Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
THE BICKERING CONTINUED, AS THE HOURS WENT ON.Days went by, and it only just then began to slow down due to how hungry they were getting. They would soon have to move to different hallways, failing to find many other people who survived, and they began to leave the school to see what was going on outside of the world. If by any chance, this issue was only at the high school. They would have to look for other teacher's lounges, to scavenge whatever they could find, but it wasn't much, considering how many students and staff were there. It was a one in a thousand chance that they'd be the only people to think of checking the lounges.
Eventually, they had to make their way out of the school. One would raid the vending machines for water bottles, while the others kept a lookout for the undead一 Estela wanted to call them zombies, but Madison thought that she was being too nerdy and that zombie apocalypses were never going to happen. But she couldn't deny the fact that these students didn't have their insides (she had to learn the hard way by attempting to save her current boyfriend, and a boy who tormented Estela in middle school), so they had to agree on something.
The service inside the schools was awful, leading them to be unable to call anyone. The text messages took a long time to send, so they had to use online news and social media to get information. Apparently, officials had a safe zone, but the question was, how were they supposed to sit tight when they had no idea when one of them was going to drop dead due to starvation? How were they going to find another place that was safe enough that they didn't have to worry about any of the undead breaking in?
A week and a half in, they lost Ms. Suwannarat while they were looking for shelter. They found a grocery store not far from the school, but there were a few of the undead that were walking mindlessly around it. They had a plan to go in there and barricade all of the doors, but Madison made extra noise going in right behind Estela, and Ms. Suwannarat had to pay the price.
It was about three weeks since the cafeteria accident when a few teams came into the area of Ritchland High School to search for survivors. Luckily, only 5-7% of the school's population had died and reanimated, and very few of the undead made it out of the building to spread the virus. Unfortunately, the assholes survived, and it was very unpleasant for Estela, as she had to share a quarantine space with terrible people. It may sound a bit fucked up, but she thanked god that something so traumatic shook them enough to leave her alone unless they were trying to be nice.
A month in the safe zone had passed, and Ritchland was in the clear for people to resume living their lives as normal as possible. But Estela couldn't just revert to that state. She had witnessed so much death, and even had to get her hands dirty a few times herself just to survive. Sure, they made a specific grief class for every student to attend, but she wasn't sure that it helped much. Her parents even sent her to therapy, but she was making very little progress.
It had been two years before Estela finally started letting her guard down. She was a junior now, and was so close to getting as far away from Ritchland as possible. She even marked off the days on her calendar, as if she was some character in a movie. She was beyond ready to leave her past behind. and get started on her new life.
