It was Wednesday, September 21st, 2022, around 1:00 pm, and Santi was busy playing Stumble guys with Lucas, when he should've been writing an apology note to Mrs. Lewis about putting the phrase,“*Racial slurs*”, in his Fractured Fairy Tale Presentation. As they entered the Final round, Somebody stood up out of their desks and Pointed at the Window, Asking, “Whos that guy walking towards the entrance?”, which was met by the sound of chairs moving as people went to crowd around the window; Many of the girls pulled out their phones to record whatever was going on, which didn't surprise Santi in the slightest. But the situation did pique his interest, making him get out of his chair and push through the crowd, earning him some glares. And when he accidentally bumped into a girl along the way, she said something along the lines of, “wow, what a douche”, and that half-assed insult was followed by a chorus of “fr’s” which he immediately compared to a flock of seagulls.

    When he finally reached the window, he saw a ragged looking man slowly pounding and pushing against the back entrance of the school, and when Santi focused more, he could make out that the man's skin was gray. He didn't think any of the other people there would notice until they edited and uploaded it to social media, and so, with his prior “Useless” knowledge from watching the walking dead, he started pushing his way out of the crowd. He was relying on Peterson to go and check it out, and he needed to get his firearm before the school cop died and the students were forced inside classrooms. When he was finally out, he heard another chair get pushed back, and then Lucas exclaimed, “YES! Go stumble down the stairs Santi!”, after getting first place in a map Santi usually always beats him at.

“Gee, thanks dude” he thought to himself as he asked Mrs. Lewis if he could go to the bathroom. But if he wasn't careful, he might do exactly what Lucas joked about, especially with all the adrenaline running through his veins. Then, as he was making his way out of the English section of the building, the Office ordered all students to stay in their classrooms via intercoms, as there was a suspicious person outside the building. And as they announced they already sent The Deputy to check it out, he quickened his pace until he got to walking down the stairs. He slowly and quietly made his way down each step, staying low. He stopped at the middle, where he could get a clear view of the doors where the supposed zombie was spotted, and not even a minute later, there was a shout, gunshots, and a slam, which he saw was caused by the body of Deputy Peterson collapsing onto the door of the school in an attempt to escape, but in turn inviting the zombie to enter the building. Which it did. And when it did, most horror movie critiques wouldve pissed themselves empty when two dumb white girls came to check out what was going on, Phones in hand, ready to get clout off of this absurd situation. Likewise, Santi was ready to get his hands on a gun.

The Two girls started commenting on what was going on for their viewers, and the zombie slowly started limping its way towards them, not gaining any ground; That is, until it suddenly lurched forward and sprinted at them on all fours. Only one of the luxury of screaming, the other had a chunk of her throat missing, and was on the ground, being feasted upon. While Santi felt bad, he didn't let the chance slip, and crept up on Petersons corpse, prying the firearm free from his cold fingers, and for a second, he just crouched there, looking at the gun, contemplating if he should just avoid this entire scenario by pressing the barrel of the firearm under his chin, and then, ‘Bang!”. It would save him a lot of trouble, but after some more thought, he decided against it, not wanting to know what being a zombie felt like. He then grabbed the taser as well, which he expected to work on zombies like it worked on humans. And after securing this, he slowly made his way over to the zombie, still feeding on the remains of the girl. He saw that the other girl was quietly sobbing in a corner, still recording. Santi brought his attention back to the being hunched over the corpse, and nonchalantly aimed the gun at its head.

“Look mom, I'm on Tv!” He joked to himself, and shot the zombie, who collapsed on the girl, without any signs of getting back up. The girl in the corner jumped when he did this, and when he aimed the gun at her dead friend and fired again, she did it again, this time enough to shock her out of her catatonic state. 

“Like, why would you do that!” She cried in between sobs.

“Like, please stfu” Santi, whos had enough of the white girl in a scary movie act, replied, mocking her.

Before he could explain his reasons to her, he heard a noise behind him, which made him immediately berate himself, seeing as what he was about to say to the girl was something he himself forgot. 

“Sh*t” He cursed, and instinctively ducked, narrowly avoiding the flying, outstretched hands of the zombie wearing the Deputy’s clothing, before it went barreling down the hallway.

