"Ahhhhhhhh!"
I woke up to the piercing screams of several people. My body jolted upright, and my vision was still hazy from sleep. My face felt warm from being pressed against my arm, and faint lines marked my skin where I had been resting. Still groggy, I rubbed my eyes and turned toward the source of the commotion.
Most people in the hall were facing the windows. A cold morning breeze rushed through the open panes, sending a chill down my spine. The girls covered their mouths, their eyes wide with horror, and the boys stood frozen, confusion evident on their faces.
I pushed myself up, my legs unsteady, and stepped forward to see what had happened, but lo and behold... I saw them.
Nine bodies
They lay sprawled across the floor with their bodies twisted and broken, their limbs bent at unnatural angles. Their bodies were crushed, their insides smeared across the cold tiles in pools of deep red. Blood had seeped into the cracks of the floor, spreading like an infection, with the pool sending a metallic scent that sent the zombies into a frenzy.
My breath caught in my throat.
'Isn't that the old man?'
The thought struck me like a hammer to the chest. My gaze darted across the room to where he had been sleeping the night before.
Nothing.
The spot was empty. The only things left behind were a discarded phone, a worn-out blue bag, and a pair of black leather shoes that had seen better days with them being creased and scuffed and their soles worn thin from years of use, with a pair of black socks that had been stuffed haphazardly inside, one hanging loosely over the edge.
'There were twelve individuals in this room before, and from the window lay 21 dead bodies'
'one…two…five…six…nine…plus me' I continued.
'That's ten, so two people died.'
I had counted the heads of everyone in the room, with three still sleeping, two sitting on the benches, and five, including me, staring at the dead bodies that had attracted some zombies.
I took a step back from the window, my stomach twisting into knots. The sight of the bodies below, their twisted limbs, and the deep red pools of blood staining the tiles was overwhelming. My heartbeat pounded in my ears, and for a moment, I felt like I couldn't breathe. The reality of the situation was sinking in fast.
'They jumped,'
I thought, swallowing down the bile rising in my throat.
'They actually jumped.'
The old man and the other two—whoever they were—had thrown themselves out of the window six floors from the ground floor, as with them choosing death over whatever nightmare awaited us. It hadn't even been a full day since the outbreak, and already people were breaking. Giving up. I clenched my fists, my nails digging into my palms.
'I need to get out of here before I become one of them.'
I turned away from the window, my mind racing. The lecture hall was still filled with a suffocating silence, broken only by the occasional sob or the low murmuring of those trying to process what had just happened. The three people still sleeping were completely unaware of what had happened, their bodies undisturbed despite the commotion. The others were just standing there, like deer caught in headlights, watching as the zombies below clawed and gnawed at the fresh corpses.
The smell of blood would attract more of them. We needed to move soon.
I scanned the room, looking for anything useful. The old man's abandoned bag caught my attention. Swallowing my guilt, I stepped forward and kneeled beside it. I hesitated for a moment before unzipping it. There was no room for shame in survival.
Inside, I found a half-empty water bottle, a pack of unsalted biscuits, a flashlight, a few crumpled receipts, and a folded piece of paper inside his wallet that held his debit or credit cards. I ignored the paper; I began stuffing the water bottle and biscuits into my bag before glancing at the man's discarded phone. The screen was cracked and the battery was nearly dead, but it was still functional except for the LCD ink that seeped from the upper corners.
'Maybe I can find something useful on it.'
I pocketed the phone before standing up, glancing toward the others as they didn't see what I was doing.
"We need to leave," I said, my voice firmer than I felt. "The smell will bring more of them. We don't want to be here when that happens."
One of the girls—a petite woman with short, curly brunette hair—looked at me with wide, tear-streaked eyes. "Leave? And go where? The whole campus is overrun! Did you see them down there?" She pointed toward the window, her hand trembling. "They're everywhere. There's nowhere safe."
She wasn't wrong. The campus had been swarming with the undead since yesterday. I had no idea if anywhere was safe. But I knew staying here wasn't an option either; given what had happened last night, I thought maybe... maybe they had been cleared.
"We can't stay here," I insisted. "We'll be trapped. We need to at least try to find a better place to hide."
One of the guys, a tall, muscular student I recognised from another class, crossed his arms. "And what do you suggest? Running out there like idiots? We don't even know where to go."
I exhaled sharply, running a hand through my hair. "I don't know yet. But I do know that if we stay here, we'll either starve or get torn apart when more of them show up."
Silence followed my words. No one wanted to admit I was right, and I knew they all knew it.
A soft groan broke through the stillness. My head snapped toward the sound.
One of the sleeping students was stirring, shifting slightly on the floor. A low, guttural noise escaped his lips, and my blood ran cold.
'No…'
The moment he turned his head, I knew.
*Bam*