Just another normal day...
Jordan Schupp was spending lunch the way he always did, alone and sitting against the wall. He didn't have many friends in that school, he never had in the past schools either. Even after two and a half years at high school, he remained as antisocial as ever. He didn't mind, though. It allowed him to be an outcast, an observer looking in from afar. he could look at the separate little groups of West, see how stupid some of their activities looked from the outside, and they wouldn't pay him the slightest bit of attention as he silently mocked them to himself.
He was suddenly jolted from his thoughts by somebody tapping on his shoulder, and looked up to see Melanie Richards looking down at him, smiling. Melanie was best known around the school as the one who wanted to be everyone's friend. For the most part, she succeeded in this goal, even if some found her a bit annoying for it. Closing his eyes and leaning his head back on the wall, Jordan decided there was no point in ignoring her, and began to speak.
"Yes? Can I help you with anything?" He said, very careful to keep the irritation out of his voice.
"Why do you just sit here by yourself?" She asked, for probably about the hundredth time this year.
"Because it's how I've spent every lunch since day one of freshman year. It's really not a problem for me, I like the peace I get from nobody bothering me." Jordan said, re situating his body so he was more comfortable against the wall.
"It's not healthy. You need human contact, otherwise life is boring." She said, sitting down next to him. He was seconds away from telling her that he got all the contact he needed from her, but was interrupted by a familiar cry from a crowd standing by the windows of the bridge.
"Fight!" Someone yelled, and the word quickly echoed across the entire bridge. Jordan got up just in time to see a guy he didn't know charge and tackle one of the football players, both disappearing behind a shrub. People were cheering and jumping around as the other guy, Jordan was pretty sure his name was Sam something-or-other, was beaten to a pulp... or atleast that's what people guessed was happening. The only thing they could really see was the attacker's back moving up and down, and the occasional flailing of the football player's arms. Jordan heard Melanie sigh, and he knew, without looking, that she was shaking her head in disgust. She hated fights, that Jordan had learned a long time ago.
"I'll be back, I'm going to go see if I can't break them up before the police get involved." She said, but Jordan grabbed her arm before she could go. At that moment, the school officers showed up at the scene. About this time, Jordan could swear he saw blood spraying from the football player's now limp body. His fears were confirmed when the officers came into view of the fight, and immediately switched to shocked looks as they pulled out their tasers.
They didn't do that for normal fights, he was sure of it. So what was different in this one? Before he he could ponder the thought any longer, he saw the attacker get up and attack the officers.
The football player was apparently dead...
Matteo Cordoba was coming back from the ROTC room when he heard the familiar cry of "Fight!" Rushing to the far end of the bridge, he quickly located Jordan Schupp standing in a shocked looking crowd next to Melanie Richards. Jordan was Matteo's childhood friend, one whom even rode the same bus as him. He hadn't met Melanie much at all, but he knew enough about her to know what kind of person she was.
"What's happening? Who's fighting who this time?" He asked Jordan, trying to make his face atleast look serious, even though he was fighting off the powerful urge to laugh at the situation. However, this urge vanished when he saw the look on Jordan's face.
"I highly doubt this is a run of the mill fight..." Jordan replied, pointing to the ground where the concrete was covered in blood, more blood than Matteo had ever seen in his life. Then Matteo noticed that the officers were outside, and had shot a man Matteo had never seen with a taser, and he was now seizing in place.
"What the hell..." Matteo said, a confused look on his face, which quickly turned to surprise, then intense fear as he saw something he never thought he'd see: The dead football player got up, and charged the cops, taking one by surprise and tackling him. Hundreds of surprised students' expressions switched to shock as the football player did something extremely recognizable to anybody: He was biting the officer he had tackled.
Then everybody heard a window on the other side of the bridge break, followed by a large amount of screams.
Then all hell broke loose.
A large amount of other people had broken through the windows on the opposite end of the bridge and were already attacking their victims. Jordan immediately grabbed Matteo and Melanie's arms and began to run, leading them towards the gym. He had no idea what was leading him to the gym, and he was positive there was no god involved him this, yet he had a strong feeling that the gym would be the safest place right now...
