In the gym's warehouse.
The air inside the gym was a graveyard of smells: sweat, fear, and the sickly, repugnant essence of death. Tim, with his large, solid frame, was an unmovable figure—a wall of muscle and steel before the kneeling man.
His hand held the pistol with an unyielding grip that brooked no debate, the barrel pointed directly at the forehead of the teacher, who was now nothing more than a trembling, pathetic mess of flesh and panic. The metallic glint of the weapon reflected the dim emergency lights, and in the teacher's eyes, he saw the universe crumbling.
He had believed that the arrival of an adult, of a man equipped, was his salvation. He had fantasized that he was a soldier, coming to seal his lie and consolidate his power over the teenagers. But this man did not have the air of a savior. He had the face of a judge. And the verdict was imminent. The way he held the pistol, with such chilling calm, betrayed an experience not acquired at a shooting range.
The students behind Tim, a group of pales, hollow-eyed faces, didn't move. They watched the teacher with a mixture of horror and relief. On one hand, they had seen the teacher's brutality, his descent into tyranny in the few hours they had been trapped.
On the other, he was still a familiar face, an adult who had promised them a path, however twisted. Now, that last hope was vanishing before the indifference of an armed stranger. Life in the sports warehouse, with the smell of chlorine and deflated balls, had been their personal hell—an ordeal of confinement and manipulation.
The teacher had taken advantage of his physical strength and the empty promises of his military connections, though everyone knew those connections didn't exist. The kids had seen, on their phones, images of chaos, viral videos of cities in flames, and panic in the streets.
They had watched the world fall apart, and in their desperation, the teacher had seemed like a lesser evil, a life raft in an ocean of death. They accepted his protection, his cruel rules, even the humiliation, because the fear of the zombies roaming outside was far greater.
They had seen the teacher confront and kill a zombie in the warehouse the night before, an act that, though brutal, had seemed heroic at the time.
But now, kneeling, with Tim's gaze on him, the teacher was the embodiment of his own insignificance. He felt small, pathetic. His mind, once full of plans for domination, now only sought an escape, a lie believable enough to save his life.
"I... I'm Mr. Harrison," he stammered, his voice barely a whisper, "The physical education teacher. I was protecting them! From the ones outside!"
Tim didn't reply, he just adjusted his grip on the pistol. The silence became oppressive.
"Please, don't hurt me," the teacher begged, his dignity completely gone. "You don't have to do this. We can help each other! I... I know people. I can get you supplies, a safe place. I swear!"
His eyes darted frantically between Tim and the students, searching for any trace of pity. He found none. He saw one of the girls he had abused, Amy, now looking at him with cold hatred, her face gaunt from trauma. The promises he had broken, the lives he had manipulated, all came back to him like a ghostly echo.
At that moment, the gym's warehouse door opened. Alex and Emily entered, followed by a small group of students who had accompanied them. The teacher saw Emily, and his eyes lit up for a second, an irrational hope.
"Emily! Tell them! Tell them I was helping them!" he shouted.
Emily, her face a mask of shock and distrust, approached cautiously. She saw Tim, the pistol, the kneeling teacher. She saw the vacant faces of her classmates and the latent terror in the air. The teacher tried to stand up, but Tim gave his leg a sharp kick with his boot. The teacher groaned in pain and collapsed again. "Emily! Please!"
Alex, seeing the situation, assessed the scene. The teacher on his knees, the terrified students, and Tim's expression which clearly meant he wasn't going to lower his weapon. He took a step forward to try and mediate the matter.
"Easy, Tim," Alex said in a voice that, despite its calmness, had an inherent authority. "Put it down. He's not worth it."
"This guy is a predator," Tim responded, his voice low and harsh, without taking his eyes off the teacher. "What he did is unforgivable."
The teacher dared to open his mouth one more time, "I didn't do anything! They were scared! I just gave them a little... a little hope!"
"Shut up!" Emily exclaimed, her voice cracking. Her eyes filled with tears as she remembered how the teacher had belittled her and her friends for not following his orders. "Liar! You used them! And you did horrible things to the girls!"
The teacher flinched, the truth of the accusations hitting him like a physical punch. He turned to the students he was abusing, who nodded and some looked at the floor in shame. The teacher, seeing the fear in the students' eyes, decided not to look again—he knew that everyone now knew the truth and there was no way out for him. Now no one would defend him.
Alex approached Tim. "He's not a threat anymore, Tim. Don't kill him. Let him live with his sins. We can't waste bullets or energy on him."
Tim hesitated, his hand still trembling on the trigger. He saw a kind of somber compassion in Alex's face, a certainty that death in this world was not the worst punishment. Finally, he lowered the weapon, his fury contained in an audible sigh. The teacher, seeing the weapon move away from his face, collapsed completely, his hands covering his face.
The weight of the tension disappeared, replaced by a heavy silence. The external war had ceased for a moment, but the internal one, of morality and survival, had just begun.
