Coyote by David L. Foster Page B

remembered. It was only the second week of school, so the class hadn’t gotten to anything complicated yet. The students in her class, all Juniors and Seniors, were sitting straight in their seats, using tablets to work physics problems that their teacher had put online. The teacher wandered about the room, looking over the students’ shoulders and responding to questions here and there. The room was quiet, with just the occasional murmured consultation between teacher and student, backed up by the sound of students tapping the keys of their calculators and scratching their pencils across scrap paper as they worked the problems out. She sat in the corner, in the back, as she did in every class. She had finished her work, but still looked down at her tablet. It was the best way to avoid the attentions of the teacher or the other students.
    It was a warm day, and the window was open. That may be why she survived, the little bit of extra warning that she and those around her got. She was saved by an open window. She wonders how many other stupid little things have saved her since.
    At one point she became aware of the sound of yelling outside the window. She didn’t notice at first, because it sounded very much like the yelling that often drifted across the commons from the elementary school playgrounds. Suddenly her tablet went dark. She could tell by the murmurings around her that everyone else’s tablet had turned off as well. Before anyone had time to really wonder what had happened to the tablets, the lights in the classroom went off as well.
    For a moment there was a burst of chatter, but the teacher soon brought the class to order. He assured them that this was some sort of power outage and stated his confidence that it would all be sorted out soon.
    But in the silence now, she could hear the yelling from the playground again. The yelling had changed. It had grown louder, and more ragged—and closer.
    She drifted to the window, looking out, wondering at the disturbance and ignoring the teacher’s protests. The yelling was coming mostly from her left, which was the direction of the elementary school. She saw a mist that had gathered in the hollow where the soccer fields were, but because of that mist could see no other details. It was a sunny day, so the mist was a surprise. Gazing into the mist, wondering, she soon saw a solitary boy run from that direction, across the commons, and into the main administration building of the school. His uniform was dirty. The secretaries in the office would not be pleased.
    The boy was just the beginning, though, of what soon became a steady trickle of elementary students fleeing the grounds of the elementary school. She thought the trickle might become a flood, but it never did. The students she did see arrested her attention though. They were wide-eyed, panicked, and often filthy. Many of them were spattered with a dark mud that must have been hard to come by on such a dry and sunny day.
    As she watched the students flee, she noticed that more students from her own class had joined her at the windows. They were leaning in, making speculative noises at each other, making it clear that none of them knew what was happening. The crowd at the windows grew close, and people started bumping into her hips and shoulders as they leaned in to see out the windows. She backed out of the crowd, using sharp elbows to clear a space for herself. None of this was right, and she wanted out. She left the room, but nobody noticed. They were all at the window, including the teacher, watching instead of reacting. She never saw them again.
    Leaving the room, she walked down the hallway, stopping to put her physics book back into her locker. She doubted that physics class would resume soon. She saw other students leaving class, asking each other what was happening. They had the feel of rising panic about them. Soon she stepped out the side doors of the high school wing, entering the commons. She saw fewer