The vibration led him to Classroom JSS1-B.
The door stood half open, Aren nudged it wider with two fingers and slipped inside.
Chairs were overturned, A whiteboard marker had rolled dry across the floor. Bags were split open, books scattered, one desk dragged hard enough to leave scratch lines across the tiles.
The room looked like panic had started small and ended fast.
The phone lay near the teacher's table, buzzing weakly against the floor, He picked it up.
Unknown number!!!!
Repeated call attempts, the last message preview shown on the notification bar....."Where are you? Don't go outside—"
The battery was at three percent.
He swallowed and set it down.
Whoever owned it wasn't here anymore,
For a moment his mind blanked then refocused.
"My sister was in SS2 am at the bottom floor so she won't be here, I gat to go Upstairs."
He turned to leave but froze.
A sound from the corridor.
Dragging footstepsof sounds of shoe against tile being Paused then Draged again.
His breath stopped halfway out.
They were inside.
How?
I thought I closed the gate. I did closed it .....
Then he remembered the bent fence section near the back field. The broken security booth window. With Multiple entrances and also some Emergency exits.
It seems they were too many gaps.
More sounds joined the dragging, soft throat noises, broken breathing, a wet clicking sound like teeth working with nothing to chew.
Aren edged toward the door and looked through the narrow gap.
They were students and adults in the mix.
School uniforms stained dark, A cleaner still wearing a faded blue apron. One teacher who looked half-recognized by the sleeve pattern.
Faces gray, eyes wrong, movements loose but purposeful.
They were eight of them.
They didn't look fast but they didn't look distracted either.
One small figure stood among them maybe around six years old.... head tilted, mouth open slightly, dried blood across the chin.
Something twisted hard inside Aren's chest at the sight.
He couldn't fathom the pain the little kid went through...
But they stopped drifting around, their Noses suddenly lifted up as if sense something.
Their heads angled to the classroom he was in.
They hadn't seen him.
But they got the scent of him.
"Of course," he whispered silently. "Of course you can."
They began clustering near the classroom door there by Blocking his only exist.
"My luck is trash."
His heart pounded so loud he was sure they could hear it. His fingers tightened around the broken chair leg he hadn't realized he'd picked up. It felt too light to matter.
It seemed he will have to Fight them.
But it clear look impossible to him, as he wasn't sure he can survive it.
He thought about Slip past them but the entrance was already congested so how..?
It felt worse since he couldn't think of a solution for now.
The interface flickered softly across his sight, he didn't give it his attention since he was distracted right now.
He didn't like this at all.
But the image of his siblings waiting, hiding, alone burned through the hesitation.
"If I turn back now," he murmured, jaw tightening, "then why did I come at all?"
One infected bumped the door wider.
Two more pressed in behind it.
There was no more delay from him.
Aren exhaled once, steadying his hands.
"Oh well," he said quietly to himself, shoulders setting. "Looks like I still have to get through"
He moved first.
He kicked the nearest desk hard into the doorway, smashing it into their knees and tangling the front pair. Before they could fall clear, he surged forward and swung the chair leg down at the closest skull.
Impact traveled up his arms like hitting wet wood.
The infected dropped, twitching then went stiff,
A flicker of light pass through his eyes.
He didn't celebrate it.
He Didn't bother to check.
He shoved through the collapsing gap while they tangled over each other, took a slash across his sleeve from grasping fingers, and burst into the corridor at full speed.
The desk slammed into them and bought him two seconds.
Two seconds was all Aren had and he spent it moving forward, not back.
The broken chair leg in his hand felt too light to trust, but it was what he had. The first infected tried to rise from the tangle of limbs and wood. Aren stepped in and swung downward with everything in his shoulders.
The crack felt wrong, it was not like the movies more like hitting soaked bamboo.
The student dropped and twitched. He didn't check if it was dead.
The second lunged low, fingers clawing for his waist. Aren jerked sideways and the nails scraped his shirt instead of skin. Fabric tore with a dry rip. He felt air touch his side where cloth used to be and a cold spike of fear shot through him.
He got a Scratch?... Will he get infected?
No time to answer it.
He drove his knee forward into the attacker's face and followed with another desperate swing. This one glanced off the temple instead of crushing it. The infected staggered but didn't fall. They were more durable than they looked or maybe he was weaker than he wanted to believe.
Two more pushed through the doorway at once.
They were too close to him.
He grabbed the fallen desk edge and flipped it hard into them, using leverage instead of strength. It crashed chest-high and knocked them backward into the doorframe, jamming one arm between wood and metal with a snapping sound.
It kept reaching out trying to grab him.
"Stay down!" Aren barked. not because they would listen, but because he needed to hear himself be loud.
Something hit his back a glancing blow spinning him half around. The cleaner in the blue apron had come from the side wall, faster than the others. Its teeth snapped inches from his shoulder. He shoved the chair leg sideways into its mouth like a bar and felt jaws clamp down on the wood instead of him.