Her leg still hadn't stopped bleeding, but Ms. Stevens had it under control enough so that it had significantly gone down. She was apparently still in great pain that was starting to get worse, and had said her vision was getting blurry and that she was getting nauseous. She was sweating and breathing hard, and generally looked pretty bad.
"There's nothing you three can do." Ms. Stevens said, looking up at the clock which luckily still worked. "It's about 6:30, the computers should be working now."
Jacques quickly ran over to the computer as Jordan looked around the room to find Brain and Ashley, both of which annoyed him greatly. They'd both been equally useless yesterday, Brian only working to defend himself, and Ashley doing pretty much nothing but shouting directions. He hated to say it- or did he?- but one of them should've been in Melanie's place.
"Hey, it's working!" Jacques yelled. Jordan and Matteo quickly rushed to his side as he logged in. Once the computer finished loading, Jacques clicked on the internet explorer icon. The internet loaded perfectly, it was fortunately still up.
"Move, let me try something." Matteo said, getting into the computer chair. As he did this, Jordan noticed for the first time that his ROTC uniform was practically painted red with blood. In fact, now that he looked around, everyone's clothes were. It was a bit eerie to see, sending chills down his spine with just the sight.
Matteo, meanwhile, was logging onto a forum he was a member of. At first glance there seemed to be no new posts, until he scrolled to the bottom, a new post was shown in General Discussion. The topic was titled "Any Other Survivors?" So far, seven replies had been posted. Matteo clicked the "Post Reply" button, and began to type.
"I'm alive, six others with me. Does anybody know what's going on? Is this happening all over the world, or is it just in the states?"
Pressing the submit button, the message was posted. The three then began to wait for a reply, refreshing the page every minute or so. It didn't take long for a reply, only about ten minutes or so.
"I don't really know what's going on, but from the way it's spreading I'd guess a virus. As for if it's happening all over the world, last time I heard parts of Japan and pretty much all of Australia haven't been hit yet. I'd guess a bit of Indonesia as well. Otherwise, we know the UK is gone, most of Europe, Asia, and Africa, too. All of North and South America is gone. Last I heard, China was violently defending themselves as much as possible. Other than that, I haven't heard anything else."
Matteo refreshed again to find somebody else had posted. No words in this post, just a world map. A key to the map said that the areas that had been hit were red.
Everywhere except for the locations given by the first poster were a blood red color...
The world was gone...
Several hours had passed since then. Jacques had tried to call 911 and his house, to no avail. Melanie's screams of pain had become louder, and now she was throwing up small amounts of blood. Brian was still asleep, as it seemed that was what he was best at. Ashley had since woken up and gone straight to a mirror, much to Jordan's annoyance.
"My freaking hair is all messed up..." She said, clearly ignoring Melanie's latest cries. Jordan decided he couldn't take it anymore, enough was enough. He quickly got up, dodging one of Matteo's quick attempt to stop him. Suddenly, all eyes were on him.
"Are you serious? Do you even care about anything? Those things are flooding the school, no, the whole damn world! All of our friends, our families are dead! Someone in this room is in more pain than any of us could even imagine! All this and more is happening all around you, and you're complaining about your hair!" Jordan stopped himself from slapping her, and walked back to his seat. "You should be the one lying here, not Melanie. Offense intended."
--------------------------
It was almost twelve hours since day two had officially started. Brian had finally woken up nearly two hours earlier, yet still proceeded to do nothing. It had been a rather uneventful time since Jordan's outburst at Ashley. According to their sources, in the time since they'd last checked: China was gone, Indonesia as well. Australia and Japan were beginning to get hit, and fast.
In other words, things seemed to be getting steadily worse around the world. Nobody in the room had heard a military jet fly overhead, no helicopters, no sirens, nothing. In fact, the only military defense attempt anybody had ever heard of since it all started was the one in China, and that hadn't lasted very long. Granted, there was little to no communication available right now, but there should've at least been something! This was pathetic!
"She's convulsing!" This shout shattered the thoughts of everybody in the room. As the heads turned to Ms. Stevens and Melanie, who's chest was thrusting up and down, and it seemed that she was gasping for breath.
"Her lungs are filling with blood, and it looks like she's choking on a large amount as well." Ms. Stevens said in a panic. Jordan rushed over to them.
"What do we do?" He asked, his eyes begging her not to tell him what he knew the answer was going to be. Unfortunately...
"I don't know, I'm a science teacher not a doctor!" She yelled, then closed her eyes and took a deep breath, calming herself down. "I don't think there's anything we can do. We just have to let her die at this point..."
...She said it.
Jordan was speechless, all he could do was drop to his knees next to her. There were no tears, this was not a time for tears. He didn't even know if he had any tears to give.
"I'm sorry..." He said. Then he said it again, and again, and multiple times after that. He knew she couldn't hear him, but he didn't care. He said it anyway. After the longest few minutes of his life, Melanie's convulsing stopped, and she died.
