The floor transformed from a place of late-night chatter and half-finished assignments into a fortress stitched together by urgency.
Corvin Kovač moved like a man assembling a machine under fire, directing without raising his voice. Doors were dragged shut, heavy furniture shoved into place. The main stairway was blocked first, then the lift, its metal doors sealed like a tomb. The emergency exit followed, chained and reinforced. Even the connecting bridge, once a casual shortcut between buildings, was barricaded into irrelevance. Curtains were drawn tight across every window, choking out the outside world until the hallway existed in a dim, artificial dusk.
---
Aisha Mercer didn't hesitate. Where Corvin calculated, she acted. Tables slammed into place under her force, chairs splintered if they resisted. The barricades weren't neat, but they were solid. Final.
---
Marco Montelli disappeared briefly, returning from the student worker storage room with the scent of dust and rust trailing behind him. In his hands: two crowbars and a sledgehammer. He passed the hammer to Aisha without a word. She took it like it belonged to her all along. One crowbar stayed with Marco, the other he handed to Chase Callahan, who gave a small nod, gripping it tighter than necessary.
---
Zhao Mei Lin didn't search. She chose. The emergency fire safe shattered under precise force, glass cracking like a quiet decision. She pulled out the fire axe, its red edge catching the dim light, and held it with calm certainty. No wasted motion. No hesitation.
---
Dimitri Volkonsky returned from his room carrying a wooden baseball bat, worn but sturdy. From beneath his coat, he produced a heavy-duty knife and handed it to Priya Satsangi. She twirled it once, a flicker of theatrical flair still clinging to her despite everything, though her smile didn't quite reach her eyes.
Meanwhile, Astrid Clairmont stood still for a moment, something tugging at her memory. Then realization struck. She rushed to her bag, pulling out a neatly wrapped package she had never opened. Hands slightly unsteady, she tore it open.
Inside was a deployable baton.
A gift from her sister, meant for safety, forgotten in ordinary days.
Astrid extended it with a sharp snap. The sound echoed down the hallway like a starting signal.
When they regrouped, the corridor felt tight and unfamiliar.
The barricades were in place. Every entrance was sealed. There was nowhere else to go.
No one spoke.
They were ready, or as ready as they could be.
The waiting stretched.
Minutes passed with nothing but the faint hum of the building and the sound of eight people trying not to breathe too loudly. Every small shift felt amplified. Every creak of the structure sounded like a warning.
Then came the knock.
It wasn't loud. Just a few quick, uneven hits against the barricaded stairway door.
All of them stiffened.
Corvin Kovač raised a hand slightly, signaling silence, though no one had spoken. Slowly, carefully, the group began to move as one toward the main stairway entrance. Their footsteps were controlled, measured, each person watching the door like it might explode inward at any second.
Another knock.
Then a voice.
"Please—please open! Let us in!"
It wasn't one person. There were at least two, maybe three. Their voices overlapped, cracked, desperate in a way that didn't sound rehearsed or fake. Raw fear.
Astrid Clairmont stepped forward instinctively, her grip tightening on the baton. "They're alive," she whispered, urgency pushing into her voice. "We can't just—"
She reached for the barricade.
Before her hand could even touch it, Corvin Kovač grabbed her wrist. At the same time, Aisha Mercer stepped in front of the door, sledgehammer lowering into position.
"No," Corvin said, firm and quiet. "We don't know if they're infected."
Aisha didn't take her eyes off the door. "You open that, and if one of them turns, we're done."
Astrid hesitated, looking between them, the voices still pleading just a few feet away. "But what if they're not?"
Corvin didn't answer immediately. His jaw tightened. "If they are," he said finally, "then we're dead."
The words settled heavily.
Outside, the knocking grew more frantic.
"Please! Please, we know you're in there! Don't do this!"
The desperation clawed at the edges of the room, pressing into every crack of doubt.
Then Zhao Mei Lin spoke, her voice flat, cutting clean through the panic.
