AN: I recommend listening to the World War Z theme during this chapter (｀∀´)Ψ
////
Suddenly, the glass on one of the sliding doors broke open; a mangled and bloodied head had bashed its way through its surface. We all watched in horror as the head tilted up, revealing a mangled man with black hair.
"Raghwr!" The bloodied man, no, not a man, the creature growled.
But what caught my attention the most was that half of the man's face was missing, almost as if its flesh had torn it off.
Isn't that the community center coordinator?
Blood dripped down his head as his teeth clattered at the sight of us all. From behind the man were several more transformed adults and students. Their groans, growls, and moans became loud and terrifying now that there wasn't any glass to muffle their noises.
"W-what the hell is that?!" One of Tamanawa's student council members, Mamoru, I think his name was, yelled loudly.
The sound only bolstered the deranged, bloodied man's actions, as he turned his head towards Mamoru and began biting the air repeatedly in his direction. I was reminded of the way several of the people outside had been eating away at their victims. Their teeth ripping and pulling away at their flesh. My eyes slid to the two sliding doors.
Those doors won't hold forever!
My eyes shifted over to the work tables in the room.
No, those won't move. They're bolted into the floor.
I scanned the room, and my gaze landed on the large stacks of lockers. In that moment, I knew what I had to do. I rushed to the far end of the lockers and attempted to push them toward the door. However, as I exerted all my strength, I realized just how heavy they were. I wasn't strong enough. I needed help.
"Geh! Hayama! Tobe! Everyone! Help me push the lockers in front of the doors!" I yelled and saw the mangled man's head freeze and turn to me. He then shoved his entire arm through the window and made to reach in my direction.
Did it react to my yelling? Is it... sound? Do these... things react to sound?
I looked back at all the male students in the room and saw they had yet to move. Their eyes shook with unbridled fear. "Hurry! Do you want to die!?"
With urgency in their hearts, Hayato, Tobe, Yoshiteru, Saika, Yamato, Oka, Mamoru, Tamanawa, and the other male students charged towards the towering stacks of lockers. They planted their feet firmly and dug in, muscles straining as we all began to push with all our might. Yet, despite our collective efforts, the lockers shifted only a few inches, creeping forward like a snail in a race. Our grunts of effort filled the air as we continued pushing, mingling with the heavy sound of the loud growling from outside.
I then risked a glance at the door and saw the bloodied man leaning into the room. It wouldn't be long before he fell inside with us all. And if the loud groans and growls from outside told me anything, he wouldn't be the only one.
I looked over at the girls in the class, ready to tell them to try to push the man back into the halls. But I saw that most of them were hiding behind the workstations or frozen in fear as they watched the growling man. His blood began to slide down the door and pool onto the floor; the broken glass was stabbing into his stomach. Slicing it apart.
Doesn't that hurt?
Suddenly, several other hands began reaching through the door's opening, waving frantically. Their bruised and bloody hands opened and closed as if trying to grab or claw away at anything. With all that movement, I saw the sliding doors begin to shift.
"Yukinoshita! Snap out of it! You all have to push them out the window! We can't let them inside!" I yelled, hoping that she would take control of the girls.
Yukino looked at me while holding her trembling arm. She seemed distressed, her eyes darting between the door and the feral man outside. As she focused on the struggling man who was growling, she shook her head and began to withdraw into herself. "Nee-san is still out there… we-we can't close the doors," she stammered.
I blinked at her answer and looked back at the struggling man. He had forced half his body through the window. It wouldn't be long before he was inside. "Push!" I yelled, and we all gave another mighty push forward. The lockers shifted slightly. The heavy storage units were now in front of the door frames.
We won't make it in time!
Surprisingly, Yui, Meguri, and Kaori grabbed a couple of brooms from the corner of the room and rushed toward the man. They began to push and prod him back with all their strength.
"Yui-senpai!" Iroha yelled and grabbed several empty pots from the work tables. "I'll help too!" She threw them as hard as she could at the man's head. Seeing this, several other girls grew brave enough to begin hurling objects as well.
Clangs and bangs echoed in the room as new pieces of cookware crashed against the man's head and face. They didn't push him back much, but they distracted him enough to stop his forward movement. Good. That bought us time. Slowly and steadily, Yui, Meguri, and Kaori were shoving the violent man back out the door. With another heave, the lockers, now halfway over the doors, pressed the man firmly against the window frame.
