What Lies Ahead II

“Where do we go?” Kurobane gasped.

“Back up! It’s our only shot.” Yuka said, gaze flicking to the flickering exit sign above the stairwell.

They barely made two steps before an infected smashed into a row of lockers, doors bending like tin. A pale hand, riddled with bite marks, clamped onto Yuka’s coat. She didn’t even scream—Shion was already there, jamming the jagged end of her weapon through the back of its skull and out its throat. Yuka tore herself free, stumbling.

Down the hall, bodies avalanched from every crack. A cascade of snapping jaws and slick, blood-dark fingers. They spilled out of ruined classrooms, from stairwells and side doors, multiplying like insects.

They’ll die at this rate. Ren’s focus swept their terror-stricken faces. His thoughts flickered fast. Options? None worth a damn. “Midori!” He barked, coming to a halt at the foot of the stairs.

Midori turned, face pale, one foot still planted on the bottom step after ushering Reina and Lilly upward. Their gazes met—an entire conversation in silence.

Ren ground his teeth until his jaw ached.

“Run.”

Midori’s stare flared with rage. “No! Not again—I’m not leaving you, Ren!” His voice fractured, raw with a desperation that didn’t belong to this moment alone. For an instant, it was like he was staring at someone he’d already lost once.

“I said run!” He vaulted over a toppled desk. With a single, savage kick, he smashed his heel into the fire-alarm box. The red plastic cracked, springs flew, and a shrill bell detonated through the corridor. Overhead speakers wailed, raw as a wounded animal.

The infected recoiled, heads swiveling. They stampeded, trampling each other, charging blindly—battering doors and walls, shredding frames.

Ren crouched behind the desk’s wreckage. They’ll still want meat. “Come on, then,” he muttered. “Come get me!” He yanked a chair off the floor and smashed it into the tiles, splinters exploding across the hall.

“Ren!”

Midori’s cries were faint now, smothered beneath the alarm and the bellow of the infected. The horde wheeled toward him, hunger dragging them forward in a single, surging mass. More and more poured from the corners of his vision. He didn’t have the luxury of debating right and wrong. Not anymore.

A window gaped open ahead. He threw himself through it, shoulder first. Glass scraped his sleeve as he rolled onto the narrow maintenance ledge, rain slamming his body with the weight of thrown stones. The wind clawed at his jacket, tugged at his legs, trying to peel him into the void.

Behind him, the infected scrambled after, their bodies tumbling onto the courtyard stones below. They writhed, then vanished beneath the larger swell. The courtyard was already a churning sea of them. Ashen faces tilted to the storm. Lightning split the sky, and for an instant the whole mass shone silver-white, a thousand wet skulls gleaming.

Ren crouched low. His chest burned. Memories flared sharp as lightning. Fields ablaze. Villagers screaming as orange flames licked wooden stalls. The day his life split in two.

He’d run back then—hesitated—convinced there would be another chance. There never was.

And after? When he’d had enough power to carve mountains, to break armies—it still wasn’t enough. And what was he now? A fraction. A shell. A man on borrowed time. How could he protect anyone?

Ren stared down at the courtyard, and the thought hit hard. One step forward and gravity would do the rest. Quick. Simple. Poetic. They’d spread the story—he died holding the monsters back, a hero’s end. No one would ever know it was just him giving up.

A voice, cruel and jeering, curled into his ear.

You’ll only let them down. You always do.

His lungs hitched. Eyes shut tight. For a moment, he almost let go. He opened them, stared into the storm, and held on.

━━━━━━━━━━𝑾𝑪𝑨━━━━━━━━━━

Midori stared at the barricaded classroom door—gaze raw, ears ringing, legs poured from concrete. Every inch of him hurt, but pain felt distant, almost irrelevant.

“We’re… doomed,” Kurobane whispered, bent over a desk, sweat dripping off his jaw.

“What the hell was that?” Haruka rasped, palms clamped to her temples. The siren’s wail had cleared the hall; without it, they’d have been dead.

“I don’t know,” Kuro muttered. “And I don’t want to.”