"Go higher, You idiots." she said. "Instead of crying here."
The bluntness landed hard.
For a second, the voices outside faltered.
"…What?"
"Go up," Mei Lin repeated, sharper now. "Find another floor."
There was a pause. Breathing. Confusion replacing panic, just for a moment.
"Okay… okay—yeah—"
Footsteps shuffled faintly on the other side, like they were turning, deciding.
And then—
Then came a different sound.
Slow.
Dragging.
Wet.
It scraped along the floor outside the door, uneven and close. The kind of sound that didn't belong to anything fully human anymore. Like soaked fabric being pulled across concrete. Like weight that didn't move right.
Corvin Kovač's expression changed instantly. His nose wrinkled slightly.
He smelled it.
Metallic. Sharp. Like blood left too long in the air.
Under it, something worse. Bitter. Rotting. Thick enough that it felt like it clung to the back of the throat.
The others noticed it seconds later.
And then––
A scream. And another one this time with even more loud.
It tore through the door, high and sudden, full of pure terror. It didn't last long. It cut off abruptly, like something had shut it down mid-breath.
Silence followed.
Not empty silence. Heavy silence.
No one spoke.
No one moved.
Every single one of them stood frozen, listening to that slow, dragging presence just beyond the barricade they almost opened.
The realization settled in all at once.
If they had let them in—
No one finished the thought.
Marco Montelli was the first to step back. Just one quiet step. Then another.
The others followed.
Slowly.
Carefully.
Like making too much noise might draw attention.
They retreated deeper into the floor, away from the stairway, away from the door, until the sounds became distant but never fully gone.
Only then did they stop and begin to look at each other.
No one needed to say it.
They had made the right choice.
And it still felt terrible.
They didn't move far before the tension cracked.
Astrid Clairmont stepped back against the wall, her baton lowering slightly. Her breathing was uneven now, shallow, like she couldn't get enough air.
"I should've opened it…" she muttered.
No one answered at first.
"I heard them," she went on, quieter now, her voice starting to drift. "They were right there. We could've—maybe if I was faster—maybe if I just—"
Her words began to overlap, repeating, spiraling. Not loud. Not dramatic. Just… unraveling.
Marco Montelli stepped closer, careful, steady.
"Astrid," he said, firm but calm. "Look at me." She didn't, not immediately.
"They didn't die because of you," he continued. "They made their own choices. They stayed there. They panicked. That's not on you."
She swallowed, but her grip on the baton didn't loosen.
"They might've lived if we helped…"
Marco shook his head slightly. "Or we'd all be dead with them."
A pause.
Then, from the side, Zhao Mei Lin spoke, her tone cold and precise.
"They died because of their stupidity." "Screaming help in such a situation will only get you killed faster."
The words landed hard.
No comfort in them. No softness. Just a blunt conclusion.
Astrid flinched slightly, but the spiral stopped. Not healed, not resolved… just halted.
Silence followed again, thinner this time.
Then Corvin Kovač spoke, cutting into it.
"…Do you all smell that?"
A few of them frowned.
"The air," he added. "Metallic. Bitter."
There was a brief pause before Chase Callahan let out a quiet breath.
"Yeah… kinda hard to miss, mate," he said, his accent more noticeable now. "Smells like someone left a bunch of coins in a wet sock and let it rot."
That earned the faintest reaction. Not quite a laugh. Just… acknowledgment.
Dimitri Volkonsky shifted his grip on the bat.
"Do you think it is zombies?" he asked. "We haven't seen one up close yet."
No one had a real answer.
That uncertainty hung heavier than the smell itself.
Priya Satsangi tilted her head slightly, eyes narrowing as if trying to frame the situation into something familiar.
"Then we need rules," she said. "Every situation like this has rules."
A few of them glanced at her.
"We need to figure out which type of zombies we are dealing with."
"Classic zombies or super powered ones, Fast or Slow, Dumb or Smart, Method of transmission etc."
