Survive

Chapter 2 - Beforemath

Walking around in the forest as usual, trying to find my prey for the day. The forest and its sounds that surrounds me, made me feel a sense of nostalgia. The poison ivy, thorn bushes, the cricket sounds, and water drops reminds me of the first time I ever set foot in a forest. I remembered being unable to take 10 feet away from the starting point without being stabbed by random plants, but now, it's like nothing. The adrenaline kicks in by thinking that there should be no mistakes,

"Ahah! I found you!" as I set sight on the last deer that I need to hunt for the day.

I crouched down and grabbed my rifle and aimed directly at its heart. The gun cracked as I pulled the trigger and the loud firing noise was received by my right ear. I stood up and went towards the deer to confirm the shot.

"Yes! I got him!" I cheered.

The whole simulated forest reverted back to normal. The main door opened and Ms. Eliza appeared to congratulate and offer a handshake to me. "Great job, Ciara!" she said as I shook her hand "I am looking forward to see you next month for another simulation test. But this time, you'll be hunting bears."

"Thank you, Ms. Eliza!" as I went through my pockets and hand over my remaining ammo from the hunt. "I'll be looking forward to it as well!".

"Great!" she ended as she let me pass by to exit the simulation room. Ms. Eliza is always kind towards me. She praises me even if I messed up somehow. Though I always think that she's encouraging people to become better hunters. While on my way to the girl's locker room, I was praised by people on the same class that was watching me hunt outside the simulation room. I've always loved getting these, they make me want to do better next time.

I reached the locker room and stopped by the gun lockers and put my gun in it. I've always thought that it's genius that whenever someone try to steal our guns, they'll be electrocuted by these peculiar locks. Though, the sight is afterward is not pretty. I locked it, and went towards the main lockers and opened mine. I took off my hunting and put it in.

"Ugh- Why can't we just wear a bra inside of these shirt?" I complained to Seanna who was always inside the locker room before me.

"I don't know about that, sister" she answered "Maybe because they're tight?"

I looked at her with an annoyed face "Bullshit, they are not that tight." I grabbed my bra from the locker and put it on.

She giggled and "You asked for an answer, there you got it"

"Fine"

She finished putting on the Gramond uniform and took off saying "I'll be going first today. Sorry bestie, got something to do first."

I put on the usual skirt uniform and took off, not long after Seanna left. I walked through the same hallway and cross the bridge from the main building to this branch. Crossing this bridge always made me feel weird, like being forced to assimilate into another culture. The hallways are always energetic. The mages playing with their glowing dusts everywhere, and made me feel jealous about it and thought: Why are they allowed to use magic in the main building and I can't use my gun here? which has an obvious answer but I can't help myself. I carried on and finally arrived at the History class.

I entered the room and nothing much changes from the hallways to here. I see my best friend, Seanna. The most stereotyped nerd, Nelson. The legendary bitch-mode user, Sasha. And Drake, the Infamous. These people are the ones that stood up inside the whole class with their own special abilities. And as usual, I made conversation with Seanna until the bell rang and I sat beside her.

We were just an hour in and the announcement speakers rang 3 times, in which it means, there's an emergency. The lady on the speakers said: "To all Fursond Hunters: Please retrieve your equipment and report to your instructor." she paused "To all Ishtaro Mages: Report to your Master mage immediately." she paused once more "To the rest of the Student bodies: Evacuate to the nearest branch school available-" the announcement was cutted off.

Of course, all of us were confused specially on why she was cutted off on the last announcement. So we went to get our equipments and gathered in the Hunting hall, waiting for our instructor to say anything.

Finally, Ms. Eliza stood up and reported: "Just after the morning period ended, we had a couple of incident about a person attacking another. An engineering student reported that he was attacked by his classmate. Another was a mage that was forced to use her magic for her self defense. The two of these were only a couple from the 50 listed incident in just an hour. We tried our best to not let you people know about it, but it grew big so fast. We went and had a group of Hunters and group of Mages to investigate about this and they found something.." she looked around "We are trying our best to evacuate people as fast as we can. The police department told us we need to hold our ground until they arrive. And that is all" She sat down and gave us a couple of instructions.

We didn't believe anything until...

"Hey, I think there's something there." I pointed out as we were getting ready for the formation.

And that's when dozens of them came running at us. They have glowing eyes, darkened body, and unusual sharp teeth. Some of them crawled both on the ceiling and on the ground. Some of them walked, but eventually, we were outnumbered. I had to sneak in the closet along with some students, and stayed in until we heard no footsteps nor other noises. We took a peek and went outside when we decided the coast was clear.

"Oh my g-" a girl puked at the sight of mutilated corpse and blood scattered around the whole bridge.

"We are so lucky we're alive!" a guy rejoice on the thought of surviving.

I walked towards a corpse and crouched to study the body. "Those things, they're fast.." I studied the body even more "..and they're pretty strong too"

The girl cough and said "I-I think we should-" cough " ..get out of here."

It hit me that I hid without Seanna and I've decided to leave the group in order to find her. I grabbed a few unused bullets from the ground and walked away.

A couple of hours searching the school property, two students decided to come along in my possibly futile search for my friend. We were arguing about whether they should come or not, but eventually I gave in and let them stay. Finally reaching the main doors of the building, I decided to see if Seanna was either dead or stuck inside the building. I used my scope and survey each and every one of the things and to my fear, there is Seanna being one of them, and I proved that that was her because of her rifle being on her back the whole time. Learning the truth, I immediately entered a trance and thought: Why?! Why did I hid?! Why didn't I grabbed her and hid?!.

The trance was broken when Vi decided to push me on the back and saying "RUN!". We ran as fast as we could but we were bested in cardio. I crouched down and said "Find a safe place!" as I positioned myself to shoot and shoot until I had 10 bullets left. Keir and Vi found a manhole, and they tried to open it, but their strength wasn't enough to open the latch. I came over and helped and finally opened the hole and closed it behind us.

Out of breath, we reached a point where there is a big open space in the sewer, and we decided to stay here and mark it as a resting point to the beginning of our horrible nightmare.