"Hikki, hurry!" Yui yelled, her face twisted with fear, but she pushed on. I nodded, and we all pushed with all our might, moving the lockers forward a foot. Sweat slid down my forehead and landed in my eye. It stung, but I paid it no mind.
Just a little more!
"Let go!" Kaori yelled as one of the man's hands gripped her broom and began to yank it and her toward him. She tried to pull the broom back, but inadvertently began to pull the man inside in her struggle.
"Stop it! Let the broom go!" Seeing this, Hayato yelled. His breath came out in quick bursts as his face was flushed and covered in sweat, and he pushed the lockers with all his might. His shout went unheard as Kaori gave another strong pull, using her entire body weight to retake her broom. My heart sank as the disfigured man was yanked into the room just as we finally managed to push the lockers in front of both doors, blocking the entrances.
"He's inside!" One of the Kaihin girls screamed as she and several others ran to the far-off wall.
"L-look! His stomach, it's-it's…"
We all watched with bated breath as the bloodied man awkwardly rose to his feet. He growled and hissed as his body twitched and jerked. In his frenzied struggle to squeeze into the room, the broken glass from the window had dug into his midsection and sliced through his stomach. Blood and intestines fell out of the wound, splashing on the ground in a heap of gore. Eliciting screams of terror from those inside. His murky, white eyes moved all around in their sockets as he faced us all.
"AAHH!" The loudest of them all, Chika, Kaori's friend, yelled in terror from the back of the room. Her scream prompted the man to roar and scramble towards her. He limped forward but crashed into one of the work tables and fell in a heap of wiggling, bloodied limbs.
"H-Hayato! W-what do we do, bro?!" Tobe yelled from beside me as we watched the man stand up slowly and crack his neck. He opened and closed his mouth repeatedly, and the loud click-clacks of his teeth hitting one another filled the room. Hayato looked around, saw one of the wooden rolling pins used for spreading dough, and ran towards it.
"Everyone! Get to this side of the room!" Hayato yelled as he pointed to the left wall. Everyone did as he said and rushed towards the wall. The bloodied man turned his head at the sounds of the stomping shoes and cries of fright and began lumbering towards us with a growl. Hayato stepped forward and held the small rolling pin in front of him like a knight would a sharp blade.
"S-stop right there! Y-you need help! If you calm down, we'll call for an ambulance!"
You can't be serious!
I watched the man's head jerk to Hayato. His teeth clanked loudly as more of his blood fell to the ground, covering it in crimson. The only response he gave was a loud, unintelligible growl.
"Raghr!" The man roared and rushed Hayato.
I felt my school jacket get tugged and turned to see Iroha beside me, clutching it tightly. Her hands shook as she watched the bloodied man get closer to Hayato. With every forward step he took, Hayato took one back.
"Hayama-senpai!" Iroha yelled in worry.
"Hayato!" Yumiko also screamed.
"This is your last warning! Stop!" Hayato yelled, and the man lunged.
Using the speed and skills he'd worked hard to gain through the soccer club, Hayato evaded the man's wild grab by moving to the left at the last second.
Hayato raised the rolling pin above his head but hesitated to bring it down. The man lunged again, managing to grab Hayato by the shoulders, trying to pull him closer to his chattering teeth.
Quickly, Hayato brought the rolling pin down and shoved it between the man's teeth. From there, the two began to struggle to overpower each other, but eventually, Hayato began to lose. He was a young man, barely eighteen, while the person across from him was a fully grown man with better muscle definition. It didn't help that Hayato was still tired after having to push the heavy lockers across the room.
"Hayato!" Tobe yelled and ran behind the growling man. Tobe wrapped an arm around the growling man's throat and pulled him back with a yell. Using this opportunity to escape. Hayato slipped out of his hold.
With the man now restrained, Hayato pulled back and struck the man with the rolling pin across the face. Tobe leaned back slightly due to fear of being accidentally hit as well; this, however, caused him to loosen his grip. Spinning around, the mangled man didn't pay the strike any mind and turned to Tobe. With a growl, he lunged down and bit down on Tobe's forearm.
"Ah! He-he bit me!" Tobe yelled in agony and tried to push the man off him, but couldn't. The man was too strong.
