Entry 2 - Beacon

Entry 2 - "Beacon"

We reached the top floor of the school. Following our retreat, I kicked a shelf of chemicals down the entrance to the stairwell we used to escape in an attempt to block it–their attention would only be drawn to feasting for so long.

Panting, I leaned against a wall adjacent to the stairwell entrance. As I took a breather, some of the downed lights had lit back up. Mai was relieved to an extent to see light return to the hallway, but I could see that the other two of the girls were still completely shaken up, having watched their friend be eaten right in front of their eyes.

I chose to give them some space. I didn't exactly have the right words to tell them now; I didn't want to make the situation worse.

"...Come on, you two. If you don't keep walking, we'll leave you behind."

Mai spoke up while I was deciding what to do, bluntly telling them to not slow us down. Mai could tell I wanted to get going and finish up our search. The girls looked shocked at first, but got the point and started following Mai.

Not my preferred method, but it worked, I guess.

No further incidents occurred during our sweep of the third floor, barring Mai lecturing the girls. We soon arrived at the area where the four wings converged. Lila, Lena, and Lukas (who had regained consciousness) sped over to me. They had noticed fairly quickly we were one person down.

The other two groups entered the hall at roughly the same time, Mathieu and Izz leading them. All four groups gathered in the center of the hall. We all went over what each of us encountered.

...We had gone first sharing our collected info. Lila would follow, then Izz, and finally Mathieu.

Of course, we didn’t learn anything new.

Not only that, but we were clearly down a person.

“We found absolutely nothing on the way up here. To add insult to injury, the other boy that was with us got distracted at the worst possible time and was ambushed by those creatures. By the time I had noticed, it was too late. Not a pretty sight at all.”

I bit my lip as I gave my regretful report.

The others in the room winced, it was unfortunate but nothing could be done‒we had bigger priorities.

Lena sighed, “Unfortunate. We had waited for Lukas to regain consciousness, and when he did, we quickly skimmed the halls of the south wing. Nothing on our end. No battles, either.”

We turned our gazes to Izz, but we could see the defeated look on his face. He shrugged, signaling he found nothing of note in the west wing.

The squad sent into the east wing had the same look, but Mathieu adjusted his glasses and spoke. “Back on the second floor, I found something.”

His group looked puzzled.

“What? You said you didn’t find anything.”

“...I lied. In the chess club room, I saw something pretty awful. I chose to wait until regrouping to share, honestly, I think if you guys saw what I did directly, you would freak out and screw things up.”

“We wouldn’t.”

Mathieu’s group got defensive over the lack of trust he had in them.

They were about to keep arguing, but Mathier quickly shut them up, and continued.

“It was an amalgamation of three-something corpses, fused with a large clump of the rotting flesh of the creatures we call ‘Turned’. Their faces were twisted in agony, somehow warped beyond recognition. They seemed to be trying to crawl away from the flesh they were trapped in, but clearly weren’t successful. I’m really not sure what happened after, I still know next to nothing about these things. Frankly, I don’t even know if they were people who were transformed initially, or if they were survivors that had been caught by the Turned.”

The scene Mathieu had described made the others in his group quickly rescind their comments. The others were clearly uncomfortable, but considering they weren’t directly witnessing it, it was hard to be completely repulsed.

“Mathieu, take me to the chess club room.”

I spared no time before asking that.

“Yeah, sure. Everyone else should stay here, as a group.”

“Not a chance, I’m not leaving Shin alone.”

Mai objected to Mathieu’s command, but he didn’t see an issue with her request, and let her tag along. We disappeared into the darkness of the eastern hall, and the rest of the survivors that were gathered in the hall either kept watch or rested.

We made our way down the stairs connecting the eastern floors to the second floor without issue. But immediately as we exited the stairwell into the second floor hall, we were greeted by a mass of the Turned.

We quickly pulled back, seeing as they didn’t notice us, and got out our weapons.

I whispered, “Alright… Remember what we know, their weak spot should be in the stomach.”

Mathieu and Mai nodded, and we quickly mobilized, gathering the attention of the Turned. I focused and counted out around seventeen of them.

“Well… Here goes nothing.”

I dashed quickly to make the first move, making a slash at the stomach of the closest Turned. For once, things worked out, and I dispatched it with ease. The other two followed my lead and we made our way through the crowded hallway without much difficulty. It was still tiring, but we made it to the room Mathier has mentioned.

“Glad we kept the group small and composed.”

Mathieu had justified the order he made earlier. He quickly told us to brace ourselves, and opened the door to the room.

...It was really that bad.

I still took a moment to process what I saw there, but it was mostly as Mathieu described earlier.

Corpses merged with rotting flesh lay on the floor of the room. I picked up on the absolutely repulsive smell this thing gave off. ...That was to be expected, but for some reason, during my fights with the Turned, I never noticed it. Perhaps it’s cause this thing is dead dead, but that sounds stupid. It was likely the adrenaline.