The question wasn't ridiculous.
It was practical.
Patterns meant survival.
Corvin Kovač nodded once, slow.
"We will figure it out," he said.
He looked toward the direction of the stairway, expression tightening.
"We observe them in daylight," he said, his voice steady, already moving past panic and into planning. "Visibility matters. We don't guess in the dark."
No one argued.
He looked around the group, reading the exhaustion sitting on their faces like a second skin. "We also rest. Even a few hours. If we're tired, we make mistakes."
That part felt harder to accept.
Resting, now, felt almost wrong.
Still, people began to move.
Aisha Mercer was the first to peel away. She didn't overthink it. She found a spot, set the sledgehammer within arm's reach, and lay down like someone who understood one simple rule: sleep when you can, fight when you have to.
--
Zhao Mei Lin followed, quieter. She chose a position where she could see both the hallway and part of the barricade even while resting. The fire axe stayed close, her hand loosely around the handle as she closed her eyes. Her breathing slowed quickly, controlled, deliberate. This wasn't escape. It was discipline.
--
Corvin Kovač was last of the three. He sat down, back against the wall, pipe wrench resting across his lap. His mind didn't stop moving, but he forced it into order. Emotions were distracting. Distractions lead to bad decisions. He shut it out piece by piece until there was only structure left.
Then, eventually, sleep.
Not deep. Not peaceful. Just enough.
The others didn't have that luxury.
Astrid Clairmont stayed awake, staring at nothing. Every time she closed her eyes, she heard the knocking again. The voices. The scream. Her fingers tightened around the baton in small, repeated motions, like she was trying to hold onto something solid while everything else slipped.
--
Marco Montelli sat nearby, elbows on his knees, staring at the floor. His thoughts circled the same place over and over. Could they have done it differently? Said something else? Acted faster? He knew the logic. He even believed what he told Astrid. But belief didn't quiet the question.
--
Dimitri Volkonsky leaned against the wall, baseball bat resting across his shoulder. His eyes were open, distant. He wasn't thinking about the moment itself. He was categorizing it. Filing it away. Trying to understand it like a piece of information instead of something that happened right in front of them.
--
Priya Satsangi sat cross-legged, the knife resting in her lap. Usually, she would have filled the silence. A joke, a comment, something dramatic to break the tension. Now, there was nothing. Just quiet observation, like she was waiting for reality to reveal its script.
--
Chase Callahan leaned back against the wall, crowbar resting beside him. He tapped his fingers lightly against his leg, an absent rhythm that never quite formed into anything complete. His eyes stayed on the ceiling, but he wasn't really seeing it.
--
None of them said it out loud.
But it sat there anyway.
The world they knew was gone.
And worse, they felt like they had helped confirm it.
Not directly. Not intentionally. But the thought lingered, sharp and persistent. If they had opened that door, maybe things would be different.
Or maybe they would just be dead too.
That didn't make it easier.
Time passed slowly.
The artificial lights above hummed. Somewhere far away, a faint, indistinct noise echoed through the building, too distant to identify, too present to ignore.
Eventually, exhaustion won small victories.
Marco's head dipped forward for a few minutes at a time. Priya lay back without realizing it. Chase's tapping slowed, then stopped. Even Astrid's grip loosened slightly as her eyes closed, though her rest was shallow and restless.
The night thinned.
Darkness gave way to a dull gray filtering through the edges of the curtains. Not bright. Not warm. Just enough to signal that time had moved forward.
Morning.
Corvin Kovač opened his eyes first.
He didn't move immediately. Just listened.
No knocking. No dragging sounds nearby. Just the same distant quiet.
"Up," he said after a moment, his voice low but clear.
One by one, the others stirred.
Some looked worse than before. Others looked unchanged, which was its own kind of exhaustion.
Corvin stood, picking up the pipe wrench.
"We observe," he repeated.
No one argued this time.
They had questions.
And now, finally, they were going to look for answers.