"Besides... I think if he was already trying to save people, he'll be able to save many more out there in all this chaos," Alex commented with irony and a hint of anger.
These words only sealed his fate. He would be expelled from the high school and would have to survive outside the walls of the school where the zombies roamed.
The teacher, a man who had felt invincible just hours before, had been reduced to a pathetic figure, his voice a desperate tremor that filled the ruined gym. The words flowed from him like an uncontrollable torrent, a mix of half-truths and complete lies, a desperate attempt to paint an image of himself as the hero of the story.
"I... I saved them!" he pleaded, looking at Emily and the other students, tears in his eyes. "I'm a teacher, it's my duty to protect them. I got them into the warehouse when everything went to hell. I killed one of those monsters that got in, I swear. I did everything I could!"
Tim watched him with a cold, penetrating stare. The composure he had shown while aiming the gun hadn't completely disappeared, but it had mixed with a silent disgust. The difference between this man and a zombie was minimal in his mind; both were soulless predators, only one had the ability to speak.
The teacher, not seeing the desired effect, tried a new tactic. "You don't understand. I didn't know what was happening outside. We were the only option here. The kids... they gave me their support, their gratitude... in an unconventional way, it's true, but it was the only thing I could do to keep them safe and with hope. You have to understand me."
A sigh of repulsion ran through the group of students. Amy, one of the girls who had been in the warehouse, turned away, unable to keep looking at him. Her hands, gripping another student's arm, trembled with contained rage. The students who had arrived with Alex and Emily looked at them with the same aversion, understanding the gravity of the situation just by seeing their classmates' expressions.
The teacher, seeing the lack of empathy in the young people's eyes, grew desperate and his voice rose. "You! Why did you take so long? Where were you last night? If it weren't for me, those things would have devoured you! You abandoned them and now you come here to judge me, why? Where is your morality? I am the savior of these students!"
Tim, without loosening his grip on the weapon, let out a dry laugh. A laugh that was more of a snarl. "So now it's our fault, huh? It's the fault of those who came to save them. You manage to turn the victim into the perpetrator. You're even more despicable than I thought."
The teacher cringed, realizing his mistake. His mind, agitated by panic, tried to find a way to fix it. "No, no, no... I... I was just trying..." mixing truths and lies. "I didn't do anything serious to the female students. It was just a few simple touches, nothing more."
A wave of disgust and contempt swept over everyone present. Emily, who had been silent, felt dizzy, a knot in her stomach. The sight of broken innocence, the betrayal of trust, was almost as horrible as seeing the zombies. Tim, who had seen the worst of humanity, had to make an effort not to vomit.
"And the others," the teacher continued, desperation in his voice. "I just hit them a little because they wanted to endanger the group. They wanted to leave, to go out and die at the hands of those things. I... I kept them alive. I was the only one who dared to take control and keep them alive. If it weren't for me..."
Tim, with the full picture of the situation now, lowered the barrel of his weapon slightly, without letting go. He knew that this man, though not a murderer at this moment, was a cancer to any group of survivors. In the world to come, this man would sink even lower, and would even kill them if they opposed him. In the world that was coming, morality would be a luxury few could afford, but pure depravity like this teacher's was a disease that had to be eradicated.
Despite his knowledge, Tim hesitated. He couldn't do it. Not with the eyes of the students on him, the same students who looked at the teacher with hatred, but also with the fear of seeing one man murder another.
His vengeance couldn't be a spectacle. He couldn't be the monster.
The war he had just fought against the zombies in the gym had, for the moment, ended, and a battle had been won, but a new, darker war had begun.
Alex, for his part, was also debating what to do with this teacher.
He knew that he wouldn't stay at the high school; even if there was someone who wanted to back him up or justify his actions, he himself would make sure to get the teacher out of the high school.
The problem was that Alex knew this type of person could be difficult to kill. Even if they released him, he would come back and maybe next time he would bring many more problems, he might even bring a group of criminals to the high school just to take revenge on them who had released him into hell.
"Would it be better to kill him out of the sight of the students?" Alex wondered.
He wasn't sure from his visions if this high school group would survive, and he also didn't know if there were many criminal survivor groups in the city, but he didn't want to take the risk—he knew that in the apocalypse it was much better to get rid of problems before they brought even more problems.
.
----
.
[A/N: CHAPTER COMPLETED
Hello everyone.
I hope you're all well.
First, I'm really sorry for the delay, but I'm having some issues. My father injured his rotator cuff, and now I have to work to replace him.
So, it's likely I won't be able to post often, or the chapters will be a little shorter.
On the other hand, the spy-offs will be on hiatus until I can get used to the new schedule.
I hope you enjoyed this chapter.
----
Read my other novels.
#Vinland Kingdom: Race Against Time (Chapter 83)
#The Walking Dead: Emily's Metamorphosis (Chapter 23)
#The Walking Dead: Patient 0 - Lyra File (Chapter 9)
You can find them on my profile.]