The words hung heavy in the air, and time seemed to stop. Vic was the first to break the silence, and shock most of us with her suggestion. "Well, let's toss him out the window he's gonna turn soon." She looked way too calm as she walked over to Trey and poked his forehead. "Are you crazy? We can't just throw him out of the window!" Bryce said, looking shocked that she would even think of such an option. Ms. Dagen kept feeling for a pulse on the side of Trey's neck that didn't look like ground beef as the two began arguing. "Well, he can't stay in here, soon enough he's gonna try to be eating us like those meatsacks out there!" Bryce's mouth hung open as he tried to think of a reason that she wasn't wrong. "She isn't wrong Bryce; we have to do something, or it might cost us all." Dan put a hand on Bryce's shoulder as I began to help Ms. Dagen with getting Trey towards the window. Being on the second floor, I thought that it wouldn't be a long fall for the jock turned corpse, which made me feel just a little bit better. As Bryce and I prepared to give him one final push out the opened window, Bryce leaned over and shut his eyes, whispering something to him and tearing up quite a bit. I put my hand on Bryce's shoulder, trying to think of something say to console him but before I could, Trey started jerking around and both Bryce and I knew what that meant. We gave Trey one last shove and sent his still twitching corpse tumbling to the sidewalk below, landing with a sickening crunch. I shut the window as Bryce sat down on the chair behind the teacher's old desk. Dan walked over to me and whispered "You know we had to do it man. He would've killed all of us and turned us into those things."

"Doesn't change the fact we just tossed a guy out of a window Dan, and Bryce just lost one of his friends." I responded, still trying to settle myself as the reality set in of what we just did. Everyone was in shock, as we waited for something to happen. Vic sat on her phone with her headphones in, probably listening to some crazy rock song. Bryce stayed quiet for a while as he sat up front at the teacher's desk, glancing around the room at each of us every so often before looking back at the desk. Dan and I helped Ms. Dagen with cleaning up the blood as best as we could, but most of the towels had been stained red already. It had felt like hours passed, but when I looked at the old clock that hung above the door it had only been 30 minutes. Bryce finally stood up and walked towards some brooms that were in the corner of the room. As he passed me, I grabbed his arm and asked, "Hey man you good?"

"No, but I can't stand waiting around here another minute. It's making me sick to my stomach. I need to do something, or I feel like I'm gonna explode." He pulled his arm away and grabbed some duct tape and a knife from the counter and went to the brooms. Ms. Dagen leaned over and said "He's just grieving Alex, give him the time and space that he needs. He'll come back when he's ready, but for now we need to organize ourselves. See what we have for resources that might help us." She wasn't wrong, and the home ec. room was one of the only areas in school that housed dried food, besides the cafeteria and some vending machines. On top of that we all had access to our phones, and kitchen utensils that we could use to defend ourselves. Bryce started to make a spear out of the broom handle, knife and duct tape he had taken, and it wasn't a terrible idea. Dan was looking through cabinets seeing if there was anything else we could use, whilst Vic and Ms. Dagen looked for updates on the situation. I took a look outside the window and noticed the plumes of smoke coming up from around town. Down in the parking lot there was still a ton of cars and a few bodies lying around, but none of them looked like they were moving.

Reading on Amazon or a pirate site? This novel is from Royal Road. Support the author by reading it there.

"So, what do we have for supplies?" Mrs. Dagen asked after a while. Outside, the sun was setting, and the fires had mostly gone out, other than one out near downtown. "Well, other than a couple cans of peaches and some dried rice, we don't have much in terms of food." Dan said, looking around at each of the cabinets that had been ripped open and scrounged for anything we could eat. "5 kitchen knives and one meat cleaver, along with some heavy frying pans." Vic said, laying them down. "I also found some water bottles in the fridge, most of them are still closed." "Okay, this isn't too bad. Soon enough, the police will come, and the army and everything will be okay. We'll just have to hold out until then." Ms. Dagen said, taking in everything people had laid out on the table. "Unless those things learn to climb or decide to break down the door." Bryce said from the corner of the room, holding the spear he had made and tapping on the desk slowly. "We need to go somewhere with more food, or less ways to get in. The school probably has a ton of those things in it now." "And what makes you think that?" Ms. Dagen shot back, clearly annoyed at his negative attitude. "Well simple, we're dealing with zombies, walkers, biters, whatever you wanna call them. And rule #1 is that there's never just a few of them, and food will always run out before help arrives." I looked between the two of them before saying "I think he's right. There's no way we can stay here and wait for help. At very least we should try to get out of the school with someone's car in the parking lot." "I just don't think that we should, what if they get here and we aren't here?" "Then we go to the evacuation centers." Dan said, showing everyone his phone, the screen showing a news board that indicated where everyone should go. "Do you think we could make it?" Vic asks, repeating what Bryce had done by duct taping a knife to a broom handle. Bryce nodded, "We should be able to, it's still early so the centers should have plenty of people with guns and we might be able to get out of town, even if not to an evacuation site, then somewhere with guns."

Ms. Dagen looked like she wanted to disagree, but all of us had made up our minds about what we wanted to do, and she knew she couldn't do anything about it except come with us and make sure we would be okay. We got to work taking the food we gathered and stuffing it into some plastic bags, then making more of the homemade spears. I kept the cleaver tucked into my belt, and Vic took the last knife and stuffed it into her boot. "Never thought I'd have to kill someone..." Ms. Dagen trailed off as she looked around, the rest of us getting everything in order and moving the desks away from the door. "Good thing they aren't people anymore then." Bryce said in a serious tone as he moved the last of the desks and got ready to open the door. I looked at all of us, getting the spear ready in both hands and Bryce turned the handle on the door and pulled it open.