This Beautiful World - Book #1 (BxB)

Chapter 2

Silence filled the room as we all stood there in shock. No one dared to move. I was struggling to comprehend what just happened. Our professor lay on the ground, his eyes wide open, but he didn't move. It didn't look like he was breathing anymore. 

Eventually, after what felt like an eternity of silence, Riley spoke up. She didn't tear her eyes away from the body as she asked, "H-he's not d-dead, is he?" 

Jonathan was the closest to the body. He touched the professor's neck as he looked for a pulse. Instead of responding with words, he simply shook his head when he couldn't find anything. That small gesture was enough to make the reality sink in. This wasn't some sort of horrible nightmare. 

The professor's hand no longer covered the wound on his neck. Now we could clearly see what killed him. There was a lot of blood and it looked like a chunk of his neck was missing. I was only able to tear my eyes away when Riley grabbed onto my arm. She had her eyes closed and there were streams of tears gliding down her face. I pulled her into my arms. I didn't know what else to do to comfort her. I was in as much shock as she was right now. 

I felt a hand touch my shoulder. I looked up from Riley to see Alex standing beside me. His hand was stable on me, but I could see how shaken up he was. He tried to sound brave as he said, "We have to go find help. We can't let his body stay here in front of all of these people."

He was right. We needed to do something, but something that our professor said was gnawing at the back of my mind. "He told us that we needed to shut the door when he got here. Why do you think that was? There could be something dangerous out there."

"It's one crazy guy out there. We most likely won't even run into him. I'll quickly get a teacher or a security guard and tell them what happened. We can't stand around here and wait for something else to happen," Alex said. 

"I think that's a bad idea. I have my phone. We can just call the police." It felt wrong to let Alex go out there. That man killed our professor and if Alex ran into him, I doubted that he would make it out safely. I didn't want something to happen to my friend.

Neither of us had any time to react anyway. Before we could do anything, one of the girls who I overheard talking about the insane man got up from her seat. She was also crying her eyes out, but she didn't seek out comfort like Riley did. Instead, she pushed past Alex and me who were standing closest to the classroom door. 

Alex reached out to grab her arm, but she pulled away from him quickly. She shot him a glare and said, "Back off. I'm leaving so don't try to stop me."

She opened the door. Standing right outside was another student. I could tell by the uniform that she wore, but her clothes were torn and bloody. She had scratches on her arms and there was blood also dripping from her mouth. When she saw the girl standing in front of her, she started growling. After that, things seemed to happen too fast.

Our classmate was attacked right before our eyes. Alex was the first to make a move. He didn't try to help the girl, though. When the girl was being bitten and struggling to get away, Alex slammed the door shut. She was out there alone now to fend for herself. 

"Alex, what the hell? She needs our help. You can't seriously kick her out of the classroom like that." I let go of Riley. I was pissed off at Alex for abandoning that girl like that. He was blocking the door which was preventing me from trying to help. I didn't know what I would do, but I couldn't let her be attacked like that. "Move out of the way."

He refused to budge. "No, I'm not going to let you be stupid and act like a hero. You'll only get yourself killed. I don't know what the fuck is going on, but we just watched our teacher die and then we witnessed that shit. You're not going to die on me."

As I looked at my friend's face, I could see how afraid he was. We were all scared. There were many people crying and there were others who watched as they were petrified by the fear. Most of them refused to get near the dead body and now they were even more scared after seeing our classmate get dragged out of the room. The screams from the girl had faded away. We all knew that she met the same fate as our teacher.

Once again, we fell silent. Now the only sound was coming from outside of this room. It sounded like the girl was being eaten. There were loud and sloppy chewing noises. Hearing that made me feel sick to my stomach. Soon those weren't the only noises that we heard.

Behind me, I heard another growl. This time, it was coming from our fallen professor. Shortly after, there were multiple bangs coming from the classroom door. Alex acted as a barricade to stop whatever it was from getting in. He was struggling, but Riley quickly ran over to him to help him keep the door shut. Unfortunately, that wasn't our only problem now. 

The reanimated professor lunged at Jonathan, who was still kneeling down beside him. He was snapping his teeth at him as he tried to get a bite, but Jonathan did his best to fend him off. He held him off at arm's length, yet the professor still clawed at his arms. He wouldn't be able to fight him off forever.

I looked around the classroom for some sort of weapon. No one else looked like they would lift a finger to help. I couldn't really blame them. No one else wanted to get hurt or even worse. We now knew what happened when you were bitten. You would turn into a monster; a zombie. I never thought that I would live in this sort of reality. How could this even be possible?

My eyes landed on a pair of scissors that sat on the professor's desk. I grabbed them and rushed over to Jonathan. His arms were starting to shake from trying to hold our professor off. I knew that I couldn't hesitate for a second longer. I stabbed down at the professor's head. I pushed them in as far as they would go. The creature let out a screeching noise, then went silent. He was no longer moving once again. 

Jonathan pushed the body off of him. I held out my hand and helped him to his feet. There wasn't any time to stand around, though. In silent agreement, both of us pushed the professor's desk towards the door. It would be a better barricade than my friends. They eventually would lose the strength to try to keep the door shut. It seemed like these monsters were strong. 

Alex let out a sigh when he was relieved from keeping the door shut. The creature still banged on the door from the other side. When I looked at Jonathan, I saw that both of his arms were bleeding from where he was scratched. The cuts didn't look too deep. He would have been fine if those were normal scratches, but if these things were actually zombies then he was screwed. 

He noticed me looking at his arms. "I know. We needed to figure out what to do before it's too late."

We needed to think about the next step. We couldn't stay in this room forever and now because of Jonathan's situation, our time was even more limited. Our professor changed within minutes. I didn't know if being scratched affected people differently than being bitten. We couldn't take any chances, though. We also didn't know how many more of those things were out there. 

The hardest part would be trying to figure out how to escape this place.