Miss Selena's voice faded into silence after reading the last line. The words lingered in the air like a tangible weight, and those who had listened with her were suspended in the same heavy quiet. The echoes of her announcement, crisp yet haunting over the loudspeaker, seemed to imprint themselves on the minds of everyone present.
On the upper parking floor, in a dimly lit room labeled "Dressing Room," four figures stood with tense stillness. The room belonged to the school's drama club, a small sanctuary cluttered with costumes of every imaginable design hanging from racks that lined the walls. The faint metallic scent of makeup and talcum mingled with the stale smell of old fabrics. In the center of the room, a plump boy in a Joker costume bit into an apple, his eyes unwaveringly fixed on the loudspeaker as though expecting it to move, to speak again. To his right stood a man in his thirties, clad in a P.E. uniform, shoulders tight with tension, eyes darting between the speaker and the boy. In front of them, two students, final-year, wearing the familiar school uniforms, stood motionless—a boy and a girl, both staring as though the very air vibrated with Miss Selena's words.
The room's dimness was punctuated by the weak glow of a single zero-watt bulb hanging from the ceiling. Its faint yellow light stretched long shadows across the scattered costumes and makeup-laden table at the center. Shoes and other theatrical props were haphazardly scattered across the floor, reflecting occasional glimmers of the pale light. The silence in the room was heavy, broken only by the distant, muffled groans that seeped through the walls from below—the unmistakable sound of the infected.
Outside, the parking floor was deserted. Every other living being had succumbed to the Z virus, leaving these four as the fragile remnants of life, huddled together amid the chaos.
A floor above, a classroom bore witness to a different kind of terror. Two students, Adam and JinJian, crouched on the lower tier of the classroom floor. Adam, tall and tense, constantly scanned the room for any sign of a breach, while JinJian, her dark hair falling over her face, clutched the edge of a desk as if it could anchor her to reality. Fear was etched deep in both of them, yet neither dared to speak, as though sound itself could summon the horrors lurking just beyond the glass.
Their classroom door was locked, a flimsy line of defense against the horde outside. Above the door, the upper wall was entirely fitted with transparent glass, providing a full view of the chaos beyond. Beneath the glass, a short section of solid wall offered minimal protection. Outside, zombies pressed their heads against the glass, clawing and banging, their groans a low, rhythmic drum that threatened to unnerve anyone in its reach.
The classroom itself was a tableau of disorder. Desks lay toppled, books strewn in jagged patterns across the floor. Blood stained the walls and glass in jagged streaks, a silent testimony to a struggle that had already occurred. On the right-hand side, an LED monitor displayed a mathematics lecture, its volume set around fifty percent, faintly audible outside, drawing the attention of the zombies clustered below the window. Every now and then, a hand pressed against the glass with enough force to rattle it, a chilling reminder of the fragility of their barrier.
Adam whispered under his breath, "If they break through, we're done. We won't last a minute…" but his words were drowned by the relentless banging outside. JinJian, trembling, pressed herself closer to the wall, her heartbeat echoing in her ears as if it were the only sound keeping her tethered to life.
Two classrooms down, a single boy stood in his room, a wall of barricaded desks and chairs forming a towering barrier in front of his door. Jiang Yan, a name that carried a quiet intensity, surveyed the approaching zombies with a calculated gaze. His classroom mirrored the chaos of the one below—desks and chairs overturned, papers scattered like fallen leaves, and the faint metallic tang of blood in the air—but Jiang Yan had prepared differently.
The glass of his window was cracked, thin lines spider-webbing across its surface, fragile and ready to give way under the pressure of the horde outside. Every muscle in Jiang Yan's body was coiled like a spring; his eyes, dark and sharp, traced the movements of each zombie with the precision of a hunter. To the right, an LED displayed a biology lecture at medium volume, inadvertently drawing the attention of the zombies directly toward him, yet he remained unmoved. His mind raced, calculating, planning, anticipating. Each groan, each scraping sound outside was another data point, another variable in the equation of survival he had silently memorized.
The zombies outside swayed and pressed against the glass, oblivious to the strategy behind the barricade. Jiang Yan exhaled slowly, allowing the calm he had cultivated to mask the storm of fear and adrenaline within. His survival instincts were honed, his patience razor-sharp, and his resolve absolute.
Above them, on the upper floor, Hasnain and his four friends—Sana, Afra, and another boy who had lost control of his mind and now considered Hasnain his enemy—stood as the last vestiges of normalcy in a floor otherwise claimed by the infected. No other living being remained. Every shadow, every shuffling noise in the hallway hinted at the omnipresence of the Z virus, reminding them that life here was fragile, tenuous, and fleeting.
Finally, in the broadcast room, Miss Selena continued her announcements, her voice a beacon of clarity amid the encroaching chaos. Two students, Yarm and Lena, flanked her, their eyes wide with a mixture of fear and determination. The room was a small sanctuary against the world outside, yet the presence of zombies loomed in every corner. Beyond this floor, only the terrace remained untouched, a small, fragile space of temporary safety.
Miss Selena's mind raced with strategies, instructions, and contingencies. Her voice, calm yet commanding, carried across the building, reaching those still alive, keeping hope alive in the face of overwhelming terror. The zombies outside moved in synchrony, drawn to sound, light, and movement, yet inside, the living clung to the fragile barrier between order and chaos.
Every floor told a story of survival, despair, and strategy. Every character, from the plump Joker-boy silently eating his apple to the lone Jiang Yan analyzing his adversaries, reflected a different facet of the human response to unimaginable horror. The air was thick with tension, the smell of fear almost tangible, yet life persisted in these small pockets, defiant and unbroken.