Read Online The Day the Dead Came to Show and Tell by Mira Grant - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Mira Grant
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no monsters wandering the halls just yet: the halls were echoing and empty, and completely free of dangers, at least for as long as the office door held. If they moved now , they could get to the airlock and get outside. Theyâd be able to run. There would still be a quarantine, of course, and all the students would need to be thoroughly tested for traces of live Kellis-Amberlee, but they would live. She could save them if they moved fast and moved smart, and didnât stand around waiting for rescueâ¦because rescue wasnât going to come. The very flaw in the school security that would allow them to escape was going to delay any sort of rescue effort, and could make things a lot worse.
The doors hadnât locked. The doors were supposed to have lockedâand whenever a live outbreak was happening in an enclosed space, like a school, any door that wasnât locked was considered an infection risk. Even building barricades to keep the infected out wouldnât make any difference; barricades could be broken, barricades didnât have the weight of a securely locked door. Everyone on campus was infected now, legally speaking, and anyone who came onto campus was likely to come on shooting. It didnât matter that the victims were children. It didnât matter that many of them were too small to have amplified. The school had failed to lock down properly, and while their parents would mourn them, the safety of the city was more important than a few little lives.
Sometimes Elaine thought the most unfair thing of all was that she had to live in this day and age, where children were collateral damage. But then, before there were the walking dead there had been school shootings, and those had been much easier to get rid of, hadnât they? Ban the assault rifles, make the background checks tighterâ¦save lives. And none of that had happened, until the dead rose and people found something better to shoot at than kindergarteners and cafeteria workers. So maybe every day and age was bad, in its own way.
âPlease take off your clothes and get in the bin, Scott,â she said, and handed a sponge to Brian. âWe need to wash him all over. I know itâs hard. But we have to do it, or we could get sick.â
Brian was crying. So was Scott. So was she. But they had to do it, or there was no way she could justify taking Scott with them when they leftâand they had to leave. They had to get out alive. They had to try.
*Â Â *Â Â *
The Evergreen incident raised several questions. How had the security systems been allowed to fail? How was it that human errorâthe guards at the airlock first missing the blood on Scott Ribarâs hand, and then missing the live viral particles on Nathan Pattersonâs lipâhad been compounded by computer error, leaving the doors unlocked and the alarms that would have notified the authorities unsounded? Why did none of the teachers have the ability to contact the police or, better yet, the CDC? Why were there no clear evacuation plans in place for incidents of this nature, and how could they be put in place for the future?
What very few people bothered to question were the rolls of the dead. Name after name, student after student, all of them killed by a cascading combination of failures that should never have been permitted to happen. Some would try to place the blame on Elaine Oldenburg, after review of the school security records proved conclusively that one of her students had been the flashpoint for the outbreak. Others would wave their hands and say that it was a regrettable but ultimately blameless combination of factors, one to learn from and prevent. The teachers unions began petitioning for more and better weaponry. The school board began petitioning for more and better security.
The parents of the students who had died at Evergreen Elementary were virtually forgotten. The few who bothered to sue the school district for damages
The doors hadnât locked. The doors were supposed to have lockedâand whenever a live outbreak was happening in an enclosed space, like a school, any door that wasnât locked was considered an infection risk. Even building barricades to keep the infected out wouldnât make any difference; barricades could be broken, barricades didnât have the weight of a securely locked door. Everyone on campus was infected now, legally speaking, and anyone who came onto campus was likely to come on shooting. It didnât matter that the victims were children. It didnât matter that many of them were too small to have amplified. The school had failed to lock down properly, and while their parents would mourn them, the safety of the city was more important than a few little lives.
Sometimes Elaine thought the most unfair thing of all was that she had to live in this day and age, where children were collateral damage. But then, before there were the walking dead there had been school shootings, and those had been much easier to get rid of, hadnât they? Ban the assault rifles, make the background checks tighterâ¦save lives. And none of that had happened, until the dead rose and people found something better to shoot at than kindergarteners and cafeteria workers. So maybe every day and age was bad, in its own way.
âPlease take off your clothes and get in the bin, Scott,â she said, and handed a sponge to Brian. âWe need to wash him all over. I know itâs hard. But we have to do it, or we could get sick.â
Brian was crying. So was Scott. So was she. But they had to do it, or there was no way she could justify taking Scott with them when they leftâand they had to leave. They had to get out alive. They had to try.
*Â Â *Â Â *
The Evergreen incident raised several questions. How had the security systems been allowed to fail? How was it that human errorâthe guards at the airlock first missing the blood on Scott Ribarâs hand, and then missing the live viral particles on Nathan Pattersonâs lipâhad been compounded by computer error, leaving the doors unlocked and the alarms that would have notified the authorities unsounded? Why did none of the teachers have the ability to contact the police or, better yet, the CDC? Why were there no clear evacuation plans in place for incidents of this nature, and how could they be put in place for the future?
What very few people bothered to question were the rolls of the dead. Name after name, student after student, all of them killed by a cascading combination of failures that should never have been permitted to happen. Some would try to place the blame on Elaine Oldenburg, after review of the school security records proved conclusively that one of her students had been the flashpoint for the outbreak. Others would wave their hands and say that it was a regrettable but ultimately blameless combination of factors, one to learn from and prevent. The teachers unions began petitioning for more and better weaponry. The school board began petitioning for more and better security.
The parents of the students who had died at Evergreen Elementary were virtually forgotten. The few who bothered to sue the school district for damages
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