Nine in Billions

“Andy, you can't get me!” yelled his friend Ryan, after tagging the other boy and running away to climb up the old wooden fort in the schoolyard.

Andy looked up dully at his friend and smiled half-heartedly. The playground supervisor frowned, while watching him, he had been sweaty, pale and lethargic all morning and she was on the verge of sending the boy to the school nurse. Then, suddenly, the boy seemed to perk up and took off after the other children playing tag around and amongst the wooden and metal structures, easing the supervisor's mind, she went back to sexting with her boyfriend while the children screamed and ran about her.

Today Andy was slow, he knew something was wrong, but he also knew he couldn't go home, his mom was on what his dad called a 'bender'. Andy didn't understand what a bender was, to him it was just a cartoon character from a show he rarely got to watch. Lately his mom seemed to do more and more 'benders'. His mom and dad were separated and it looked like Andy would be getting a new dad, Vick. Vick was a new arrival in the last two days and was a bit odd. The man had brought Andy to a park and left him there alone to play last night, saying something about picking him up later. It was the first time Andy had been left unsupervised in a public park in his life and was quite a bit terrifying for the boy. He had played okay until it grew dark, then some teenagers had shown up, they seemed genuinely concerned that Andy was there alone and he had heard them arguing whether to go or stay. Andy had the idea they only stuck around because he was there. Things had only gotten bad when the homeless guy showed up.

The man was a mess and he smelled, frankly, a little bit like Andy's mom had been smelling lately. The guy had made a beeline for where Andy was sitting on the swings and then grabbed for the boy. Confused Andy didn't know what was happening and let out a scream. The teens, still close by, had jumped on the old man and the group of them had fallen together onto the sandy ground by the swing. During the scuffle Andy's arm had been pressed up tight against the old man's mouth, the teens had stopped the old man from biting Andy more than once, but once was more than a enough for the terrified boy. Wriggling away from the mass of fighting teens Andy had crawled to one side where he was panting and crying when the teens yelled at him to run and get help. Andy was not too far from his house, and he thought he could make it home, even in the dark, so he took off running. He had never ran so far alone in all his life and once he arrived all thought of calling for help were smacked out of him by his mother, who cursed him for running off without telling her. Vick was no where to be seen. After a peanut butter sandwich and a short call to his dad to say goodnight Andy was ushered off to bed where he slept like a log.

This morning he had been awoken twenty minutes after eight by his irate mother who pulled him out of bed and yelled at him to get dressed because he was going to be late for school and she was going to miss work again. Complaining that he didn't feel good earned him a light tap from his mother's bare foot and the admonishment that he 'better not get sick today' because she didn't have any more time off at work to come get him. With that in mind Andy tired to look healthy so the teachers wouldn't sent him to the nurse, who would call his mom and get him in trouble.

Naturally at recess, tag started. Ryan always tagged Andy, if he could, the boys were best friends and that was how things worked. Running after his friend, it felt to Andy like he was wading through a lake, his feet sticking in the muddy bottom and his legs making their way through water up to his thighs. He was doggedly pursuing his friend and made it to the top of the walled 'fort' where he almost got his buddy before he fell over and started frothing at the mouth.

“Don't fall for it! He is playing so we get close, then he will tag you!” yelled Ryan. The other children screamed and laughed at that and slid down the slides or climbed down to make good their escape while Andy frothed his last. Eventually the children giggled their way back to the top of the fort to see what Andy was doing. Ryan was the first, of course, he knew all of Andy's tricks and felt confident he could get away from his friend if he had to. But Andy didn't move. Ryan slowly crept forward, then jerked back when Andy slowly started to get up.

“I knew he was faking!” Ryan turned to go up a step to get on the slide and ran into Susy Sparks, who had climbed up the slide and was coming out of the small opening that led to it. Bumping heads both children fell backwards, Susy tilted and fell through the opening where the slide was and went down it head first on her back, screaming the entire way. Ryan ended up on his behind with his back to Andy. Rubbing his head and trying not to cry Ryan yelled out that common cry for mercy among grade school aged children, “Time out!”

Andy wrapped his arms around Ryan and the boy yelled again, “I said time out! My head hurts!”

Then Andy bit into Ryan's neck, and the screaming started in earnest.

Down on the playground the supervisor was no where to be seen, she had discretely left for the bathroom to finish up her session with her boyfriend. The kids were wild, but basically harmless and she knew she could deal with any of their 'little' emergencies when she returned. As the children's screaming reached a peak the supervisor did too, leaving her oblivious to the fact that something was very wrong. There were, however, other teachers who grew concerned at the yelling and rose from their classrooms to check on the children. Looking out the teachers saw the kids screaming unusually loud and running around in a game of tag. The gym teacher went so far as to open his classroom door and yell out for the kids to quiet down because they were getting too loud.

Back at the 'fort' Andy had moved on from Ryan and was now working on Vance, a dark haired older kid from the fifth grade who had tried to intervene in the 'fight' between the two younger boys. Vance's girlfriend, whom he had progressed to kissing only the day before climbed up to see what Vance was doing, after all he should be paying attention to her, not some fight between first graders. Slyvia reached the top and started screaming at what she saw, her boyfriend on his back with some little kid burrowing head first through his stomach. In her screaming she raised one hand off of the fort to point at the boys and it was that arm that Ryan latched onto and bit down on as he revived. The children with enough sense ran to the school building for protection, those with more sense ran home. Ryan was lucky enough to be the first to bite into the playground supervisor when she returned to the schoolyard.

..home..