The swarm descended on the panicked mass as soon as the first scream erupted, falling upon us like a hailstorm of bloated flesh and clicking mandibles.
In the chaos of it, we devolved into a kicking, punching and trampling mob as everything and anyone tried desperately to back away.
An elbow slammed into my face and I slammed against the wall just in time to see a group of three, two girls and one boy fall to the ground only to get trampled by the others, arms broken and rib cages caved in, hysterical, blood-curdling screams lost in the cacophony of a panicked mass. Within seconds, the swarm descended on them, ripping and tearing like corpse flies settling on fresh carcasses, burrowing into their opened mouths in sprays of gore.
Shock and horror grabbed hold of my spine and I tore myself from the wall, barreling away in a crouched run, hands over my head. Survival instinct had taken over completely and I did not stop. There was no time to think or hope, there was only the action.
All around me people died and the storm of wings and chitinous bodies raged. I bulled through the press of bodies and insects, keeping myself low, clenching my teeth against the pain of that damned dust off their wings enveloping me in a stinging, irritating fold.
It was like trying to run through fire. But, run I did.
Jaw clenched and mouth shut, elbowing and shouldering my way through the flailing students, it was all I could do to run.
As soon as I saw the door to the bathroom at the edge of my sight, I jumped in, away from the chaos of the corridor.
“GOPHER! GOPHERRR! FUCKING HELP MEEE!!”
The scream sounded behind me and I turned just in time to see Benjamin swarmed by a cloud of those flies, uselessly swinging his butterfly knife at them. He was just at the entrance and managed only to sound out the beginning of something when one of the mass of flies tore it’s way into his mouth.
I heard his jawbone snap, saw his eyes burst in their sockets and blood spray out from his nose and ears.
He went rigid immediately and then fell face first onto the tiles.
Before I could say or do anything, a jolt of pain in my shoulder struck me and I turned my head and nearly screamed. One of the human head-sized flies had latched onto the back of my hoodie during my run and, just now, had bitten into my shoulder. Its entire head was nothing more than a triple sectioned mouth, no eyes, no nothing, just a damned mouth with wings.
I don’t know why I didn’t scream. Maybe it was the panic. Maybe the shock of the bite.
Maybe the grotesque way the Headmaster had died, flies burrowing into his skull like some grotesque approximation of wasps entering their nest, had locked my jaw for the rest of time. Either way, I did the only thing my adrenaline-addled brain thought of at that moment.
I rammed my shoulder into the tile wall.
The albino fly burst into mulch and the smell of rot that expelled from the burst insect immediately turned my stomach over, my mouth filling with bile.
I bit it down and swallowed it back. Panicking, screaming, even puking, these were luxuries I did not have at this point.
Benjamin still lay motionless on the ground and there was no sign of the insects anymore. But the buzz and screams that carried on made it clear that the slaughter was still very much under way.
With the momentary break, my adrenaline subsided and I got enough time to think.
I moved quietly towards the door and dared a peek out into the corridor.
It was a charnel house, a sight plucked straight out of a dying man’s fever dream, linoleum floors slick with blood, bits of flesh and corpses frozen in paroxysms of pain. All that I saw bore the same marks like Benjamin, burst eyes, blood trickling languidly from noses and ears.
Far to the left, the few remaining survivors were running, the bulk of the swarm after them, with only a few straggler flies laying on corpses, chewing into their flesh.
It was nothing more than a theory, more a hope than anything else, but considering that the swarm had followed the survivors and the way the flies' heads were formed, I assumed that they were drawn to sound. And that was the best I had at the moment.
I yanked on Benjamin’s arm, pulling the corpse deeper inside the bathroom and closed the door as quietly as I could. The poor bastard had fallen too far inside for me to risk the noise of pushing him out into the corridor.
“Alright. Alright. Focu…" I began thinking only to gag again. The rotten smell of the bloatfly still lingered and before anything else, I tore my hoodie off and chucked it out the window.
“Now then. Focus” I mentally repeated.
With the adrenaline high slowly subsiding, I was beginning to feel the reality of my current predicament. And all the pain that came with it.
The areas on my hands and the back of my head where the mist-dust had touched me were itching and burning something fierce and my shoulder was throbbing horribly.
The back of my hands were red and inflamed, the skin dried and flaky, looking as though I was having some sort of skin rash, if not an outright infection. It wasn’t a longshot to assume that the back of my head was the same.
I went to one of the few still intact sinks and turned on the faucet enough to allow a trickle of water without making too much noise. As soon as the cold water hit the rash, the pain subsided. Whatever that dust was, it was easy to wash off. Within minutes, I had cleaned it all off from my skin, hair, even my jeans and then went to lift the side of my t-shirt and inspect the bite.