“You guys—you saved us. Thank you. Thank you so much!” The man with smeared glasses blurted—shirt spattered, tie crooked. Tears glossed his lenses. “I thought we were dead and I—I panicked—”

“Shh.” The girl with him hissed, finger to lips. Her stare caught on the red across her hand, then drifted up her arm, across her uniform. She sucked in a sharp breath. “O-oh.” Her voice thinned.

“Satsuki—wait—” the glasses kid reached for her, but froze when she recoiled.

“Stay away! I don’t want to get you dirty.” She stared at her palms like they weren’t hers. Her lip trembled, knees buckling. Yuka caught her, steered her into a chair, yanked a spare jacket from a rack and wrapped it around her shoulders.

“It’s okay. Let it out.” Yuka traced slow circles between Satsuki’s shoulder blades as the girl folded into her and shook.

While they worked to steady her, guilt chewed Midori hollow. Stupid. Stupid coward. He thumbed his useless phone again. He didn’t talk to his parents much anymore, but he didn’t hate them either. The thought of them bleeding somewhere made his stomach turn. Don’t think about that.

“Hey,” Haruka said softly. “How are you holding up?” She slid into the chair beside him, laid her palm over his.

“I think Kuro might be right...”

“He’s just scared. Listen. I’m sorry,” she murmured. “About earlier. I sort of shut down there, Truth is, I was scared.”

“That makes all three of us.” He tried for a smile that wouldn’t come.

He took a moment to enjoy the warmth of her hand. His focus flicked back to the door. If Ren staggered there—too weak to push it open—if no one heard—if—

“He’ll come back.”

“If he doesn’t, it’s my fault.”

“What you did was dumb,” Haruka said, squeezing his fingers. “But neither of us was going to stop you. You run into fires when people need you. You always have. I guess… he does, too.”

Midori wanted to ask how she knew Ren that well. He swallowed it. Maybe it didn’t matter anymore.

“Am I interrupting?” Kuro edged closer.

Haruka’s hand slipped from his. The mood shifted. Midori pretended not to notice. “No,” he said. “We were talking about Ren. What he did—it bought us time.”

“Time for what?” Kuro sagged against the wall. “Another plan? We’re screwed.”

“Stop. Just… stop.” Midori’s voice sharpened. “We still have hope. We’re breathing. That’s a chance.”

“Well said.”

Shion stepped from the shadows of the door—hair damp, broom-haft still dark with blood.

“Makabe-san.” Midori nodded. Relief pinched his throat. “Not surprised you’re alive.”

“She’s impressive,” Reina added at Shion’s side. “All of you are.” Her mouth curved faintly. “And don’t worry about that stubborn wannabe; he slipped away somehow. The nerve—pretending he’s some tragic hero.”

“It’s not over.” Shion tucked a damp strand behind her ear. Even amidst the ruin, she seemed dreamlike. “The alarm. The storm. It’s still now or never.”

“We’re no closer to the lounge. Maybe we’ll get lucky on the way. Once we take the tour bus,” Kuro said. “We breach the gate and ride the hell out of here.”

“What if they chase the bus?” Reina asked.

“It’s loud, yes. But heavy. Fast.” Shion’s smile thinned. “It’s our only real exit.”

“By the way, did you see anyone else when you were alone, Makabe-san?” Midori asked.

“I didn’t.”

The thought scraped raw. Seiryo had housed thousands…

“So what now?” Kuro asked.

“We try again,” Shion said.”This time. No rushing off ahead.”

“You saved lives,” Haruka whispered.

“And cost others,” he shot back.

If Ren was dead—if they opened that door and found him broken in the hall—or worse, turned—Midori would never forgive himself.

“We can’t wait. The rain’s getting heavier. If we don’t go now, we won’t make it to the lot.” Kuro said.

“What about Ren?” Reina asked.

Before anyone could answer, the door handle rattled. Breaths hitched. A shadow crossed the frosted glass. The knob turned.

“Shit. One of them?” Kuro hissed, knuckles white on the bat.

“They don’t use doorknobs,” Yuka muttered, frown etched deep.

“Who is it, then?” Kuro demanded.

“Me.”

The voice cut clean through the air—flat, unmistakable.

Ren stepped inside, soaked to the bone. White hair plastered to his forehead, clothes clinging heavy with rain. His gaze swept the room once, like nothing outside had fazed him.

