Michael stood in that silence for another moment, like he was hoping that if nobody spoke, Leon's words would stop being real. Then he stepped forward and wedged himself between Leon and his friend, even though it was obvious he didn't fully know what he was going to do beyond that one desperate move, the kind meant to hold reality back for a single second.
"No." The word came fast, almost immediately, as if he was afraid that if he hesitated even a little, Leon would take it as consent. "No, wait, this… these are scratches. He wasn't even bitten. It could be nothing. It could, "
The boy with the torn-up neck grabbed Michael's sleeve right away, clinging so hard the fabric strained at the seams, and nodded frantically, gulping air like someone who had only just realized the ground beneath him was truly giving way.
"Yeah, yeah, it's nothing, it's just… just the skin. Look, I don't even… I don't even feel pain, I, I can run. I can fight. I swear, I, "
He spoke fast and loud, his voice starting to crack as his eyes went wet. And even though he tried to look confident, there was something painfully human in the way he moved, that childish, panicked I don't want to die that leaks out of a person the moment someone tells them they're being left behind, which in practice meant being alone in the middle of an apocalypse.
Leon watched them without blinking for a long moment. Then he glanced at the wounds again, as if checking whether he'd missed something, and only then did he answer, calm, no yelling, but so hard each word sounded like a door being shut.
"I don't know if there's a cure," he said. "Maybe there is. Somewhere. Maybe one day someone makes it. Maybe it's in a lab that's still running, or a military base, or a hospital where there aren't a hundred corpses in the hallway."
He paused, briefly, then added, without a single maybe, like he was cutting the illusion cleanly on purpose.
"But I don't have it. And I'm not risking the entire group because you want to believe it'll 'probably' be fine."
Michael swallowed, his face going pale. Leon hadn't insulted him. He hadn't called him stupid. He hadn't mocked him.
He'd just killed his hope with something you couldn't argue against: responsibility.
"He's my friend," Michael whispered, like that was supposed to change anything, like the word friend could be a shield.
"In this world, 'friend' doesn't stop an infection." Leon's eyes shifted, not to Michael, but straight to the infected boy, because Michael wasn't the one with a clock ticking inside him. "You have a choice. Leave now, alone, and try to find a miracle before what I've already seen once starts happening… or stay here, and I'll kill you before you turn into one of them."
The words hit the group like something heavy. The girl Leon had saved earlier covered her mouth with her hand. The student from the wasp incident took two steps back, like the thought of killing might stain him. Someone in the crowd whispered, "No…" but nobody said it louder, because everyone could see the wounds the boy had gotten from the zombie.
Michael stared at Leon for a long time, like he was searching for the smallest crack of hesitation, like he wanted this to be a bluff, just a threat.
But Leon didn't move. His hand rested on his sword. His face offered no escape.
And then something happened that wasn't heroic at all, just ugly and human.
The other four students began to rise, slowly, and one by one they backed toward Leon. At first uncertainly, like they were afraid of their own legs. Then more clearly, because fear in moments like this becomes concrete and practical. And suddenly it turned out that Michael's "friend" was standing alone in the middle, while his own group instinctively chose survival.
Michael moved too, because he saw himself being left behind, and understood that if he didn't go now, he'd be cut off along with him. That was too much even for loyalty. So he walked, slowly, his face twisted with pain and shame, like someone heading toward something he hated… but heading there anyway, because there was no other way.
The infected boy looked at the three students who'd hurried away from him to hide behind Leon, then looked at Michael, and there was something in that gaze that was instantly recognizable. Something rotten. Something anyone could name, because everyone has seen that look on someone who's just had the ground ripped out from under them.
"You too?" the boy whispered, staring at his friend. "Michael… you're leaving me too?"
Michael opened his mouth, but nothing meaningful came out, just a soundless movement, like he was trying to say no while his legs kept carrying him forward, toward Leon, toward life.
And then the boy snapped.
Not neatly. Not in a movie way. Dirty, loud, with spit and tears, his face twisting so sharply he looked like a stranger for a second.
"Yeah, sure!" he roared, his voice breaking halfway through. "Of course you're leaving me! You're all leaving me! It's always like this, things get bad and suddenly everyone's so smart, everyone knows what's 'reasonable,' everyone runs their mouth about the group!"
He took a step toward Michael, but he didn't attack. He just flailed his hands, pointing at his own wounds like they were proof the world had betrayed him.
"It's a scratch!" he screamed. "A scratch, do you get it?! It's not even a bite! I was, "
He choked on the words, his voice snagging in his throat. And then something else appeared in his eyes, something disgustingly honest.
"I don't want to die," he said much more quietly, and that was the worst part. There was no anger left in it, only pure fear. "I don't want to become… that."
Leon didn't move an inch.
"Then leave," he said. "Now. Before you start wanting to bite other people."
