The fire escape rattled under their weight as they climbed down in a frenzy.
Lucian went first, his hands slick with sweat and blood, gripping the cold metal bars so tightly his knuckles turned white.
Ren followed close behind, his breath sharp, his jaw clenched.
Elio and Noa helped Aria down, their movements frantic but coordinated.
The rooftop door was breaking apart behind them.
They could hear it—wood cracking, metal bending, the guttural snarls of the undead pushing through.
The last thing Elio saw before he fully turned away was a pair of soulless eyes peering through the splintered barricade—hungry, rabid, inhuman.
Then—
The rooftop was gone.
All that mattered now was getting to the ground before the infected reached them.
One of the other students—a random guy named Jordan, someone they barely knew—was below them, climbing fast.
Too fast.
He was panicking, his hands slipping.
His foot missed a step—
He screamed as he lost his grip.
For a second, he dangled—
Then—
He fell.
Noa's stomach twisted as she watched his body slam into the pavement below.
A disgusting, wet CRACK.
Jordan lay still for a moment, his arms bent at unnatural angles.
Then—
He twitched.
His fingers curled, spasmed—
And then, like a puppet being yanked upward, he moved.
His head snapped toward them.
His eyes, now cloudy and bloodshot, locked onto them like a predator spotting prey.
The fall should have killed him.
It didn't matter.
He wasn't human anymore.
And he wasn't alone.
The street below was crawling with the dead.
They gathered around Jordan's broken body, growling, sniffing, hungry.
Some were schoolmates.
Some were teachers.
Some were things that should've stayed buried.
And all of them were looking up.
Elio cursed. "We can't go down."
Lucian clenched his jaw. "Then we find another way."
A gunshot echoed through the school.
Everyone froze.
The zombies turned toward the sound—
And then they ran.
Not shuffled. Not staggered.
Ran.
Like predators who had just found fresher meat.
They disappeared around the corner, leaving the path below momentarily clear.
Ren exhaled sharply. "That's our chance."
They jumped down one by one, landing as quietly as possible.
Ren helped Noa down. Elio grabbed Aria's hand. Lucian scanned their surroundings, keeping his weapon tight in his grip.
For now, the street was empty.
But the city beyond them?
It was on fire.
Buildings burned.
Cars were flipped over.
And in the distance, they could hear it.
The sound of civilization dying.
'
They weren't alone.
A small group of other survivors had made it outside as well—maybe ten of them.
Among them was Aaron, a senior. Tall. Strong. Cocky.
He was holding a makeshift bat—stained with blood.
"Hey!" He called out, approaching them. "You guys made it too, huh?"
Lucian kept his grip on his own weapon. "For now."
Aaron grinned. "Then you should come with us."
Ren narrowed his eyes. "Why?"
"Because this shit ain't a game, man. We need numbers. And let's be real—" Aaron smirked, giving them all a once-over. "Some of you aren't gonna last long."
Noa scoffed. "And what, you're offering to babysit?"
Aaron chuckled. "Nah. I'm offering you a chance to pick the right side before things get messy."
Aria crossed her arms. "And what exactly does 'your side' do?"
Aaron's smirk didn't fade.
But his eyes darkened.
"We survive. No matter what it takes."
Behind him, one of his guys shifted uncomfortably.
Elio noticed.
The guy wasn't looking at them.
He was looking at something behind them.
Elio turned.
And his blood went cold.
They hadn't heard them coming.
They should have.
But the zombies were learning.
They weren't just running anymore.
They were hunting.
Elio barely had time to shout a warning before the infected slammed into them.
Aaron's group scattered.
Lucian swung his weapon—cracking a zombie's skull open.
Noa shoved one back, her heart hammering.
Ren grabbed Aria's wrist and pulled her behind him.
Elio saw one of Aaron's guys trip—
The zombies pounced on him instantly.
His screams lasted seconds before they tore him apart.
Aaron?
He didn't even look back.
He ran.
His whole group left the weaker ones behind.
Elio gritted his teeth. "Fucking coward."
But there was no time to be angry.
The infected were everywhere.
And then—
One of them bit someone.
It happened too fast.
One of the survivors—a girl, maybe a sophomore—screamed as a zombie's teeth sank into her shoulder.
Her body convulsed.
She fell to her knees, trembling, sobbing.
Lucian knew what came next.
Everyone did.