They gathered near the windows, careful not to disturb the curtains too much. Just enough space to see. Not enough to be seen.
Outside, the world had changed.
The campus grounds, once scattered with students and routine movement, were now slow and uneven.
Figures wandered without direction, their paths crossing and drifting apart without purpose. No coordination. No awareness.
Just movement.
Dimitri Volkonsky slipped back briefly and returned with a small, worn notebook and a pen. He leaned against the wall near the window, already writing as he watched.
"Keep talking," he said quietly. "I'll record everything."
Corvin Kovač narrowed his eyes, studying the patterns.
"They're slow," he said. "Not completely immobile, but definitely limited. No sprinting. No coordination."
Dimitri wrote it down.
Movement: Slow. Limited mobility.
Zhao Mei Lin spoke next, her gaze fixed and analytical.
"No signs of intelligence," she added. "They don't react unless something triggers them."
Another note.
Cognition: None observed. No higher thinking.
Priya Satsangi scanned the crowd below, eyes sharp.
"No visible mutations," she said. "No special types. No variation."
"Yet," Aisha Mercer muttered.
Dimitri paused, then wrote anyway.
Mutations: None observed (for now).
A brief silence followed before Dimitri Volkonsky spoke again, more to himself.
"We don't know transmission fully," he said. "But we've confirmed at least one method."
Everyone knew which one.
Transmission: Bite (confirmed). Others unknown.
Astrid Clairmont shifted slightly, watching one of the infected stumble after a sudden noise in the distance.
"They react to sound," she said. "Not sure about sight."
A distant crash somewhere below caused several of them to turn sharply toward it, drawn like magnets.
Dimitri wrote quickly.
Attraction: Sound-based response confirmed.
"Incubation time?" Marco asked.
No one answered.
Too many unknowns.
Dimitri added it anyway.
Incubation Time: Unknown.
Chase Callahan lifted a pair of binoculars, adjusting them carefully as he focused on a group further out.
"Hang on…" he murmured.
The others glanced toward him.
He stayed quiet for a moment longer, observing closely.
"Their skin," he said finally. "Look at it."
They couldn't see what he was seeing, not at that distance.
"It's changing," he continued. "Not all at once… but it's happening."
He lowered the binoculars slightly, frowning.
"Turning grey."
Dimitri paused mid-writing.
"Grey?" he repeated.
Chase nodded slowly, eyes still fixed outside.
"Yeah… not pale. Not sick-like."
He hesitated, searching for the right words.
"More like… ash."
That word lingered.
"Ash?" corvin said. "That is the bitter and metal we smell."
It wasn't just decay.
It was transformation.
Dimitri wrote it down carefully, pressing the pen harder than before.
Skin Condition: Gradual greying observed. Ash-like appearance developing.
The group fell silent again, each processing the same thought from a different angle.
From the observations the zombies were predictable.
But that also made them dangerous.
The barricade was secured again behind them, every piece checked twice before anyone let go. Only then did the group gather in the center of the corridor, forming a loose circle.
For a moment, no one said anything.
Corvin Kovač stood near the center of the corridor, pipe wrench resting against his shoulder.
"We can't stay here long-term," he said. "This place isn't designed to hold out. Limited exits. No control over the surroundings. If something breaks through, we're trapped."
That landed immediately.
"We leave town," he continued. "Find somewhere isolated. Fewer variables. Fewer people. We fortify and survive."
A clean plan. Logical. Controlled.
But not everyone was on board.
Astrid Clairmont spoke first, quieter than usual but firm. "We can't just leave."
Corvin's eyes shifted to her.
"My family is here," she said. "I need to check if they're okay."
That opened the door.
Priya Satsangi nodded slightly. "Same. We don't even know what's happening outside this campus. What if they're waiting? What if they need help?"
Dimitri Volkonsky added, more reserved but no less certain, "Information matters. And… they're still my family."
The room shifted.
Corvin exhaled slowly, tension building behind his eyes. "Going back into town blindly is risk without structure."
