The amphitheater on the third floor was a massive room, larger than three classrooms put together, with a central stage overlooking a semicircle of benches.

  In all fairness, calling it an amphitheater was giving it too much credit, but it was by far the largest room in the building and it had served as just that when the old campus had been in use.

  For all its size, it was fairly well-populated. Nowhere near to capacity, but enough.

  Thirty two of the student body had escaped the main campus and holed up here, led by Andreas, an assortment of young men and women, everything from freshmen to seniors, with almost a quarter of them sporting some sort of wound, gash, or makeshift bandage in the form of a rag wrapped around a limb. More than a few of the guys had some sort of improvised weapon within reach, whether it be a chair leg, a broom handle broken to a sharpened point, even a small boulder here and there, most likely picked up on their run here.

  Andreas and his goons made six more people, the only ones armed with guns and, very coincidentally, all looking completely unharmed.

  Our gopher group, isolated into a corner under Andreas’s express orders, numbering in ten, myself included.

  And lastly miss Samantha Wright, communicating with Andreas on the central stage in hushed whispers, and looking increasingly more distraught at what the mammoth of a man was telling her.

  All in all a group of forty-nine “survivors”.

  Forty-nine beating hearts, and I could hear each and every one of them in excruciating detail. Without my immediate survival or the rage-inducing cruelty of Andreas and his goons to occupy my mind, it was becoming very difficult to just sit still and not focus on the growing thirst.

  My gums were itching, and I was having to grind my teeth, jaw clenched tight, fearing that if I relaxed it, my canines would start lengthening.

  Exhaling slowly, air hissing through my teeth, forcing the tightness in my chest to loosen, I tried to steady my mind, to push the hunger back down where it belonged. For the moment, I focused on the simple, mundane task of distracting myself—something to keep my mind from spiraling down progressively darker and visceral fantasies of raw red meat splitting.

  I began my usual exercise, the one I’d been doing for the past couple of hours: scanning the faces around me, searching for any familiar ones.

  It was a pointless exercise, if I was being honest. As a gopher, I’d never exactly been the social butterfly. Not by my own choice, though.

  Friends were something I would have liked.

  But Andreas had made it clear, in his own twisted way, that anyone who associated with the gophers would be marked. It was a forced isolation, no different from the one we were trapped in now.

  Still, I scanned the room.

  There were a few faces I recognized from the senior class—people I had seen around but never actually talked to. I knew them by reputation, or by chance encounters in the halls, but that was as far as it went. None of them were friends, not even acquaintances. Just ghosts in the crowd, people I had brushed against in passing but never allowed myself to know.

  Lizzie Landon, self-styled queen bee of the school, surrounded as always by her gaggle of geese. Tall, from a well-off family, blond-haired and blue-eyed, the 18 year old woman was objectively gorgeous, as befitting the girlfriend of Mayor Henderson’s son. Well, ex-girlfriend, since the two of them eventually got tired of cheating on one another and finally broke up.

  In stark contrast to her appearance though, her personality was sick to put it mildly.

  The female mirror image of Andreas. Vapid, vain, manipulative and possessed of that needless cruelty that some people in positions of social authority gravitate towards.

  At the very least, while she was nowhere near the sociopathic tendencies of her former lover, she nonetheless had a habit of making sure that anyone who irked her the wrong way, or when she was simply bored, was ridiculed, harassed and isolated into becoming a social pariah. It was one of the reasons she and Andreas hovered in the same social circles even though they were exes.

  They worked well together.

  That, and her group of sycophantic hens pretty much rotated into the beds of Andreas and his goons.

  Further in the back, far and away from the main bulk of the student body, the twins Mina and Tina Miller spoke with one another in hushed tones.

  I’d never spoken to either of them, even though Mina had been in my class since my freshman days, but it had always been a “trip” to see them together. Despite being twins, both seniors like me, no two people could be more different.

  Mina could be called petite, although the word itself seemed far too “large” to describe her frame. 4 foot 7, 145 cm, weighing in at a staggering 39, maybe 40 kilos soaking wet, the young woman was absolutely minute. Short, whipcord-thin, looking damn-near anemic at times, it was a surprise that a body so small could harbor a brain as powerful as her’s.

  And powerful was the appropriate word here, since calling her something as simple as a “genius” seemed almost insulting. Mathematics, Physics, Chemistry, Literature, this young lady had dominated every academic olympiad and contest she had set her eyes on, even going so far as competing in the nationals.