Jordan immediately got up and silently walked over to the other side of the room, his back to her corpse and everybody else. He put his head against the wall and closed his eyes, trying to get everything and everyone out of his mind.
"Holy crap!" His attempts were crushed as Brian shouted, and he turned around to see Melanie, alive and charging at him. He was sure he'd die right then and there, but Matteo saved him by swinging a hockey stick into her face. Melanie's body instantly fell limp to the floor, and for a long few minutes nobody did anything but stare at it. There was nothing else they could do. It seemed like hours before Jacques spoke.
"It's the bite... This proves it. It has to be." Jacques said quietly.
"Makes sense..." Jordan said in a voice full of sorrow. "It explains how it spread so fast and why not everybody is effected. If it were airborne, foodborne, or waterborne, everybody would be effected. This explains the speed it's spreading... First person bites one, both bite another, so on and so forth."
Everybody tried to think on this new development, but were interrupted by a large thud on the door.
Then another.
Then another.
"What the hell are they doing?" Jacques said. Jordan wasn't sure he could answer that question. They seemed to be trying to break down the door, but why all the sudden? Jordan racked his brains trying to figure it out. He took a deep breath, and it came to him instantly.
The smell.
Melanie had only died about ten minutes ago, it shouldn't have smelled as bad as it did right now. Not this quickly, atleast. Maybe...
"It's the smell." Jordan spoke out loud.
"What do you mean?" Matteo said, a confused look on his face that mirrored those of the rest of the group.
"Melanie smells too bad for how long ago she died, and it's spreading through the air. They're not attacking each other, so there must be some method they have of telling each other apart from normal people. They all smell really bad for having just died yesterday, maybe it's how they tell us apart from them, we smell differently. Now they smell her, and they know that we could be in here too, so they're trying to get in." Jordan explained his theory in full. It made perfect sense to him as he said it.
The group thought on the possibility for several minutes. It was quite awhile before anyone actually said anything, but Matteo was the first to speak.
"If that's true, then we can't stay in here... we have to move." He said. "But we can't just go without a plan, like we did last time. We need to know where we're going this time."
"Right, I agree. So where would be a good place to go right now?" Jordan asked.
"The roof." Jacques answered. "Get on top of the top floor halls. They probably won't be able to climb, and we'll be seen if a helicopter happens to pass over."
"It's a good idea, but we'd never be able to make it in one run. My room is just down the hall, halfway between here and the stairs. It would make a suitable checkpoint." Ms. Stevens said.
"So that's where we'll head, then." Jordan said as another thud sounded on the door. "We better make it fast, too. That door won't hold up much longer. Grab all you can, and make it fast!"
The group began scuffling around the room, grabbing all the defensive weapons and other equipment as they could. Noticing that Ashley was doing nothing, Jordan grabbed a hockey stick and marched up to her.
"Here." He said, forcing the stick into her hands. "Try actually doing something this time."
--------------------------
Ten minutes later, everybody was at the door and prepared to fight their way through the crowd of creatures outside. Jacques was once again braced and ready to open it.
"Alright. Three, two, one!" He threw open the door, bashing quite a few people aside at the start. The group immediately ran straight into the horde of people, bashing any one of them that got too close as they made their way towards Ms. Steven's classroom at the end of the hall.
A scream sounded out from the hall, and Jordan whipped around to see Ashley had been overpowered and brought down.
Good riddance. Jordan couldn't help but think that, no matter how horrible it sounded. However, it seemed karma was biting back hard that day, as when Jordan turned back around the first thing he saw was Matteo tackled from behind.
"No!" Jordan yelled, and ran over to his friend's aid, hacking rapidly at the thing on him until he was sure it was dead. But it was too late...
Matteo was now a corpse, staring blankly at the world. Jordan, knowing what he would've wanted, took the bat he'd been holding up from the floor and crushed his skull before he could come back.
He then turned around to see that Jacques had been defending him from behind that whole time.
"Brian and Renae are already in the classroom, let's go!" He shouted over the scuffle of stomping and running feet. Jordan nodded, and they both began to move forward again.
"You're calling her Renae now?" Jordan asked as they ran.
"Titles are pretty much pointless now. I'd appreciate it if you called me Jack from now on." He answered, and the two continued their fight forward.
--------------------------
When they finally arrived inside the classroom, they saw Ms. Stevens- no, Renae messing with something under her desk, and Brian, of course, was asleep. Renae pulled out a sandwich and split it in half, giving the halves to Jordan and Jack.
Afterwards, Jordan immediately fell asleep.
That night, Jordan had a dream. He was running away from what originally looked like a large cluster of the things his world had been destroyed by, but when he looked at them closely, it turned out to only be Melanie and Matteo. He ran as much as he could, but, in the end.
He died...
No comments:
Post a Comment