A red welt roughly the size of my palm surrounded multiple puncture wounds, swollen and hot to the touch. Considering how putrid the thing had been on the inside, it wasn’t a long shot to assume that its bite was just as foul.
“Shit” I cussed.
Infection, sepsis, gangrene, all these were possibilities if I left it untreated. I’d seen enough horror movies, survival shows and played enough survival games to know this.
And that was the optimistic assumption. Best case scenario, these rot-bugs were either poisonous, carried rabies or who knew whatever else disease.
Worst case, considering they were clearly not of this world, I didn’t want to think about.
I did the only thing I could. Soap and water to clean the wound, grinding my teeth as I made sure to dig the soap as deep into the puncture holes as I could.
After all was done, I took Benjamin’s discarded knife and rested against the wall, letting my head hang and taking a few moments to rest.
I had to think.
I had to plan.
I had to…
*thunk*
Barely a few minutes into my break and a sound made me shoot my head up.
The silence was deafening and then, Benjamin’s corpse twitched again, a sporadic spasm, arms and legs slapping wetly against the tiled floor..
“Oh you got to be shi…” I mouthed silently as I got my feet under me. Benjamin’s corpse twitched again, then again, each iteration quicker than the previous, until finally, in a burst of unnatural, contortionist-like motion, he shot off of the ground, back on his feet.
I didn’t make a single sound or move, motionless like the wall behind me, as the corpse began to move grotesquely, in a morbid dance of uncoordinated and spasming motions.
It rolled its head back and forth, as if trying to angle its ears in ways to help it hear better, ruptured jaw snapping at the air in quick bites.
It made sense, in some gruesome way. Benjamin’s eyes had burst when the insect had forced its way into his mouth, so there’s no way it could see. The way it had faced me more than once but had not reacted, at this point I was almost certain that, whatever the hell this zombie-like thing was, it functioned only on sound.
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The best strategy here would be to wait it out. As long as I remained motionless and quiet it wouldn’t find me.
The error in that plan presented itself quite quickly.
As I lay there motionless, the creature that had once been Benjamin swung its head back and opened its mouth wide releasing a series of insectoid clicks. The same sound immediately echoes beyond the closed bathroom door.
As if in response to it, “Benjamin” began feeling its way blindly towards the exit.
Shit.
SHIT.
The damn thing would break down the door, or open it in order to join the others of its kind in the hallway. I had seen enough horror movies to know how this went. More than likely, all those corpses in the hallway had risen too. At the very least, those that had been infected by those flying rot-bugs.
It wouldn’t matter how silent I was, if the door was gone, sooner or later they’d hear me.
Without giving myself enough time to change my mind, I quietly pulled out the butterfly knife and picked up a pebble of porcelain from the broken sinks.
It clattered lightly as I flicked it towards one of the stall doors, not loud enough to alert the entire hallway, but more than enough to grab “Benjamin’s” attention. The creature rounded on the direction of the sound, teeth chattering aggressively and grasped at the air in front of it. When it grabbed nothing it began shuffling towards the sound, hands clawing mindlessly all the way.
I moved slow and low, taking as much care where I placed my feet as I could, making my way behind it, knife held in a reverse grip.
If zombie movies had taught me anything, it was that I’d have to go for the head.
Although this wasn’t exactly a zombie, per se.
Everything progressed painfully slow. I felt like I was moving in reverse, and my breathing sounded far too loud in my ears. Hell, even my own heartbeat sounded far too loud, so much that I was surprised the creature hadn’t heard me yet.
Seconds that had felt like minutes later, I was right behind it, right arm cocked, ready to stab in the back of Benjamin’s skull.
The squeak of my heel against the tile floor might as well have been a bullhorn.
I’d been careless. Had not minded my footing.
“Benjamin” rounded on me immediately and I gasped in surprise before I could stop myself.
With a whirring thrum of clicks and snapping teeth, it charged into me, bearing me down onto the floor.
Either by sheer luck, instinct or self-preservation reflex, I managed to cross my left forearm across its neck just before we struck the ground, barely just keeping that blood-frothing mouth away from my face.
The creature didn’t snarl or growl as it tried to tear into me, the only sounds coming from it, a cacophony of insect chitters and snapping teeth.
It only made it all the more horrible.
The dead thing flailed and slammed its arms into my sides, grabbed clumsily at my clothes, all the while single-mindedly pushing to bite down at me, lips peeled away, bloody red gums on full display like a dog baring its teeth.
