Act 3: Hallways of the dead

Day 1: 

Time: 2:23 P.M. 

Location: Kirishima High School – School Grounds

Time until Nighttime: 3 hours and 37 minutes left

The baseball bat is a little bit heavy for his liking but it hits quite hard as he whacks away on the zombies. And since the heads of these zombies are particularly soft, just a few bash from the baseball bat and their heads get squashed like melons so easily. Kyosei frowned at this peculiarity. There is no way the head is quite this soft for the baseball bat to easily break into pieces. He might be able to squash their heads quite well if the bat he was using is reinforced with metal or if it is weaponized more by adding nails on the blunt area of the bat. But using the regular bat? It is possible but he has to be strong enough to cause that.

Although that is a big weakness that Kyosei noticed from them, compared to the "Romero Zombies" that are slow, they are moving quite fast, though not as fast and terrifying as the running zombies in 28 Days Later film, they still move quite fast. No, they should be nimble enough to chase someone slow enough to run. No wonder some students are still bitten despite easily defeating them. With how oversaturated the zombie genre in games and movies, anyone knows that destroying the head is the only way to stop them though there is also the lack of weapons in the surroundings, or just they panicked the moment they saw corpses littered all around. Either of these reasons is the cause of their downfall which is also none of Kyosei's problem.

With a trusty melee weapon in hand right now, Kyosei went out of the shed and finished off the remaining zombies that followed the first one. Even if their head is easy to squash now, needless to say, Kyosei felt more comfortable dealing with gore while using something rather than keep on using his keys.

The next plan in action for Kyosei is to push through all the undead in the area and go inside the building to pick up his bag and of course, to search for Miyuki.

Of course, even with a weapon, Kyosei went to stealth mode instead of fighting head-on. His goal is to get inside the building and not eliminate all of the zombies. If he did, he would be too exhausted to continue and he might be forced to use more energy to fight back as a result. Make all the battles at a minimal level and keep his energy intact as well.

Sneaking through the zombie-infested school grounds is not easy. He either has to remain still and stationary for a while or he is forced to eliminate any of the zombies nearby. Either choices are risky but these two are his only choices just to get close to the entrance.

It took some time for him to reach the entrance so he decided to use the sneaky approach. Of course, that effort alone is hard enough for him as the zombies are either too dense in the area or the zombies cannot be lured by just the sound alone and he has to eliminate them to proceed.

He slowly opened the glass door littered with bloody hand imprints and entered inside. He wondered why the glass door was still intact despite the commotion that occurred based on the number of handprints present on the door but decided to stop thinking about it a few seconds later. If they are present, then he just needed to eliminate them as quickly as possible.

Day 1: 2:50 P.M

Kirishima High School -Ground Floor: East Wing Corridor

Time until Nighttime 3 hours and 10 minutes left

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Kyosei's first action is to observe both hallways. Not only does he have to be careful of his movements, but he also has to make sure that his actions will not attract more zombies his way. With how narrow the hallways are plus the tables and chairs scattered across on some as a makeshift barricade, fighting with a bunch of them using the baseball bat will not do him good. Perhaps if he was holding a bladed weapon then that is another story but without any access to sharp weapons, he has to make do with what he has. Since his weapon right now is a blunt type, he would prefer to just fight them one at a time. They might be easy to kill but they are annoying still and they are pretty agile so he can potentially miss his swing as well.

The way to the second floor which is the stairs directly in front of him is filled with barricades made by students to potentially halt the advance of the zombies. Chairs, tables, and other stuff were blocking the way which made the stairs not possible to traverse so his only big choice was to go to the stairs of the west wing or the east wing as both stairs still led to the second floor, but he hopes to use the middle stairs as that is the shortest out of the three and he only needed to use the latter two if the room he needed to go to is near on either stairwell. He hoped that the two stairs would be not barricaded at all so he could ascend to the second floor without the need to climb using the windows instead.

The west wing is full of blood and some walking corpses are present as well, all facing away from him, while the east wing is a bit bloody but there are fewer of the corpses walking around and the area is relatively silent. The west wing is where the library and the student council room are. It's not a great area to go in as there might be a lot of zombies lurking in the library being a big hiding place, and with students bitten hiding there, the spread might have occurred as well, causing the students to hide there becoming a meal, so it was an obvious way to not go there. In short, he will be taking the east wing.

