The swarm descended on the panicked mass as soon as the first scream erupted, falling upon us in a storm of bloated flesh and clicking mandibles.

  Panic spread like wildfire, and in moments, we devolved into a frantic mess of pushing, shoving, and scrambling, each person desperate to get away.

  An elbow caught me in the face, and I slammed against the wall. Dazed, vision swimming, I only registered the feel of a hand grasping for my shirt when it had already grabbed hold.

  A girl. Young. A junior, maybe even a freshman, was staring at me through bulging eyes, one hand on me, the other clawing desperately at the body of a bloatfly burrowing into her mouth, features lost in a spray of gore and shards of teeth, scream muffled into a wet gurgle. In one last spasm of violent motion, the fly tore her lower face to ribbons and disappeared inside her skull, spraying me with blood.

  The girl’s hand slackened, went limp and she fell like a wet rag onto the floor.

  Shock shot through me, paralyzing my senses for a split second, but then my body reacted on its own. I tore myself from the wall, keeping low and sprinting forward, hands instinctively raised over my head.

  Every ounce of survival instinct kicked in, and I didn’t stop to think. There was no room for thought, no time for hesitation, just the frantic, animal need to get away.

  Around me, chaos unfolded like a nightmare. People screamed, fell, and were consumed as the storm of wings and chitinous bodies raged. I kept moving, bulling my way through the writhing mass of bodies and insects, shoulders and elbows shoving aside anyone in my path, gritting my teeth through the pain of that damned pale dust sticking to my skin.

  It was like trying to run through fire.

  Jaw clenched and mouth shut, bulling my way through flailing students and bloated abominations, I ran, the flailing, desperate bodies around me barely registering;

  bludgeoning everything in front of me with rabid abandon.

  A single goal echoing, roaring in my mind, consuming any other thought in its frenzy.

  Survival.

  As soon as I saw the door to the bathroom at the edge of my sight, I jumped in, away from the slaughterhouse that the corridor had become.

  “GOPHER! GOPHERRR! FUCKING HELP MEEE!!”

  The scream cut through the air, sharp and desperate. I turned just in time to see Benjamin, already surrounded by a cloud of those damn flies, swinging his butterfly knife wildly at the swarm. He was so close—just at the entrance, his hand reaching for the door.

  He tried to yell again, but before he could finish the word, one of the flies burrowed its way into his mouth. His face twisted in agony as his jaw snapped, a sickening crack echoing through the chaos.

  Eyes bulged and burst out of their sockets, blood pouring from his nose and ears in torrents. His body went rigid, and then he collapsed forward, hitting the ground with a wet, lifeless thud.

  Before I could say or do anything, a jolt of pain in my shoulder hit me like a bolt. I turned my head and nearly screamed. One of the human head sized flies had latched onto the back of my hoodie during my frantic run, and now its grotesque mouth was sinking into my shoulder. Its head was nothing but a horrifying, triple-sectioned maw—no eyes, no other features, just a monstrous mouth with wings.

  I don’t know why I didn’t scream. Maybe it was the panic. Maybe the shock of the bite.

  Maybe the grotesque way the Headmaster had died, flies burrowing into his skull like some aberrant approximation of wasps entering their nest, had locked my jaw for the rest of time. Either way, I did the only thing my adrenaline-addled brain thought of at that moment.

  I rammed my shoulder into the tile wall.

  The albino fly burst into mulch and the smell of rot that expelled from it immediately turned my stomach over, filling my mouth with bile.

  I bit it down and swallowed it back. Panicking, screaming, even puking, these were luxuries I did not have at this point.

  Benjamin lay motionless on the ground, blood pooling around him. The swarm was gone, but the echo of their presence lingered in the air. The buzz of the insects, mixed with the frantic screams of others, making it clear that the slaughter was far from over.

  For a moment, the chaos slowed, the adrenaline that had been pumping through me finally beginning to fade. My heart hammered in my chest, my hands shivered uncontrollably, like a man dying of hypothermia, but now there was space for thought, and it was a heavy, suffocating thing. I couldn’t afford to stop, not yet.