  In absolute antithesis to her sister, Tina was a staggering 6 foot 4, 195 cm, amazoness that bore the muscled frame one would expect of a three time National gold-medalist in women's wrestling.

  And not the showman falsities on TV but the actual sport of wrestling.

  Tall, body sculpted with the kind of corded muscle you could attain only through monumental effort and perseverance, and yet bearing the unmistakable curves of femininity, she was the image one would’ve put right under the dictionary definition of a “tomboy”.

  Complete with short hair, punk tattered jeans and athlete’s crop-top.

  The two women, despite being twins, were polar opposites in almost everything.

  Where Mina was a soft-spoken girl’s girl with long hair wrapped in pigtails, framing a round, button-nosed face, Tina was loud, boisterous and had a sharp, aquiline, but not at all unattractive, edge to her features.

  Where Tina was slightly above mediocre in anything but sports and phys-ed, her sister was an academic prodigy.

  Where Mina was the type to get bullied, the last person who’d tried that had gotten pile-drived into the floor by her sister.

  I couldn’t help but feel a slight smirk begin to twist my mouth, cutting even though the gnawing drum of heartbeats, as I remembered Tina damn near headbutting Lizzie Landon full in the face when the “queen bee” had made a joke on her sister’s account.

  Both the Miller sisters were being actively scouted by Universities on both academic and sport scholarships and were the “pride and joy” of our small Texan city. As such, neither Lizzie nor Andreas could pull their normal tactics with them. They were too well known.

  The rest of the student body I didn’t know well enough to pay more than passing attention to.

  So, I fell back on what I could do—watching, keeping my eyes on the mass of people, some of them frantically whispering to one another, others barely holding it together. My hearing, sharpened in ways I wasn’t entirely comfortable with, picking up fragments of conversations.

  Hysterical questions about the army or police showing up. A few whispered proposals to leave, to risk heading to the city proper, as if there was any guarantee of safety there. Wild theories, too—everything from the world-ending chaos of an alien invasion to apocalyptic proclamations of the End of Days.

  And who could blame them? In truth, we didn’t know anything. I knew no more than they did, which was exactly nothing.

  I let out a long, frustrated breath and pulled out my old brick of a phone for the third time. I needed something, anything, to distract myself. To stop hearing the same damn alien invasion theory for the fifth time in half an hour.

  Still no network. No signal. No internet. Hell, I didn’t even have enough battery life left to play a game or scroll mindlessly through bloatware. The screen displayed the time—11:42 AM—mocking me with the cruel reminder that there were still a solid eight hours to go before nightfall. Eight hours of waiting. Eight hours of this consistent and constant reminder of just how dry my throat felt.

  Not good.

  Not good at all.

  At this point, the drum of heartbeats had become an entire orchestra, thrumming through my skull. My gums felt like they were on fire, itching and aching so badly that I couldn’t help but wonder if the instant I unclenched my jaw, my fangs would burst free from their sheaths, snapping open my mouth like a ravenous animal. That dark presence in the back of my mind was thrashing, spasming, clawing its way to the forefront of my thoughts, a migraine pounding behind my eyes, the kind of pain that made me want to crack my skull open just to dig it out.

  Even my sense of smell had sharpened to unbearable levels. All around me, the stench of sweat and unwashed bodies clung to the air, thick and suffocating. But there was something else beneath it, something sweet—almost intoxicating.

  “Fear,” the word whispered from the depths of my mind, settling like a stone in my throat. I swallowed hard, trying to ignore it, but it clung to me like a sickness.

  Whatever the hell this presence was, I was never going to get used to it. It was a constant ache, a gnawing hunger that twisted inside me.

  What made it worse was the knowledge that I shouldn’t be this hungry. I could still feel blood sloshing around in my stomach, not enough to satisfy me, but enough to tell me I wasn’t starving. This wasn’t the hunger of someone who hadn’t eaten in days. No, this was the hunger of an addict—the craving, the desperate need for a fix.

  And my fix was right there, in every heartbeat, in every exposed jugular that passed by me. It was all I could think about.

  I groaned as I bent over on my seat, trying to put enough pressure on my stomach and distract myself.