"It's not blind," Priya pushed back. "It's necessary."
"It's emotional," Corvin replied.
Aisha shifted her weight, resting the sledgehammer against the ground with a dull thud. "We are humans, Corvin" she muttered.
That pulled attention in another direction.
Zhao Mei Lin spoke next, calm as ever. "We don't need to move yet."
Corvin glanced at her.
"We have supplies," she continued. "Food. Water. Shelter. Defensible position. Leaving now introduces unnecessary risk."
Chase Callahan nodded. "Yeah… not keen on legging it into a city full of those things without knowing the rules yet."
Marco Montelli added carefully, "We're not prepared for travel. Not yet."
Corvin's jaw tightened slightly.
"And when supplies run low?" he asked. "That's when you want to start thinking? When we're forced to move instead of choosing to?"
No one answered immediately.
"That's the worst time to make decisions," he continued. "You don't think clearly when resources are gone."
Corvin's eyes flicked toward Marco Montelli.
"Back me up here, Mr. Mental Health."
For a second, Marco didn't answer.
He ran a hand through his hair, exhaling slowly, like he was sorting through too many truths at once.
"You're not wrong," he said finally.
That gave Corvin a small, quiet victory.
"But neither are they."
That took it back.
Marco straightened slightly, looking around the group instead of at just one person.
"Stress changes how people think," he continued. "When you're low on food, low on sleep, low on options… your brain stops planning and starts reacting. That's real. That's not opinion."
He glanced briefly at Astrid, then Priya, then Dimitri.
"But ignoring something important to you," he added, "does the same thing. It sits there. It builds pressure. And eventually, it also makes you act without thinking."
The corridor fell quiet again, but this time it wasn't tense. It was focused.
"So either way," Marco said, "if we handle this badly, we end up making rushed decisions."
Corvin didn't interrupt. That alone said he was listening.
Marco shifted his weight, grounding the conversation.
"So we don't choose yet," he said. "Not like this."
Aisha frowned slightly. "Then what do we do? Just sit around thinking forever?"
"No," Marco replied. "We separate the problems."
That caught attention.
"First problem," he said, holding up a finger. "Can we even leave this place safely?"
No one answered.
"Second problem. If we can… where do we go?"
He lowered his hand.
"Right now, we're arguing about the second one without solving the first."
A pause.
It clicked.
Zhao Mei Lin gave a small nod. "Logical."
Corvin Kovač looked away for a moment, then back. "So we build an exit plan first."
"Exactly," Marco said.
Routes. Timing. Noise levels. What to carry. What to avoid.
It wasn't about hope or fear anymore. It was about process.
Chase Callahan scratched the back of his neck. "Yeah… makes sense. No point arguing about the destination if we can't even get out the front door without getting jumped."
Aisha Mercer lifted the sledgehammer slightly, resting it back on her shoulder. "So what's the plan?"
Dimitri Volkonsky spoke up, quieter but focused. "We should map the building exits first. Every possible path. Even the ones we don't want to use."
"Agreed," Corvin said.
Priya Satsangi crossed her arms, thinking. "And once we have that… we decide timing."
She didn't bring up families again.
Not yet.
Astrid Clairmont stood a little straighter, her earlier hesitation replaced with something more controlled. "And we don't go alone."
That made everyone look at her.
"If we leave," she added, "we move together. No splitting."
Corvin studied her for a second, then gave a small nod. "No splitting."
That part was settled faster than anything else.
Because deep down, they all knew what separating meant now.
Silence settled again, but it felt different.
A plan was starting to form. Not complete, not safe, but real.
Marco Montelli let out a quiet breath. "Alright," he said. "Step one… we figure out how to get out of here alive."
Corvin Kovač adjusted his grip on the pipe wrench, eyes sharpening slightly.
"Then," he said, "we decide where to go."
No one argued this time.
Because now, finally, they weren't pulling in different directions.
They were moving forward.
Together.