  Quietly, I moved toward the door, trying to make as little noise as possible, and pressed my ear against the cool metal for a second, listening. The screams, the buzzing, they were still there, but growing fainter, as if the nightmare was moving deeper into the building.

  I dared a careful glance out into the corridor, my breath held tight in my chest.

  It was a charnel house, a sight plucked straight out of a dying man’s fever dream, linoleum floors slick with blood, scattered bits of flesh and corpses frozen in paroxysms of pain. Everything bore the same marks as Benjamin, burst eyes, blood trickling languidly from noses and ears.

  Far to the left, the few remaining survivors were running, the bulk of the swarm after them, with only a few straggler flies laying on corpses, chewing into their flesh.

  I yanked on Benjamin’s arm, pulling the corpse deeper inside the bathroom and closed the door as quietly as I could, swiping his knife in the process. The poor bastard had fallen too far inside for me to risk the noise of pushing him out into the corridor.

  “Alright. Alright. Focu…" I began thinking only to gag again. The rotten smell of the bloatfly still lingered and before affording to think of anything else, I tore my hoodie off and chucked it out the window.

  “Now then. Focus” I mentally repeated.

  It was nothing more than a theory, more a desperate hope than anything concrete, but it was all I had left. The way the swarm had pursued the survivors, the way the flies’ heads were structured everything pointed to one thing: sound.

  The buzzing, the chaos, the relentless attacks, it seemed they were drawn to noise. It was a slim chance, but right now, it was the only chance I had.

  With the adrenaline high subsiding, I was beginning to feel the reality of my current situation. And all the pain that came with it.

  The areas on my hands and the back of my head where that cloud of dust had touched were itching and burning furiously.

  I turned them over.

  They were red and inflamed, the skin dried and flaky, looking as though I was having some sort of skin rash, if not an outright infection. It wasn’t a longshot to assume that the back of my head was the same.

  I moved to one of the few still intact sinks, twisting the faucet just enough to let a trickle of cold water flow. As soon as it hit the rash, the pain subsided. Whatever that dust was, it was easy to wash off. The cold felt almost soothing, and I scrubbed at my skin with a frantic urgency, working quickly to clean it from my arms, my face, even my hair. I moved to my jeans next, rinsing the fabric as best I could while they were still on me.

  When that was done, I paused for a second, breath still shaky from the adrenaline, and then took off my t-shirt to inspect the bite.

  My shoulder had become a red welt roughly the size of my palm, surrounded by multiple puncture wounds, swollen and warm to the touch. And considering how putrid that bloatfly had been on the inside…

  “Shit” I cussed.

  Infection, sepsis, gangrene, all these were possibilities if I left it untreated. I’d seen enough horror movies, shows and played enough survival games to know this.

  And that was the optimistic assumption. Best case scenario, these rot-bugs were either poisonous, carried rabies or who knew whatever else disease.

  Worst case, since they were clearly not of this world, I didn’t even want to let my mind wander there.

  I did the only thing I could. Soap and water to clean the wound, grinding my teeth as I made sure to dig the suds as deep into the puncture holes as I could.

  When it was over, I reached for Benjamin’s discarded knife, the cold steel a brief comfort in my hand, and sank down against the wall, my body shaking with exhaustion. I let my head fall, face cradled in hands, and allowed myself a few moments of stillness, my breath coming in ragged gasps. I had to think. Had to plan. To…

  *thunk*

  The sound cut through the quiet like a knife stab, sharp and unexpected. My head snapped up, heart lurching in my chest. The silence was suffocating, heavy, before the sound of a wet, sickening slap echoed through the bathroom.

  Benjamin’s body twitched again…

  It wasn’t much, just a small, sporadic spasm, but it didn’t stop. His arms and legs jerked, slapping wetly against the tiles, the movement unnatural, almost mechanical.

  My blood ran cold and breath caught in my lungs.

  It wasn’t over.

  “Oh you got to be shi…” I mouthed as I got my feet under me. Benjamin’s corpse twitched again, then again, each iteration quicker than the previous, until finally, in a burst of unnatural, contortionist-like motion, he shot off of the ground, back on his feet.

