It has been nine hours since everything fell apart. Nine hours since the alarms blared, since the screaming started, since we barricaded ourselves inside the lecture halls, hoping—praying—that someone would come.
But no one did.
The sun had long since set, and the city outside had become a graveyard of flickering lights. Street lamps buzzed weakly, their glow sputtering in and out—as if they were solar-powered—and no one had come to change them to direct supply. Shadows stretched across the roads, cast by abandoned cars and bodies no longer moved. The once-bustling cityscape had turned into something out of a nightmare—eerily quiet, unsettlingly still.
Inside, we sat in silence, backs pressed against cold walls, too afraid to move. Our phone batteries were dead, drained from our countless desperate calls for help. Supplies were dwindling—half-empty water bottles, pocketed snacks—but the vending machines, stocked with food and drinks, stood just outside the lecture halls. None of us dared to retrieve them or had thought of leaving the lecture halls.
Even with our phone batteries dead and charging ports nearby, no one got up. We were frozen. Glued to the spots where we sat as if any movement might call the hordes outside the halls and shatter the fragile illusion of safety.
Worst of all, night had fallen, and with the street lights blinking on and off, unreliable and weak. We didn't dare turn on any lights of our own. We didn't know if they could see us—but none of us wanted to find out.
I stretched and used the hem of my clothing to wipe my face, but I could still feel the blood on my skin. Thick. Sticky. Cooling against me.
It wasn't mine.
It belonged to a classmate—a boy from my department. I barely knew his name, but I would never forget the way he died. Trampled. Crushed beneath the weight of stampeding feet, his body breaking under the force of our collective panic as he screamed for help and raised his arm for help.
I had watched it happen.
And I had done nothing.
Or maybe I had. Maybe, somewhere in the chaos, I had been part of it. Maybe I had shoved someone when they shoved me. Maybe I had seen someone clawing at the barricade, begging for help, and I had turned away. Maybe I had chosen my survival over theirs.
For the first time, I understood what it meant to kill someone and see them die.
As I sat there in the dark, surrounded by trembling bodies and quiet sobs, I wasn't sure if I felt regret.
***
Midnight came, and some of us had begun to have growling stomachs; hunger had begun to settle in, and I began to feel empty. Just empty. I could neither close my eyes, talk more, nor fall asleep, but...a snore broke the silence.
"*Snore**Snore**Snore*"
I turned my head and stared at him in disbelief
'Some could fall asleep at this moment.'
He was a senior student—no, a middle-aged man—and slumped against the wall, his breathing deep and steady. He was asleep. But I guess the stress had caught up to him. Time went by slowly as the cold of autumn began settling in.
Time dragged on as I turned my head and looked toward the windows behind me again, and thoughts of how to escape started settling in.
"Do you have a plan?" A voice behind me spoke quietly as I felt an armrest on my shoulder.
"For what?" I asked as I turned to look at them.
"To escape, of course."
This person was... 'Uhmmm'
'Right'
He was the student that always sat behind, the one I barely acknowledged before today. His name danced on the edge of my memory, something familiar that I couldn't remember.
"You think there's a way out?" I whispered back.
"There's always a way," he murmured. "We just need to figure out the safest one."
I stared at him, trying to gauge if he was just talking or if he truly believed that. His face was gaunt, eyes sunken with exhaustion, but there was a weird happiness to his gaze, something calculating and weird at the moment.
"You sound confident," I muttered.
He smirked faintly. "Not confident… Just desperate."
A rustle from the other side of the hall made both of us tense. One of the girls—Sarah, I think—shifted uncomfortably in her sleep, whimpering as if caught in a nightmare. None of us could afford to dream anymore, but she did. Maybe it was better than reality.
"Do you think they're still out there?" I asked, voice barely above a whisper.
His expression darkened. "They never left."
A chill ran down my spine. I already knew that, but hearing it said out loud made it real.
For hours, we had heard them—their distant groans, the occasional scuffle of movement outside, the sound of something dragging against pavement. They were still out there. Waiting.
"Maybe in the morning," he continued, "when there's light, we'll have a better chance to see a way out."
I nodded slowly, though I wasn't sure if I believed it. Morning didn't mean safety. But doing nothing wasn't an option either.
"Get some rest," he added, leaning his head back against the wall. "We'll need it."
I let out a breath, pressing my back harder against the cold wall. Sleep felt impossible, but exhaustion was pulling at me like an undertow. Maybe, just maybe, I'd close my eyes—just for a moment.
And I hope that when I opened them again, this nightmare hadn't gotten worse.
A screaming cut through the silence. My breath hitched, my heart slamming against my ribs. It wasn't from inside the hall—it came from outside. Close.
I snapped upright, eyes darting toward the windows. Several shadows moved. More than one. They were out there, shifting in the dim glow of the streetlights. A figure of two people was ahead, running and trying to flee from the campus grounds, running as fast as they could with nothing but their bare feet and clothes.
The others stirred, eyes widening in fear. Whispers spread as they rushed towards the window's pane to look at what was happening. From varying corners, we all noticed several students running from the campus grounds, all barefooted and in different directions, and in the depths of night behind them were several zombies chasing after them. In the darkness and with the waving brightness of the street light, the zombies, we could finally make a good image of them.
The zombies were all rippening apart, but unlike in the movies, they weren't rotten, and they could run as fast as the student escaping them, but something that made it worse was they all just were screaming; each and every zombie just screamed, attracting others in the area and even those in the campus building.
"Someone's still out there."
"They won't make it." I clenched my fist. We could do nothing.
The scream stopped abruptly, replaced by a wet, gurgling sound. Then, silence.
I squeezed my eyes shut, swallowing the bile that rose in my throat. Morning wouldn't save us.
Nothing would.