ball soaring over the iron fence and into the parking lot.

“Tristan!” Ava, hands perched on her hips, gears up to tell him off. Each syllable hits the perfect rhythm, weaving a composition of pure sass: “You don’t have to be so mean!”

Anticipation surges in Kris. She craves to see little Dylan show some backbone too: shout, sneer, flip him off. She won’t even deduct it from his conduct grade. But he just trudges off, kicking miserably at the puddles until dirty water dots his khakis.

“Crushers,” Kris confirms.

Tristan performs a grand hop onto the next stranded worm. His laughter mirrors Antonia’s. “Is that derision I hear in your voice?” she demands. “You’re engaged to a crusher. A professional crusher, of a variety of vermin.”

Kris grins, twisting the diamond on her finger. “I’m not passing a judgment. Just suggesting the worm test is a good predictor of who’s going to brandish the scissors during art.” Her eyes roll skyward. “Or throw orange peels into the orangutan enclosure.”

Antonia snorts. “Sounds like the field trip was a blast. You’ll have to tell me all about it over dinner. Rain’s starting to come down like hell, so I’m done spraying for today. If I—?”

The Bluetooth blares. Pain locks Kris’s jaw and prickles the hairs on the back of her neck. She tugs the earpiece away and the tones’ pattern come into focus: the Emergency Alert System.

Once it’s faded, Kris tucks in her earpiece to catch Antonia’s words mid-sentence: “— orders to shelter in place.”

Shelter in place. The words spin circles in Kris’s mind as her gaze flickers between the three children. “What? You mean, like… immediately?”

“One sec, one sec.” A synthetic voice blares from what must be Antonia’s truck radio. “Yeah, immediately. Nearest indoor shelter.”

“Why?” But then a better question occurs to Kris. “Where are you now?”

“On my route in Laguna. It’s a riot, maybe? They’re giving all sorts of instructions for traffic redirection now.”

A groan stirs in Kris’s throat. It’s not like she’s getting home on time anyway. Still, the realization aggravates the pinch of her shoes, the cinch of her skirt. She slips inside the classroom door and fishes her phone out of her desk.

“You gotta see this footage.” The anxious excitement in Antonia’s voice is alarming; she thrives in chaos. “Cities all over the country. Fuck, the world. They’ve taken anchors off the ground. It’s helicopter footage. I’m sending you videos.”

Between glances toward the children, Kris minimizes the Bluetooth call and opens her messages. She scrolls through the videos, squinting and lifting the screen to her eyes until it clicks what she’s seeing: looting. People beating the shit out of each other. Pulling guns. Shots ringing out amid screams. Children trampled. A shot of what looks like a scene from a late-night apocalypse drama: some gray-skinned fucker sinking its bloodstained teeth into the throat of a screaming woman, tearing chunks of flesh and muscle like taffy.

Kris tries to refresh the video, but the website bids her a cheerful apology; it’s been taken down for violating the terms of service.

The phone case crackles under Kris’s white-knuckled grip. “What the hell is this?”

With all the confidence of pinpointing a rats’ nest, Antonia declares, “This is zombie shit.”

#

Watching the down slope of humanity occur in real time is fascinating. The directions relayed by the governor are clear: shelter in place, do not engage, allow authorities to set up the quarantine zones. But actual authorities are spread thin and panicked mobs aren’t well known for following simple instructions.

That’s how the roads end up clogged with crowds smashing store windows for toilet paper and canned beans. People with guns playing cops, people with guns playing robbers, all carving wounds society can’t cauterize fast enough. Mesmerized, Kris watches the videos under her desk, with Antonia commenting in one ear while Bill Nye lectures the kids from the smart board. It’s like being strapped to a zero-gravity carnival ride, guts stuck to her spine, while the world whirls around her.

She’s gotta get these kids out of her hair.

When someone pounds on the classroom door, Kris jumps so high that her knees bang the desk. She bites back a swear and dashes to the window. Dylan’s mother stands in nursing scrubs, face still masked. Kris opens the door and her reflexes nearly slam it shut again; the woman’s sleeves are coated in dark red blood.

