'There's a decent few alleyways on the way so we'll stick to those, stay quiet'.
'We don't even know what it's like out there' I whispered, trying my level best to ignore the violent churning in my stomach. Of course I was determined, but petrified didn't touch the sides as to how I was feeling right now. We could be walking out into dead silence with bodies lining the streets, or crossing the path of those things. People. Though I really didn't believe 'people' was the right word for those demons.
'I know, but we're gonna have to adapt pretty quickly' he paused, 'Amelia, I know I've said, but please let me go collect him for y-'
'No' I replied sternly, 'You're not going out there alone. If you won't let me, I won't let you.'.
I finished tying my shoelaces as Laura caught my eye. She'd paled considerably and once again she was scratching at her arms till it had finally heartbreakingly dawned on me that it wasn't a nervous habit or tick, but a symptom. I could feel my lip quivering slightly as I took her in, bundled under a coat tapping away on her phone. I knew her mother wasn't answering, and I knew that wasn't the only reason she was sobbing. When I took a step towards her, David's arm shot out and halted me. Guilt lined every crease in his face.
'Amelia, you can't...' he said softly, voice cracking. And in that moment, I wondered if I had ever been a truly good friend to Laura, because I paused for only a second or two before nodding. We'd never been crazy close, a few jokes here and there, a bit of workplace banter, the odd party, but I still owed her more than being scared to approach her, to touch her.
'We showed you the special knock' I addressed everyone in the back room who were all spread out from one another, keeping feet of space between them.
'We'll let you straight back in' Deano said, pulling his girlfriend close to him. They were the only two who could manage to touch.
'Unless you're one of them' bucket man added, looking me dead in the eyes, 'I know you understand'.
I nodded.
'Course'.
'Keep an eye on the TV, we need to keep up to date' David said, 'Laura, text us if anything changes'.
She nodded slightly, lifting a hand to wave as we reached for the door we'd cleared. David took a long look at me, shaking his head.
'Please stay here'.
'Don't be boring, I wanna see the zombies' I laughed softly, aiming an elbow at his ribs. It took a second before he laughed properly and I joined him, relief flooding my body at the sensation of pretending, just for a second. There were tears filling my eyes and fear was pinching at every nerve inside me but I wasn't alone.
'You gonna butter them to death with that?' He nodded to the small knife in my hand and I braved a smile, eyeing the hammer in his grip.
'Alright Bob the builder, simmer down. You ready?'
'Ready'.
He pushed the door open before we had a chance to change our minds as daylight flooded the small room only fleetingly before we pushed it closed behind us. We were met with a small alleyway and though I'd have liked to kid myself and pretend we were greeted with silence, somewhere in the distance echoed a faint, guttural scream. Neither of us said anything.
'Stay low and stay silent' David mouthed, nodding for us to make our way forward. We pushed through the alleyway and it felt like a video game somehow, the tense few moments before you head straight into the last place you want to be. I was sweating, my stomach was churning rapidly and I could taste copper in my quivering mouth. My footsteps were silent but my heart hammered with the intensity of a thousand drums and it only made me feel worse, blurring my vision and making my head swim.
I held my eyes closed as we reached the end of the alleyway, we had to walk straight through a street before the following one, straight out in the open. David peeked the corner first and when he gestured for me to move, I did just that. The way we ran was so silent, so careful, that it crossed my mind we might be floating. It was eerily quiet; nobody seemed to be around and no bodies littered the street. When David grabbed my hand and led me through the alley to the next road which was equally empty, I wondered if perhaps things weren't quite as dire as they'd seemed. There wasn't even blood. I'd snapped my head to the right at the cracking of a twig, but a lone cat was just making its way across a fence, borderline mockingly.
'You good?' he asked me, holding my shoulders as we ducked sneakily into the next alleyway. I simply nodded, head darting side to side, terrified to relax.
'Everything seems too normal' I muttered, to which he nodded.
'It's never too busy round here in the day, anyway' he whispered, checking our angles, 'And everyone is probably holed up inside watching us through the windows'.
The thought sent a shudder through my body and I couldn't help but eye the curtains of the house nearest us, half expecting a decayed looking body to smash straight through it.
'Two streets done' I said out loud, 'we just need to get through this next one'.
