"UWAHHHHH STOP DON'T HURT ME! I-I DON'T TASTE GOOD."
Diana fell onto the ground feeling defeated. She didn't want to turn out like the girl she saw on the first floor when this "apocalypse" started. She would rather kill herself than get ripped to pieces. While awaiting a painful tearing sensation nothing was happening. Only the banging and groaning from outside.
"Hey, are you alright?"
"Eh?…"
Diana looked up and saw a group of students who seemed disheveled and a bit scared staring at her
"You see I told you it was a person!"
A girl who was standing next to Diana spoke first she had fiery hair and freckles around her nose area. She looked like a fox she had a furry scarf covering her neck. Diana couldn't see the others too well from her vision getting blurry.
"…Are you okay? You didn't get bit right?"
"…mmm.."
'ah… I'm safe-…'
Diana felt water droplets hitting her hands while she stayed half laying half kneeling on the floor. She faced her head down not letting anyone see she was crying uncontrollably being too afraid to show anyone her awkward demeanor. The adrenaline rush was gone in a flash. She felt immense pain in her left ankle and the bruises she sustained on her knees and arms from the fall. Her head was also throbbing since the injury from earlier didn't exactly go away. Diana had a low pain tolerance and she cries very easily which made the situation from earlier 10x worse, running for her life was also a big factor as well.
"Why are you all just standing around?"
Another voice came back from behind the red hair, she went over to Diana squatted down and embraced her in her arms.
"Shhh you're okay now."
"mph-… uwaahhhh"
A loud cry rang in the room Diana stuffed her face in the unknown girls uniform and kept crying. Rubbing her entire face into her shirt she returned the embrace. She felt a warm hand rub her head and back. It felt familiar and she slowly fell asleep due to exhaustion and fatigue due to the physical and mental attacks.
…
"What are you thinking Aurora? We hardly have enough food for ourselves. How are we gonna feed another person??"
"And what? You expect me to leave her outside with whatever those things are? Is that why you brushed off those screams."
"Aurora… you know we can't trust strangers. What if she turns into them? We don't know what or how they got here."
Diana was pretending to sleep to not interrupt the awkward conversation about her. She was mad they had such ill thoughts about her but after remembering Aria, she couldn't help but understand. Her thoughts were short lived as the intense conversation earlier became silent.
"Ey, you're awake right?"
Diana flinched a little after being caught. She slowly got up to avoid even more suspicion.
"Hehe…" a nervous laugh peeped out her mouth "yeah sorry."
"It's alright, can you tell us what happened though?"
Before Diana could answer a loud rumble disrupted them.
"let's get you some food first."
Diana's face flushed with color from the embarrassment and silently nodded. After a few minutes they handed her a container with a quarter of rice left in it. The rest seemed to have been eaten.
"You can eat it all it's going to get bad soon so."
"Thanks!"
After slowly savoring each grain of rice it was soon completely empty. After she finished she was still hungry but somewhat satisfied. Once she looked up she realized that they were staring at her in envy. Feeling awful she put down the container.
"Ahem, I'm Aurora."
The girl who spoke was the one who saved Diana earlier. She had red hair, freckles on her nose, and a fox like face. She seemed to have an angry looking face but was nice. There were two other people in the room standing behind her.
"The guy here is Daniel and she's Mia."
Daniel had beautiful blonde hair, it was much more yellower than Noelle's but was still nice. He had bandages covering his right eye but was overall pretty attractive. Diana had heard about him being one of the schools top hotties. The girl behind Aurora she didn't know much. She had light brown hair and ocean like eyes, she gave off a sloth like aura and seemed to keep to herself.
"Oh uhm, I'm Diana."
"Diana? Huh… do you know a girl named Iris?"
"Uhm yes?"
"You're friends with Iris right?" Aurora shockingly gasping "Do you know where she's at? Is she okay?"
"Uhm why?"
"I'm her sister."
"Sister? You're her sister?!"
"I know we don't look alike except for our hair."
Diana was confused, she never knew Iris had a sister and more confusingly how did her sister know her?
"I can see the similarities, but uhm no… Iris left school before all this happened."
Not knowing whether to be upset or relived Aurora changed the subject.
"I see… well can you explain what happened?"
"Uhm it's a little complicated but I got locked out and now I'm here."
Diana was feeling relatively bitter about the incident earlier but she was sure that Aria didn't mean to lock the door. Maybe she had thought she was a zombie… right? She couldn't help but feel that she had ill intent from the beginning though. Feeling uneasy Diana only told them a bit about what happened.
"Mmm I see, that must've been scary. You'll be fine here don't worry."
Feeling a warm feeling on top of her head she blushed out of embarrassment.
"Aurora we still haven't resolved the issue on food and water."
A piercing voice interrupted the moment. A blonde boy was staring at them fiercely
"Uhm… I know where we can get food"
Diana chirped out feeling stares on her made her feel uncomfortable.
"The teacher room on the 1st floor has a vending machine and a fridge of food in there."
"Oh, I thought the teacher room was just filled with chairs and couches."
Mia shrugged
"Where did you get that information from?"
"Oh uhm…" Diana didn't know if telling them she got it from the person who backstabbed her would probably make them suspicious of the place, but wanting to earn their trust she lied,"I've been there before."
"Well let's go then!"
"Huh? That's too dangerous it's dark as well we only have 2 flashlights. Let's go tomorrow."
Aurora and Daniel started bickering whether to go or not.
"We're going. What if someone else raids it? We have no food or water, we'll die!"
"The things out there haven't left this place yet, what are we suppose to do?"
