GED Class, 1:15 PM -- the front of the room
When one of the kids near the front of the room groaned from his seat, it didn't seem like anything out of the ordinary at first. He'd been feeling sick that morning, a cold he claimed to have caught from his father, and partway through class his head had dropped forward to rest on the desk. Later, he'd shifted enough to use his folded arms as pillow and, to all appearances, soon fell asleep.
Yvie stood at the whiteboard, writing down a series of numbers and speaking with her brisk, assertive tone. Scanning over the students to try and pick out how many kids looked lost, she instead zoomed on him. The sleepy head. She marched over to him, nudging his shoulder with the palm of her hand.
“Hey- wake up. You can’t absorb chemistry in your sleep, junior.” The kid moaned, and Yvonne wrinkled her nose. “Hey, if you’re sick, you need to go home.”
The boy suddenly surged to his feet after being prodded, but it was probably just because he needed to puke or something, at worst. In fact, he was in such a rush that he stumbled over his own feet, knocking into the girl seated next to him. Her desk tipped and they both went down in a flurry of limbs and clattering furniture.
And then the girl started screaming.
“What the fuck?” Marina muttered, standing and moving towards the pair struggling on the floor. She didn’t need to get closer to realize that there was blood, no doubt the reason the girl was screaming. Did he bite her? “What the fuck?” She repeated, louder this time.
There was only one reason Marina could think of someone doing something like that and she really didn’t like where her thoughts were going. But whether she liked it or not, it was happening.
Stepping closer she raised a foot and kicked at the boy on top, rolling him off of the girl. She was crying and bleeding and this was all kinds of bad news. “Move over there. Get away from that psycho. Now,” Marina said, her tone harsh, hiding the fear she was feeling.
“Shit,” Yvie said, her voice a sharp intake of breath as she ran over to the girl. She crouched over the girl, trying to look at her to figure out what had happened: a zombie? A drug laden attack? “Come on,” Yvie said to the girl, grappling her by the forearms before the boy (was he still a boy?) turned on them and barreled towards the new blood smeared teacher.
Marina had two options: go for her gun or try and push Ms. Depkova and the girl out of the way. She should have gone for the first, but stupidly she did the second, a moment of hesitation putting enough fear that she wouldn’t reach it in time into her brain. With a hard shove, Yvonne was pushed out of the way. Marina heard a loud thunk -- their teacher slamming into a nearby desk maybe? -- but she didn’t have time to worry about it because the kid who’d been gearing up to attack Ms. Depkova and the bleeding student turned his attention to Marina.
Fucking great.
It wasn’t as if Marina had never killed a zombie before but this was her first experience with a brand-fucking-new one. He was so goddamn fresh that he still looked like the kid who had been sitting next to her for the past week… except with blood around his mouth now. It was all kinds of fucked up.
Her gun was in its holster in her backpack, because why wouldn’t she think school was “safe”? If she made it out of this alive, she didn’t give a fuck, she was having her gun out and ready at all fucking times. No matter what, this kid was coming at her and Marina didn’t have many options. Extending a leg, she kicked him behind his knees, causing him to buckle, but not before he was able to reach out a hand and dig his nails in, bringing his mouth to where he’d immobilized her calf. The bite itself made Marina’s stomach drop, like she would faint and throw up at the same time. It wasn’t until he disengaged his teeth that she screamed.
The only thing that was working to her favor was the fact that zombies had bad coordination, so even though she had a giant bite mark in her leg, she was still able to get up faster and start hobbling towards the back of the room.
“Go--” she gasped, fighting the pain in her leg to just keep moving.