When I finished the crossing, facing with both legs towards the cabin in front of me, I noticed how tense my muscles were and I tried to relax, without much success. Now he was two cabins away from the door. The body of the last girl—the only one, in fact, dead—was just outside the door of the last cabin. I intended to get down and go out the door, but I soon understood that the idea would be flawed: the upper part of his body was leaning against the cabin door, which would make it difficult to open it without making noises. How much time would I have from the moment I attracted the attention of the creature Sarah? Seconds?

It needed to be something faster.

I risked slowly crawling closer to the edge in order to look at the floor. In front of the partition of the last cabins was the body drowned in a pool of blood, making it impossible to make a jump to the floor without the risk of losing balance. I looked again at the monster that until now seemed not to have noticed my presence, with his gaze lost in infinity, and analyzed the distance from where I was to the door. It didn’t seem advantageous to me, but perhaps there was no possibility of advantage from now on.

I thought about waiting until I got the courage, but maybe that moment would never come and I would eventually end up attracting attention to those things. Carefully, I stood on the edge of the partition, putting my legs forward, still bent over. It was a small fall, but it would certainly have to be executed carefully so that nothing would stop me from starting to run as soon as I hit the ground. The impact of my landing would be enough to attract the monster’s attention, and if I had to rely on the same predatory instinct I’d witnessed earlier, I was pretty sure I’d have to be very quick.

Maybe my shadow had finally caught his attention, or maybe my discreet movement hadn’t been so discreet after all. Be that as it may, I didn’t jump because I felt ready, but rather I was kicked out of where I was by the dead man in the cabin next to me, who finally realized my existence, announcing his knowledge with a wide growl.

This being the first sound that resonated in that environment at that time, it was present like a bang. Functioning as a call, the infected on the other side of the bathroom promptly answered it, turning in my direction. I noticed that her skin was pale and that blue veins stood out all along the extremity of her body. How long were we in that bathroom? It also opened its mouth in a grunt, moving towards me.

Panicking, I jumped up and jumped from the partition I was standing on to the floor. Due to the hurried jump, I didn’t fall perfectly and I felt a jolt of pain go up my spine. As soon as I landed on the ground, I saw that the monster began to move faster, seeing its prey—me—closer.

I immediately got up, running towards the door. I found the strength to ignore the appearance of the disfigured human body in front of me, but I couldn’t ignore its presence: in an awkward position, another of its legs was propped up against the door. I had to use more force after pulling down on the handle in order to move it. With some effort, I managed to open a crack, but it was clear that there was no time for that: I placed the sole of my sneakers against the body lying on the floor and, with all the strength I could find, I kicked it away from the door, towards to the corpse moving towards me. The body moved little, being tossed to the side like a doll, but it released the door. When I realized that what-once-was-called-Sarah prepared to attack me, I finally managed to open it and jump out in panic. I almost fell to the ground out of desperation, but I found the strength to pull the door handle to close it, just as the creature stretched its arms out.

We started a tug of war for my life, in which arms with claw-like hands tried to reach me as I put more intensity into my attempt to close the door. I was shocked at how, regardless of the strength I put on and the red marks that started to form on the pale skin — was her owner always pale or did she look that way after she died and came back to attack me? — it didn’t seem to back off or lessen the strength the monster put into trying to open the door. As the red marks slowly began to open up into sores, I wondered if I was even capable of feeling pain.

Soon my arms started to ache from the applied force. If I stopped for a moment, he would be able to sneak through the gaping gap and get to me, so I invariably kept pulling the door handle toward me, keeping my arms outstretched so my body was out of reach. I realized that it would be useless: obviously I would never have the strength to close it, only if I cut off its arms. He had no intention of giving up.

An idea popped into my head, as if a lightbulb went on in my brain. At the time it seemed a bit stupid and risky to me, in the future I would be sure I was completely stupid.

I opened the door, still gripping the handle, and the creature immediately moved towards me. I lifted my leg and supported her approach with my foot, feeling her hands wrapping around my shin, protected only by leggings. I flexed my leg as much as I could and kicked the creature hard. She tripped over the body behind her, falling on top of him. I didn’t follow her fall, because seeing that the difficulty was gone, I pulled the door hard towards me and closed it with a bang.

At first I gripped the doorknob tightly, hearing a pounding start against the door as an angry growl reached my ears. I figured at any moment the handle would be forced in an attempt to open the door again, but the pounding just persisted, as if he was throwing his weight against the door over and over again. He hadn’t stopped to think if, as a monster, the previous person’s consciousness was still present. As there was no movement to try to open the door, I took my hands off the icy metal of the handle, keeping my attention there for a while.

Finding myself free at last, I looked down for any scratches that might have been made on my leg. Fortunately my pants had only a few superficial rips. At that time, I was just looking to see if I had been injured, having no idea that scratches would also be vectors of infection.

I finally managed to breathe a heavy sigh of relief, feeling my muscles release tension again as I relaxed. There was a layer of sweat all over my body and I was pretty sure my shirt was marked with blood in places. My hands were red and sore from the force I used on the doorknob and my heart was riding hard against my chest, complaining about the misuse I had made of it all this time. Still, I was alive.

As I calmed down, I realized that the cries of despair that had once been the only thing to be heard outside the high school buildings had subsided. A wall full of windows at equal meter intervals awaited me as I glanced back, ready to broadcast whatever grotesque show played out in the rest of my high school, like a television playing a horror movie. Still, the groans remained present, followed by the strange, unidentifiable sounds of several other things being done at the same time. There were still some occasional screams. I will avoided the windows for now.