We turned the corner closest to the school and it seemed as though a thrumming of noise was just a little too far away to make out what was being said. David and I looked at one another with a frown and began to jog towards the noise which was gradually becoming clearer the closer we got.
'Is that coming from the school?'
He couldn't answer me as we moved nearer, ducking low behind walls and scouting the area out before we headed anywhere. The building itself came into view as the noise simultaneously began to make sense, and my blood ran cold.
'God, no'.
It was a raw, animalistic cry, amplified by about a thousand. What sounded like hundreds of people making a borderline demonic noise, as though their throats and voices only existed to instil fear in everyone around them. It was hoarse and guttural and when David looked at me with pure fear in his eyes, I almost burst into tears.
'Get away, now' he hissed and he'd seen it before me; hell on earth. Because noises have a source and when I finally braved a look, I saw masses of bodies filling the school grounds, falling over one another, shuffling metre by metre. I understood now why the infected would signal the end of days, because I'd never seen anything quite like them.
Their faces were either paled beyond belief or smattered with a dark red canvas of blood, hair matted into their eyes. Their skin had discoloured and for so many of them was torn, as though trying to violently separate itself from its owner. Arms were slack by their sides or tearing into something on the ground but god, it was their eyes that made me lose all my faith. Sunken in, encircled by dark brown stains and white. Empty. Cold. The eyes of the infected were a true gateway to hell.
'Amelia, look at me'.
They had been people once. No more.
Fight or flight was kicking in and I was paralysed, my lungs tightening horribly. I could hear them breathing and crying out hoarsely, too close, far too close. My chest was burning, my face was sweating. If I moved, I'd die. If I didn't move, I'd die. I didn't want to die. I didn't want David to die.
'Amelia, it's okay, they don't see us' He put a hand on my arm with wide eyes, staring straight into mine, 'I need you to back up the way you came, and don't stand up. Stay behind this wall. Do not run. You got it?'
'I can't' I choked out and my voice was barely my own, pinched with raw fear, 'What are they?'
'People, just people. Back away, Amelia. Right now'.
My feet shuffled backwards in time with my erratic breathing and I felt like a toddler learning to walk again, one unsteady foot at a time. I could hear their footsteps.
'Keep going, perfect' David encouraged me and I didn't care that I was being difficult, I only cared about putting distance between those things and us. About waking up from whatever terrible sleep paralysis I'd fallen into. How was any of this possible? It seemed mere minutes ago all this had started and everything was spiralling. Things like this didn't happen in real life. It took an embarrassingly long time for me to halt my breathless shuffling before the cloud in my mind steadied and I remembered the only reason I was here.
'Christ, David, Noah's inside there. Noah'.
'I know, and we'll find another way in, but this isn't safe. We will die here'.
'Was the main door open?!' I panicked, 'Were they inside?'
He shook his head, looking behind us every few seconds.
'It was closed. Mia, go back to the cafe the way we came and I'll bring Noah to you'.
I wanted to. God, I wanted us to run and never come back, but only with my brother. Deep down, David must've known no force was moving me away from this school which looked suspiciously like the gates of hell.
'I'm not doing that'.
'They need to know that all these... things are only a couple of streets away'.
'They'll hear them before they see them, stop trying to get me away from here. The gym has an outdoor entrance and it's open during the day, we'll have to go in there. Do you think we can do that?'
He paused and took a long, wary look at me before nodding, signalling for me to move along the wall some more.
'Fast, though. I don't know what the fuck disease has taken over those people but they're not friendly. They can't see us'.
'Noted' I replied, but my voice cracked so much that the word made no sense. The only way we'd get through this was without thinking, so I took a breath, pretended this was all a dream or a bad movie, and pictured Noah's face in my mind.
'He's seven, he needs us. Let's go'.
My head throbbed as I peeked up over the next wall, noting the entrance to the gym seemed empty. I tried not to dwell on the fact only the entrance of the school was heaving with them, signalling that might actually be where they came from. Inside.
'On my three' I ordered, 'One, two... run!'
Our feet thudded as we pelted towards the gym entrance, hopefully just out of sight of the throngs of infected people no more than twelve metres away from us. I made sure there wasn't a single thought in my mind as I pulled open the large door a crack, eyeing the empty gym and silently gesturing for David to follow me in. I winced as our footsteps echoed, bouncing wall to wall as we took in our surroundings. It was too quiet for a school day, too empty for a lunchtime. Everything about this place was too quiet, and it sent my pulse racing.
