Rayne only came out of his trance when the screams started.
At first it was only one or two. here and there. But not only did they increase in number, but also variety.
There were screams of terror, those were the most common, then screams of pain and despair, and finally screams of anger.
Rayne didn't dare to leave the closet, nor did he even dare to call his mom. All he did was tremble and pray, Pray to God for salvation, but would he answer?
A couple people burst into the physics classroom and hurriedly, but quietly shut the door. They were breathing heavily and quickly hid under desks to avoid the window in the door's line of sight.
This did not save them.
After ten minutes or so a gentle, almost timid knocking sounded from the door.
Rayne held his breath and shut down his phone. He squeezed his eyes shut and tried to make himself as insignificant as possible.
The door began to creak as an immeasurable force was placed on it. One of the people in the room screamed.
The door shot out from its hinges and struck the wall on the other side of the room.
The thing did not enter the room immediately, it seemed to savor the awestruck silence and fear.
Its skeletal hand slowly gripped the door frame as it crouched to enter. Its whole body came into Rayne's view from the slits in the close door.
It was massive. So tall that it had to crouch on all fours to maneuver around the class.
Its body seemed wasted in nature, it pale grayish skin pulled tight around its ribs and bones. Saliva was dripping from its smiling mouth. It was so, so hungry.
It sauntered through the class with predatory grace and picked off student by student.
It grabbed a male student by his head and his leg then ripped him apart sending each half flying in different directions.
Then there were no students left. All five who entered were dead, except for Rayne.
The creature was deliberate in its acts. It gathered their body parts and started to remove all remaining clothes. It then opened its mouth, not inhumanly so, it was if it was just a regular man eating a sandwich.
It took bites out of them bones and all, eating as if it was a delicacy, ecstasy clear in its eyes.
It grunted in-between every bite. No, it wasn't grunting. It was struggling to say something.
In a grotesque fascination Rayne strained to hear what it said.
"...urry... m....eye'm....sau..ry.."
'Is that thing saying 'I'm sorry'', Rayne thought.
He also noticed something else about its eyes, they were moist, as if it was about to cry.
Rayne didn't even know what to feel when he realized what this creature was. Maybe it was because it didn't look like its movie counterpart that it didn't occur to him until now.
It was a wendigo.
A human possessed and transformed by a cannibalistic spirit.
After it had its meal, it left the room to search for more food, even though it would never be full.
Rayne felt relief, but also disgust with himself. Many people had just died, but he was feeling relief. Not only that, he even dared to pity the monster.
However, Rayne's focus eventually shifted back to his phone. He powered it back on.
His mother hadn't responded to any of his frantic texts. Rayne was worried, but there was nothing that he could do.
Rayne thought about his mom. He thought about Navia and Mark. He thought about Lila, Nate, and Samuel.
He thought about his classmates and teachers. He thought about wether he would live.
The only thing to accompany these thoughts were screams.
So he sat in that small closet. He sat there and he waited. Waited all the way till dawn.
And he would have continued with his waiting is it wasn't from a tremor in the earth that shook the whole building.
The following sound wave was so strong that he even lost his hearing and was sent tumbling out of the closet.
From his position on the floor he managed to look up and out the window in the class.
He saw a mushroom cloud.
So big that it couldn't have been from any normal means. Luckily it was so faraway that it likely would not affect him or his mom too much.
The ground began to shake again and a sound wave even greater than before struck Rayne and his ears begun to bleed.
Rayne struggled to get up and make his way out of the class. As he stumbled through the halls towards the school's entrance the brutality of last night was put on display.
Splatters of dried and drying blood covered the hallways, but no bodies. Only tattered remnants of clothing.
Rayne did eventually make his way to the entrance of the school. And slightly to his surprised there were around 20 people there, but only three who he recognized.
Mrs. Fayad, that girl he bumped into in the hallway, and Samuel.
The atmosphere was solemn, and people only talked rarely. They were all observing the skyline.
There were jets, fighter jets, circling the mushroom cloud.
'There's no way anything could survive that....'
One of the jets swooped close to the mushroom and then back up. The ground shook and they all covered their ears before falling down.
Suddenly, a bestial roar cut through the sound of the explosion. So loud that a few of the people immediately passed out. This roar was even louder than the atomic bomb.
Something began to emerge from the massive mushroom cloud.
Its black reptilian head was the first thing out, followed by its huge black scaled body. It stretched it wings as if it wanted to encompass the sky.
As it rose higher into the air, the fighter jets backed off and retreated. But the creature did not want to let them go.
A might pressure appear in the air, so heavy and dense that Rayne struggled to breath and felt crushed under its weight.
The black dragon opened its mouth and it was as if all the color of the world was immediately drained away. The earth darkened like night was to come.
Then an immense beam of white light was released that wiped out all the fighter jets, vaporizing them as if they never existed and shooting far into the horizon.
Light and color returned to the world.
But this did not appease the dragon.
It turn its massive head to the land.
The world darkened once again.
An apocalyptic scene occured as the white beam swept across the land.
The land not only burned, it died. But not only the land, but the cities too, and the people within the cities. Erased to ashes.
Rayne and the others watched as the light quickly approached them.
His mother was likely dead, Navia was likely dead, Mark was likely dead. It didn't even matter anyway, did it?
If they weren't dead before, they most certainly are now.
The light grew closer and Rayne finally lost it. With a smile, he made his final decision.
He decided to curse God and die.