The earthquake came so suddenly and so violently that we had no time to prepare. It ended within five minutes and left us still trembling and sprinting for cover. By the time we realised that it was over, hundreds had already died and the body count was looking to raise with each moment we wasted in shock.
Going to the local school wasn't a major priority, it had been right at the epicentre and was little more than rubble. So few students were thought to be in on Sundays that we turned our focus to places where survivors might be more likely - the supermarket, the community centre, the park.
We only knew someone was still in the school when they phoned their sister and asked why everything had gone dark. They said there was a whole group of them who'd become trapped when the wall-mounted climbing frame had come loose and gotten wedged against the collapsing hall.
It took three days of digging before we found them, three days of frantically trying to call them and their responses becoming more lethargic and less lucid as time passed. Eventually they just kept muttering about the spiders inside them and how they'd climbed up the underground spouts.
We chalked it down to dehydration and trauma and when we saw them we thought that perhaps they were too scared to move, too exhausted and in need or serous medical attention. We tried to lift one of the children but his skin broke apart in our hands like it was made of wet tissue-paper.
That was when we noticed how all of their eyes were closed and all their mouths shut and their nostrils sealed by something vaguely shiny. Then the first skeletal legs began to emerge from the hole in the boy's head and a translucent, bulbous abdomen followed.
It took three days to get to them and five seconds to fire flares down until they became a writhing ball of stick-thin legs and inhuman shrieks. We buried them, claimed that we couldn't find them and prayed they'd all be dead by the time someone came to clear all the rubble away.
Going to the local school wasn't a major priority, it had been right at the epicentre and was little more than rubble. So few students were thought to be in on Sundays that we turned our focus to places where survivors might be more likely - the supermarket, the community centre, the park.
We only knew someone was still in the school when they phoned their sister and asked why everything had gone dark. They said there was a whole group of them who'd become trapped when the wall-mounted climbing frame had come loose and gotten wedged against the collapsing hall.
It took three days of digging before we found them, three days of frantically trying to call them and their responses becoming more lethargic and less lucid as time passed. Eventually they just kept muttering about the spiders inside them and how they'd climbed up the underground spouts.
We chalked it down to dehydration and trauma and when we saw them we thought that perhaps they were too scared to move, too exhausted and in need or serous medical attention. We tried to lift one of the children but his skin broke apart in our hands like it was made of wet tissue-paper.
That was when we noticed how all of their eyes were closed and all their mouths shut and their nostrils sealed by something vaguely shiny. Then the first skeletal legs began to emerge from the hole in the boy's head and a translucent, bulbous abdomen followed.
It took three days to get to them and five seconds to fire flares down until they became a writhing ball of stick-thin legs and inhuman shrieks. We buried them, claimed that we couldn't find them and prayed they'd all be dead by the time someone came to clear all the rubble away.
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