Icarus looked around, his eyes narrowing as they swept across the silent neighborhood.
"We need to leave. Now."
Jon followed his gaze, his expression darkening.
"There were more of them..."
He wasn't talking about the three infected humans they spotted moments earlier. No, rather, he was talking about the signs of movement occurring in every corner they turned their heads to.
From driveways, between houses, behind hedges, beneath carports, and from half-open front doors, these figures were appearing one after the other from everywhere.
Soon, from three, their numbers climbed to six, wandering into the street with slow, uneven steps and rising at every moment, at every corner they looked at.
The rapid development was very strange.
Only minutes ago, the entire staff quarters had appeared deserted. They had almost convinced themselves that this section of campus had somehow escaped the nightmare consuming the university.
Now…
It looked as though the infected beings had been in hiding, waiting in every home, and had spent the night in hibernation, only to awaken with the rising sun and resume the only instinct left to them.
Find the living and infect them by any means possible.
However, that didn't answer the blaring question of what triggered their awakening, and that thought sent a chill down his spine.
Whether it had been opening the front door, moving the professor's body, or simply stepping outside, he had no way of knowing, and he had no intention of finding out.
"Run!"
Neither wasted another second and bolted.
The first infected reached the front gate just as Jon and Icarus disappeared around the corner, its cloudy eyes fixated on the retreating pair.
Frustrated, it let out a guttural cry that echoed through the neighborhood.
As if answering a call, more figures appeared with similar growls.
Doors hung open, and bodies staggered out from their various hiding places. Within seconds, the infected began converging from every direction.
…
Rows of identical houses lined the streets on each side, with small gardens decorating every house with their blooming flowers, and low brick fences surrounding and demarcating each of them.
This beautiful landscape that bathed in the morning sunlight should have been peaceful and calming.
Instead, it had become a hunting ground.
The air was filled with a torrent of screams, growls, and moving bodies. Everywhere Jon looked, people were running, falling, and calling names.
And everywhere, something chased them.
The staff quarters had become a maze of terror.
A duo huffed and panted heavily as they hid behind a massive waste dump site, cautiously looking around them to avoid danger.
"…What have we done?" Icarus bit his lips hard with a pained voice. He instinctively flinched whenever the screams sounded louder or closer.
Jon turned. "I have told you already. How could we have known survivors were hiding here?"
"How couldn't we have known? It is a staff quarters for crying out loud. Just as you sought it, others did too." Icarus replied fiercely.
Jon's chest tightened, and he went silent.
Only seconds into the wild chase, the duo quickly realized that they weren't the only survivors inside the staff quarters. A sizeable number of them had entered to seek refuge, just like they did.
The duo came to a realization too late, and the survivors were forced to face the onslaught of infected creatures.
Before them, they witnessed the consequence of the single mistake.
A lecturer burst from the front door of a nearby house, clutching a kitchen knife; behind him was his wife, and behind her...
Three infected creatures.
The man pulled her behind and swung wildly, knocking one to the pavement before another sank its teeth into his shoulder.
His scream tore through the street for one moment. Seconds later, he rose again... and the first person he attacked was his wife.
Farther ahead, two young women sprinted across a lawn toward an older man. The man threw open the gate, shouting desperately for them to hurry.
One of the young women, seemingly falling behind, suddenly pressed her body weight forward, pushing the other girl to the ground.
The young woman didn't glance or react to the fervent scream of the fallen and dashed over to the older man. Wide-eyed, the older man stared baffled and horrified at the instant actions.
An infected woman lunged from behind a parked SUV and sunk her claws into the skin of the fallen woman.
Elsewhere, someone started a car, with its engine roaring to life.
For one hopeful moment, it seemed they might escape. Then, another infected smashed against the windshield.
A second crawled onto the hood and rammed itself against the vehicle.
The driver panicked, and the vehicle lurched sideways, mounted the curb, and slammed into a concrete light pole with a deafening crash.
Its horn blared continuously and never stopped.
The sound drew even more infected.
In another distant building, a sudden fire had broken out, crackling into the air and slowly spreading. Screams of terror erupted from the house, its residents unable to escape it.
Only a few were able to hold back the onslaught of the infected creatures; however, even that wasn't for a long time before they eventually retreated.
"We…can't help them."
Jon sighed at Icarus' conscious words. They both knew it. As guilty as they felt, there was no avenue to restitute for their actions.
There was no heroic thought on saving anyone. Perhaps if there were any, it was already overridden by an instinctual sense of survival.
All of a sudden—
"Jon, watch out!"
Icarus turned to him, his mutated right eye now pulsing out a flashing yellow glow. His expression turned into panic as he stared at the space above Jon's head.
As soon as he heard the warning, Jon felt a terrifying dread wash over him, drenching his back in sweat.
Something was behind him.
It had approached them without making a sound, and if not for Icarus' timely warning, it wouldn't have made a sound until it had struck.
Its grey, emotionless eyes remained as its claw fell.