F*** Cancer, This One Did Us All In.

6

We were still screaming as we ran down the final corridors. We didn't stop,not once, not until we were literally completely out of breath. We all came to a stop and spent I-don't-know-how-long just breathing.

We should have been running but we couldn't. My chest was on fire, my throat had cramps in it and I could feel every molecule of air rubbing against my raw trachea.

"We . . . need to . . .find . . . an adult." Amelia wheezed out.

"Oh . . . Oh my god." I panted. "Amelia . . . so far . . . the two adults . . .we . . . have seen . . . have tried . . . to eat us . . . or . . . was being eaten."

"Don't. . . talk about . . . that." Mfundo said as he grabbed his stomach and looked on the verge of vomiting. I still felt like crying and screaming and vomiting, they were all boiling over the top but nothing spilled. Amelia actually did vomit, a big white creamy one that splashed against the ground with a sickening splat.

I'm sorry but if I had to live through that horror then you have to live through it too.

"Then . . . what . . . are we. . . going . . . to do . . . Theodore?" Amelia asked as she wiped some of the disgusting puke off her bottom lip. I was about to say get the hell out of there but I stopped myself short.

"Well?"Mfundo said.

"Ssshhh!" I said. "Listen."

So that was what we all did and when the hallway we were in was completely silent we could hear that noise gently drifting through the air and into our ears. A noise so bone-chilling, so spine-shaking, so . . . um, jelly-wobbling? That fear, truly cold fear, took place in my stomach.

Screw the heart being the symbol for emotions, I pick the spleen.

We heard screams. Cries,screams, terror woven into the air in the form of sound. My heart started pounding faster and my spleen felt an overload of a lot of dark emotions coming on.

"Guys," Amelia said and I knew what she was going to say and I didn't want her to say it because that would have made what was happening to us feel so real and not at all like a dream. "What's going on?"

Oh, I actually didn't know what she was about to say. I thought she was going to say a word that rhymed with Upocalypse.

Then, for the first time since Mrs Hobkins tried to eat me, I thought about my family.

Dear God, my family!! What was happening with them? What were they doing? Where were they? Were they okay? Oh Jesus, was Michelle okay? (As the youngest, I felt she needed to be in my most forefront of mind.)

"It sounds like there's a riot outside?" Mfundo said, at least I thought he was saying it and not asking it.

"Maybe some stupid strike about oil." I said in an attempt to make a joke.

The attempt was doomed from the start.

"We need to go outside."Mfundo said.

"Why?" Amelia asked.

"My mom should be there now. We have to get outside to her and she'll help us."

That . . . actually sounded like the first good idea we have had all afternoon.

"Let's just take a few more minutes to rest."Amelia said and leaned back against the door.

"So what were you guys up to?" I asked them.