Something was very wrong. Fifty cars lined the street in front of his child’s school. He parked a block away and strode down the sidewalk.

A news van was parked in the busway next to a police car. A crowd of parents buzzed as the officers hovered in front of them. The school was cordoned off with crime scene tape. Dread pooled in his stomach.

An administrator called for the crowd’s attention.

He felt himself swept up, crammed next to parents like him, all here to pick up their children. As one, they surged against the policemen.

“May I have your attention please,” shouted the beleaguered official for the fourth time. “We are now in the process of accounting for all students. I would like to urge everyone to remain calm …”

Instantly, she was drowned out. The parents shouted and moved forward. The police struggled to contain the crowd.

Moving to the rear, the man saw a way onto school grounds. While the police handled a particularly harsh surge, he ducked under the yellow tape and dashed around a corner.

The schoolyard was filled with quiet, a quiet he knew as the antithesis of children.

He stopped short.

The sidewalk twinkled with broken glass from the windows of the classrooms. Scorch marks covered the brick walls and overhangs.

He made his way, slowly now, terrified of the silence and of being discovered. He stepped through the broken window into his child’s classroom.

Ash marred the bright, primary colours he recalled from the last open house. Pencils sat in their holders. Books were open. Tattered class projects swayed in the breeze.

All the desks were empty.

He went back outside to the playfield. The red gravel lay covered in virgin snow.

Not snow. Sheets. He had never seen so many and wondered why they were all on the ground—until he saw a limp hand protruding from under the layer of white.

The white covers undulated across the playfield, onto the grass, and out onto the soccer field past the playshed. In the distance, a figure in a protective suit moved calmly up and down the rows, making notes on a clipboard.

His child. He must find his child.

He had faith—and it was affirmed each time he lifted a white sheet revealing another child that was not his. Finally, he stopped short, his faith shattered with the vision of his child’s new shoes protruding from under a sheet.

He knelt carefully, reverently smoothing the white sheet and trying to sob. Nothing came.

From the nearby playshed came the noise of a bouncing basketball. He looked up to see his child’s teacher, a young man, idealistic in his approach to children. Half of his scalp was missing; streams of blood sullied his once crisp shirt. The teacher stood at the free-throw line and shot, over and over, never missing.

He considered approaching the teacher, asking him what had happened, but the teacher was already speaking, stringing together phrases that made little sense.

“Get under your desk,” the teacher said. “Stop, drop, and roll. Put your head between your knees. Stay in line. Walk. Don’t panic. Don’t panic. Don’t …” The young man let the ball tumble away from him and crumpled to the asphalt, filling the playshed with the paralysing sound of his loud, fresh sobs.

He closed his eyes against the teacher’s sobs and tried to believe that his child lying beneath the sheet constituted some kind of game. He scooped up his child, sheet and all, and walked back toward the classrooms.

“Hey,” a muffled voice called from behind. “You shouldn’t be here.”

He turned to see someone in a decontamination suit. “I’m here to pick up my child.”

“You can’t. There’s a quarantine. You can’t leave here.” The suited figure approached him.

“Get away from me,” he said acidly. “We’re going home.” He entered the classroom, where he found the children’s coats and lunch boxes lined up in waiting. He struggled to reclaim his child’s belongings, and then headed for the front of the school. The man in the suit did not try to stop him.

More police had arrived. It was no use sneaking. He walked into the open.

There was a moment—a perfect, silent moment—where the crowd saw him and surged back in terror. A perfect moment in which all of them saw him holding a small crumpled form, limbs dangling, loosely covered by a starched white sheet.

The news cameras surged forward.