I can't move.
I'm going to die.
Oh hell why did I have to die again?
I couldn't do anything as I saw the creature slowly close in. I felt as if time had slowed down and my body wouldn't respond.
But then I felt a pull on my arm and the feeling shattered like glass, falling apart in an instant.
Being yanked away from under the monster as it slammed down at an unbelievable speed into the wooden floor– and then through it.
The floor started to collapse at the edges to form an even larger gaping hole, almost bringing me and the girl down along with the rubble. And with that thing down there, the drop would have been the least of our worries.
I was too focused on my paralysis to fully process what had happened.
I… was alive.
Had the girl saved me?
All kinds of thoughts ran through my head as the girl kept running while pulling me along by the arm.
I hadn't even noticed that we had started running together; come to think of it, I hadn't noticed anything, all I could grasp at the moment was that I wasn't dead.
This girl had given me a way out back then when she screamed for help, and somehow saved me again?
Wait… where were we going?
I turned to the girl as we ran down the hall and truly looked at her for the first time.
She had light brown hair, pale skin adorned with freckles and green emerald eyes that brightened our horrid surroundings and seemed to shine with the light of the setting sun.
And those eyes were looking back at me.
Had we stopped running? What was wrong with me and not being in control today?
Before I could apologize for awkwardly staring she spoke.
"What the hell, man? Do you think it'll come back? Is it even safe to talk here?" She said as she looked around us, as if the creature were creeping just around the corner, waiting to strike.
"I don't know, let's go to that classroom over there", I whispered to her silently as I walked through an open door to what seemed to be an algebra classroom, judging from all the math posters littering its walls and the blackboard that nobody had bothered to clear.
"I tried luring it away from my friends", she started saying in a low whisper as we walked in. "But I almost died then and there", she said, looking back at the door as if remembering the whole ordeal.
"So how did you even get out of its way at first?", she asked with a strange look in her eyes.
How stupid of me to forget we almost died, and I had almost apologized for staring of all things.
Wait, she mentioned survivors?
Had other people actually survived?
All I saw around us were broken windows, broken walls and doors, and even worse, broken bodies that littered the floors and painted them red.
How had people survived? How had I survived when there was death all around us?
"Where can we find them? We need to find others fast", I thought aloud, thinking of my friends that could be alive.
Oh man, I hope Yusuf is alive, I don't think I can make it through an apocalypse without him.
The girl saw me looking around and spoke as if talking to a 5-year-old.
"You saw that people turned into those things, right?"
What?
"What?" I asked without thinking.
"Wait, you didn't see what happened"? She eyed me as if she didn't believe me.
"You know how whoever gets bitten turns into one, right? Like uh, zombies", she said. Suddenly, she started staring at me like I was the monster that we just ran away from.
Zombies? That thing didn't look like a zombie, it looked more like something from outer space. If this was just a basic zombie then there was no way I'd survive. Could they all be hearing-based?
While I was stuck in my thought process, she suddenly had this skeptical, accusatory look on her face that made me know she was about to make me regret not taking my chances with the monster.
"What have you been doing for the past few hours if you don't know anything?" she said with a venomous tone.
"Okay sorry, sorry, I was just" I paused, trying to think of a good way to describe it. "Just stuck in the restroom after I saw one of those things in the hall"
She suddenly laughed, a stifled laugh but still a laugh, as if we hadn't just escaped death. Then her face went back to rage like before, as if her laugh was merely a mirage within the furious desert of her face.
"So you just hid out? Didn't try to help anyone?", she said as if she wanted me to commit suicide.
"Hell no, you think I could help when one of those things can jump through the floor?", I said, raising my voice from an angry whisper progressively louder up to an almost normal volume, but I shut myself down before I got riled up.
Yet she still persisted, continuing to say, "Well you at least have to try, how can you call yourself human if you're just listening to everyone die, huh? Are you just heartless?"
God, this girl is insane, what point is she trying to make? Does she want me to cease to exist? She's crazy, for God's sake!
"Hey, calm down, I tried to save you, didn't I?" I said, trying to salvage the situation. I didn't want her to get angrier and alert the monsters.
"I was trying to get it to jump out the windows dimwit, I'm fine by myself. I lead it away from people by myself. The area is mostly empty for some reason, besides one on the other side of the building and that one" she said as if what she was saying was just expected.
But this was ridiculous, no wonder she did what she said. This girl was crazier than a psych ward patient, why would she even do that to begin with? And why was the place empty?
Nevermind that, it's good that it's mostly empty. I just have to get her to shut up.
"Okay, okay, sorry! I get it, can you just calm down before we become zombie food? Or whatever-those-things-are food? They don't even look human, y'know?" I said, while raising my hands in a defensive stance, but she really was getting on my nerves.
"Alright, okay, I'll shut up, but tell me, what do you think we should do? We can't stay here, and there's still a chance of more things crawling through the windows, you know? Or there being new ones bitten by that hearing one", she said, with a look of fear but also conviction, this girl was truly weird in her own way. And she was right, but also strangely good at this.
"Okay, let's just silently walk around, stay close to the other side of the wall, and crouch?" I said, trying to quickly think of something before all the fear set in. I was trying to give myself some momentum so I wouldn't stop again.
"Okay, that seems solid, you don't seem to be freezing up anymore. Well, again, it was your first time. I've got a few hours experience at this, just don't look at the bodies and you'll be fine. We'll it's not like I can recognize them anyways", she said with an "it is what it is" tone, but her last bit of detail was strange, why had she added that?