Compared to the west wing with only two notable rooms, the east wing on the other hand has the chemistry lab, the home economics room, the music room, the kitchen area, and some of the other club rooms. Kyosei is crouching whenever he passes a window of a room to avoid unnecessary detection of the dead. His stealth is top class and no one can sense him traversing an area full of obstacles and he has a very small chance of being detected. He mastered the stealth ability of his during chase events of his enemies when he was still a delinquent. When gangsters seek to beat the crap out of him, Kyosei would hide and avoid their detection, allowing him to adopt the way of proper stealth and look out for an exit to any troubles. During this time, Kyosei didn't expect that his skill stealth would come in handy for him during the apocalypse.

Kyosei's first plan is to arm himself. The current arsenal he had right now is pretty much lacking and knowing how harsh things get in an apocalypse scenario, getting creative saves the lives of many. This is why, Kyosei decided to check out the first room, the Chemistry lab if there was some stuff he could use there to arm himself for later. He doesn't have much hope for it, but he still decides to try it out.

In front of the door, he can hear someone is currently inside. It seems someone is still alive as he can hear someone speaking inside, but he still keeps himself ready in case things are not going well.

Day 1: 3:22 P.M

Kirishima High School - Ground floor: Chemistry Lab

Time until Nighttime: 2 hours and 38 minutes left

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Kyosei just slowly slid the door open as slowly as he could to make sure he wouldn't be making any noises and the person or if it was still a person, didn't notice him opening it. As quickly as he opened it, the quicker he went in and closed the door to ensure that the person or zombie inside wouldn't notice his entry. Fortunately for Kyosei, it seems the person or zombie inside has not noticed entering the room.

But as soon as Kyosei is inside, he can smell the disgusting stench of blood all over the room. The floor also has some dried blood splatters as well, but he is sure it didn't come from those. The smell is still pretty fresh so he is sure that it is not just something old.

"Looks like I came in bad timing. Guess I have to go back."

He was about to return outside but then, a bloody metal test tube rack came swinging down to him. Kyosei's reflexes are fast and his reaction time is superb, allowing him to dodge the surprise attack. He immediately swings his baseball bat and the test tube rack flies off from the hands of the assailant. Kyosei then turned to look at the one who tried to harm him and he saw a girl the same age as him wearing a lab gown above her own Kirishima High Uniform. She grinned and backed off while her guard was still up. Her hands are bloody but she is wearing gloves, making the blood just on her gloves and not directly on her hands and skin.

Kyosei's eyes wandered on the floor and there he saw a dead body of a young man who had a large piece of flesh missing on his head, while his face looked like it got bashed so hard. But that wasn't the main highlight, the dead body's abdomen is open like it was currently being experimented on like a frog getting dissection. His intestines are all over the place and some of his organs are gone.

"Ah, I thought it was another one of these freaks entering the room so I immediately attacked without warning. Sorry about that. Nice dodge, by the way," the girl in the lab coat gives a thumbs up to me.

She then picked up the test tube rack she used earlier and put it back on the table before she returned to what she was doing. Although Kyosei doesn't know who this girl is, he is sure that this girl is a senior seeing the III symbol, emblazoned on her collar which is a sign for third-year students.

"Ichinose Kyosei right? I heard of you as a wild delinquent. Although you don't look like one, I can tell based on your strength earlier that you are indeed quite strong for a teenager. And here I thought you would be out there fighting zombies to satiate your hunger for violence. Hahaha, just joking," she smiled before she continued her work.

"What are you doing?" Kyosei asked. He does not understand why this girl is doing something like this to a dead body.

"I am just examining whether I can determine what made this person walk even though he died. I saw him get devoured by the zombies earlier and slowly joined them. I killed him and dragged his body here to check out a cause. Surprisingly enough, his head is pretty fragile but I don't think it was that fragile in reality, making me wonder why."

She continued to check the guy's body until she pulled out something familiar that Kyosei had seen before. A black metallic stone. Seeing the stone, Kyosei checked the stone in his pocket and just like the stone in the girl's hands, the one in his pocket was the same.

"What is this? A metal? No way, I don't remember metals growing inside the human body and solidifying in this manner. It's also not something this guy has swallowed either as this thing is not on his stomach or in his intestines, it's inside his body far from the digestive system."

Kyosei looks at her and the dead person. The scene is gruesome and normally, this is enough of a warrant for police to come and capture the perpetrator for how brutal the guy's death is. But now, it is no longer the case. The people are now killing and eating each other. Violence is the answer to anything and the weak gets devoured.

The girl sighed before taking a small container and putting the black stone in. She removed her bloody gloves first before she put the container in her sling bag.