  “Jon, you okay man?” Tim asked from my left and I nodded, trying to shift my focus. Before he could say anything else, however, Stephanie Evans’s voice echoed through the amphitheater and I snapped my head up, thankful for a proper distraction.

  “Alright, please everyone, may I have your attention?” she spoke up from the main stage, the woman’s thickly accented voice carrying easily. The hiss of whispered chatting died off immediately and everyone turned their heads to regard her and the giant bulk of Andreas to her left.

  "Thank you," she began, her words carrying over the room, measured yet strained. "Now, I know I said yesterday that help is sure to be on its way, and I still believe that to be true…" The last part came out hurriedly, cutting off the whispers that had begun to swell into murmurs.

  "…but the fact remains, we cannot simply wait and hope for the best…" Her attempt to continue was swiftly cut off by Andreas, who took a heavy step forward, seeming to almost fill the space with his presence.

  “What Miss Evans is trying to say is, we got no supplies. No food. Water. Nothing” he bellowed and paused, letting the reality of their situation sink in.

  “Now I dunno about any of you, but I’m hungry as hell and my throat is dry. And if help is coming, we got to be alive to receive it”.

  More than a few students nodded and Andreas took another step forward, standing near the edge of the stage.

  “And I sure as hell didn’t save you from the deadheads to see you all starve. So I got a solution” he shouted out, arms splayed wide open.

  My eyes narrowed and jaw popped as I ground my teeth. There it was. The theatrics. The manipulation. It was beginning.

  “Yeah baby” Lizzie’s voice rang out, followed by a few whistles from Andreas’s goons. This was all the catalyst needed for most of the student body to cheer in one form or another, either a clap, a whistle or as simple as a shouted out “Yeah”.

  Credit where credit was due, the bastard was smart. The words used, Lizzie’s reaction, his goons keeping tempo, everything had most likely been staged and staged well to boot.

  The students were hungry, thirsty and scared, they would’ve cheered for a bucket if it promised to help them. Moreover, Andreas already had accrued enough “brownie points” by leading them out of the school building in the first place.

  Still didn’t explain why he was pretending to be nice to Samantha. Or why, for that matter, he hadn’t just started barking orders to the other students like he did to the gophers.

  He had the guns after all…

  Then it hit me like a ton of bricks…

  Realisation…

  So that was his plan.

  Andreas wasn’t just trying to survive—he was setting himself up to be the leader of this ragtag group. The man was smart enough to know that simply being the one with the guns wouldn’t be enough to hold power for long. You could push people around for a while, but eventually, that sort of heavy-handedness would breed resentment. Keeping a small group like us gophers in line was one thing.

  But over forty people? Too much.

  So, he was playing the long game. He wasn’t just flexing muscle; he was positioning himself as the necessary man, the one who would become indispensable to everyone’s survival.

  Right now, Samantha Evans still held some authority, if only because students still saw her as the vice-principal, the “adult” in the room, and they clung to her authority out of habit. But that authority would erode and Andreas knew this as well as I did.

  This was why he was playing nice, letting her speak first, letting her have the last word every now and then. It wasn’t out of respect—it was strategy. If he had outright challenged her, ignored her instructions, or directly tried to seize control, it would have been too obvious, too fast. The students would’ve picked up on the power struggle, and that would’ve caused chaos. Instead, he was waiting.

  This way, sooner rather than later, the student body would just follow his lead naturally. A peaceful transition of power rather than a coup-d'etat, securing his position.

  I couldn’t help but be impressed.

  I’d always known Andreas was more than a simple bully or brute, but this was downright machiavellian. Well, either that or I was severely overthinking and overestimating him.

  Regardless, one thing was for absolute certainty.

  Andreas was as pessimistic as myself on any prospect of help coming.

  “There’s still food in the cafeteria. Water too. Medicine in the nurse’s office” Andreas continued, snapping me out of my thoughts.

  “We’re going to go in a large group, cut a swathe straight through, and get as much as we can before nightfall…”.

  The amphitheater fell into a grave silence, as the prospect of going back out there registered on the gathered students. Faces went pale and a few heads began to slowly shake. He let the tension hang in the air, heavy and oppressive, crushing against the back of the increasingly panicked student body.

  But, before an outroar could begin, Andreas continued.

  “Of course, I’m not asking for any of you to do that. There’s already enough injured people, and it’s dangerous. So me and my guys are going to handle this” he said, motioning to himself, his goon squad and finally, our gopher group in the back.