She surely must know someone here if she went here for even a year, and we hadn't gotten any transfer students, otherwise it'd be school-wide news for a bit since we rarely get new students. It was strange, to say the least.
But I didn't want to set her off again, so I just accepted it as fact and walked over to the broken door of the entrance.
I looked into the hall and all I saw were bodies strewn about, puddles of red, and broken windows letting the last of the day's sunlight in. I had to hurry up and find a safe place before the night came.
I stepped out carefully, making sure the footing was stable before taking another step. And another, then another more, before looking back to see if the girl was following. She was.
We continued to walk for a few minutes, but the distance was what would have only taken a single minute if we weren't trying not to die a horrible death.
A few more painstakingly slow minutes and we finally reached the corner that would've been a good two minute walk from the middle.
And suddenly a door opened quickly and loudly, almost giving me a heart attack that would've killed me with much more ease than the hearing-monster-zombie-thing, or the zombie-whatever-monsters strewn about… wherever they were.
Out the door I saw an older man, balding with a bit of gray hair at the sides, and the usual casual teacher's attire a man his age would wear.
And I recognized him.
"Mr. Greyson?" I asked, glad my history teacher had survived. After all, he was a great teacher, not being overly strict and able to still teach while being genuinely funny and kind to students who struggled in his subject which required above-average memory.
But why was I stuck thinking still? If I stayed out here any longer I would die.
I grabbed the shocked girl that was behind me and instantly tried the quietest run in my life, and oh God I was so bad at it. I knew if I died right then and there because of the monster I would've deserved it.
After me and the girl entered, Mr. Greyson closed the door, locked in and said in a whisper "I'm glad you guys didn't need me to say it, I was scared I'd have to yell your name like I used to, right kid?" he said to lighten the mood. He used to yell me awake when I'd fall asleep in class, but he never punished me for it, which I was very thankful for.
And as he said that, I looked around the room and noticed the windows were intact and desks were mostly blocking them. And there were more people, around 50 in the large room, which seemed to be some sort of science class. It was slightly crowded, there were around 3 other teachers and some students I recognized, but never had tried talking to.
Before I could look around, I felt someone pull me from behind and almost knock me over. I was about to try to hit them off as I noticed it was Yusuf.
"Oh man, no way, you're alive! Holy– I'm so glad, I don't think I can make it through without your horrible humor and even worse singing to keep me up and alert at night against these things", I said to him jokingly as he hugged me for an awkwardly long time.
"I'm glad too man, I ran over here to check if you were okay as soon as I saw those things but I hid here when I saw something jump in. Are you okay?" Yusuf said as he let go.
"Hell yeah, you think I'd get killed that easily? No way I'll die before you hit the dust", I said as I lightly punched his shoulder, before realizing there were more people within the room.
"And I'm glad there are other people alive. Tell me, how's this room intact, with untouched windows while most of the other rooms are destroyed?", I asked Mr. Greyson or whoever decided to answer.
And it was a teacher with black hair and dark brown attire who decided to answer me in a stern tone.
"First be silent, we don't want your bickering to get us harmed. Second, take a seat, it's only because we followed protocol unlike what other classes might have done, and we only opened the doors after some time", she said in a quiet voice, but not a whisper yet.
I followed her instructions with a frustrated look and chose a spot to lay down in a corner by a large metal closet that was a bit further from the door but a little bit too close to the window for comfort compared to the other spots.
Sadly I still had to listen to teachers even in the apocalypse, didn't I? And of course it was the wisest decision.
Yet weirdly enough the girl was following me and Yusuf. I waited until they both were sitting before I asked.
"Why are you following me?", I asked in a quiet whisper.
She responded "Why not? My classes are usually on the other side of the school, and you know the campus is huge, right? Like, a thousand kids per floor. It's ridiculous!", she said, as if it were humorous, even though we were stuck in a large science classroom with way too many people, definitely more than the room was intended for.
The room was awfully quiet after, and not only that, but also an awkward vibe from the silence that followed what the girl had said.
Then, suddenly, one of the teachers tapped a desk then spoke, not a whispering tone but spoke just slightly more quietly than a normal volume.
"Everyone, whoever has food please place it here, we need to ration whatever we can, and put it in a safe place where no other can take it. We understand there are some ruffians here and some of you want to be safe. We will share the food between everyone equally. Teachers will take shifts each night to watch over it, okay?"
Immediately after, a few kids walked up with their lunch bags and left them on the desk. Then, the teacher collected them and went to her corner. there seemed to be types of people gathered in different corners. One had the teachers, another had some people that seemed to be crying further from the door, and then there were some people just in a state of shock in the other corner, and a few guys were huddled around the desks that were pushed against the windows.
After getting bored of looking at my surroundings I took off my ripped hoodie and used it as a pillow as did some others in the room. Yusuf decided to just use the hood as a protection against the wall and the girl was just laying against the wall awkwardly. She truly had her own way of doing things, didn't she?
After finishing to make myself comfortable I decided to try and sleep, foolishly hoping maybe this was another of my wack dreams, but my mind kept thinking of everything during today, making me feel more scared and unsure of my future, after all what will happen later? How were we going to get out?
Was help even coming? The teachers didn't even bother to mention that, or maybe they did before I came in, none of it mattered if we were going to end up dead anyways. Oh man, what would I even eat? I would starve or die of thirst. Even then if I somehow survived, I'd miss the internet, videogames, even toilets. Would there be no toilets due to lack of a working water system? Oh hell.
After worrying for what seemed to be an eternity or a few minutes the sun had finally entirely set, and I began to drift off to sleep.
But all that waited for me were horrible nightmares.