Katie Williams
High school student.
Katie Williams:
Our school was over 100 years old, easily making it one of the oldest schools in America. Despite this, the school was a very underfunded public school, it wasn't too uncommon to have a sink break, or see a rat in your classroom, or anything like that. I won’t say where my school is, there's still people stuck in there, I was one of the few that was allowed to get out when the two rescue helicopters arrived from the Norfolk shipyard to evacuate people still stuck in the cities near Norfolk.
Prewar photo of the Norfolk Shipyard, HQ of the United States Navies Atlantic Fleet, most of which has been moved to the west coast after the war broke out.
The reason I wont say where or what the name of the school was, is because there are raiders, who will kill, steal, and sometimes do worse things with children during this apocalypse. I don’t want them listening and hearing where this is.
Anyway, it all started as a somewhat normal day. I say somewhat because just like everyone else all around the world, we had heard rumors. I feel like because we were kids we were more prepared for what was about to happen. We didn't know what would happen, but we took it with a lot more caution, especially since other people in the school were talking about dinosaurs showing up in their neighborhoods, apartment buildings, or backyards. Heck, I had seen something, I think it was a Dilophosaurus getting into a trash can behind my neighbors house a few days earlier.
Paleoart of a Dilophosaurus.
What i’m saying is, we believed that dinosaurs were back way more than the adults, we were more gullible. This news also spread quickly via our friend groups, group chats, and our respective social media apps. We took pictures, although very glitchy pictures of what we saw, and sent them to one another. We knew something was going on, and we had an idea that something big would happen, we just didn't know what.
Another strength we had that had somewhat prepared us for this apocalypse was that we could all unite together if we saw something that was bigger than ourselves. If you don’t know what I mean, I mean that in a normal school setting, we were constantly at each other's throats, like drama, fights, and such. But when there was a bigger problem that threatened each and every one of us, we could all unite against a common foe.
As I was saying, it was a normal day. We were doing our normal, albeit boring classwork. Then, suddenly, an explosion rocked our school. It was from a gas station a few blocks over. A gas pump had exploded. There was a massive fireball engulfing a few buildings but we were safe. We panicked, and then over the school intercom they announced we were on lockdown.
The teachers did the standard procedure, and locked the door to our classroom and closed the windows. We could still hear what was going on outside, though. Screaming, fighting, gunshots, and roars from what we now knew were dinosaurs. Some kids opened the windows in my classroom to see what was going on. They told everyone, even the kids in other classrooms were told on social media.
Hours passed. The school buses didn't come, and the lockdown order was never lifted, but by sheer chance, nothing ever entered our school. We slept in our classrooms and the lockdown order still was not lifted. Remember when I said our school was super old? There were jokes at my school that our school looked like a castle. I’ll be honest, it did look like one. That was another advantage we had. We had a secure place to stay. American schools had reinforced doors, tough glass, and many other security measures in place which helped us, but the building itself was our best advantage. There were, and no i’m not kidding, parapets on the roof, and tons of other stuff like that. The entire school was unironically built like a fortress. I have no idea why it was built as such, but we quickly realized this.
We stored all the food we had in the basement, began boarding up the windows and doors, and while the urban/suburban area around our school descended into chaos, we chose to rise up and make a stand in our own school! It was actually pretty awesome, we turned our desks which were made of wood and metal and turned them into shields and armor! It was absolutely genius! We got books from the library about survival guides and put them to use. There were some books on dinosaurs that we used to identify different types of them outside the school.
A few other examples of people using things we had inside the school to help us were kids who somehow, and don’t ask me how, used something to sharpen some of the metal from the desks and turn them into cheap swords. Now, the school literally was a castle. We had a few disadvantages, however. We had a limited amount of food, as there were around four hundred kids in the school, that food would be consumed fast. We solved this by going outside in small expeditions to the outside world, which would grab food and supplies, and then bring them back to our “castle”. We never lost any lives through these. Everyone returned back alive. It was extremely successful.
What I was most worried about at the time was my baby brother. The school itself was one of those schools that was an elementary, middle, and high school. He is in the fourth grade, I was, and still am, in the tenth grade. We both got out of the school safely. Some did not.
We still faced threats, however. Mostly, it was dinosaurs. I don’t care what anyone says, the spinosaurs were the worst to deal with. They had these long ass snouts which allowed them to smash through our boarded up windows, grab onto a kid with their mouth, maybe tear them in half if they werent armored, or if they were, they would pull them outside the school and use their arms to slice the kid up.
Itchyovenator, the spinosaur in question Katie is talking about.
Therizinosaurs were also pretty bad, same with sauropods. The sauropods did try to topple our school down, and when that didn't work, they used the same tactic as the spinosaurus, and would reach inside with their head, bite onto a kid, and pull them out, then drop them and kill them. It’s like these things werent just normal animals anymore, they were genuinley fucking sadistic. They could clearly think and they used the most efficient means possible to try to kill us.
Sauroposiden, the most common wartime sauropod. There are many confirmed reports of sauropods grabbing people with their mouth, and then dropping them to kill them.
Paleoart by Mark Witton of a therizinosaurus.
They weren't as bad as the lights which circled over us, using those light beams on us. The beams nearly destroyed the building, but still, our school still stood. We also had to face raiders. Raiders are the worst possible thing we could have faced. Raiders are people, just like you and me. They might just want to take food or supplies from you, or they might want to do worse things than that. We were aware of some of their intentions. Regardless, we held the school.
Somehow, I don’t know how, but we managed to get in contact with this submarine. They agreed to send helicopters to rescue some people from our school. Me and my brother were lucky enough to be selected for this. It seems like we got lucky with all of this, but our luck had run out. The only time our school was breached was when an army of raiders, maybe 300-700 of them had banded together to raid the school, take supplies from it, and some would probably take some of us.
I remember that day. Ash was rising from the suburbs around us. Fires were still burning, you know? It was sunset, and the sky was blood red. Kids and former teachers were sharpening weapons, reinforcing fortifications, cleaning guns, yes, we did have guns, there was a lot of abandoned military hardware from when the military retreated from our town.
Destroyed Leopard tank somewhere in europe, an example of this discarded military hardware.
We had the song “The last stand” from Sabaton being blasted on the intercoms to hype ourselves up, to “take the piss out” of the enemy. We could see their army in the distance. They started firing at us, from there it was a blur. I remember only small parts of what happened. I saw my best friend get shot in the arm from a guy with a machine gun. I still don’t know what happened to them even though we still have contact with the school.
I remember a bunch of them getting in the front door, us trying to push back, I saw them capturing kids, I hope those kids are alright. I don’t know how it happened but we managed to get them to flee. I think only two hundred kids are still alive in the school. The next day I was placed in the helicopter, and then got on the Dmitri Donskoi.
Please, if you somehow know where this school is, please don't hurt the kids in there. Help them if you can.