“Sorry, but you’re gonna have to give me the rest of your ammunition” Santi Shakily said as he regained his footing, Pointing the gun at the zombie, who was scrambling over itself to bull-charge him. Santi, frustratedly fired off several shots, underestimating how hard it was to hit a moving target as the zombie came barreling towards him. He clicked his tongue, and as a last ditch effort which he would quickly come to regret, he stupidly grabbed the girl by the arm, putting her inbetween him and the zombie. He saw both the girl, and his own horror in her eyes seconds before the zombie mauled her face and sent all three of them sprawling to the ground. But now that it was stationary, Santi got his right arm free from under the girl's corpse, and fired a round through the girl's head, removing a future zombie, and getting rid of a present one in the same shot. 

For a very drawn out moment, Santi just lay there, under two dead bodies, covered in blood and catching his breath. It was only then that he noticed the girl's phone in her hand, still recording.

Santis' gaze darkened. He assumed this was the world's way of making him repent for what he did, and with that thought, he managed to get out from under the corpses, and sit up, leaning against the brick wall. Again, he sat there for an amount of time he was uncertain of, and as he looked at the scene around him, he didn't feel like making any jokes.

    It was around 2:30 pm, and a good amount of time passed from when Santi had to make that headache of a walk back to the classroom and lie about the blood on him, to him sitting back down in Mrs. Lewis’s class, who, with the rest of the class, turned on a news channel talking about the situation in other parts of the world. Apparently there were riots in front of official government buildings like the pentagon, which didn't last long due to zombies being attracted to all the people, which to the students' horror, wasn't cut from the live feed. The main reason for the attempted riots was due to the fact that the government had yet to act or respond to the pleas of the people, or the worldwide pandemic, in any way shape or form. While this did arouse suspicion in Santi, he wasn't paying attention to much else, seeing that what happened at the entrance got to him more than he thought it would. He knew that the guilt would be meaningless when all hell broke loose and all morals were lost, but what was worrying him more than killing that girl, was the people watching the livestream on her phone. If and when all hell broke loose, he would be the most likely target of a lot of people, with their sense of justice being the excuse for his execution. 

    In the middle of his swirling thoughts, Mrs. Lewis announced to the class that the remaining police forces were cooperating with armed civilians and parents, and decided on making the school a fortress to defend everybody in. She said they would all arrive around 4:00 pm, and that we were just gonna have to hold out until then. For some students, the wait would drive them insane, and for others, much darker thoughts were passed around.

    Around 4:20 pm, the teachers started leading all the students down towards the lunchroom, where on the outside section, there was a wall of cop cars, along with regular cars blocking the distance. Inside, the students found their friend groups, and stuck close to one another, some out of fear, and others out of intention. In the process of all this, Santi felt several glares stabbing him in the back, and could almost feel the malice some students there felt towards him. But he tried to ignore them as he conversed with his friends, discussing what to do about protection as some of the parents there handed their children guns, which made Santis' gut uneasy. And as usual, His intuition was right, as one of the kids who got a gun accidently set it off, firing through a window and hitting an adult in the neck, instantly killing him. Said student dropped the gun in shock, and curled up into a ball, apologizing and crying, trying to block out and forget what he just did. While this was occurring, a group of boys started smiling and walking towards the cafeteria doors, with a glint in their eyes.

    It was at this point that Santi had a gut feeling that the group of armed boys had ill intention, and with some explaining to his friends, they followed the group out to the outside section of the lunchroom, where the car wall was barricading any zombies from getting in a good amount of distance away from the actual lunchroom, he estimated the distance from the lunchroom doors to the cars was about as long as a tennis field, if not longer. 

    When he and his group arrived outside alongside with the other group of boys, a lot of other groups of students went outside to see what was going on outside, and there they would find a scene full or corpses, both of zombies and humans, scattered around the inside of the barricade, which he saw was breached due to a flipped over cop car.

The only adults that remained protecting the school outside after the conflict were two, but that number was cut down to just one officer, due to the kid who accidentally fired a shot. Most kids were shocked, and others were mourning and in grief because they saw faces they recognized on the ground. One thing he noticed though, was that none of the human corpses had been shot in the head, meaning being out here for longer would be a death sentence. As he turned to the adult, out of the corner of his eye he saw one of the kids from the armed group, who he’ll just refer to as “The Douches” from now on, was slowly pointing a pistol in the direction of the last remaining officer, while being edged on by the other Douches. But after a shot rang out from one of the smaller groups of students, that student lay on the ground along with the rest of the to-be zombies. The Officer immediately turned around and was baffled at what had occurred.