At the sight of her, Tristan blurts out an impressed, “Whoa!” He cocks his head, admiring the gore. “Did someone die?” He seems delighted at the prospect. Ava smacks his arm.

A mama’s boy through and through, Dylan would have attached to her waist on any other day. Today, he stares with knees crunched against his chest, glued to the rainbow carpet. When he doesn’t move, his mother crosses the room and lifts him to his feet. As she drags him to the door, Kris catches her gaze: steely, determined, in survival mode. There’s nothing left of the patient, indulgent mother that swings by for centers every week.

“Get out as soon as you can,” she instructs Kris, walking her child out the door. They leave his backpack behind.

In the context of a suburb, Kris isn’t sure in what direction she’s meant to “get out.” How far did they need to go until they were safe? Farmland? Mountains? Coast? There was river access close by; maybe it’d be smartest to follow it to the bay?

But she’s ahead of herself. Before she and Antonia can go anywhere, she has to get rid of these last two kids.

No doubt a bit riled, Tristan threatens to wipe boogers on Ava, who brandishes a hardcover book at him. In hopes of distracting them, Kris gets out the construction paper, ink stamps, and glitter. Thoroughly on edge, she hides her phone away and watches the parking lot instead. Before long, a pickup truck with a jam-packed bed pulls into the fire lane. Ava’s father throws open the passenger door. Head swiveling in every direction, he dashes past the iron gate and through the open corridor. He shouts from the window for Ava. She nearly trips over herself to obey, hands fisted tightly in her skirt.

All the while, Kris tracks Antonia’s progress through her Bluetooth: driving, pulling up to their house, rummaging around in a flurry.

“I’ll be there in a flash,” she pants in Kris’s ear. “Grant Road is a clear line to you.” Antonia sounds way too damn giddy. She loves emergencies—the break in routine, the swell of excitement, the problems that need tackling.

Kris would have been fine with a movie and takeout tonight. She struggles to keep her voice level as she whispers behind her hand, “I don’t want you driving out in this.” But it’s more of an observation, an admittance of fear, than an instruction. There’s only one back road separating the school from their little duplex. It’s mostly wild grass along undeveloped land—safe, so long as it’s not already some sort of congested traffic jam surrounded by a wildfire.

“I’m safer in the truck than you are in your dumb electric cube.” A final thud reverberates from the earpiece. “All right! Got our emergency supplies in the back of the truck.”

“We have emergency supplies?”

“Not formally. But I filled all our water bottles. Tossed in the nonperishables. Rice, beans—”

“The Pringles?” Kris tries to season her voice with levity. She’s too detached to hear if she succeeds. “I just bought those.”

“You should think better of me than to forget.” Antonia’s words are punctuated with a telltale crunch.

“Leave my salt and vinegar.”

“Like I’d touch those. Disgusting.” A truck door bangs. “I’m coming to you now. Seven minutes.”

Kris’s heart springs into her throat, pushing up bile. “Stay on the line with me?”

Antonia snorts. “Who else am I gonna call, my mom?”

A grin tugs at Kris’s lips, but it fades when Tristan materializes at her elbow saying, “Are you on your phone?” as if she’s committed a heinous, cold-blooded puppy execution.

“You haven’t offloaded those little goblins yet?” Antonia sounds equally appalled.

“You’re not supposed to be on the phone,” Tristan declares. “My mom locks up my babysitter’s phone so she can’t use it.”

“Wow, I hate him!” Antonia drawls.

Kris has to pause and reengage the correct portion of her brain to address Tristan. “Why don’t you go get the Play-Doh out? You can even mix the colors.” As he turns tail and scurries away, Kris mumbles under her breath, “Eat it for all I care.”

She grabs her spiral-bound emergency contact book and the old corded school phone to dial Tristan’s mother. She steps into the corridor, breathing deeply of the rain-tossed air. Eyes sweeping the vacant campus, she grits her teeth through four rings before it hits the answering machine. Out pops that uncanny, high-pitched voice she uses to deal with parents: “Good afternoon, Ms. Forrest. This is Ms. Rhodes calling from—”

Click.