Fortunately, whatever these things were, they seemed to be as strong as they had been before being taken over. “Benjamin” may have been a head taller than me, but I had spent the last 3 years working on a construction site. All that shoveling, lifting and wheelbarrow carrying had given me enough upper body strength to keep an uncoordinated, flailing tween zombie off me.
With a shift of my hips and a push, I launched the monster off me and rolled on top of him where my weight advantage gave me the upper hand.
Pushing the entirety of my mass over its lower body, I grabbed at its neck, holding those damned bared, bloody teeth as far away from me as I could. The thing thrashed and grabbed at my arms, but it was pinned and lacked the coordination and fine motor skills necessary to shake me off.
I had to end it.
Quickly.
It was making too much noise.
Without wasting a moment more, I cocked my arm back and stabbed the knife into “Benjamin’s” temple. The monster immediately went rigid and stopped moving, but I didn’t stop.
The knife tore out with a bony crunch and I stabbed again.
And again.
And again.
By the time I drew myself back off the corpse, I had stabbed it enough times to reduce the right side of “Benjamin’s” skull to a gaping hole.
My hands shook.
My heart drummed in my chest as though trying to jump out.
My breath came out in short, ragged gasps.
Realization hit me like a fist to the face.
I had just stabbed a person in the skull. During the fight itself, I hadn’t even thought about it. Not even considered it. It was pure fight or flight and flight had not been an option.
I dropped the knife and backed even further away from the corpse, the blood coating my hands feeling significantly more cloying all of a sudden.
For whatever reason my mind went back to remembering an interview I saw on the Internet, of some old WW2 veteran speaking about the first enemy soldier he had killed with a bayonet.
“It’s easy to shoot. You don’t see their face. The look in their eyes. The desperation. From afar, from a scope, you just see a target. But up close, they want to live just as much as you do. And when you run them through… you remember that feeling. Of blade cutting meat and jamming into bone”
I remembered the look in his eyes. He looked haunted.
I remembered scoffing. What was the big deal? Kill or be killed, it was war. What a whiny little wuss.
Now, I understood.
Rationally I knew that I had not been “Benjamin” anymore. That thing, that creature, was something else. Rationally I knew full well that if I would have hesitated, the monster would have killed me.
And yet, I couldn’t shake the feel of the knife sliding into the bone.
It had felt so much different than I had imagined it. There had been so much more resistance. There had…
I immediately shot to one of the sinks and began scrubbing off the mix of blood and rot-smelling ichor off my hands.
“Stop whining, you little wuss. That wasn’t a person anymore” I whispered to myself, all the while keeping an eye on the door. The struggle must have lasted seconds and we had made a fair bit of noise. But the creatures outside seemed to lose interest as soon as everything went quiet, shuffling away.
I turned my attention back to scrubbing my hands clean.
“Not a person anymore. Not a person anymore. He was already dead. A walking corpse” I repeated, like a mantra.
“A walking corpse that had been a living person only minutes before” something in the back of my mind reprimanded me.
Was it supposed to be like this?
Was I supposed to feel guilty for keeping myself alive? Against a walking corpse, no less?
Yes.
No.
Yes and no.
Yes because feeling off about carving out someone’s temple like a damned pumpkin was normal unless you were a psychopath.
And no, because it was a simple matter of survival. Kill or be killed. And feeling “off” about this was a luxury I wouldn’t be able to afford having. Not unless I was aiming for an early grave.
Taking a deep breath and exhaling slowly, I gathered myself from the sink and went to retrieve my knife.
It was slick with a mixture of blood and that foul smelling ichor. The same smell as the bloatfly I had crushed against the wall. I turned to Benjamin’s body.
The side of his head where I had stabbed, repeatedly, was a broken mess. I hadn’t just pierced it, I had carved a hole into the side of his skull. And though it could see a portion of the albino fly’s body, with several knife wounds in it.
I grimaced as disgust filled me.
These bugs, they didn’t just invade the body. They burrowed straight into the head, and considering the size of them, it took very little to imagine what happened to the brain.
“Horrible way to go” I muttered.
I stood there for a few more minutes. Considering, taking stock and thinking.
Staying here would be just delaying the inevitable.
Either the other things outside got in, or I was trapped until I starved. That was, unless my bite wound was already infected and I was going to die of fever and sepsis. Or whatever else these bloated hellspawns carried in their mandibles….
No.
I refused. I refused to allow myself to stop.
I hadn’t done that in the orphanage. Not in the ghetto. Nowhere and never.
If I was gonna go down, it’d be while struggling to live another day.
At the very least I was going to head to whatever afterlife awaited without regrets.
I gently crossed Benjamin’s arms across his chest and made the sign of the cross.
“Rest in peace. You were a sadistic prick but even you didn’t deserve to die like this”