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Ashley Williams was in the cafeteria at the time of these happenings, sitting at a table with her friends while applying makeup. The others at the table where either talking, or doing the same. It was an ordinary day for her.
Some of the girls stopped their activities when a large amount of screams came from outside the cafeteria. Ashley looked up from her mirror for a few seconds, then went back to looking at herself as she spoke.
"Some guy probably just jumped out of a corner and scared a bunch of girls. Why are you so surprised?" She said. However, it seemed she was proven wrong as a group of panicky people rushed into the cafeteria. Ashley rolled her eyes and signaled for the rest of the group at the table to leave with her.
The second they opened the door, a man jumped at and tackled the girl to the right of Ashley, her best friend in the group. The others quickly panicked and ran back into the cafeteria, but Ashley was too shocked, and simply stood there frozen in fear as the man bit her friend... He was actually biting her!
As the man looked up and saw her, he got up from her now dead friend's body and began to chase after her. She panicked, and ran away from the doors to the cafeteria, heading towards the new wing. She was suddenly halted as she ran into three others in front of the gym doors. One of the guys looked up and saw the man that was chasing Ashley.
"Come on!" He shouted, as he quickly got up and helped her and the other two up. Then rushed into the gym, quickly closing the door behind the four of them.
"Hey!" Somebody shouted from the other side of the gym...
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Jacques Rudel was the king of the jocks at West, so much so that he was given special permission to be in the gym to run laps during lunch. During this time, the gym was usually locked and nobody was allowed inside, but the coaches had given him an extra set of keys for this exact purpose. He was running his usual laps around the gym when four people burst in from the front entrance, and quickly closed the door.
"Hey!" He yelled. "Hey! You're not supposed to be in here right now!"
One of them, a guy who was tall but very skinny turned to him with a very serious expression.
"Shut up. Is there any way to lock these doors?' He said with a rather demanding voice.
"Look, I don't know who you guys are or who you're running from, but I'm not gonna lock the doors just so you can get away from them.." He answered. He was about to go on speaking, telling them to get out, but he was quickly cut off by the skinny guy again. This time, his voice was much louder and he was speaking slower.
"Is there any way to lock these god damn doors!?" He yelled, making a slow approach towards Jacques. Jacques stood his ground, he was sure he could take this guy.
"Yes, I have a set of keys that the coaches gave me, but I'm not giving them to you. If I have to, I will go out there and get a coach to help me force you guys out of here." Jacques said, trying to keep a threatening tone to his voice. He was never good at scaring people. The guy simply shook his head and chuckled a bit.
"Trust me," He said. "You don't want to go out there."
"Oh yeah? Watch me." He said, and started making for the side doors. Halfway there, he heard another shout, this one from the other guy, a Latino guy in an ROTC uniform.
"If you go out there, you will die!" He said, putting extreme emphasis on the last three words. Jacques almost stopped, but then shook his head and kept going, hearing the steps of the skinny one coming up on his fast.
"Shut up." Jacques said, and opened the door. Low and behold, the first person he saw was the coach. The coach looked over at him, his eyes wide.
"Ah, coach, good, it's you. Look, I have a group of people refusing to get out of the gym, help me out?" He said, but then was pushed aside by the skinny guy as the coach charged at him, revealing a gaping wound on his shoulder. The skinny guy quickly shut the door, and a large thud sounded through it a few seconds later. Jacques got up from being pushed out of the way, wiping a bit of sweat from his brow.
"What the hell just happened? What's going on?" He asked, quickly pulling out his keys. The skinny guy grabbed them from his hands and looked him straight in the eyes.
"I have no idea."
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Renae Stevens was a science teacher at West who had been on hall duty downstairs when the incident occurred. She had been close to the boys locker room door and about to turn around when the weights teacher turned the corner and charged at her. Panicking, she tried the door to the locker room, and it seemed luck was on her side, because it was unlocked. She quickly rushed into the room and closed the door. A series a dull thuds was heard as she guessed the man was throwing himself against the door.
She quickly crossed to the other side of the foul smelling room, and opened the door to the other side very quietly, so as not to attract anybody else. She then crossed the hall, into the next set of doors, and quickly went up the steps and arrived at the door to the gym. She grabbed the handle, turned it, and saw somebody fall on their face in front of her with keys in his hands...