I looked closer, but as Mathier said, the faces were twisted to the point I could barely even see them as faces. There wasn’t anything of note that wasn’t mentioned already, so I ended up brandishing my blade and slicing open the flesh.

The other two were, for a second, surprised. But after I opened up the flesh, I saw the same red core as I did when I bisected the Turned. However, it was only half formed.

“Was this thing… Transforming other humans into Turned?”

That was my first guess.

“...Do you think the humans they devour morph into Turned?”

Mai turned to me, after seeing the core.

“It’d make sense, this is normal in all that apocalyptic zombie outbreak fiction, after all.”

Mathieu gave me a dirty look when I said that.

“Are we really doing this again? Trying to draw parallels between fiction and reality?”

Before I had a chance to respond, a loud alert rang out from our phones. We all looked to see that all of us received the same message: All remaining people in the city, please gather at the auditorium closest to the city square if possible.

Someone had finally put together a concentrated effort to do something about this outbreak already. I had my doubts, but ultimately, we had no better options now if we wanted to learn more about what the heck was going on right now.

I picked up the core from the atrocity in the room, to see if I or anyone else could glean anything from it. I put it in a school bag I found in the room instead of my pocket, out of the fear that keeping it in contact with me could cause problems.

We shut the door to the chess room, and the rest of the members from the High Fiction club met up with us, Izz leading them.

“The other students rushed off to the city square, we separated to pick you guys up and relay the message.”

Izz and Lila looked at the door after he spoke, but he didn’t really want to see what was in there. He then led us down the stairwell, and out of the school.

At this point it started to set in how exhausted I was. It had been several hours since the Eclipse had occurred, and since the moon wasn’t moving any time soon, I had begun to lose track of time entirely. Additionally, I never really rested since the beginning, and had fought twice already.

I moaned. Whatever. I just need to make it to the square, and I can rest all I want.

We moved under the endless night sky, unchanging as if frozen in time from the moment the Eclipse had begun. There were countless Turned out and about, mostly individuals, but we thought it best to avoid all conflict in our current state.

Several blocks passed by as we sprinted through the city, witnessing several groups of people draw the hostility of Turned. Some would prevail over them, some would flail around in fear, unable to do anything but be consumed by the flesh monsters roaming the once peaceful streets.

Mathieu made sure none of us stepped out of line regardless of Lila’s protesting, her wanting to help the strangers we saw. All of us wished to do something about the aura of death circling us, but if we stepped in and started a scene, we would surely be overpowered in due time. Mathieu wasn’t going to allow that to happen, and Lena saw eye-to-eye with him, keeping Lila in check.

About half an hour was spent traversing the streets in the shadows. We approached the auditorium in the center of the city, and saw the doors boarded up. Lila and Izz immediately reacted, believing we were too late, but Mathieu just walked up to the boards and knocked. A man confirmed if we were humans, quickly opening the door after Mathieu responded.

Walking in, we saw about a few hundred survivors, all disheveled and anxious. Some were armed with firearms or house tools. A large number turned to us when we entered, not only because it was very apparent when people entered, but also because we had already been decked out in what appeared to be survival and battle gear.

A few people rushed over to us, namely Lila and Lukas’s parents, Mathieu’s sister, and Aki.

“Shin!”

My brother was genuinely very relieved to see me well. There wasn’t much to be said between us, but he did say he was alone in his school and frightened. He made it here by himself.

“You did a good job, Aki. I’m happy to see you well.”

“...I kind of took you for granted. I was actually afraid you were going to die out there, Shin. Really.”

He started to tear up.

…

I wasn’t used to this.

...I guess we realize how important things are when you fear you’re about to lose them. I didn’t have my mind on that, being blessed to have my friends close by.

…

The few reunions ended well, minus the other three. Most of the group spent time at the club because their home life was empty or damaging. Lena and her family were on awful terms, Mai lived alone, and Izz’s parents just didn’t really acknowledge him much. I couldn’t exactly read how they reacted to the rest of us seeing our family, and seeing us have other people worrying about us.

I also noticed Lila’s brother wasn’t present, nor my mom. We quickly learned they were nowhere to be found after the Eclipse, and it was inferred they had morphed into the Turned.

Lila was heartbroken, hearing the news about her brother.

I, on the other hand, didn’t really… feel anything. It felt wrong, but… I just accepted it.

Aki was distressed when he brought up our mother, but I truly could not manage to shed a tear, even when he told me how much he was scared he was never going to see her again. I wasn’t capable of feeling remorse.

Why was that?

…

The words spoken by everyone became blurred in my ears, turning into white noise as I faded into thought.

…

Just why was it that I didn’t care?

…

I was pulled back into reality by the echo of footsteps on the stage of the auditorium.