Chapter 3

Leth strode forward, his gait was a bit shaky due to his weakened physique. As he had no time to spare, he immediately advanced upon the nearest zombie.

The creature stood stock still at the threshold that gave way to stairs leading to the lower floors. It groaned occasionally but was otherwise listlessly staring towards a light fixture installed in the ceiling above it.

He was able to get surprisingly close—within a half dozen feet, before it showed any reaction to his presence. Perhaps, it recognized something familiar inside of him and was slow to act as a result. As charming as he found the gesture, Leth preferred to find common ground with other—less viral persons.

Shnnk

A blade protracted quietly along the side of his palm like a small serpent. His footsteps were silent; his breathing quiet like the grave.

He stopped a few paces away from the zombie, noticing that it was not immediately attacking. It clearly suspected something but lacked the intelligence to understand this new sensation. It stared at Leth, its breathing grew heavier and its muscles twitched.

I wonder…

He cautiously glanced down the stairwell while keeping the immediate zombie in the corner of his eye. More were gathered at the lower landing, and even more on the stairs below that.

Unfortunately, they were gathered too tightly for him to sneak by.

Well then, In that case—

The sharp flash of a blade. In one moment, there stood a zombie—in the next, nothing but a corpse on the floor. Leth had already turned heel and lunged down the stairs to the lower landing, his blooded blade dripping on the stairs as he descended.

A zombie turned in his direction and lurched towards his descending figure. In response to this clamor, the surrounding zombies followed suite.

He could not afford to get bitten. His right hand shot out towards the nearest zombie’s throat. Conveniently, as they prioritized attacking with their teeth—an awkward feat considering they were bipeds—they were effectively presenting their necks to his blade.

A stream of blood spurted out from the zombie’s throat. Despite suffering lethal damage, this did not stop it from continuing along its trajectory towards Leth. Narrowly, with as little energy expenditure as possible, he pivoted his back foot and bent his upper body out of the way. The zombie passed by harmlessly before colliding with the stairs behind him.

Of course, just as soon as he felled it did another jump forward to take its place. As things stood, he would be driven back—but unlike thinking opponents, the zombies would pursue him doggedly no matter where he ran.

Pardon me.

Sometimes, the safest place was nowhere else but the eye of the storm. Rather than take a step back to create some space, he stepped forward into the maelstrom. Evading a zombie’s lunging strike with nary a glance in its direction, his right hand struck out and slashed another throat before retracting just as suddenly.

I need to speed things up.

With no regard for the notion of a frontline, Leth wove his way through the crowd of zombies that were scrambling over each other to sink their teeth into his flesh. Every strike struck true, and with every extension of his arm a zombie collapsed to join the ever-growing number that littered the stairs.

The tiled floor was slick with blood. This was another reason why he was constantly changing location, one slip for him would be disastrous. The zombies on the other hand, slipped frequently, which lessened his burden.

While his weakened body could not strike as hard as usual or move as explosively, his processing ability and senses were boosted dramatically by the injection. Therefore, while his movements were minimal and his strikes relied heavily on his weapon, he was able to react much faster than normal to the chaos going on around him. He kept tabs on every zombie within reach; which ones were preparing to attack, which ones were recoiling from a missed attack, which ones had slipped, which ones were trying to climb over or under other zombies to reach him.

So long as he could foresee an attack, he could evade it and counterattack in short order.

“Haah… hah…”

Following a minute and a half of tooth and nail fighting, he was beginning to feel the strain. To keep track of so many constantly changing variables and immediately calculate the most effective response was nothing short of exhausting—even for someone as proficient in combat as Leth.

More...

Did he have any other choice? Was there another, easier path that he had missed along the way? Perhaps. Not that it mattered. He kept cutting throats, and zombies kept throwing themselves at him. Physically and mentally exhausted, he pushed forward—but not without cost.

His body began to rebel. A leg that froze when it should have pushed off, a shoulder that hung when it should have pivoted. Although he managed to avoid getting bitten, he sustained blunt force trauma to his midsection after failing to evade a zombie that charged into his waist with all its weight following behind it. In addition, had it been not for the effects of the injection, the blood loss he suffered until now would have rendered him unfit for combat.

If you encounter this narrative on Amazon, note that it's taken without the author's consent. Report it.

This isn’t enough to kill me. More!

He had an objective and he intended to see it through. Unlike the movies, having a goal did not protect him from the zombie’s jaws, it didn’t heal his body or grant him superhuman strength when he needed it most—yet it was no less important than anything that could grant such things.

A goal granted purpose. To move with purpose and to move without purpose were radically different concepts. A man who moved with purpose held nothing in reserve for there was nothing beyond their purpose to save their energy for.

Leth was a man who moved with purpose. Inhaling deeply, he gave the surroundings a cursory glance. Somewhere along the line, color had filtered out of his vision to leave the world in grayscale. He could no longer tell how many remained due to his tunnel vision. He struck again, his strike lashed a zombie’s throat and carried him forwards into his next which dispatched another zombie just as efficiently.

THWACK

From out of nowhere, A zombie dashed into him and pinned him up against the wall by his right shoulder. His already addled mind reeled from the blow and his shoulder creaked from the impact.

... I’m dead if I lose both shoulders.

