Outbreak (Part one)

'it was peaceful... it was quiet... it was normal... it was today...'

T minus till outbreak: 00: 06: 23.

Finally, it was Emeka who had come to his rescue, his unreliable friend had come in at the last moment whisking Dion away from the awkward situation.

In the end, Dion didn't get the chance to do anything else as the Physics Teacher walked in for his lesson.

After 45 minutes of plotting graphs, calculations and minor experiments, Dion met up with Obinna, The Labour Prefect, and requested for some man power from the male Junior students to move the items into the store.

With that done, Dion felt that he could tackle other problems at his own pace.

Period after period rolled by swiftly and then suddenly...

RING!!!

The bell for the one hour break time had rung.

Immediately the bell rang, a cacophony of disorganized noise rang out across the school. Break time was undoubtedly every student's favourite hour of a school day.

Most students used this chance to fill their stomachs, play games or even have private conversations away from the prying eyes of classmates.

But for Dion, this was a chance to clear any of his duties keeping him behind schedule. Which was why at this moment he was heading for the library, he had some volumes of books he needed to put in a request for.

The library wasn't on their block, it was a separate building across the block, so he left the building and joined the fray of students jostling back and forth going in and out of the school block.

He had barely walked a minute when he spotted an unpleasant scene just beside the school's mini-mart, three largely built SS2 students were crowding in on an SS1 student half their size, the lanky boy had a timid presence which was swallowed by their shadows, he cut a sorry figure as he hurriedly bobbed his head up and down in timid assertion to whatever those three were telling him.

For a moment Dion wished it was just an act, hopefully they would leave the boy alone and he could go on his way to take care of his jam-packed schedule.

But no they didn't, in fact, Dion could deduce that the boy was about to loose every single naira in his pocket .

Dion sighed, "Well, f*ck it".

He strode confidently down to meet the quad, halfway there he was noticed by one and by the time he got there the trio were already hugging the boy like they were best friends.

On arriving Dion didn't speak, instead he stared all four of them down, his sharp eyes also thoroughly scanning the environment.

"SP, good afternoon".

After an awkward moment of silence they decided to break it, nervousness was creeping in.

"What's going on here?" Dion ignored them.

"Nothing," one of them answered immediately. "We were just playing... right Ekene?"

The student called Ekene seemed startled by his being mention, but when he was roughly jabbed by an elbow in his stomach he nodded.

"Right".

Dion was enraged, he had so much to do and yet these morons were wasting his time.

"Bunch of imbeciles," he spat, and the students looked at him in confusion.

"You four," he gazed at them in annoyance. "How much do you think our school fees are".

"Huh?"

They were already expecting a scolding or maybe even some kind of punishment, but his sudden question caught them off guard.

"Five million six hundred and fifty thousand Naira," he said. "Do you see that as small money?"

They were quiet unable to respond.

Most of the students in this school were children of politicians, so they had lived luxurious lives which had no respect for the currency's value.

The same went for Dion who had extremely rich parents, but the difference was that he knew value, he understood the hardship the less privileged were suffering in Nigeria, so he knew how impossible an amount as high as that was to most.

"The average Nigerian can't even begin to start paying such fees," he went on, his every words making them flinch. "Because of this, our population here at Next Step is very low, on average the twelve classes tally to below 150 people in total".

A silence descended, they couldn't speak.

"I50 people amounts to over 100 influential families who lead the nation, do you know what that means?," they shook their heads, then froze and hurriedly nodded their heads. "That equates to over 100 students who may well likely be the leaders of tomorrow".

After making his point, his voice rose a pitch and his glare grew deeper.

"So do you three idiots think you can lead us tomorrow?"

The trio suddenly found themselves shaking their head, it was a subconscious movement.

Then Dion turned towards the skinny student angrily, one would expect him to be sympathetic but he didn't agree with such views, students like these made his job a whole lot more difficult than it should be, if he had at any point reported this harrassment Dion would have seen to it personally that they received at least a suspension or maybe even an expulsion.

But this boy, out of fear, had been quiet about it, thus allowing these fools to disturb other students.

He was going to deal with all of them.

"The four of you," he pointed. "Principal's office".

There was a momentary pause, a brief moment of hesitation where they didn't want to go to the Principal's office but were also aware that they couldn't not go as the Senior Prefect had instructioned.

They glanced about stiffly as if to find something that could help them out of their predicament, and one of them suddenly shouted, it seemed he had found it.

"James!"

Dion turned. A student who was passing by stopped and looked over, then after briefly mulling it over he walked over.

'James...'

Dion frowned as he looked at the muscle tank walking over

James was his classmate, and truth be told outside of his frightening appearance, he wasn't a trouble maker.

James was as high as 6ft 4, and with those muscles he probably weighed about 250 pounds. He was one of those who weren't chosen to be Prefects, which was quite normal as the Prefects were in the minority, but he was a quiet kind of guy who rarely spoke, stayed at the back of the class but was attentive during lessons.

Due to his build and oppressive appearance, wannabe thugs like these began looking up to him and followed him, so pretty soon they became his crowd.

In short, while he and Dion didn't have any interactions, they also didn't have problems.

'Would that change today?'

After arriving, James greeted him with a nod and then turned towards the trio with a questioning look.

One of them coughed, looked at Dion cautiously before he began telling his tale, it has some elements of truth in it but was mostly weaved to make it look like they were just hanging out as friends and Dion was the one who misunderstood.

James observed them silently for a while, then nodded and turned to Dion.

"Could you let them go?"

Dion sighed and shook his head.

James shrugged, "Cool".

And then he turned to leave.

Trio, "..."

Dion turned to them to deliver his verdict, but then suddenly froze.

All of a sudden his hair stood on ends, he suddenly had a feeling of déjà vu as once again he was struck with a feeling of terror so great his mind blanked. His breath was stuck in his chest, and sweat pooled out of him till it almost seemed like he just stepped out of the pool, his heart began to beat so fast it hurt.

He was suddenly reminded of that feeling of ancient, primal terror he felt on the bus yesterday, it made him feel insignificant and worthless, like whatever he did in life would be meaningless.