"Oh yeah, I haven't introduced myself. I am Chie Motsuki. I am an aspiring doctor and researcher scientist in the future, though I doubt my dream can be achieved when the apocalypse starts. What are you doing here, Ichinose-kun?"

"To find someone," Kyosei pulls out his phone opens the message Miyuki sends for him, and lets Chie read the contents of the message.

"Miyuki huh? If I remember correctly, she made an announcement earlier on the comms but it was a few hours ago. I doubt she is still in there. But still, she might be nearby.

Kyosei ponders immediately after learning Miyuki's last known location.

"Why don't you just call her? The network is still present, perhaps you can get a hold of her right now?"

"I doubt it, I tried calling her before but I couldn't contact her at all," despite what Kyosei said, he still dialed Miyuki.

"We apologize for the inconvenience but because of an unusual network traffic, the number you have dialed cannot be reached. Please try again later."

The automated voice answered his call. But the difference is that the call did not connect due to the "unusual network traffic" that was currently happening.

"Well, that's pretty obvious. If this is happening all over, that means the people are currently using the phone to call the others, and due to the overload, the calls cannot connect. Don't bother," Chie shook her head.

Kyosei looks at the signal and it still shows a full bar signal. Kyosei understands it since the apocalypse is just beginning and people are trying to dial people on their phones but he finds it annoying. After all, it's an emergency, and then this happens, pretty troublesome indeed.

Just as Kyosei plans to go to the broadcasting room to check for Miyuki's traces, he hears a loud gunshot and something broken. Although the sound is far, Kyosei can tell that it came from a high place. Then, his attention immediately shifted to his Line app as it received a message, a voicemail to be exact. He wasn't surprised that the app was still functioning but the only thing he was surprised with was the person who sent him the message.

"Hello! Kyosei if you are listening to this please help us! I know you are outside the school so there must be a way for you to contact the authorities and send someone to solve the problem. I cannot contact the police right now for some unknown reason and the line keeps on stopping all of my calls." the voicemail begins. Kyosei listened to the voice of the message and it is certainly the voice of Miyuki. Although Kyosei can't tell where she was recording the voicemail, it seems to be echoing for a bit. He also noticed that she seemed to be whispering like she was afraid that she would be heard.

"The school is getting dangerous! Aah! What was that?.....

(Voices of screaming and terrified students) (Glasses breaking to pieces)

Oh no, this isn't good. Kyosei, listen. Once you have called the authorities, please tell them that we are currently holed in the Clocktower. Although we are safe in the meantime, I am not liking it here especially since Kaze got a gun and started to act like a pervert guy. Please hurry, I don't know how long will we be able to hold on."

The voicemail didn't end just yet as the pause then registered a loud gunshot before the message was cut off.

"The Clocktower huh?"

"If you are planning to go there, I can tell it will be suicidal. Based on the voicemail, the zombies are flooding there, trying to break free. I would rather you just don't go if you value your life," Chie suggested.

However, Kyosei seems to be not listening.

"Are there any chemicals that are harmful if it is used on humans?"

"Eh? Ah, don't bother looking. Most chemicals here are gone as most of them are spilled off due to the commotion that occurred here before. See those broken bottles below the cabinets? Those were chemicals that you were looking for but they are now gone."

"Other chemicals?"

"The only one we have is a few gallons of ethanol. It's recently delivered for the use of some experiments and disinfecting tools but I doubt they will have use for it with things happening now."

Kyosei checked the gallons and he saw a lot of them. Kyosei is not familiar much with it but the gallon has a flammable sign on it. Although he was not sure, he grabbed a few empty bottles and filled them with ethanol.

"You have a lighter here?" Kyosei asked.

"I thought you smoke? Shouldn't that be your first tool in your pocket?" Chie asked.

"Just because I was a delinquent doesn't mean I carry a lighter with me. Also, I don't smoke."

"Is that so? Here, here is it."

Kyosei nodded and pocketed it. As for the bottles, he put some piece of fabric from the uniform of the dead guy and stuffed it on the entrance of the bottle before putting a cap on it. He continued doing it in all of the bottles before he put them in his bag.

When he was done, he turned to look at Chie.

"You won't come with me?"

"Oh, don't worry, I can handle myself alright. Besides, I still have some things to do. But I can go to the clocktower later on if you want me to. But for now, I will be staying here."

"Is that so? Suit yourself."

After that, Kyosei left the room. He is now ready to go to his destination. With his baseball bat and his key ring with his keys as his extra weapon, he is now ready to go and try to rescue the damsel in distress.