Gritting his teeth, Leth summoned every ounce of strength he could muster in his left arm and hoisted it up to his face. Simultaneously, the zombie’s gaping maw descended upon his neck. Pinned as he was, he could not reach the zombie’s neck with his right hand until it was too late.

CRUNCH

Instead of biting into his neck, the zombie’s teeth entered his left forearm which he had raised to intercept at the last second. The adrenaline coursing through his body numbed him to the pain.

With the zombie’s head in such close proximity as it busily tightened its jaw on his arm, his right hand was now able to reach its throat.

Slit

Blood spewed across his face and neck as the zombie’s body slowly collapsed on top of him. Feeling his right shoulder become free from its grasp, he dropped his body and rolled out of the way of the corpse.

He groaned as he climbed laboriously to his feet, using the wall he had been pinned to for support. Exhaustion assaulted him in waves, he could barely see from the combination of tunnel vision and blood in his eyes.

His body refused to move. He urged, he screamed at it to move. To no avail.

So, he waited. Since his eyes were failing him, he listened instead:

Silence. Abruptly, the attacks stopped coming and silence descended upon the 2nd hallway.

A second, then two.

A half minute later, Leth concluded that he had cleared the second floor; or at least, this wing of the second floor.

He bent over at his waist, his one good arm braced his knee for support. His labored breathing reluctantly calmed as he brought it to heel.

He wanted to rest, but he had no time to do so. His body screamed as he took an unsteady step forward. He waded his way through the stacks of corpses—careful not to slip—and over to a certain door. Above the door hung a small sign that read: L2A

Lab 2A.

Leth wordlessly slid the door open and stumbled inside.

---

Several minutes earlier…

The interior of the lab was dead silent save for the faint scratching noise of pen on paper. Seated atop one of the lab stools was a lithe young woman with long black locks tied up in a pony-tail as per standard lab safety protocol. She was garbed in modest school apparel that identified her as a student of West High.

The woman seemed utterly unperturbed by the chaos that had enveloped the school; instead, she seemed far more interested in the words she was writing. Her pen moved expertly across each page. Every time she paused to think, she would habitually raise her free hand to push her glasses back onto the bridge of her nose.

She was the picture of focus.

She paused a little longer than normal, her brow creasing in annoyance upon hearing the clamor originating from outside, but she soon turned her eyes back to the notebook before her.

After another minute or so, the clamor died down once again which caused her brow to relax. She was about to savor the silence when suddenly, the door to the classroom shot open and a figure stumbled inside.

Silently, the woman folded the notebook and leaped to her feet. She shot back a few paces and scrutinized the individual who had so rudely intruded on her work. Her eyes also darted to the empty doorway which now gave way to the hallway outside. The sight beyond was… not one she had expected to see. She turned her head back to the intruder and gave him a cautious once over.

The man’s body staggered with each step. His left forearm had suffered a large gash that showed the white of bone. The man’s left shoulder also drew her attention, the wound was letting a dangerous amount of blood. Aside from these, the man’s body also showed signs of heavy blunt force trauma. All in all, he was a grizzly sight.

He’s dying.

Not that it took an expert such as herself to realize this fact. Despite coming to such a conclusion, she did not offer to help—or go near him at all for that matter, instead, she edged towards the doorway. Considering the situation, it was hardly any wonder where he got those wounds from—the man was no-doubt infected.

The man barely registered her presence as he stumbled over to one of several metal shelves that lined the left wall of the classroom. After a quick search, his eyes landed on the bright red emergency kits which were made to be easy to find by design. Grabbing one, he tossed it onto a nearby lab table and snapped the lid open.

He had not a second to spare.

First, he tore apart the clothing covering his wounds with two quick incisions of his blade. Next, he quickly cleaned out the wounds and bandaged his forearm with gauze—since the bone was intact, he just needed to staunch the bleeding. He tore the gauze with his teeth and used a pin to fasten the wrap tightly.

Given his… choice of hobbies, he had become an expert at administering first aid out of necessity. By some combination of luck and skill, the wrap held, and the bleeding stopped for the time being.

The clavicle, however, was a whole other ball game.

A piece of the clavicle is piercing into the subclavian artery.

Peeking over his shoulder and into the wound, he wordlessly pulled a pair of sterilized tweezers from the first aid kit. Since the bone was visible, he had no trouble locating the issue; the only trouble would be pulling it out without causing any more damage.

He was not a doctor, and this was not a hospital. Some things, it seemed, just had to be left up to luck. Leth crossed his fingers mentally and angled the tweezers over his wound…

“Wait!”

But before he could act, a harsh yet undeniably charming voice drifted into his ears. He crooked his head to look towards the speaker who had one foot in the lab, and one foot in the hallway.

The young woman was staring intently at his left clavicle, her eyes betrayed her curiosity. Leth doubted his own vision for a moment as the woman’s eyes appeared to be… glowing. Faint, yet clearly unnatural blue light radiated from her gaze which she alternated between his two bite wounds.

“You. What are you?”

Unsurprisingly, Leth did not feel like answering considering he was about to go into shock from blood loss. Disregarding the strange female student, he lowered the tweezers down to the bone—

—But he stopped midway. The tweezers fell from his feeble grasp and clattered to the cold tile floor beside his feet.

Damnit. I was so close…

The world around him took a sudden turn for the surreal as color, shape, and sound melded together into a single nonsensical cacophony. The last thing he heard before everything went dark was the sound of muffled footsteps approaching in his direction.