The Survivors

Chapter 1

Everything happened when I was a kid.

The first to die was my best friend Chris. At least first in my class. We all witnessed it, but back then I thought it was just a coincidence?

I remember every detail. The night before it rained so heavily that I had hardly slept. I can even remember lunch in the cafeteria. I remeber exactly how disgusting I found that spaghetti, but Chris just stuffed it into himself. His whole mouth was full of tomato sauce, just like his T-shirt.

He just lifted his cup to drink something, but his hand started to tremble violently. His mouth was open, bis eyes were looking directly at something behind me, but they were not full of emotions as usual. No! There was only emptiness in them. His forehead was furrowed.

And then something happened that I never thought was possible. The cup in Chris hand suddenly began to float and his otherwise grass-green eyes began to glow blue. Then they rolled back. He gave a little sigh and the cup flew across the room.

"Chris, are you all right?" That's what I said to him that day.

In the meantime all the people had gathered around our table. Everyone around us froze when Chris suddenly fell to the ground. Some screamed that he had fainted, but I knew better. 

HE WAS DEAD!

A break supervisor and the school nurse rushed to the table. While the break supervisor brought us all into the building. I saw the school nurse measuring the pulse of Chris lifeless body. 

It's not the first time I've seen a dead man. My mother died about a year ago. Her hand was so cold and her skin was so pale. Her lips were pinker than they should have been. The person in the coffin who was once my mother wore a white dress and a gold chain. Mom's dimples were gone, too. 

A week later, Cody stopped showing up at school. Then Camila, then Maddy.

At that time some parents started to take their children out of school because they were too afraid that something could happen to them. A month after Chris died, health authorities issued us a five-point list of symptoms to help parents determine whether their child was risk of IAAN. In the meantime, half of my classmates were already dead. 

My father was too drunk to even take an interest in me. The only thing he was interested in was if I made a mistake or wrote a bad grade so he could hit me on the back with his belt again. Since Mom died, he tried to drown his sorrow in alcohol and he took all his grief and anger out of me. Sometimes I hoped I'd die too. Every night I lay in my bed and cried in pain and sorrow.