Hayato stepped to the side as Tobe kicked the man back, finally managing to escape his hold due to the force of the blow. Tobe hissed and looked down at his forearm. It was bloody with deep gashes made from the man's teeth.
The seemingly unstoppable man stumbled backward from the kick. It was then that Yamato rushed in with a battle cry and jumped in the air to land a devastating kick that sent the man crashing through the back wall's glass window. It seemed that Yamato practiced some type of martial art.
We all rushed to the window after hearing the loud thud of a body crashing on concrete and watched as the man lay in a growing puddle of his own blood. With the danger now gone, several people rushed over to Hayato, Yamato, and Tobe.
"Tobe, you okay, man?" Yamato asked quickly as he and Hayama checked on their friend.
"You three were so brave!" One of the Kaihin girls said. "Hayama-san, you were incredible!"
Iroha and Hina ran over to Tobe and checked on his wound. It had begun to bleed profusely. My eyes watched as his blood soaked through his school uniform and dripped onto the floor.
"Tobe-senpai! Are you okay?!" Iroha asked frantically.
"Here! Let me treat that!" Hina said as she ran under one of the workstations, being careful to avoid all the blood and gore, and pulled out a first aid kit. She quickly began treating Tobe's arm with disinfectant and bandages. "That was reckless, you idiot!"
"Haha! You know I had to help my bro!" Tobe said with a pained smile as he rubbed his head. For some reason, I found myself staring at the bandaged wound on his forearm. It began to darken as it absorbed his blood. "But man... I'm tired! I guess I'm out of shape. I need to run more laps."
"Tobe, here, sit down," Yumiko said as she placed a chair behind Tobe. He thanked her and took a seat. There was a growing thin sheet of sweat on his face now.
"H-Hikki. What's the matter? Are you okay?" Yui asked me as she placed a hand on my shoulder.
"Huh? Uh, it's nothing, I'm fine," I said and walked over to the broken window. I looked down and saw that the man had landed awkwardly with his legs now broken. Remarkably, he wasn't dead from the impact or the rest of his injuries. No, he was still alive and began crawling back to the street. The burning bus seemed to catch his attention. "It's still alive..."
"H-Hikigaya-kun... I'm-I'm sorry," Yukino said with regret. "You needed my help, and I... I ended up being useless."
"Yukinon, that's not true!" Yui said quickly and ran to Yukino's side.
"It's okay, Yukinoshita. I don't blame you for freezing like that. That was a tough situation," I said with a sigh and looked over at Hayato. He was kneeling next to Tobe. Tobe had begun shaking and sweating profusely, almost as if he had a terrible fever. Hayato took off his jacket and wrapped it around his shoulders.
"Here you go, Tobe."
"T-thanks, b-bro."
With the attack seemingly over, everyone was shaken and in disbelief. I looked around and saw everyone sitting against the workstations and the walls. Hayato and his group were taking care of Tobe in the center of the room.
Good. Everyone is staying quiet.
I remembered earlier that the man had only reacted to the loud noises and yells from everyone inside. Staying quiet will likely cause them to lose interest until the next loud noise occurs. At least, I hoped that was the case.
I'm not completely sure, but these things must be blind. At least, to an extent.
I was wondering if these ravenous people could still be identified as human. Humans don't eat each other and don't walk around with large pieces of flesh or with limbs missing. This thought made me turn to Tobe. Specifically, to the bite wound on his forearm. His body was shaking, and his skin was graying. Dark and brown veins were now visible on his neck and face.
Wait... can it be? No, it couldn't!
"Tobe-kun! What's the matter?!" Yui asked just as Tobe slumped forward onto the floor.
Hayato and the rest of his clique rushed over to him in a panic. Just as Yui and Iroha were about to rush over as well, I held them back. They turned to me with a questioning stare.
"Hikigaya-kun?" Yukino asked, confused.
"Tobe!" Hayato yelled. The groans and banging outside had grown louder due to their yelling. "Tobe! What's the matter?"
"Step back!" Meguri said and stepped over Tobe. Everyone in the room looked on in concern. Meguri leaned her head over Tobe's mouth and listened. She pulled back with a flinch and pressed two fingers on Tobe's neck.
After a few seconds, Meguri swallowed deeply, her eyes shook in horror. "He's... he's dead."