The boy boiled over again, like the words were a slap. He spat onto the ground, not at anyone in particular, just at the world.
"And if I leave, then what?!" he shouted. "I'm supposed to lie down in some bushes and wait until I get eaten?! I'm supposed to do you a favor and die politely so you don't have to get your hands dirty?!"
At that, Leon's eyes widened slightly. He didn't want to admit it, even to himself, but he knew what he should do. Kill the man in front of him before he turned and attacked someone else.
And yet, even though he'd carried out that kind of execution once before, in the pharmacy, he didn't have enough nerve or endurance to do it here. Not again. Not in front of all these eyes.
His gaze flicked over the faces in the group, searching for even one person who wouldn't look away, one person who would say Stay. But most of them stared at the ground. And the ones who looked at him didn't have compassion in their eyes anymore.
They had fear, like they were already seeing a future enemy.
The boy understood in a second.
And it landed like another blow.
"Okay," he hissed. "Okay. I get it now. I'm not a person anymore, right? Now I'm a problem. Now I'm… trash you toss out."
Michael looked like he was about to vomit, but he was already on Leon's side, because his body had carried him there. And that was the truth of the scene, not in big speeches, but in the ugly fact that even if you love someone like a brother, when you're staring death in the face, your body still chooses life.
Leon lifted his sword a fraction, not threatening, more like setting it into readiness. Like someone who didn't want this, but had to be prepared.
"Last time," he said quietly. "Go."
The boy stared at the blade, then at the faces behind it, and something in him shifted. His outburst curdled into something both vile and understandable: hatred tangled up with despair. In his head, this moment was already the end, and people at the end are rarely "pretty."
"Go to hell, all of you…" he whispered.
Then he shouted it, so loud the sound rang across campus like a bell.
"GO, TO, HELL!"
And that was the worst part, because in this world, a scream wasn't just emotion.
The echo hadn't even fully died when something in the air around them changed, like the space itself tightened and grew heavier. Leon knew it before anyone else even understood what was happening.
They were about to pay for those few seconds of emotion.
"Shut up!" he snapped on instinct, but it was too late.
To the left, from the direction of a low academic building, something moved with a distinctive dry crunch that had nothing to do with human footsteps or a zombie's slow shuffle. A heartbeat later, three silhouettes burst into the open, low, broad, moving too fast and too wrong to mistake for anything normal.
They were insects.
Or rather… things that used to be insects.
The first resembled an oversized mantis, almost a meter tall at the shoulder, its front limbs elongated and thickened into scythe-like blades. With every movement they brushed against each other, producing a faint metallic scrape. The chitin armor on its torso was cracked, like something had grown too quickly beneath a shell that was too hard, and from the seams seeped a dark, sticky fluid.
The second stayed closer to the ground, something between a cockroach and a beetle, with a swollen abdomen and six legs that hammered the asphalt in a fast, nervous rhythm. Where its eyes should've been, two translucent lumps pulsed, reacting to movement.
The third was the smallest, but the fastest. It looked like a wasp, only wingless. It moved in leaps, ricocheting off ground and wall, and the stinger at the end of its abdomen was short, thick, and tipped with something that looked like a hook.
Leon moved the instant he saw them.
He didn't shout. He didn't give orders. He just stepped half a pace in front of the group, like his body remembered where it needed to be when something came for them, and his sword rose in his hand almost on its own.
The mantis reached him first.
Instead of cutting at the torso, Leon dropped his center of gravity and drove the blade upward under one plate of armor, right where the limbs connected to the main body. The sword went in with resistance, like pushing through hard rubber, but his strength did the rest. The chitin split with a dry crack, and the creature let out a short, broken sound that was neither shriek nor roar before collapsing, still trying to slice the air with limbs that were already empty.
The roach-like beast was faster than it looked.
Leon took half a step back and let it build momentum down that short, straight line. Then, when it lifted its front legs to strike, he turned sideways and opened its abdomen with one wide sweep. The body burst like overripe fruit. Its innards spilled onto the ground, twitching for a moment before the rest of the mass slumped, limp and useless.
The third creature was already airborne.
Leon felt it more than he saw it, a sharp spike of adrenaline, an instinctive warning, and before anyone else could even scream, he thrust out his free hand and pictured the shadow beneath its body as something that could harden for a heartbeat. Something that could snag.
The shadow rippled.
That was enough.
The creature lost balance mid-leap. Leon closed the distance in a single step and drove his sword straight into what passed for its head, feeling a brief resistance, then that unmistakable give as the blade punched clean through.
Three bodies lay on the ground.
It had taken seconds, but for the people behind him it was somewhere between shock and numbness, watching huge monsters charge them, and then watching one man erase them in the span of a breath.
"Are you out of your goddamn mind?!" one of the guys shouted, whirling on the infected boy with raw, uncontrolled fury. "Do you want us all dead?!"