'Think logically' David muttered, eyeing the door behind us, 'There's an emergency broadcast, you get the kids to lay under the tables, right? Lunch had just ended, they'd be back in class. You realise those... things are outside, and you lock the doors, turn off the lights, and bolt the doors to your classrooms. The only way we're gonna find Noah is if you have any idea what classroom he's in'.
'Christ' I massaged my temple, thinking as hard as I could, 'I helped him with his geography homework last night, but what are the chances that's where he is? Fuck, David, we need to get to reception, find the lesson timetables'.
'Do you know wh-'
He was cut off by loud footsteps in the hallway outside the gym, through a door we hadn't yet explored. I felt my eyes widen and I took a step to call out, but David clamped a hand over my mouth and shook his head with wide eyes, holding up a hand. His body pressed against mine and held me in place, and though my blood had run cold with fear, he offered a grip of comfort.
'Listen'.
The steps were slow, uneven. There was no purpose behind them, and after a few seconds, it sounded almost like the feet were dragging along the floor.
'Oh my god' I mouthed as tears sprung to my eyes. There was no time to duck behind anything, we were in the middle of a huge gym and the door was wide open.
'Lay down' David hissed and pushed me clumsily to the floor, where we lay as close to the ground as possible, holding our breaths.
The stumbling legs grew ever closer and as my heart hammered against the floor, the subject of my nightmares moved into view, dragging itself - or himself - down the hallway in such an eerie way my hairs stood on end. He almost looked normal from down here, and perhaps we wouldn't have known if not for the jerky movements and small trail of blood trickling behind him, painting the floor with death. His legs cracked as they moved one in front of the other, and from here we could hear his angry wheezing breaths, the drops of blood hitting the floor as he went to move out of view. That wasn't a person. That was what I imagined bodies looked like when they'd been found weeks after they'd died, TV programmes with awful endings and the subject of recurring nightmares. But it was walking. He was walking.
We probably felt relief a touch too soon because about a second before the infected man disappeared behind the door, his leg dragged to a slow stop and he stood swaying in such an awful, predatory way. I hadn't known true fear until the moment he slowly turned his head and stared into the gym with those dead, empty eyes and slack jaw, and I felt like he was glaring straight into my soul. Moment after moment passed while I clutched the knife so tightly in my hand that it sliced at my skin. But in reality, this predator was looking straight behind us and satisfied with scaring us half to death, continued to move back down the corridor. We let out long, long breaths.
'They're inside' I said in a dull tone, barely able to comprehend anything anymore. Nothing was reasonable or logical. Death was wandering the halls of my brother's school, and we were laying face down on the wooden floor trying to dodge it.
'This place could be crawling with them' David said, glancing behind us again. He was right, probably.
'It was maths' I said after a few beats of silence, 'He said after lunch he had to get through maths, then his geography presentation'.
'Great, that's great' David nodded and he looked reassured, but I didn't. The pit of my stomach was empty, my arms felt like they were being weighed down. Those things were inside, and so was my baby brother.
'Until we see otherwise, he's locked in a classroom, safe. Alright?'
I nodded, but it felt like somebody had knocked the wind out of me. I'd wake up eventually and my brother would be asking for help with his homework again. I'd do even better this time, I swore it.
'I had a meeting with his teacher in the maths classrooms once, I remember them. It's down the hall, through the dining room and on the left. That's where he's bound to be'.
Hearing my words out loud woke me up a bit and I felt brave enough to slowly rise to my feet, letting David follow suit. He was going to be okay, and I was going to get him. I'd just decided that, and it was true.
'Don't think, just run' I said and he took a breath, nodding towards me.
'I'm going first. Fast and silent. We see one, head back to this door and bolt. Amelia, be careful. Please'.
I nodded, trying to ignore the fact my head was swimming. The knots in my stomach were worth it, because Noah.
'Hey, imagine if he took the day off sick today' I joked weakly, and David laughed, pulling me into him.
'If that's the case, Mia, I'll kill you myself' he replied and I smiled, feeling a little more brave.
'Down the hall. Through the dining room. Left' I relayed, and he nodded.
'Follow me, turn straight back if anything happens' he said, and I knew he wanted to say more but I shook my head, pointing to the door.
'We're gonna be fine. Let's go'.