"Isn't it obvious? We're going to attack them!"
Everyone stared at Daniel with a dumbfounded look. "Attack?" Everyone thought he was joking those things didn't even seem like they would die after an attack.
"I'm not joking. We can have 2 people hold flashlights and 2 attackers."
"If Diana is okay with it then fine."
Aurora looked even more stunned that Mia would agree.
"Guys be serious?! She just came back from those things we can't let her go out again!"
Diana didn't want to step back outside but since they all wanted to go, she decided it should be fine since there's 4 of them.
"Uhm it's fine we can go!"
Diana said with a wavering smile trying to seem confident.
"Now that we solved that, Aurora you're on flashlights with Diana, you both can hold books as a shield or throw it to surprise a zombie. Me and Mia will use the fire extinguisher and a water bottle with cloth attached to it for attacking, sounds good?"
in unison, they all agreed, but Aurora pinched in a concern
"But we're not going right now are we? There's still zombies outside and it seems there's 8 of them roaming around near here."
"It'll be fine, they're spread apart from each other so we should be fine and c'mon Mia and I have been taking self defense classes since we were young. We'll be fine."
Daniel went up and patted Auroras head while giving her a gentle smile. She turned her head away from his hand, ears bright red. Mia seemed to be oblivious and continued wrapping her arms with cloth.
"Me and Aurora are gonna check the tables over there before we head out."
Mia nodded
5 minutes go by,
Daniel and Aurora seemed to be in a happy mood when they came back, they were flushed red and were standing oddly close to each other. Diana didn't care though and continued massaging her ankle.
"We're all set?"
Aurora said with slight concern, everyone was covered up and seemed to be ready. So Aurora crept towards the door and carefully slid it open.
"Raughhh…"
2 nearby zombies had heard the creaking noises from the door and came rushing towards them. Daniel pulled Aurora out of harms way and hit one straight in the head. It's grotesque body twitched and flopped on the floor. The blood splattered everyone and went in Daniels mouth while huffing.
"Bleh, euagh disgusting."
Daniel was holding back his puke and spat out his mixed spit that had rotting blood in it. He made a signal egging us to hurry to the stairs, Diana and Aurora lite up the pathway and started running towards that direction.
At the end of the hallway a figure had popped out of the staircase door and was only inches away from Daniel.
"UWAH!"
Daniel stumbled back falling flat on his back from the scare.
"Duck!"
Aurora and Diana quickly ducked down, looking at the maggot infested zombie coming closer a flying object rammed straight at its teeth making it fall backwards on the staircase. After that initial scare Aurora helped Danial up and they began going downstairs carefully to not trip on the blood left behind from the dead body. Diana was limping at this point because of kneeling down earlier had hurt her bruised knees and had retwisted her injured ankle. The other three didn't take notice of this. Halfway down the stairs Diana was gasping for air, each steps she took felt like a knife stabbing into her ankle but she kept persevering and had somehow managed to limp to the first floor. There were barely zombies past the 2nd stairs so it went smoothly.
"Hey Diana you okay?"
…
Diana didn't respond back because baring the pain was the only thing on her mind.
"Diana… Diannnnaaa?"
Aurora felt that Diana was awfully slowing down and her breathing was out of control. Her face looked distorted but she didn't say anything since she didn't want to bother if it was something personal but after seeing she was basically hopping Aurora had enough waiting.
"Diana are you okay?"
A slight grab on her shoulder made Diana flinch almost letting out a cry.
"Huh? What happened Aurora?"
Daniel popped behind Auroras back lovingly embracing her waist.
"stop Daniel…"
Aurora blushing faced away from Daniel
"Is Diana okay?"
Mia had also chimed in,
"…Huh? Oh uhm yeah I'm fine we're almost there so."
"Mmm okay if you say so"
Mia shrugged and continued down the hallway, the classrooms were eerily quiet and the desks seemed to be in perfect placement. Nothing was disturbed which made it even more creepy.
*THUD*
The noise seemed to had come behind them, they turned their heads to see Diana on the floor.
"Ah, sorry…"
Sweat fell from Diana's head dripped on the cold floor.
"Are you okay?!"
Aurora rushed towards Diana and placed her palm on her forehead, examining her complexion.
"Raughhhhhhh"
In the distance a hoard of zombies had caught up to them, they were coming down from the 2nd floor flooding in the doorway.
"C'mon let's go!"
Daniel shouted in a hurry while grabbing Aurora
Diana also tried getting up but her legs had given up a while ago. She tried moving but every movement felt like needles all over her foot.
"Daniel let go we need to help Diana!"
"We don't have enough time Aurora!"
"gRAUHH"
The hoard was now only 12 feet away from the group and was gaining in speed
"Ah f— fine!"
Daniel gave his fire extinguisher to Mia and pulled Diana up forcefully with an annoyed expression onto his back.
"ow!"
A small yelp came from Diana's mouth but she quickly covered her mouth to not make any more noise. While running towards the teacher lounge Daniel was slowing down barely catching up with the two but they reached the teacher lounge in time.
"Hurry open it!"
Daniel shrieked in panic
"The doors locked, hold on."
Mia slammed the door knob with the fire extinguisher repeatedly.
"Ah hell."
Daniel sighed putting Diana down and grabbed Mia's water bottle, he swung it towards the zombies closet to gain some time.
*BANG*
"It's open let's go!"
"RAUUGGHHH"
Aurora carried Diana up with the help of her shoulder and went inside first, Daniel was the last to get inside. Mia slammed the door and pushed a couch in front the door.