  I didn’t make a single sound or move, motionless like the wall behind me, as the corpse began to move grotesquely, in a morbid dance of uncoordinated motions.

  It rolled its head back and forth, as though trying to angle its ears in ways to help it hear better, ruptured jaw snapping at the air in quick bites.

  It made sense, in some gruesome way.

  Benjamin’s eyes had burst when the insect had forced its way into his mouth, so there’s no way it could see.

  And the way it had faced me more than once but hadn’t reacted, at this point I was almost certain that, whatever the hell this zombie-like thing was, it functioned only on sound.

  The best strategy here would be to wait it out. As long as I remained motionless and quiet it wouldn’t find me.

  The error in that plan presented itself quickly.

  As I stood there, crouched, my nerves stretched to their breaking point, the creature that had once been Benjamin swung its head back and opened its mouth wide releasing a series of insectoid clicks.

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  A sound almost immediately mirrored just beyond the bathroom door.

  “Benjamin” began feeling its way blindly towards the exit.

  Shit.

  SHIT.

  The damn thing would break down the door, or open it in order to join the others of its kind in the hallway. More than likely, all those corpses in the hallway had risen too. At the very least, those that had been infected by those flying rot-bugs.

  It wouldn’t matter how silent I was, if the door was gone, sooner or later they’d hear me.

  This bathroom was going to become my grave if I didn’t act.

  Without giving myself enough time to change my mind, I quietly pulled out the butterfly knife and picked up a pebble of porcelain from the broken sinks.

  It clattered lightly as I flicked it against one of the stall doors, not loud enough to alert the entire hallway, but more than enough to grab “Benjamin’s” attention.

  The creature rounded on the direction of the sound, teeth chattering aggressively and grasped at the air in front of it. When it grabbed nothing it began shuffling towards the sound, hands clawing mindlessly all the way.

  I moved slow and low, taking as much care where I placed my feet as I could, making my way behind it, knife held in a reverse grip.

  If zombie movies had taught me anything, it was that I’d have to go for the head.

  Although this wasn’t exactly a zombie, per se.

  But close enough.

  Everything progressed painfully slow. I felt like I was moving in reverse, and my breathing sounded far too loud in my ears. Hell, even my own heartbeat sounded like a parade drum, so much that I was surprised the creature hadn’t heard me yet.

  Seconds that had felt like minutes later, I was right behind it, arm raised, ready to stab in the back of Benjamin’s skull.

  The squeak of my heel against the tile floor might as well have been a bullhorn.

  I’d been careless. Hadn’t minded my footing enough.

  “Benjamin” rounded on me in a jolt of movement and I gasped in surprise before I could stop myself.

  With a whirring thrum of clicks and snapping teeth, it charged into me, bearing me down onto the floor.

  Either by sheer luck, instinct or self-preservation reflex, I managed to cross my left forearm across its neck just before we struck the ground, barely just keeping that blood-frothing mouth away from my face.

  The creature didn’t snarl or growl as it tried to tear into me, the only sounds coming from it, a cacophony of insect chitters and snapping teeth.

  And the unnatural subtlety of its noise only made it all the more horrible.

  The dead thing flailed and slammed its arms into my sides, grabbed clumsily at my clothes, all the while single-mindedly pushing to bite down at me, lips peeled away, bloody red gums on full display like a dog baring its teeth.

  Fortunately, whatever these things were, they seemed to be as strong as they had been before being taken over.

  “Benjamin” may have been a head taller than me, but I had spent the last 3 years working on a construction site. All that shoveling, lifting and wheelbarrow carrying had given me enough upper body strength to keep an uncoordinated, flailing tween zombie off me.

  With a shift of my hips and a push, I launched the monster off me and rolled on top of it where my weight gave me the upper hand.

  Pushing the entirety of my mass over its lower body, I grabbed at its neck, holding those damned bared, bloody teeth as far away from me as I could. The thing thrashed and grabbed at my arms, but it was pinned and lacked the coordination and fine motor skills necessary to shake me off.

  I had to end it.

  Quickly.

  It was thrashing too much. Making too much noise.

