The screams had stopped.
That terrible, agonizing silence that followed was somehow worse than the sounds themselves had been. For what felt like hours but was probably only minutes, we had listened to the desperate cries echoing up from the library below—ten people who hadn't made it up the makeshift rope of tied blazers in time, trapped as the infected finally broke through our barricades.
The computer lab felt like a tomb now, filled with twenty survivors who sat in stunned silence. Some had pressed their hands over their ears during the worst of it, trying to block out the screams for help that gradually transformed into something far more horrible. Others had simply stared at the floor, their faces pale and haunted by sounds that would likely follow them for the rest of their lives—however long those might be.