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After the jock-head Jordan had recognized as Jacques Rudel handed over the keys, Jordan quickly ran to the individual doors, testing each key to figure out which went to which door. The final door that needed to be locked was the far right door going out to the hall leading to either the auxiliary gym and the stairs down to the locker room. But just as he began to test the keys, the door opened, and Jordan lost his balance, falling on his face.
The woman who had opened the door helped him up, and he got a good look at her face. He instantly recognized her as the science teacher Ms. Stevens.
"What are you doing here, how'd you know to come here?" Jordan asked as Matteo and Melanie rushed to his side as well.
"I was kinda chased here, didn't have much choice." She answered, coming completely into the gym. Jordan closed and locked the door, then turned and counted the amount of people inside the gym to see how large the group was.
"Six of us. That's not a bad turnout, I guess. Maybe we're not the only lucky ones..." He said, an expression on his face that showed he was making plans.
"Seven." Ms. Stevens said. Jordan looked back up at her with a confused look.
"No, there's only six of us here..." Jacques said.
"Don't tell me your iPods and such have deafened you all to the point that you couldn't hear the snoring coming from behind these bleachers, did they?" Ms. Stevens replied, pointing towards the bleachers up against the stage-like section dividing the back and main gyms. Jacques walked over to the side and looked behind the bleachers.
And there he was, a guy sleeping behind the bleachers. He was wearing ripped jeans, a black hoodie, and had long, dark hair. He looked like your average stereotypical druggy.
"Hey! Wake up!" Jacques yelled into the "alley" along with pounding on the side of the bleachers. The guy jumped up almost immediately.
"What the hell, man?" He shouted back.
"Get out here. Now!" Jacques shouted, and backed away to give him room. When he was finally out, Jordan's eyes once again moved over the group.
"Alright, seven people." Jordan said, once again looking down as if planning something.
"What the hell is going on? Why do you need seven people? I was taking a god damn nap, idiots." The new guy said, looking more and more angry by the second. Jacques quickly got in front of him to look him in the eyes.
"You shouldn't have even been taking a nap in here in the first place! This is a gym, not your freaking bedroom." He said. The new guy simply rolled his eyes.
"Okay, mom. Whatever. Now what the hell is going on?" He said, this time more fiercely.
"We'll explain later, just tell us your name." Jordan said, trying to stop the oncoming fight. Luckily, he succeeded, as the new guy backed off and answered him.
"Brian Welter. And you four are?" He asked. Jacques turned around to look at them, and Jordan was pretty sure he wanted to know the exact same thing.
"I'm Jordan Schupp, the redhead girl is Melanie Richards, the ROTC guy is Matteo Cordoba, and I don't know her name..." He said, pointing to the black haired, rather attractive girl they had accidentally collided with in front of the gym doors.
"It's Ashley Williams." She said, with quite a bit of attitude in her voice. Jordan immediately took back his mental compliment about her being attractive.
"In case you don't know, I'm Jacques Rudel." Jacques said, figuring he might as well introduce himself as well.
"I'm Ms. Stevens, for those of you who don't have me as a teacher." Renae said, thinking the same as Jacques.
"Don't you mean had you as a teacher? If you didn't notice, the school's not really functioning normally right now, seeing as it's full of a bunch of walking, biting, dead people." Matteo said, correcting the teacher's statement. However, this statement was greeted with laughter from Brian.
"Dead people? Zombies? Are you serious? Zombies? You idiots really think I'm gonna believe there are zombies outside this door? Seriously? Oh, man, I gotta hear this crap story now." Brian was still laughing as he spoke. Jordan stepped up to him with one of the most serious looks he had ever worn, and began to tell the story of what had been happening.
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When Jordan was finished, even if Brian still thought they were freaking insane, Matteo looked up to see that they had already been in the gym for eight and a half hours.
"I had no idea time was going by that fast..." Jacques said, amazed as he looked at the clock, now reading about 8:00. The rest of the group had taken to wandering the gym or laying down on the floor. Jordan, noticing Melanie sitting alone in a corner, went to join her.