The infection spread fast.
It felt like all of this was happening again and again and again.
She had maybe a minute.
Maybe less.
She looked at them—eyes full of terror.
"...Please…" she whispered.
But nobody moved.
Nobody wanted to do it.
Then—
Aaron's group was gone.
And so was their gun.
Lucian's grip tightened on his bat.
She was crying now.
Noa clenched her fists.
Aria looked away.
Ren didn't hesitate.
One swing.
The girl's head snapped to the side—her body crumpling instantly.
Silence.
Just like that, they were one less.
Ren's shoulders rose and fell.
He didn't say anything.
Nobody did.
They just kept moving.
The moment they pushed into the second-floor hallway, the smell of death thickened. The air was humid with sweat, iron, and something rotten—like meat left out in the sun. The fluorescent lights above flickered, casting long, jagged shadows that made every shape look like a moving corpse.
And soon enough, they were.
"Go, go, go!" Aria yelled, shoving a student forward.
The stampede of bodies pushed through the hall, their footsteps slamming against the floor like a drumbeat of panic. Lucian stayed at the back, gripping a bent metal pipe he'd picked up earlier. Noa kept a switchblade in her shaky hands. Elio was dead silent, his breathing uneven.
And Ren Nakamura?
He wasn't panicking. He wasn't hesitating. He wasn't running blindly like the rest.
He was watching.
Watching how the zombies moved. Watching how they reacted to sound. Watching how fear killed people faster than the infected did.
The First Collapse
A group of six students reached the staircase to the third floor, but that was when it happened.
BANG. BANG. BANG.
The doors at the end of the hallway suddenly exploded open, and a wave of bodies came crashing in—a mix of the living and the dead, tangled together in a writhing mess of screams and gnashing teeth.
One of the girls in front—the one with a pink ribbon in her hair—tripped.
She reached for help. No one stopped.
She tried to scream. A hand **clamped over her mouth—**not to help, but to stop her from attracting more.
She was dragged into the wave.
Her pink ribbon landed on the floor. Her head landed a second later, rolling.
The horde didn't stop. It surged forward.
The Choices That Matter
"Fuck, fuck, fuck—back, back!" Lucian yelled, shoving Elio out of the way before a zombie clawed at his arm.
The students turned to retreat down the hall—only to realize that the way they came from? Blocked. The staircase they just ran up from was now flooded with the dead. They were trapped.
"FUCK!" Noa screamed, her voice cracking. "Where the hell do we—"
"Left. Classrooms," Ren said, already moving.
"What?!" Aria snapped. "Are you—"
"Move or die."
Ren didn't wait for a discussion. He grabbed Elio—who was still frozen in shock—and shoved him toward the nearest door. The rest of the group followed because there was no other choice.
The students crashed through the door of Class 2-B, a half-lit classroom with rows of desks, a blackboard smeared with old chalk, and a window leading to the outside balcony.
There was no time to think.
Noa slammed the door shut. Lucian pushed a bookshelf against it. Aria checked for openings.
Elio? He was still shaking.
And Ren?
Ren was at the window. Calculating. Thinking.
"We can get out through here," he said.
"The hell are you talking about?" Lucian panted.
Ren grabbed a desk and hurled it through the glass. The window shattered. A cold breeze rushed in, carrying the distant echoes of sirens and screams.
The school was burning in the distance.
"The ledge outside leads to another classroom," Ren explained, already climbing up. "We go now, or we don't go at all."
A second later, the barricade behind them started to break.
The Second Collapse
CRACK.
The bookshelf holding back the infected splintered.
Someone screamed—maybe Noa, maybe someone else—but Ren didn't turn to look. He was already halfway across the ledge.
Lucian was next, moving fast, practically grabbing Elio by the collar and forcing him forward.
Noa hesitated. She glanced back—maybe at the students who weren't fast enough, maybe at the ones who were about to die. But hesitation?
It was a death sentence.
One of the zombies reached through the crack in the door and grabbed her by the hair.
"NOA!" Aria yelled.
Ren moved without thinking.
In a blur, he twisted his body back inside, grabbed Noa's wrist, and yanked her forward—
—right as the door blasted open.
The infected swarmed in. The students still inside? They never made it out.
All that was left of them was the sound of ripping flesh.
The Balcony Decision
The five of them collapsed on the ledge outside, panting, shaking. Ren let go of Noa's wrist. She was trembling, but alive.