“You’re loud.”

Relief split through Midori’s chest. He swiped his face with a sleeve, laughter bubbling up. That scowl had never looked so good. Reina Aokawa was on her feet before he could move, her eyes bright with a relief so raw it nearly spilled over. She stopped just short of throwing her arms around him.

Ren nodded once, shut the door behind him, and moved deeper in. “Sorry to disappoint.”

“How did you—I mean—how?” Midori stammered.

“Window,” Ren said. “We’ll talk later.” His gaze raked them again, narrowing. “We need to leave. Now.”

“Hold on, we—”

Ren cut him off. “This is our only chance. The path’s clear.”

“Wait. What do you mean by ‘clear’?” Haruka asked him.

“The storm’s got them wandering. We can slip to the main building. This is our one and only chance. And no matter what you see—” his gaze cut across them all, sharp as a blade, “you keep moving.”

Silence thickened, then broke when the man in glasses blurted out, “Then what are we waiting for?” He flushed under the sudden stares. “Ah—S-Sorry. I haven’t even introduced myself. Haruto Tsukikami. Thank you, again, everyone, for…for saving us.” He bowed, awkward, dripping rain.

“Great.”

Midori’s lip twitched. “Don’t be so rude, Ren. Come on. Let’s go.”

━━━━━━━━━━𝑾𝑪𝑨━━━━━━━━━━

Even in the downpour, the courtyard looked less like a school and more like a burial site. Bodies sprawled in grotesque heaps, spread across pathways and flowerbeds, tangled in the fencing. Haruka could hardly believe her eyes.

“It’s a cemetery,” Midori whispered, wide-eyed.

“So many lives cut short…” Yuka murmured.

Shion crouched by a corpse near the pergola. She tilted her head, focus narrowing as she studied the ruin. They all saw the same thing. The body’s head wasn’t just cut, smashed, or even shot. It was gone. A jagged ring of skull fragments framing a wet crater.

“Unusual,” she said. She rose, drifting to another. This one’s legs were twisted, pulverized at the knees, as though something had driven straight through bone and flesh alike. It crawled toward her. Rasping, arms left as wet stumps. She prodded the femur with the haft of her weapon and frowned. “This one too...”

“Don’t do that! It was the infected. What else could it be?” Kuro hissed, unease leaking into his anger.

Shion’s stare lingered on a third corpse, half buried under the others. Its torso had been compressed inward, ribs snapped like broken shutters, organs flattened. As though the weight of a building had come down on it all at once. “It’s almost like someone got here before us.”

Relief rippled through the group when Reina and Lilly returned with Yuka, who raised the keys overhead. Lilly pointed to the seawall. Waves hammered the fencing, spray breaking high. “T-They’re following the sound.”

Ren’s voice cut flat and steady through the storm. “Let’s not linger.”

━━━━━━━━━━𝑾𝑪𝑨━━━━━━━━━━

They stumbled across the flooded lot, feet slapping waterlogged asphalt, every breath burning in their lungs. Rain slashed sideways, stinging her face, while the wind shoved at her back like it wanted them gone faster.

Haruka glanced up. Beyond the seawall, the elevated monorail cut across, frozen mid-track, windows black with shadow. For a moment she thought it was empty—until one shape twitched against the glass. Another followed. Dozens. The silhouettes jerked and writhed like marionettes tangled in their own strings. Her stomach twisted; she tore her eyes away and clambered aboard.

Yuka slid into the driver’s seat. “It’s just a big car,” she whispered to herself, fingers locking around the wheel.

“Big enough to smash through,” Kuro said.

Ren leaned forward, voice colder than the rain. “Remember, Doc. They’re not people.”

“Not anymore.” Shion agreed.

Haruka glared at them both. “Take your time, Fujimori-sensei.”

“Not too much time…”

Yuka drew in a shaky breath. “Once I start this… there’s no going back.”

“Good,” Midori said. “Step on it.”

Headlights flared, weak tunnels through sheeting rain. With a metallic grind, the bus shuddered to life, gears groaning as Yuka fumbled with the wheel.

But before the bus could lurch forward—

“WAIT! STOP!”