  And there it was. The final piece of the puzzle.

  Put the prospect of going back out there onto the students, let the fear and danger of such an action register to them, burrow into their minds, then quickly take away that responsibility and place it on someone else’s shoulders. The manipulation, while not subtle, was nonetheless very effective, and I could see fear warp into relief on so many faces. Some had even begun to cheer.

  The only person not relieved was Miss Evans, standing behind him, chewing on her thumb nail and trying not to look towards us gophers. Probably the reason she had been gesticulating so much before.

  “Shit. Shit” Tim mumbled beside me, trembling so hard I could almost feel the vibrations traveling through the floor “They’re going to use us as meat shields. Shit, why did I have to come with them? I should’ve left when I had the chance”.

  “Too late now” I muttered back and nudged my head towards the entrance.

  Bill had stationed himself by the door and was keeping his eyes on us, the sawed off shotgun resting menacingly against his shoulder.

  “And we’re going to go, right now” Andreas continued as soon as the cheering died down.

  That quickly got my attention, enough that I stopped listening to the other gophers around me. Half-baked, whispered plans of running away tonight or barricading ourselves in the gym became insignificant noise in the face of this new problem.

  And it was very much a problem.

  There was absolutely no way I could go out in daylight.

  Before I could even start forming a plan on how to avoid this, a small, yet sure voice rang out through the room.

  “That’s an idiotic ideea”

  All noise died down as Mina Miller got up from her seat. Which, in and of itself, meant very little considering how short she was.

  “Haven’t you been paying attention yesterday? The fly-clouds only moved to attack people that were screaming. The infected have burst eyes in their sockets and move in little more than circles until they hear something” she carried on, keeping a level gaze on Andreas.

  “Well, sorry Mina, I was a bit busy saving everyone’s ass yesterday. What’s your point?” Andreas retorted, that fake smile reserved only for “polite company” plastered on his face.

  “My point” she continued, undeterred “is that those things are predators that function only by sound. They’re all blind. A group that large can’t be silent. It’s only gonna attract them and get overrun”.

  “Smart girl” I whispered, eliciting a look from Tim.

  “So what'd you propose we do, smart-mouth?” Lizzie asked, not even bothering to turn her head and regard Mina. Despite feigned indifference, the vein on her temple clearly spoke of frustration at Andreas's speech getting interrupted.

  “Simple” Mina said, either oblivious or outright ignoring the blonde’s provocation.

  “Smaller groups, three to four people tops, enough to move quietly and make a retreat if need be. Each group focuses on a different resource. A group for food. One for water. One for the nurse’s office and one for the caretaker’s shed. More than anything, there’s still the Mall a few miles from the main campus, down the hill. There’s resources there. Water, food, medicine, the hardware store. At least one group should go scout it, make sure the mist wall hasn’t covered it too. See how infested it is. Start prepping a plan to scavenge it”.

  “Smaller groups would be easy pickings…” Andreas started, only to get interrupted immediately.

  “And larger groups get heard and overrun. There are over 2000 students at our school. If even half of them are infected, that means “cutting a swathe” is a pipe-dream.

  The moment the group gets attacked, you’ll have to fight. Which means attracting more infected. And unless you’ve got an unlimited supply of bullets, those guns of yours won’t count for nothing”.

  Andreas hesitated for a moment, a flicker of uncertainty passing through his gaze.

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  "This is basic logic," Mina said, her voice cutting through the tension. "Even B-movie zombies get it."

  “This isn’t one of your movies, nerd” the blonde screamed out, launching the nail polish she was busily applying to her fingers and rounding up on Mina.

  “This is real life. And you….” She carried on, her voice specked with upward notes of hysterical frustration. Whether this was because she had it out for the Miller sisters or because Mina was speaking truths she’d rather not hear, was anyone’s guess.

  “I am trying to help” Mina interrupted her, voice calm and hands crossed protectively over a barely existing chest. Despite her minute frame and small voice, she nonetheless spoke with the surety and conviction of someone adamant of their own conclusion.

  Thus, her words had weight. Weight that was actively putting a wrench into Andreas’s, and most likely Lizzie’s, plans.

  “Going as a large group is nothing more than putting all our eggs in one basket” she tore her gaze from the fuming Lizzie, settling back to Andreas.

  “And when that fails, and it will, we’ll be stuck with fewer people, less ammo, no food and no water. We’ll be back to square one but with far less options”.