    “What the HELL are you kids doing?” The Officer yelled. 

But this outburst went by ignored as both of the groups involved were glaring daggers at each other, hands tightening around their weapons, a firefight ready to break out any second. But when the Officer took a step in the direction of the kids, trying to prevent any violence, He broke the tension in another way, when he was tackled by a zombie that just recently woke from the dead. And as the kids blankly stared at the Officer being ripped apart, The countless other corpses in the field started to stir. Bringing dread in many students. Some started for the doors, but a singular student took a step towards the Wall of cars. As students looked at him, it was like ice shattered, and loads of students started sprinting towards the cars, some kids stopped as some of the corpses, took their guns and sprinted back to the doors, some were grabbed by wakening zombies, bitten and waiting to be turned, some of those who got grabbed were unwilling to go out alone, and grabbed others, and some were shot in the back by fellow students, some of which were in the same group. As Santi was nearing a car, he realized that in a zombie apocalypse, the actual zombies weren't the only thing you had to be wary of. As his group of friends neared the cars, Santi shot out the windows, and jumped in through the opening, to which the rest of his friends copied. In the cars, they armed themselves with Pistols, Put all the ammo they could in any kind of secure pocket they could find, and got low inside the car to avoid any stray (or directed) bullets, and Santi, who was struggling to start the Police car, noticed that a hoard of zombies were closing in around the school, due to the ruckus. That was when the car jumped to life all of a sudden, and Santi accelerated into the car in front of him, causing the students in there to be disoriented. And as he backed up and turned the car to face the Lunch doors, His friends in the car, and in the cars behind him, seemed to realize his intentions, and prepared to follow him. As He put all his weight on the petal, Those in the car buckled their seatbelts and braced themselves for the impact. They stiffened every time there was an audible crunch, bump, or scream as they barreled down the makeshift battlefield. And their stomachs lurched when the car went over the blue tables like a ramp, which was followed by a huge impact as they crashed into and through the building. And after some moments of coming to terms with what just happened, they unbuckled their seatbelts as the two other cars containing their friends followed suit and crashed into the building. When they got out of the cars, they made a beeline for the library, and made sure to barricade and fortify the entire place for when a group of kids or zombies arrived. But strangely enough, Santi was counting on both of them coming.

    5:25 am, September 22nd, is when Nolan (Who was the lookout at the time) woke everyone up from their slumber. He unfortunately used the method of kicking everybody in the side to wake them up, which was just an insult to injury, seeing as they were either on a table or on the floor, using books as pillows. 

After the rude awakening, Santi and his friends were informed that Nolan saw a person looking in at them through the second story window, and also mentioned that most of the other student groups got forcefully merged into the Douches group, who had set up a base of operation in the cafeteria. The methods they used were horrible; going as far as to strip people of their guns and make them try and survive outside in the horde. He also said something about the guys having some one-sided fun with unwilling girls, to which Santi presumed he stayed a prolonged amount of time watching it happen, as there were a lot of unneeded details said.

The Final Mention was the most important. And it was about how Nolan overheard The gang of Douches arming a lot of people, and whispering their names, and something about the library. It wasn't that hard to piece together what was going to happen if they sat around and did nothing, so Santi was determined to switch it around on them.

Santi, with the Assistance of Jason, took 2 makeshift crowbars and lots of the school's doorstops, and went around their side of the school, undoing barricades and propping doors open, offering a warm welcome for the hordes of zombies to come. and then at 6:30 on the dot, they fired off several shots into the air and made sure at least a few zombies saw them. And when they saw the cloud of dust, signaling the approaching stampede, they sprinted as fast as they could in the direction of the library. The Shots alerted the zombies in the vicinity, and also served as a wakeup call for the opposing student group, which pushed them to make their move. Which, to Santi’s surprise, happened a lot quicker than expected, and for good reason. Since the Douches were at the cafeteria, there were not many places to barricade themselves in, and so there was a mad rush for the library between Santi, Jason, and the entire other group, who were all getting pursued by the mass of zombies, which were rapidly gaining on them. 

At the main intersection of the hallways, the open door of the library was the only thing in most people's line of sight, where Ian was holding the door open for them, yelling to get in. While also taking cover behind the door itself.

