The End

Living

"God is cruel. Sometimes he makes you live."

Stephan King

Ellen

"Ellen, do you have the answer to question four?" Asked Mr Peters

I looked down at my sheet. I didn't need to check it, I knew the answer of the top of my head, I'd worked to long on that question to forget it, but pretending to look for the answer wasted some of the lesson, that was my aim.

It's not that I don't like school, it's ok. The boarding house is brilliant, it's where I live most of the year with my parents working all the time. But I don't mind, my friends are there, someone to talk to. It's just maths that I hate. I don't know why I decide it was an acceptable A-Level for me. Oh, wait, I know why it is. Its because my parents both working in banking and accountancy and stuff and said that I could only take art if I took maths. My lovely parents.

I was procrastinating to much, I could hear someone grumbling to their mate in the back. Mr Peters sighed and then...a thud.

I looked up. Mr Peters had slumped onto his desk. His glasses were askew and his hair covering his eyes. Weird. Teachers don't normally pass out in lessons. Then...there was another thud. I looked behind me to see Jennifer Walters passed out on the her desk in the corner of the room, her long blonde hair cascading around her. Then another thud, followed by another, then countless others as my classmates fell to their desks with looks of horror contorting their faces. What was going on?

Out of shear desperation I looked towards Emma, by best friend, who sat just across the aisle from me. My eyes met hers for a brief second before she too fell, sliding of her chair and coming to rest next to my chair.

That's when I heard the scream.

Leila

I screamed. They were dead. They were all dead. My teacher. My friends. My enemies. All gone. And me still alive and well.

When I'd first seen the people around me begin to collapse I didn't know what to think. Was this some insanely ludicrous practical joke that they'd all decided to play on me? Had I fallen asleep and having an amazingly bizarre dream? I'd pinched myself to check this, but, finding myself to be very much awake, turned to Molly who was sat next to much and shaken her.

Molly had been my best friend since I'd started at Stunford Grange all those years ago. I love her to bits. Correction: I LOVED her to bits. But now she was just another corpse lying around me.

I'd found her to be dead after checking her pulse. I then proceeded to check the pulse of the boy on my other side. Then the pulse of the one behind me. Not even a hint of a heartbeat. They were all dead. Everyone of them. I was the only person left.

I screamed again.

Nicholas

I knew the scream immediately. I'd heard it so often in the nights of the past two years. It was the scream of my eldest sister. Leila was alive. I was filled with relief.

Up until now I'd thought it was just me and Henry, and that would have turned out badly. Henry was my best mate but, in a world where it was just me and him, it couldn't have been long before he found out that I liked him a little more than I should, before he rejected me.

I ran from the classroom, with Henry behind me, towards the room where I knew Leila had her lesson. She was stood there, in the middle of the room, surrounded by the bodies of her classmates, a look of shock creating lines across her face.

I wrapped my arms around her and embraced her in a rib cracking hug, not letting go for over a minute, not letting go until removed herself from my grasped.

"Your alive," she muttered looking from me to Henry then back again," your alive." Her eyes met mine once again it came to us both: the hope and horror. Mary, was our thought. Mary the middle triplet.

Ellen

I rushed out of the classroom and in the direction of the scream. The sight I saw when I reached it made my insides freeze.

Everyone new who the triplets were: Leila, Mary and Nicholas Wallaby, smart, funny, broken... This was going to hurt them even more.

Leila and Nicholas were knelt by a body in a room that was used for English lessons. Henry Galhert stood with them. Everyone new Henry as well, smart, good-looking popular and Nicholas' best friend. The body on the ground was all too familiar. It was that of Mary, the middle triplet. The other Wallaby. The final third that completed them.

I moved to stand next to Henry. He acknowledged my presents but did not start a conversation. He just continued to stare at the sobbing siblings, the boy's arm hunging the body of the whimpering girl close to him. There eyes trained upon the lifeless figure before them.

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Hey look! It's new! Do you like the idea? I'm still going to continue with 'Interpret Me' but I just wanted to get this idea out there. It's a bit different and a faster pace.

Just to warn you: this is a romance story, the people in it will be paired of by the end and their love life and how they cope will be the main focus.

Hope you enjoyed it and thanks for reading!