  “Oh, lookit miss ray-o-sunshine over here. Good pep-talk, nerd” Lizzie meandered on, petulantly trying to get the last word in.

  “I’m not trying to make you feel good, princess. I’m trying to plan so that as many people survive this. But, by all means, feel free to go manifest good vibes or whatever. Manifest a bottle of water too, while you're at it ” she concluded, mimicking the last part, in a surprisingly good impression of a valley girl accent.

  The sound of chair legs scratching hardwood flooring cut through the room, as Lizzie Landon shot up from her chair, livid. She’d always been at the top of the food chain. Any sort of deviation from that, no matter how slight, was clearly fraying her nerves.

  “Now listen here you little bi…”

  “Ho, you better sit down before I smack the makeup off your face” a gruffer, yet no less feminine voice, rang out through the amphitheater. Tina Miller had risen from the seat herself and was looming right beside her sister, eyes locked on the now, far less vociferous blonde.

  Mina could cut deep with words. But her sister didn’t bother with words or empty threats. Lizzie Landon was fucking around, and getting dangerously close to finding out.

  “Enough” Miss Evans shouted before things could get further out of hand.

  “Both of you. Sit down. We will not be reduced to ruffians squabbling among each other”.

  Lizzie, however, wasn’t done. Her face was flushed, a mixture of rage and feigned indignation, bubbling just beneath the surface. She whipped around, finger pointing accusingly at the Miller sisters, her voice rising to a fever pitch.

  “But she threa…”

  “Sit!”

  “But…”

  “Sit Miss Landon! Right now!” Samantha said one more time, glacial gaze pinning down the younger woman. There was no denying the sense of authority her words carried. As strong as a Drill Sergeants without even needing to yell.

  The vice-principal was nothing if not a born disciplinarian.

  Lizzie plopped herself back onto her chair, making a theatrical show of hyperventilating while her group of sycophantic hens fawned all over her as if this was some TV Drama and she had been the victim of a great injustice.

  “Miss Mina, while I agree there’s truth to your words, your plan would put more people at risk. We only need enough supplies to last until help arrives” Samantha said, turning her attention back to the petite woman.

  Mina shook her head.

  “Respectfully ma’am, I disagree. Smaller groups would make less noise. Smaller groups will have an easier time retreating if things get bad”.

  She pointed her arm as if to encompass the group of students.

  “And more than that, please do not try and coddle us. There’s no help coming any time soon”.

  This immediately shifted the atmosphere in the room. Most students began to whisper and mutter while a few others just sat there with flabbergasted expressions. Even Lizzie and her mob were now paying full attention.

  “M-Miss Miller, I know things look bleak, but….”

  “It’s not how they look, ma’am. It’s how they sound,” Mina cut in sharply, her voice unwavering and clear, as if she had no intention of letting anyone derail her point. She didn’t wait for a response, and the room seemed to fall still, every pair of eyes locked onto her.

  “What have you been hearing? Nothing. It’s been almost 24 hours since this all began, and our campus is right next to the main freeway out of town. Where’s the sound of cars evacuating? The wail of sirens—police, ambulances, fire trucks? Five miles down the road, there’s a National Guard outpost, but not one truck, not one chopper has passed through.”

  Her words were like a whip, crackling with cold logic, drawing the room’s focus tighter and tighter around her. With every sentence, the atmosphere was growing colder, more oppressive, as the bare, unvarnished truth is want to do.

  “The mist walls surrounding us—about 100 meters tall, maybe more—wraps around this area like a prison. Sure, it’s tall, but not enough to stop a chopper from flying over. So where is it? Silence. Complete silence. Not even chem trails from planes” She paused, letting the weight of her words settle in the air like dust.

  “That’s not normal. So it’s safe to assume that whatever’s happening beyond these walls is just as bad, if not worse, than what’s going on here. We don’t just need supplies for a few days. We need to gather everything we can and hunker down for as long as it takes. This isn’t a temporary thing—more likely than not, we’re in it for the long haul.”

  She let that final note hang in the air, a solemn truth that no one in the room could ignore.

  The murmuring and whispers had stopped and the tension in the air was almost palpable.

  Mina's logic was self-evident and she had said nothing other than what most were thinking. But people have an optimism bias by nature. They assume and expect that things like tragedies, catastrophes, all these happen to “someone else”.