  Without wasting a moment more, I reared my arm back and stabbed the knife into “Benjamin’s” temple. The monster immediately went rigid and stopped moving, but I wasn’t done.

  The knife tore out with a bony crunch and I stabbed again.

  And again.

  And again.

  By the time I drew myself back off the corpse, I had stabbed it enough times to reduce the right side of “Benjamin’s” skull to a gaping hole.

  My hands shook.

  My heart drummed in my chest as though trying to jump out.

  My breath came out in short, ragged gasps.

  Realization hit me like a fist to the face.

  I had just stabbed a person in the skull. During the fight itself, I hadn’t even thought about it. Not even considered it. It was pure fight or flight and flight had not been an option.

  The knife clattered to the floor and I backed even further away from the corpse, the blood and ichor coating my hands feeling significantly more cloying all of a sudden.

  For whatever reason my mind went back to remembering an interview I saw on the Internet, of some old WW2 veteran speaking about the first enemy soldier he had killed with a bayonet.

  “It’s easy to shoot. You don’t see their face. The look in their eyes. The desperation. From afar, from a scope, you just see a target. But up close, they want to live just as much as you do. And when you run them through… you remember that feeling. Of blade cutting meat and jamming into bone”

  I remembered the look in his eyes. He looked haunted.

  I remembered scoffing.

  What was the big deal? Kill or be killed, it was war. What a whiny little wuss.

  Now, I understood.

  Rationally I knew that I had not been “Benjamin” anymore. That thing, that creature, was something else. Rationally I knew full well that if I would have hesitated, the monster would have killed me.

  But I couldn’t shake the feel of the knife sliding into the bone.

  It had felt so much different than I had imagined it. There had been so much more resistance. There had…

  I immediately shot to one of the sinks and began scrubbing off the mix of blood and rot-smelling ichor off my hands.

  “Stop whining, you little wuss. That wasn’t a person anymore” I whispered to myself, all the while keeping an eye on the door. The struggle must have lasted seconds and we had made a fair bit of noise.

  But the creatures outside seemed to lose interest as soon as everything went quiet, shuffling away.

  I turned my attention back to scrubbing my hands clean.

  “Not a person anymore. Not a person anymore. He was already dead. A walking corpse” I repeated, like a mantra.

  “A walking corpse that had been a living person only minutes before” something in the back of my mind reprimanded me.

  Was it supposed to be like this?

  Was I supposed to feel off for keeping myself alive? Against a walking corpse, no less?

  Yes.

  No.

  Yes and no.

  Yes because feeling off about carving out someone’s temple like a damned pumpkin was normal unless you were a psychopath.

  And no, because it was a simple matter of survival. Kill or be killed. And feeling “off” about it was a luxury I wouldn’t be able to afford having. Not unless I was aiming for an early grave.

  Taking a deep breath and exhaling slowly, I gathered myself from the sink and went to retrieve my knife.

  It was slick with a mixture of blood and that foul smelling ichor. The same smell as the bloatfly I had crushed against the wall. I turned to Benjamin’s body.

  The side of his head where I had stabbed, repeatedly, was a broken mess. I hadn’t just pierced it, I’d carved a hole into the side of his skull. And though it could see a portion of the albino fly’s body, with several knife wounds in it.

  My face contorted into a disgusted grimace.

  These bugs, they didn’t just invade the body. They burrowed straight into the head, and considering the size of them, it took very little to imagine what happened to the brain.

  “Horrible way to go” I muttered.

  I stood there for a few more minutes. Considering, taking stock and thinking.

  Staying here would be just delaying the inevitable.

  Either the other things outside got in, or I was trapped until I starved. That was, unless my bite wound was already infected and I was going to die of fever and sepsis. Or whatever else these bloated hellspawns carried in their mandibles….

  No.

  I refused. I refused to allow myself to stop.

  I hadn’t done that in the orphanage. Not in the ghetto. Nowhere and never.

  If I was gonna go down, it’d be while struggling to live another day.

  At the very least I was going to head to whatever afterlife awaited without regrets.

  I gently crossed Benjamin’s arms across his chest and made the sign of the cross.

  “Rest in peace. You were a sadistic prick but even you didn’t deserve to die like this”