Level 1: Intruder Alert

SYPHERIA:

 

 

“The pieces of the bodies of infidels were flying like dust particles. If you would have seen it with your own eyes, you would have been very pleased, and your heart would have been filled with joy.”

“America is a great power possessed of tremendous military might and a wide ranging economy, but all this is built on an unstable foundation which can be targeted, with special attention to its obvious weak spots. If America is hit in one hundredth of these weak spots, God willing, it will stumble, wither away and relinquish world leadership.”

-Osama Bin Laden

 

 

 

 

 

 

Level 1:

Intruder Alert

 

 

 

May 11^th 2010

6:30am

Steve Johnson, an older gentleman, is driving to work as a beautiful, glowing May sunrise stretches across the sky. It’s a staggering sight that looks like an unflawed painting more so than reality. As he drives on the freeway, he passes under a bridge which hides the magnificent site for a moment, but it comes to life only moments later. The inside of the car is quiet, resembling a forgotten time when the radio was at home on a dining room dresser; not in the car. Steven arrives at an inconvenient stop in a traffic jam.

Across the state he’s in, Michigan, miles away from Steven, school buses are making their rounds indiscriminately picking up children of various ages for the final destination distanced by the travelers who are en route to reach it. Beside the cliché chaos on the bus itself, it will be far from a normal day and it will leave an indelible impression on these particular children’s lives.

A bus carrying a large load of students reaches its dreaded destination, Campbell Middle School. The kids get off the bus and gather in groups and enter the school. Two older children, eleven year old twin sisters, capture a lot of attention; especially from the boys. The twin sisters are Middle Eastern but fit more comfortably in a Caucasian dominated school population. They don’t seem to have the need or desire to find other Middle Eastern children. They move very easily through the crowds.

Across the state, in a bad area of the state, an undercover cop car cruises through the streets. The neighborhoods have burnt down buildings and many other things that depict these areas are definitely hazardous to your health if you don’t have a weapon. Two detectives driving the unmarked car are in civilian clothes, but those who they pursue are aware of their presence. Both men are in their early thirties, white, and are normal looking men except for the chain and badge hanging from their necks and the standard issued nine millimeter hand gun in a holster on their hips. The sun is now an inescapable source of light shining with a growing intensity.

 

9:45am

The two detectives drive through the worst neighborhood they could find. As they slowly drive, they draw a massive amount of attention to themselves, more and more people are seen gathered in groups, varying between five to ten people in each. The detectives see that all in the groups are black and all have firearms, hiding them but not discreetly. A few men walk by with their pit bulls with scars and torn flesh scabs on them, indications of fighting dogs.

The two detectives look around and slow the car down as they approach a small group consisting of four men. Something is off; something is strange about this situation.       

In the back of the cop car there are two boxes of blonde hair coloring kits, they are open and empty. The two detectives have freshly bleached blonde hair. The car comes to a complete stop a few feet away from those who are occupying the curb.

     The detectives get out of the car, but as they do the detective in the driver’s seat pushes down on the horn and stays on it for a good ten seconds. The innocent civilians on the curb are confused but instinctively nervous, anxious, paranoid, and preparing for the bad situation they can smell in the air. By the time the detective takes his hand off the horn he has quite a crowd observing every move made by his partner and him. Eyes peer through windows, frustrated and skeptical spectators stand on porches. The two detectives join each other side by side and walk furiously to the four civilians on the curb and vigorously draw their weapons and fire. The faint breaths of pleadings that were to come out of their mouths are instantly silenced by the thunder of the blasts. Bullets rip through flesh, the crack of the gunpowder being ignited by collision, echoes between houses. Within seconds the four are down, in a swamp of blood and chunks of flesh; the hollow tip bullets used by the detectives, tore off their bodies. The cries for help and gasps of air resonate from the two still living victims on the ground.                           

The shocks on the faces of the audience of a massacre are thick with confusion, denial, hate and fear. Some are so shocked they didn’t even flinch. One of the detectives pulls out a radio and says, “Officer down, on 35^th and Davison, need assistance taking fire!” He holds the radio down by his gun and fires a few rounds. “What the hell man!” is shouted from those who scattered when the gun fire began, but who are now edging towards the detectives behind the cover of houses.