  Having the harsh truth slapped in your face, is something few people are capable of experiencing without missing a beat. That takes age, grit, experience. And the group in this room was mostly formed of teens and young adults.

  Too green.

  Some looked to border on outright panic. Others looked ready to burst out in frustrated rage. But most had simply frozen.

  “She’s right” Andreas cut through the silence.

  For the most part he’d just stood there throughout her speech, holding his chin, seeming to consider Mina’s words.

  “I don’t think the situation’s as doom and gloom as she says” he added quickly, a theatrical shrug to his shoulders. “But as far as the idea of smaller groups goes, she’s right. We got to hedge our bets, so to speak”.

  Without waiting for an answer, he clapped his hands together.

  “Right, I want my guys with me, we gonna’ plan this out, split into groups, settle for routes and get to work”.

  Again, credit where it was due, Andreas had just saved the situation. Going into full active action and not letting anyone dwell on the situation was what had been needed. Add to that, him asking only “his guys”, which of course meant our gopher group too, to start getting on with it, had made it clear to everyone present that they were still in no immediate danger.

  I made no move to get up from my seat, still busily wringing my brain for any sort of way to avoid going out in broad daylight. If I could somehow stall this expedition nightfall, I could play pretend to still be the obedient little gopher and once we went out, make myself scarce and leave them to their own fate.

  Save for Andreas and his goons, I had no problem with anyone else here. But I sure as hell didn’t intend to stay until my secret came to light and I’d find myself facing a scared, angry mob with the proverbial pitchforks and torches, ready to kill the vampire.

  That and, more than anything, I didn’t owe anyone a single thing. Least of all my help.

  If anything else, silver lining and all that, all this talking and debating had been enough of a distraction to take my mind off my withdrawal symptoms.

  Before I could even begin to take stock and start planning, a voice right behind me pushed me out of my concentration.

  “Hell no!”

  The room once more fell into a deep silence as three gophers right behind me got up. Two looked very much unsure, but the large blond-haired, blue-eyed young man in the middle looked like he’d made up his mind. The same guy I’d talked to earlier.

  Andreas just crossed his hands behind his back and flashed that fake smile at him. We gophers knew that smile. It was what usually preceded a show of violence when it came to the bastard. An “example” soon to be made.

  “Excuse you?”

  “I said, hell no” the young man continued, crossing thick arms over his barrel chest. From the corner of my eye, I could see Bill was making his way from the door towards us. He stopped as soon as Andreas gave a small, almost imperceptible gesture with his fingers.

  “Why us? Why do we got to go out there? Why not everyone?”

  “Well, everyone has to pull their weight, no?” Andreas answered back passively, holding one arm towards the other students.

  “The others have to remain here and safeguard our sanctuary. Y’know, barricade stuff and whatnot. They got their job, we got ours”.

  The lie was obvious. There was nothing to do here, everything that could be barricaded had already been, and everyone knew that. But it nonetheless galvanized the other students

  What the other students also knew was that Andreas intended to use the gophers. And that meant they would be safe. So, they immediately rallied, with all the self-righteous indignation a hypocritical mob could muster, launching a veritable fusillade of appelatives at us.

  “Stop whining, we’re all in this together,” someone barked, though their words lacked any true conviction, more like a tired mantra they hoped would calm their own nerves.

  “Everyone’s gotta do their part,” another added, their voice pitched just a little too high, trying to sound braver than they felt.

  “Yeah, someone’s gotta hold down the fort,” a third chimed in, as if their sacrifice was the key to everyone’s survival.

  “Just do your part, you whiny bitch!!!”

  The hypocrisy and double standard on display was so obvious it was almost funny. One of the three gophers sat down, brow beaten by the angry, bordering on violence mob, but the blonde man seemed undeterred, face locked into a grimace.

  “No. This is bull and you all know it. No way I’m risking my life out there unless everyone does the same. Either we’re all in this or I’m walking, yea? What’re you gonna do? Shoot me?”.

  The berating swelled, like a storm gathering force. Every word became more venomous, more desperate, as the tide of frustration crashed against the gophers. Andreas stood back, a silent conductor orchestrating the chaos, letting it play out for as long as it could. It was a calculated move—stirring the pot, letting them stew in their own anger, pushing them to the brink.