The scream cut across everything—the storm, the alarm, even the roars of the dead. Figures staggered through the downpour, waving frantically. A man’s voice ripped raw as he bellowed again.

“DON’T LEAVE US!”

Every yell dragged more infected toward them. The horde shifted in a tide, heads jerking, bodies slamming against one another as they turned.

“Let them in!” Midori shouted. The doors hissed. They tumbled inside, dripping rain and sweat, gasping for air. The man in the front nearly collapsed to his knees. The younger girl with him gripped his arm for dear life, and the other woman clung to the seat rail.

Haruka froze. Her breath hitched. Venom filled her throat.

Shigure.

She wanted to scream, to tell Yuka to open the door, to kick him out and leave him to his fate. But it was too late.

The doors slammed shut. The bus rocked as a wave of infected crashed against it. Wet smacks. Smears of blood and streaks of hands dragged down the glass. Their howls melded with the fire alarm’s endless wail. Dozens quickly became hundreds.

“Drive!” Kuro barked.

Yuka stomped on the gas. The bus thundered forward, shoving through the school gates with a metal-screeching crash. One headlight burst, sparks spitting into the rain. The frame juddered, threatening to tip, but Yuka fought the wheel until they lurched onto the main bridge.

The screaming followed. Through the back windows, Haruka saw them—streams of pale bodies spilling from the courtyard, pouring onto the bridge like floodwater. A tide of white gazes and snapping mouths drawn by the roar of the engine, by the lights, by the terrified cries. The aisle erupted into chaos—shoulders slamming, voices clashing.

“Faster!”

“They’re gaining!”

“Shut up, shut up!”

Fear pressed in from every side. Yet for a moment, the sight through the windshield almost gave hope. Rain-slick asphalt stretched ahead, empty but for scattered wreckage. The bus roared across it, tires hissing, and some dared to believe they might actually make it.

It didn’t last.

“Why are we slowing down?!” Kuro’s voice cracked like a whip through the bus.

“I can’t—I can’t get through! The whole road’s blocked!”

A sea of abandoned vehicles stretching across the bridge like rusted tombstones. Bent fenders locked together, windows shattered, doors hanging open. A graveyard of escape attempts, and it stood in their way.

The bus screeched, tires shrieking on wet asphalt, shuddering to a halt. “Everybody out!” Yuka snapped, near hysterical.

But Haruka didn’t move. Her mind screamed to run, yet her legs were stone, nailed to the floor. Her nails bit deeper into her skin, chest heaving like she was drowning.

Midori appeared in front of her, shaking her by the upper arms. “Haruka! Get up—come on! We have to go!”

She couldn’t. Her body refused.

Midori’s face twisted, desperation burning behind his stare. He swore, turned his back, and moved through the mob to find Kurobane. Their voices clashed.

“We can push through!”

“We’ll never make it!”

Another argument, while their deaths came closer. Pointless. Her attention slid past them, through the windshield, out into the storm.

And there he was.

Ren…

He wasn’t panicking, or shouting, or running with the rest. He stood alone in the rain, white hair plastered to his brow. Just beyond the reach of the headlights, facing the horde pouring after them.

What are you…?

He crouched, deliberate, steady. Like a man bracing to shoulder the weight of the sky. He pressed his palm to the bridge. Her breath caught.

Time held. Even the storm hushed for one impossible second.

Steel shrieked. Asphalt dented inward as if crushed by something colossal. Supports snapped like bones. The road gave way. Cars tumbled nose-first, vanishing into black water as the span between them and the horde collapsed. Their screams cut off mid-howl, swallowed by ruin. A geyser of seawater and shattered concrete exploded upward.

The blast hit last—a bone-deep shockwave that rattled the bus windows, shook the seats, and left Haruka’s teeth aching.

Through the blur of rain, she saw him still kneeling, hand braced against the ground, as if the act had ripped something out of him. Slowly, he rose. Lightning forked. For an instant, Ren looked less like a man and more like the storm itself—inhuman, unstoppable. He turned his head toward the bus, eyes catching the glow of the headlights.

Haruka fought back a shiver. She didn’t know what she’d seen. If she was staring at their savior—or something far worse.