If you think it sucks, I wanna know.

Final edits have yet to be made.

 Inside of the school, it was business as usual and only a few of the students and teachers across the building took notice that the air conditioning had turned back on, sans the annoying vibrations, as silence is rarely noticed by the average person. Classes were in session and all was fairly sedate as it was on any normal day. Only a few minutes had gone by since the initial release of the deadly toxins and the students, as well as the teachers alike had just begun to notice the symptoms, but it was far too late. A biology teacher in the west wing, Laura Majors, was comparing the components and discernable differences between adult and fetal stem cells to her class of twenty-three high school juniors when she began to realize that something very bad was happening. Walking around the room as she spoke, Laura was now standing at the back of the class.

 Just a moment earlier, she noticed an ever so slight, involuntary twitching in the back side of her hands. The slight bit of eye and throat irritation she began to experience a minute or so back wasn’t enough to raise any sort of alarm, but the fan was finally quiet. Somebody was working around the air supply…suddenly she put it all together. The twitching told her everything she needed to know, especially given the current state of the nation. The lesson stopped as she stared directly into the classroom’s air conditioning vent. She whirled back away from the vents, facing toward the children in her class.

 “Kids! Out of the school, now! We’re being gassed! We’re being poisoned!” Laura commanded her class. She would have opened the windows if they had any in the room, but this school was built to conserve energy, and windows weren’t a part of that option.

 “Run! For God’s sakes, and don’t stop until you’re far out of the building!” the startled teacher pleaded to her class. Several of the students gave her stunned looks while others immediately came to their feet and shot out the door. Laura rushed back to her desk, through the students, slamming her hand down on the classroom’s fire alarm, which in turn set off the school’s fire alarm system, praying all the while that it would force the entire populace of the stricken high school outside without question or hesitation. Of all their options available, she decided, this was their only hope of survival. A single bead of sweat appeared on her forehead.

 Not five seconds later, Laura made it to the door of the classroom and was almost through it when she lost feeling in her legs, unceremoniously crumpling into the hallway jammed with screaming kids. Other children inside of the hallway began falling around her by the dozens. Ignoring the screaming kids surrounding her, she tried to pull herself back up, but now couldn’t manage to make her arms function properly. Another ten seconds had passed. Her arms and legs began to spasm in earnest now. Drool slid down her chin. Another twenty seconds passed when muscles began their grotesque contractions, immediately causing her arms and legs to curl up into her body. The pain from the contractions was incredible. Looking down the hall, she could tell hundreds of others were down as well. Without warning, she vomited across her legs, then simultaneously defecated, emptying the contents of her bowels into her skirt and onto the hallway floor. The spasms grew stronger still, causing violent jerks in her body from head to toe, as if she were a child’s rag doll being shaken by an angry rottweiler. The hallway smelled like a sewer as others around her began their death throws. Her eyes involuntarily crossed and then suddenly things became black as they rolled into the back of her head. Hearing the screaming of others trapped in the hall caused Laura to pray for death to take her. She silently decided this had to be hell on earth. Trying to put the screaming of the children out of her mind, suddenly realizing it was her own voice she had heard. Another ten seconds passed and at this point, Laura could no longer scream, but only gurgle, and gasp, trying to catch her breath. Her lungs were quickly filling with fluid. Acting on its own now, her nervous system lost total control. The spasms becoming so ferocious; they began to tear muscles, ligaments, and tendons from bone. Unfathomable pain wracked her entire body from head to toe, yet her mind was still clear enough to inform her there was no way out. A full three minutes had passed since she had activated the school’s fire alarm system. The heart attack came at the very same moment a massive contraction caused her spine to snap. Death had been kind enough to answer Laura’s final plea.