Alpha Omega

The students at NutriStart Skills Academy begin to show symptoms of an unknown, bloody contagion…

A timer appears on the giant screen on stage and ticks down from twenty to zero, and the tension in the auditorium becomes almost unbearable as every boy and girl restrains themselves from chanting like they’re launching a rocket.

At zero, the blue screen is replaced with the broad, terrifying face of the Deputy Headmaster. Something has gone wrong with the resolution of the broadcast. His features have been stretched to fit the screen and he looks grotesquely wide and amphibious. Even on a screen of this size, the picture is infinitely brighter and clearer than real life, and Peepsy can see every glistening hair in his nostrils, every delicate, purpling thread-vein, the slightly receding gums above his canine teeth when he tries to smile.

“GOOD MORNING EVERYONE,” says Mr Tooley’s cavernous