“How could you do this?” an elderly woman cries out standing a few feet away from them in her doorway. One of the detectives quickly shoots her three times, in cold blood, like the others. The cries are now angry war calls, death threats to be carried out in seconds. The detectives begin firing shots and reloading clips at everybody. These hostile and horrible actions begin to spark the reaction expected. The detectives begin receiving fire from hand guns and rifles being shot from houses. Then from the house where the older woman was gunned down, a man in boxer shorts comes out with a large double barreled shot gun and fires, creating a resounding, thunderous explosion sound dwarfing in comparison to the meek cracking sound of the hand guns. The two detectives are hiding behind the car, but the attack quickly increases and multiplies and now they are being shot at from every direction. The imposters who were acting like detectives are shot and are struggling to keep up with the firefight radioing for help. As their blood spews out and squirts out of their bodies their minds are resting easy on a mission completed.

Cop cruisers burst onto the scene with great haste, some without their sirens on, and immediately realize the war zone that they have driven into. The police react with speed once they notice the imposter detectives are down. The police return the fire more accurately but the numbers of the shooters firing at them has doubled. 

 Once the original gunfire was initiated, the word spread like wild fire of racial slaughter in the surrounding neighborhoods. Now a series of events are unfolding, in the echoes of the gunshots, that are irreversible and are creating a monster named mayhem. 

     The monster is born from an act intentionally set up, to ignite this exact reaction. The people surrounding that neighborhood and every one in it are fueled now by something more powerful than hate, anger, and frustration. Justification and the defense from fear and impending death now are the thriving driving emotion. Separate these are all powerful words, but when combined; they create a movement, but this is just the beginning.

 

11:00am

     In a classroom at Campbell Middle School, the sound of excited children fills Mrs. Mac’s room. The veteran teacher exercises flexibility and leniency with the children because the bell for lunch is only minutes away. Mrs. Mac has a white flower in her flowing golden hair, given to her earlier by a student. She has a genuine smile on her face as she sits behind her desk sifting through papers, checking them with a red pen. She has her head down trying to balance between drowning out the commotion and keeping a watchful eye on the rambunctious students. Her eyes focus on the paper in front of her with intensity. She is gripped suddenly with a frost bite chill and senses that eyes are on her very steadily, and this is not a normal case. Her skin rises and she lifts up her head reluctantly and finds the twin sisters standing side by side at the foot of her desk. She is startled because of the silence and their stiff bodies, but before she can say anything to them an administrative voice comes over the PA system. “Mrs. Mac, can you please send Amanda and Mia down to the office, their father is here with their instruments for music class.”  

     “Ok,” responds Mrs. Mac. “You heard her, you two,” she says with a smile directed towards the girls, “scoot.” 

     As they walk away, the happy sisters seen earlier are ghosts compared to the faces of the two as they leave the room. The second the word “music” was uttered over the PA something inside them triggered shutting them off emotionally. They walk down the hallway together holding hands, one whispering to the other. They reach the office and open the door and find their Americanized Pakistani father, who is a psychologist, chatting with the secretaries and making them laugh. He is very charming, charismatic and an all round nice guy. He holds a guitar case in one hand and in the other, a violin case. 

     “Hey you two, there’s my girls who make me a proud father,” says the dad. The two girls walk in and into their father’s arms after he puts the instruments down and kneels. “This is the second time this week your mother has had to call me at work.”

“Sorry papa,” says Amanda. Mia hugs her dad extra hard, but in a rehearsed fashion. The father quickly pushes them off lovingly, but with force he says with an assertive voice: “That’s enough now, just no more, don’t let this happen again.”

The father stands up and speaks briefly with the secretary. “Thank you for your help again,” he says with a smile, “I’m just going to speak with them outside, you have a wonderful day.”  

 

“Sure, sure,” responds one of the secretaries without haste. “Take your time, it was a pleasure catching up again,” she laughs.

“Bye, bye,” the father quickly responds as he is walking out of the office with his two daughters. 

