Pathogen (Classroom of the Elite)

Chapter 2: Escape Ground Zero

Ayanokouji Kiyotaka

"Okay, guys, what do we do now?" Ike asked, walking back and forth in the room in a panic. "Tokyo is fucked, dude! As we speak, those zombies have probably jumped out and are eating people alive at the bay."

A heavy silence descended upon the room, only broken by the muffled screams and growls from outside the ship. If I concentrated a bit more, I could hear distant sirens and gunshots from further down the bay. The infection had already begun to take over Tokyo.

Sudou turned to me, eyeing my weapon. "Hey, Ayanokouji. You think you can break the window with that metal pipe of yours?"

"I probably can, but we're not surviving the fall. I doubt there's a way to climb down, either."

There were faint traces of lumps on the ship you could potentially use as footing. But at that point, facing the horde of infected outside and making your way down the decks was a far safer option. I side-eyed Ryuuen who seemed to share my thoughts, letting out an audible sigh.

"You fuckin' cowards."

With a muffled thud, Ryuuen jumped down from the bunk bed. He silently approached the door while everyone watched him, and peeked through the peephole.

"Ryuuen-kun, what are you doing?" Horikita asked.

"Checkin' if there's anything outside. As long as you guys ain't stupid enough to scream, we can head to the stairs and escape the ship from the lower deck."

"The zombies aren't blind, Ryuuen-kun. One way or another, we'll run into a horde."

"So? We fuck 'em up," Ryuuen declared, pumping his fists together. "Three out of six of us still have the strength to fight. That's good enough."

Even though Ryuuen's plan seemed reckless, it was the only viable option that remained. On top of that, we didn't necessarily have to make it all the way to the bottom deck. Just low enough so that we could essentially jump out without sustaining any major injuries.

I supposed the military forces had begun to take action while Tokyo bay was quickly getting overrun by zombies. Even if we made it out, we would still have to find shelter since there was a high chance we were going to be mistaken for infected. From a far distance, I'd imagine it was hard to tell between an injured survivor and a zombie.

"Only Ayanokouji-kun has a weapon, though," Horikita said.

"There's a maintenance room about a minute's walk away from here, even less if we run. We can each grab a weapon from there," I suggested.

I took note of nearby areas while we ran here. Unfortunately, during that time, I couldn't find an alternative way down other than using the elevators. So, chances are, we would probably have to be using the same one that was swarming with zombies.

"W-Wait, hold on, so you guys are just gonna go out there and hope you make it out of this cruise ship alive?!" Ike asked, hesitant.

"That's the premise of it, yeah," I answered. "But, like what Ryuuen said, if we're smart about it then we should be good."

I tightened my grip onto my rusted metal pipe and approached the door, walking past Ryuuen. I rested my palm on the handle, and looked back at everyone else. Fortunately, they seemed to have steeled their resolve.

"I'm about to unlock the door. Are we ready?"

In response, everyone silently nodded. After checking that the coast was clear through the peephole, I slowly pushed the door open. Immediately, I scanned my surroundings, and noticed a couple of zombies to my left. Luckily, the right was clear, which was the corridor that led toward the maintenance room I was talking about.