  I could barely make out Samantha’s voice, weak against the rising tide of insults. “Quiet,” she called, then again, “That’s enough!” But her words were swallowed whole by the mob, lost in the shrill chorus of cusses and accusations, the kind that came easily when survival was on the line, when every fear and every frustration needed an outlet.

  In the eye of the storm stood Lizzie Landon, right in the center, her eyes gleaming with the kind of fervor only desperate desire to survive could fuel. She was the gasoline in the fire, egging everyone on, her voice like an engine revving, pushing the students to escalate.

  Every shout from her added fuel to the already blazing fury.

  But it was the stillness that caught my attention. Mina and Tina Miller sat like statues, their faces impassive, their mouths sealed shut. They weren’t feeding into the frenzy like the others. They weren’t defending, they weren’t attacking—just waiting. Observing. Silent, calculating.

  “That’s fine” Andreas bellowed, loud enough for his voice to cut through the cacophony. Everyone immediately went quiet, and a few of the gophers around me twitched in full attention.

  “That’s fine. We’re all equals here, we’re civilized people. No one’s a prisoner here. So if you want to walk, walk” he continued, pointing towards the door.

  The blonde man just gave a nod and made to get through the other sitting gophers, his only standing ally right behind him, with the one who had sat down half-rising to follow. All around me, gophers were whispering, some fidgeting as if ready to get up themselves.

  I didn’t move. I knew Andreas too well to know that he’d just sprung a trap.

  “Out of the building, please” Andreas added with finality.

  There it was.

  The three stopped in their tracks and the fidgeting gophers around me went stock still.

  “What?” the blonde man shouted.

  The words slipped from Andreas’s mouth like honey, sweet and smooth, but laced with venom. "Well yes, of course. If you’re not going to pull your own weight, you can’t stay in our community. No squatters allowed. We all took this place together, barricaded it together, worked for it, why would you get to just squat here without doing your part?" The smile on his face remained fixed, an expression of forced congeniality masking the steel beneath. Every word, every syllable, was a calculated stroke in his manipulation. He knew he had the majority on his side. They’d follow him if only to avoid being the next target, to keep themselves from facing the horrors beyond those walls for one more day.

  It was a cruel kind of power, the kind that twisted the truth until it was unrecognizable, but it was power nonetheless.

  “You’re going to throw me out there? That’s just killing me with extra steps” the gopher snarled, livid with anger and fear in equal parts.

  “No. Nonono! NO!” Samantha quickly interjected, putting one hand in front of Andreas and setting herself in front of him.

  “No one is throwing anyone out, am I clear? Andreas Henderson, you will not…”

  Andreas just backed away, theatrically holding his hands up, smile now a full-fledged smirk.

  “Miss Evans, I’m not doing anything. We’re still civilized people, right? So we vote on it”.

  Before she could even have a chance to put a stop to the farce, Andreas turned to the students and raised an arm.

  “Who here believes we should throw out anyone unwilling to pull their own weight?”

  Hands shot up immediately, everyone except the Miller sisters and Samantha Evans, who was too busy trying to stop it, raising their voice in one large “Yes”.

  Andreas just turned and spread his arms towards the former vice-principal.

  “And there we go, the people have spoken”.

  That had done it.

  Whatever semblance of authority Samantha Evans had, whether by virtue of her seniority or her position as vice-principal, had just evaporated.

  There was no turning back now. Everyone with half a brain could see what had just happened here. It’s not like Andreas had been subtle enough or Machiavellian enough to properly hide it, but it didn’t matter. With one move he’d just made everyone here complicit in the creation of a serf class.

  And the guilt of that would knit them together as tightly as the desire for safety would.

  This sort of thing,it was a cliche in movies and comics for a good reason. Because it’s human history and nature.

  People, when scared enough, get dumb. And when that happens, it takes very little to get caught up in the rolling boulder of a majority decision. After all, you either roll with the avalanche, or it swallows you up too.

  The blond, heavy-set guy had tried his best and, for what little it was worth, he was still trying, pulling at the gophers closest to him, trying to galvanize them.

  “Comon, don’t just sit there, if we all walk out, we can make it. We won’t even have to walk out, Andreas will have to…”

  He stopped mid-sentence when he realized no one was paying attention. More than that, the others were putting in effort to deliberately ignore him. With a defeated sigh, he plopped himself back onto the chair, face buried in his hands.