Once they are outside in the privacy of the hall the father kneels down and gets face to face with his two girls. He speaks soft Arabic to them, “you are the most important thing to your mother and I and the most valuable asset here.” The clock on the wall now reads 11:13 a.m. The father stands up and leaves without saying a word, and the two girls automatically turn and walk away also.

 

11:31am

The sunlight is shining now through the glass doors at the end of a lengthy hallway. As it shines off the grey floor it gives the hallway a grey misty appearance. Behind the girls’ bathroom door a strange solid clicking noise is momentarily heard. The two girls then walk out of the bathroom. Only Amanda has her guitar case, Mia’s violin case is gone. The two girls walk away from each other, but as they do, Mia looks at her sister with a distressed look. She imagines a world without her sister in it and she can’t bear the thought. But the previous companionship once shown seems to have evaporated. Amanda walks back to her class and Mia walks to the cafeteria. 

The loud shrieking lunch bell’s sound bounces off the walls as the two walk down the halls, but the tremendous sound of the bell mixed with excited children doesn’t seem to faze them. Amanda opens the door to Mrs. Mac’s room. Kids are lined up at the door and Amanda has to make her way through the crowd back to her desk on the other side of the room. “Relax, relax,” says Mrs. Mac. “You all know that is only the first bell, calm down!” Mrs. Mac’s attempts to make a substantial quell of the chaos. The kids pile up at the door now pushing and shoving, creating a wall of bodies.

Amanda’s view is blocked because of the children’s height and the sea of kids standing in the distance of the class room. Suddenly Mrs. Mac’s voice screams out in fear. “Amanda, put it down, put it down now!” The horrific and deafening sound of close range automatic fire slams the children’s ear drums, pounding with terrifying veracity, as the 7.62 rounds from an AK47 obliterate their backs. Mrs. Mac received the first attack, then her students. The crowd of twenty five children now only has ten still alive crouching in fear, blood and urine flood the floor.

In the cafeteria, the students are all looking around confused and frozen in fear. Mia stands amongst them in the middle of a group, but there are hundreds of students in the cafeteria. The distant gunfire sounds like fire crackers but the screams of the remaining ten decisively determines that this is far from what most think it is.

     Back in the classroom, Amanda drops her AK47 as soon as it runs out of bullets. Within a second of that calculated move she sprints towards the remaining children. She screams like a wild animal with rabies “Allah Akbar! Glory to Allah, glory to Allah!” Once she reaches the children she pushes a button on a remote control she has in her hand with a wire running out of it which is leading down her sleeve in the inside of her shirt. The suicide vest she is wearing explodes and destroys every life left in that class room. The violent explosion rocks and shakes the cafeteria like an earthquake. The fire alarm begins blaring. The blast is so furious it sends shattering glass flying and everyone drops to the floor ducking for cover, except Mia. She also has a remote in her hand. A large piece of glass stabs her in the side but she remains standing, like a zombie. The thoughts running through her mind are of fear now and she legitimately doesn’t want to push the button. “Mia, get down now!” screams a teacher who is on the ground. Mia drops the remote to her side crying and unable to perform the awful task put in front of her. But suddenly her vest begins to beep and explodes in a much larger explosion than the one produced by her sister’s vest.

A half a mile away outside the school, parked in a black truck, is the girl’s father. His hand pushes the “END” button on his cell phone. He detonated Mia’s bomb, a remote insurance policy just in case Mia could not complete her mission. The school is very large and half of it is smoldering in black smoke that has red and purple smoke mixed in. The bombs they wore had chemical weapons in them so it produces different colored smoke. 

Because of this there will be no survivors for miles and miles. One of the particular agents used is radioactive so even after the bodies of the children are removed, there will be no chance of a funeral because the bodies are so heavily contaminated. The families of these children will never see them again, not even in a coffin. The enemy has struck a monstrous and horrendous blow, but when this day is done, the wounds that America receives may be her last.

 

Reviews

[Archia]

Oh my gosh, that is so... just so something (I can't find the right word). I love your writing style, how it's almost like there's a narrator talking but a bit different from that. I enjoyed how I could begin to guess what was going to happen yet it still came as a shock.