"You—you just—" Noa looked at him like he wasn't human. "You didn't even—"
"They were dead the second they hesitated," Ren said flatly.
Noa swallowed hard.
Lucian wiped his forehead. "How many do you think are left now?"
"Less than forty," Aria muttered. "Definitely less than forty."
Ren didn't say anything. He just stared at the school below them.
It wasn't a school anymore.
It was a graveyard.
The five of them crouched low on the narrow ledge outside the shattered window of Class 2-B. The cold wind whipped at their faces, carrying the distant echoes of sirens, screams, and the wet chewing of the dead.
Ren Nakamura was the first to move. He didn't hesitate. He didn't need to. His mind was working through the situation like a puzzle, each step planned before his feet even hit the ground.
Lucian Carter was next, his breath shallow, his grip on the metal pipe tightening like it was the only thing keeping him alive.
Aria Vaughn followed quickly, her hands trembling, but her legs steady. She had no time to be scared—she had seen too many people die already.
Noa Williams hesitated. Just for a second. She still wasn't used to this—this absolute fucking nightmare. But when she saw Elio still frozen behind her, she knew she had no choice.
She grabbed his wrist and pulled.
"Move, Elio!" she snapped.
Elio Ren stumbled forward, nearly losing his footing on the ledge, but he forced himself to keep going. He had no choice. None of them did.
The ledge led to another window, half open. Ren reached it first and peeked inside. Class 2-C.
Empty.
For now.
He slipped in first, landing silently. Lucian followed, then Aria, then Noa, then Elio.
The room was dark, but the smell of blood was thick.
Noa stepped forward—and something wet squelched beneath her foot.
She froze. Slowly, she looked down.
There was a severed hand on the floor.
And it was still twitching.
The Butcher's Room
Aria was the first to see the rest of the body.
A boy, maybe fifteen or sixteen, sat slumped against the teacher's desk. His stomach was ripped open, his intestines spilling onto the floor like ropes. His arms were clawed to the bone, his face barely recognizable.
And yet, something was off.
No bite marks.
No torn throat.
Just... butchery.
"This wasn't the zombies," Lucian muttered, stepping forward. He crouched beside the body, his expression darkening. "This was done by a person."
Ren stared at the walls.
There were knives pinned to the whiteboard. A bloody desk covered in tools. A makeshift workbench.
And, written in smudged, bloody handwriting:
"IT'S SAFER TO BE A MONSTER."
A chair creaked at the back of the room.
Everyone froze.
Then—a sound.
A long, slow inhale.
And from the darkness beneath the teacher's desk, something moved.
The Thing That Lived
Elio was the first to step back.
And that was a mistake.
The moment his shoe scraped against the floor— the thing lurched out from under the desk.
It wasn't a zombie. It wasn't even fully human anymore.
It was a student. A boy in a blood-soaked uniform, his eyes wide, his pupils blown out like he hadn't seen light in days. His teeth were stained red.
Because he had been eating.
He had been cutting up the bodies.
And eating them.
"WHO THE FUCK—" Lucian started, but the boy lunged.
Ren didn't hesitate.
In one motion, he grabbed a chair and swung it forward.
The wooden legs slammed into the boy's ribs, sending him sprawling back. But he didn't scream. He just giggled.
Noa's hands were shaking. "He's—he's not turning?"
"He was never infected," Ren said, his voice eerily calm.
The boy on the floor grinned up at them, blood dripping from his teeth.
"The dead are stupid," he whispered. "The living are worse."
Then, without warning—he grabbed a knife from the floor and lunged again.
The Kill
Lucian reacted first. He stepped forward and swung his metal pipe.
CRACK.
The sound of bone breaking.
The boy collapsed to his knees. His head snapped back at a sickening angle, but he still twitched.
Noa moved before she could think. She grabbed the closest thing—a pair of scissors from the desk—and drove them into his throat.
A wet, gurgling sound.
The boy choked, his grin finally slipping.
He stared at Noa.
And he laughed.
Then—he stopped moving.
Noa let go of the scissors.
She stepped back, her hands covered in blood. Her breath came in short, broken gasps.
Elio was staring at her.
No one spoke.
Then—a crash.
No More Hiding
The door to Class 2-C burst open.
And they came in.