  It had been a futile attempt. The gophers were already browbeaten before all this, and no different than the other students as far as their desires went. As long as they could postpone going out there for one more hour, they were more than happy to keep their heads down and say nothing. It just meant one more hour of safety rather than being exiled outside with the monsters.

  “What just happened?” Tim mumbled, staring numbly at the scene playing in front of us. Andreas was just standing there, shit-eating grin on his face as Samantha Evans was gesticulating rapidly, clearly trying to make a point, and the rest of the students were talking amongst one another, nodding rapidly, pointing at our group, probably justifying their actions.

  After all, no one saw themselves as the bad guy.

  So they would rationalize themselves into circles until they’d come to the clear reasoning as to why we weren’t “pulling our weight” and it was right to threaten us with “exile”.

  “We just became something. I dunno man, pick a word : Serfs? Indentured Servants? Undesirables? Or maybe something older and less politically correct? Cannon Fodder? Yeah, that sounds about right” I mumbled back, sounding a lot colder than I intended to.

  But it wasn’t coldness that ran through me; it was the weight of jaded experience. I’d seen this before.

  Not like I was some kind of psychological savant or a genius who could read between the lines and predict every outcome. It wasn’t some supernatural gift, just something born from years of surviving the trenches—growing up in orphanages, foster homes, and the streets of the ghettos. That kind of life makes you keenly aware of how quickly the masks of civility and morality can slip when the world goes to hell.

  People can preach all they want about decency, but when the walls start closing in, those same people will turn on you just as fast as they’ll turn on each other. It’s survival. It’s instinct. And you can either embrace it or be consumed by it.

  And yet.

  Just because I understood the why’s and how’s of this situation, didn’t make it any less disgusting.

  Just because I knew that if I were in their place, scared and panicking, I probably would have been swept up in the mob and done much the same, moral compass be damned, didn’t mean the sight of them trying to rationalize their actions didn’t sicken me.

  Because I wasn’t in their place.

  And I was no saint.

  So I felt every right to look at them for the bastards they were being.

  “Then I’m going in his stead” I picked up Samantha’s voice in the cacophony. Andreas’s smile fell and he just shook his head.

  “No can do, Miss Evans”.

  “That’s not your decision to make, young man. I’m going in his stead and you let him stay”.

  “No. This is not up for debate. Unless you’re willing to abandon all the students that are looking to you for guidance and security”.

  This clamped her mouth shut quick. Andreas was playing to her sense of duty.

  As impressive as it was to hear Miss Evans try to put herself into danger just to help one person, for some reason or another Andreas wasn’t willing to let that happen. Not yet, at the very least.

  He didn’t even bother to wait for her response, only turned around and motioned to Bill.

  “All right, let’s get this planned out, we leave in an hour”.

  “Oh, now that would be such a waste in profit”

  The voice, as clear as crystal, cultured, jovial and with just a hint of sarcasm rang out through the large amphitheater unnaturally loud, even though it had barely been murmured.

  All whispers stopped. All mutterings fell silent. And all everyone, including myself, could do was stare at the freakishly tall, impossibly thin creature which had, for all intents and purposes, just popped into existence behind Andreas and Samantha.

  There was no sound, no flash of light, no sign to mark its arrival. It was as though it had always been there, lurking just beyond our perception, waiting for the right moment to emerge.

  The creature towered over us, standing an imposing eleven feet tall, draped in a finely tailored outfit that seemed almost out of place in the chaos. Its attire, rich and regal, clung to its form in a way that made no sense for something so alien—like a mockery of elegance. It raised a hand to its head, removing a wide-brimmed hat adorned with a feather plume.

  But it wasn’t the hat or the outfit that held my gaze. It was the creature itself—the head was nothing but a ball of white fur, featureless, devoid of any true face, save for the wooden mask that was affixed where a visage should have been. Two hollowed-out eye sockets, each filled with blazing, sapphire-blue orbs of light, glared back at us, burning with a quiet intensity.

  Then, with a grace that belied its intimidating form, the creature dipped into a deep, elegant bow, as though honoring us with its presence. The gesture was paradoxical—polite, even courteous—and its otherworldly nature sent a shiver of unease rippling through my spine. It was as if something ancient, something far beyond us, had stepped into the room, and I could feel the weight of its gaze like a heavy hand pressing down on my chest.

  “Greetings. This most humble merchant is named Puck”