"Are you okay?" He said as he sat down. "You haven't said a word since we got in here. That's not like you at all..."
"I'm just scared, that's all... This isn't really something they teach you to be ready for in life..." She replied, a small amount of tears welling up in her eyes.
"Fear is impossible to escape from in a situation like this. Doesn't matter who you are, everybody's afraid when faced with something they never expected to face." Jordan said. Their conversation, however, was halted by Jacques speaking to the group.
"We can't stay in here. There's no food here or anything, we need to find another place to go." He said, walking into the middle of the gym.
"Are you insane? And how do you expect we get somewhere else? If you haven't noticed, outside these walls is flooded with those things. We wouldn't make it three feet. This isn't some game or movie where we're going to find a gun randomly laying around somewhere, we have no way to defend ourselves! The closest thing to a gun you'd find in this school is a taser." Jordan said, getting up to confront the idiot jock that was making the idiot suggestions.
"Tasers seem to be effective if you remember that one outside that the cop shot." Matteo said from across the gym.
"Yes, but you can only shoot one target at a time, and it doesn't kill them, just causes them to fall and twitch for a few minutes." Jordan replied.
"He's right, tasers wouldn't be very useful. However, he's wrong about us not having anything to defend ourselves with. This is a gym, there's a storage room over there. Baseball bats, hockey sticks, both very useful for cracking a skull open." Jacques retaliated, and led the group over to the storage room, throwing out hockey sticks and bats. When all seven had something to defend themselves with, they gathered at the front doors.
"Okay, everybody stay close, watch your backs. Don't let them get to you, shout out any info you can, and see if any of us can figure out a place to go. In three, two, one!" Jacques quickly threw the doors open and the entire group rushed out, ready to defend themselves.
The first thing Jordan noticed was that it smelled terrible outside... The second thing he noticed was that they weren't making any noise whatsoever.
The bridge was completely silent.
It was the most deafening thing he had ever heard.
They were on the group instantly, charging and jumping, but still making no noise at all except for the sound of their footsteps, which did create quite a bit of noise itself.
"New wing is too full of them to go through there! We'll have to cross the bridge!" Ms. Stevens shouted out. The rest of the group nodded as the group moved forward, crushing the skull of any of them that came too close. All seemed to be going well, until they reached about five feet from the doors, then the sound that filled the air was the sound of Melanie screaming.
Jordan turned around to see that one had gotten the best of her and was biting her leg. He ran up and bashed its head with his bat, quickly helping her up and onto his back.
"Guys! I need extra cover!" He yelled. Jacques and Matteo immediately came to his side. When they got into Time Square, Ashley shouted out directions to the group.
"To the left! Stairs and straight ahead are too full!" The group followed these directions, and three doors down the hall, arrived at a closed door with blood splatter on the front of it. They opened the door, Jordan and Melanie entering first, Jacques entering last, and then they collapsed, exhausted.
They didn't get to relax for very long, as Melanie began screaming in pain. Ms. Stevens rushed to her side after finding a first aid kit in the teacher's desk, pulling out a ton of gauze. Jacques, meanwhile, tried to access the computer until Matteo stopped him.
"The computers in this building run on a timer, they won't work right now. We gotta wait until morning." He said. Jacques nodded and walked over to the other side of the room. Brian walked over to the door and locked it, realizing they had forgotten to do that on the way in.
"You all get some sleep. I'll take care of her." Ms. Stevens said, and all of them grudgingly agreed. Jordan walked over to Melanie before he went to sleep. She immediately grabbed his shirt.
"What's going to happen to me? To all of us?" She asked, pain very evident in her voice.
"You're going to be fine." Jordan replied. "I'm not going to let anything happen to you. I swear it."
Melanie looked as content as she could possible be, as Jordan went to the other side of the room, laid down on the floor, and got ready to go to sleep. However, first he took a quick look at the room. It was apparently an English room, with literary terms written on the board. However, one term in particular stuck out to him.
Setting.
Next to that one term was another word written by somebody in red marker, probably the same person the blood on the door belonged to. Their dying message. One word.
Hell.
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