A flood of bodies. The dead. The infected. The wave of horror that had been following them since this nightmare began.
There was no time.
Ren grabbed Elio. "MOVE!"
The group turned and ran.
No time to breathe. No time to think. Just run.
They barely made it to the hallway before the infected swarmed the room behind them.
Noa turned back just in time to see the cannibal boy's corpse disappear under the weight of the horde.
She should have felt relief.
She didn't.
Because for the first time since this started—
She realized that the zombies weren't the scariest things in this school.
The survivors were.
Elio was hyperventilating. The blood. The screams. Everything was happening too fast.
Ren grabbed his collar. "Focus. We have one way out."
Lucian was already moving toward the edge of the roof. The fence.
"We climb," he said. "Now."
Noa hesitated. "Are you insane? We'll fall!"
Lucian's eyes were cold. "Then stay here and get ripped apart."
She shut up.
They scrambled toward the fence.
Aria went first. "Fuck, fuck, fuck—" She pulled herself up, fingers slipping against the cold metal.
Lucian climbed after her. Fast, efficient, not wasting a second.
Noa followed, her hands shaking so bad she almost lost her grip.
Ren pushed Elio toward the fence. "Go."
"But—"
Ren didn't give him a choice. He grabbed him and threw him up.
Elio's fingers caught the metal. He gritted his teeth and pulled himself over.
Ren turned.
There were five other students still on the roof.
And they weren't gonna make it.
Kaito Yamashiro was one of them.
He wasn't climbing. He was frozen, staring at the door.
"My sister's still inside," he whispered.
Ren grabbed his arm. "She's dead."
Kaito shoved him back. "FUCK YOU!"
He ran toward the door.
Ren didn't stop him.
Because he knew what was waiting.
The moment Kaito stepped through the doorway—
A zombie tore his face off.
Blood sprayed across the walls.
Ren turned away. Didn't even blink.
Three students had climbed over the fence.
Ren followed, gripping the bars and swinging himself down. His feet slammed onto the second-floor balcony, rolling to absorb the impact.
He looked up.
One student was still at the top. Haruto Maeda.
His hands were slick with blood.
His grip slipped.
And he fell.
A second of weightlessness—
Then he hit the ground head first.
The sound it made was sickening.
Ren exhaled.
The Courtyard Chase
They ran.
Down the second-floor hall.
Past the shattered windows.
They could hear screaming behind them. The zombies were still following, pouring down from the rooftop, crawling over each other to get to them.
More bodies than they could ever hope to fight.
Lucian yanked open a door. "Stairs. MOVE."
They flew down the staircase, practically leaping over steps.
The first floor was worse than they expected.
The front entrance was gone. The walls were painted in gore.
And the zombies—
There were even more of them now.
Aria nearly collapsed. "Fucking hell—"
Noa grabbed her. "Keep running!"
Ren pushed forward, scanning for an exit.
Then—
A door.
The back exit. Still intact.
But there was a problem.
A crowd of zombies stood between them and freedom.
Lucian didn't hesitate.
He grabbed a chair, swung it, and caved in a zombie's skull.
Ren moved with him. Fast, precise, breaking bones and dodging bites.
Elio's hands were slick with sweat. He wasn't a fighter. He froze when one of the undead grabbed his wrist.
Its mouth opened wide.
Noa tackled it from behind, stabbing a broken mop into its neck.
It spasmed, falling limp.
She looked at Elio, eyes dark. "MOVE, OR DIE."
He didn't hesitate after that.
The Final Sprint
The doors were right there.
Aria kicked them open. "OUTSIDE! GO!"
They pushed through, spilling out into the cold night air.
Lucian turned, grabbing the metal doors—
And slamming them shut.
For a second, there was only silence.
Then—the pounding.
The zombies threw themselves at the doors, howling.
Lucian stepped back. Breathing hard.
They were outside.
Alive.
They turned, looking at what lay ahead.
And what they saw sent ice down their spines.
Smoke choked the skyline. Sirens wailed in the distance.
And on the streets below—
More of them.
Not just dozens.
Hundreds.
Elio's mouth was dry.
But then
SWITCH
"where am I"
"ELIO WAKE UP!"
"SEE GUYS HE'S AWAKE"
"Guys are we out of the apocalypse ?"
"Yes we are but, as much as we discussed with each other..."
"We were not together when the apocalypse was happening"