When Santi basically dived into the open doorway with Jason right on his tail, they went behind cover joining the the rest of their friends,and reloaded their guns, with every bodies main focus on the main door, which was being forced open by the main group of Douchebags, against Ians attempts at closing the door on them. 

“Get back behind something! I’ll cover you!” Santi yelled at him, peeking out from behind a turned over table. As Ian let go of the door and ran to safety, One of the Douchebags that got in only had the chance to look his way before being lethally shot. His death worked for Santi’s group as it bought Ian enough time to hurdle over the main desk of the library and get into position.

The remaining lot of the Douchebags forces forced their way in and quickly made cover for themselves, and at one point, the ones inside the safety of the library shoved the rest of their group trying to enter the library back out into the horde seconds away from getting in and shut the door, barricading it. The next seconds of silence were broken by muffled screaming, and the view of the hallways being blocked out by a great big mass of zombies, looking in at the conflict about to break out in the library like spectators who paid for a show.

6:45 am. The somewhat distant groans and whine of fingers on glass outside the library was from time to time broken by outbursts of bullets flying every which way. Due to the difference in preparation, Santi’s side was winning. That is, until bullets started flying through the barricaded windows facing the outside of the library. They all dropped to the ground, but still shot at the Douchebags in order to prevent them taking this chance to snuff them out. After the long spray of bullets finished, they got back into positions. They were lucky to only get away with Rian getting shot in the chest, but now they had to fight a battle on both sides, which, if you’ve ever had a world history class, never worked out. Santi knew he had very little time until whoever was outside ed his or her gun, and started firing again. reloaded his or her gun, and fired again. And it only quickened their heartbeats when the barricades at the windows started to get pulled away and broken. Santi made eye contact with Lucas, and signaled with his hands for them to take the door that connected the library to Mrs. Litchfields class, and head upstairs. Once Lucas saw this, although confused on how they were gonna make it, he communicated with the others behind cover, and then all eyes were on Santi, anticipating what he would do in order to get them out of this situation. 

But when Santi peeked out of cover, and aimed his gun at not the Douches, but at the windows of the library, which was holding back the mob of zombies, it all clicked, and they got ready to run for the door as if their lives depended on it. Because it did. 

Santi unloaded his entire mag, and watched the glass shatter and the zombies rain down on the fear-stricken Students. But he only watched for a second. He hopped over the turned over table, and Sprinted into room 1300A, the zombies behind him flooded over each other turning to the room in order to get at him. He dived through a narrow gap in a shelf, and rolled behind the second door. As he hurried to close it, a singular zombie put its arm through and gripped his forearm hard enough to draw blood. He gritted his teeth and ran into the door with his shoulder several times, breaking the arm off of the zombie, and finally shutting the door.

As Santi slid down the door, feeling the banging of the horde on the other side, he wanted to sit there for a long time. As he looked at the gray spot of skin around the scratch marks the zombie had left on him , He knew he was now doomed to turn into one of those things, and wanted to end his life right there and then before he lost the chance to. He felt bad for being unable to meet up with everybody on the roof, but there wasn't much he could do, since this was a storage room with only one way out. But he wasn't the type to leave with any final words anyways, so he wasn't as depressed as some other people would've been, despite his appearance and everything else, he considered himself able to hold out longer than the average person. In his slight delirium, he could make out the sound of what he thought was rain. He dryly laughed to himself. Of course it started raining. After all, on a day like this, why wouldn't it rain.

At 7:37 am, Lucas and the others reached the roof after a short struggle with some zombies that were already up there.They waited some time for Santi to arrive, but after a long silence of everyone looking at the sunrise, they all knew he wouldn't be showing up. The silence was broken by a distant drone, which, after squinting and scanning over the sky over the rising sun, they saw originated from a Jet speeding past them, a few miles away. They thought that the government finally responded to the crisis the world was in, and was sending help all around the world, but when the jet dropped a warhead, clearly outlined by the huge sun, and zoomed off into the last remaining darkness in the sky, it came completely out of left field. They were either too shocked to speak, or had just accepted the fact that their own government abandoned them all in their time of need. Some of them just dropped on the ground and stared at the brightening sky, while others leaned on the railing and watched the bomb hit the ground. At the very least, the tainted final breeze that met them on the roof was pleasant. The explosion quickly engulfed both neighborhoods & stores alike, And just before the blast hit the school, a silenced shot rang out.

The End