A Light That Never Fades

𝟭𝟲

    "Over there!", Samy points to the school parking lot. Samy and her friends had hurriedly arrived just in time to reach the front gates of Atkins high. The giant herd of infected beings were still on their tails from behind, snarling abhorrently at the need of wanting to feast on their flesh. Fabian reaches for the front gate, quickly lifting up the latch to unlock it. Once he does, he and Aston use all their force to open the gates wide enough for the rest to enter inside. They could all distinctly hear the growls of the sick get closer and closer, time was running out.

    Samy enters first along with Nettie who enters right after. As both Fabian and Aston manage to enter inside next, Tommy is the last to run through the entryway. Just as Fabian was about to close the gates, a sick drooling infected man grabs onto the right leg of Tommy's. The chubby boy tumbles down on the hard concrete floor, he desperately yells out for help as he realizes the danger he is placed in. Fabian's eyes widened as the sick man's arm extended through the open gap of the gates, swiftly pulling Tommy towards him as the grasp on his leg became painfully tight.

    The sick man sinks his yellow teeth onto the fresh bare skin of Tommy's leg, causing the poor boy to scream in agony. This dangerously causes for a few other diseased beings within their school vicinity to reveal themselves from their hiding spots. Nettie whips her blade out in preparation to attack any of them that dared to get close. The sick man vigorously bites deep down, spilling an abundance of blood down onto the ground. Samy and Aston sprint over to Tommy's aid, the cleaver in Aston's hand raises high into the air, then brings it down to sink into the sick man's skull.

    His tightened grasp onto Tommy's leg loosens, allowing for the boy to easily let himself free. Samy kicks the sick putrid man back outside the gates, Fabian takes this opportunity to fully close them shut before any more of the diseased outside barge in. As the door loudly closes, Nettie attacks at a few sick stragglers that attempt to lunge forward at her friends due to the distracting noise, a bloody mess was caused as her blade violently slashed at their heads. Out of breath, Nettie turns around to face her friends, now noticing their trepidation glances at one another. The clever girl speeds closer to them and lands all her attention on poor injured Tommy.

    There, she could see a row of bloody teeth marks embedded deeply into Tommy's bare leg. Her heart begins to pound inside her chest as she immediately realizes what this fully means. She tightens the grasp on her sharp blade in her hand, already determined to put Tommy out of his misery.

    "Shit", She curses under her breath.

    Samy anxiously glances at Fabian, waiting for the smart boy to share an idea on what they can do for the vulnerable bitten boy. They all knew what was going to happen, being bitten by these cannibalistic monsters is basically already setting up a nail in their coffin. However, Samy pondered to herself whether or not removing a bite immediately could potentially prevent the infection from spreading into their entire blood flow. Therefore, maybe saving their life.

    She spots Nettie slowly raising up her knife. "Stop!", Samy exclaims, causing Nettie to give her a sly confused look. "We're not killing him. We can remove his leg instead, see if that works", she clarified to the others. Tommy's eyes widened in horror as he realized that most of his friends' first thoughts were to murder him. Aston shared the same facial expression as Nettie, while Fabian inspected Tommy's bite a lot more. He quickly nods, agreeing with Samy's suggestion.

    "Let's hurry on to the gym before any more of them show up in our school", Fabian urged. Nettie stares at the boy bafflingly, not understanding why he and Samy were so set on following this absurd idea of carrying around an infected liability back to the gym. She carried doubts about whether or not amputating Tommy's leg will help save him from the infection. Both Samy and Aston helped Fabian pull Tommy up to stand back on his feet, carefully helping him walk as Fabian and Samy continued to haul Tommy back to their school gym.