DEGREES OF DEATH

4. The Blind Spot and a New Lineup

 

Scrrrape… scrrrape…

The sound of metal dragging across the dusty concrete floor stole the air from their lungs.

Inside the pitch-black sports shed, the musty smell of gym mats and old dust was instantly replaced by pure terror. Outside the tin walls, the storm and the roars of the mutants still raged like a symphony from hell, but the threat inside this room felt infinitely more lethal because they couldn’t see it.

Still half-kneeling on a pile of mats, Daniel slowly raised his teak club, his arm muscles tensing. He could hear Xavier’s ragged breathing behind him, while Bianca lifted her broom handle with trembling hands.

Scrrrape… The sound was getting closer.

“Who’s there?” Daniel hissed. His voice was low, almost like the growl of a cornered animal. He refused to die in this dark place without a fight.

The footsteps stopped. The silence hung for three seconds that felt like three hours.

“Niel?” a hoarse voice from the darkness broke the quiet. “Is that really you, Daniel?”

Daniel frowned. He knew that voice. Before he could answer, the dim beam of a phone flashlight flickered on from the corner of the room, shining directly into Daniel’s face and cutting through the dust motes dancing in the air.

Daniel squinted, shielding his face with one hand. As his eyes adjusted, he saw two silhouettes standing near a rack of basketballs. One was holding an aluminum baseball bat, the other a length of iron heating pipe that he must have ripped from somewhere.

“Alex? Noah?” Daniel lowered his club slowly, his breath coming out in a harsh exhale.

The two guys, still wearing their university basketball jerseys, quickly turned off the flashlight and jogged over to them. Their clothes were filthy with dust and sweat, their faces pale.

“Thank God. We thought you were one of those crazy corpses from outside,” Noah whispered, wiping cold sweat from his temple with the back of a shaky hand.

Chania slid to the floor, burying her face in her hands and letting out a sob of relief. Xavier immediately collapsed onto his back on a mat, his breath whistling like a broken flute.

“How long have you two been in here?” Daniel asked, his sharp eyes scanning Alex and Noah from head to toe. In this world where the rules had just been completely rewritten, he couldn’t immediately trust anyone.

“Since the first commotion broke out in the indoor court,” Alex answered, still catching his breath. “We were in the middle of afternoon practice. Then some freshman ran in, his neck torn open. All hell broke loose after that. Noah and I ran in here and locked the door from the inside.”

Daniel stepped forward, closing the distance until only a few feet separated them. His eyes narrowed suspiciously. “Anyone hurt? Scratched? Bitten?”

Noah shook his head quickly, almost frantically. “No, Niel! I swear! We’re clean!”

Alex hesitated for a second, his eyes avoiding Daniel’s gaze. That brief pause made Daniel tighten his grip on his club.

“Alex,” Daniel said coldly. “I’ll ask one more time. Is anyone hurt?”

Alex swallowed hard and looked up at Daniel. “Just a bruise from getting slammed against the door when we were scrambling to get in. My skin isn’t broken, Niel. I’m not lying.”

Daniel stared hard into Alex’s eyes for a few seconds, searching for any hint of a lie or the abnormal paleness he had seen on Becca. “Good,” Daniel finally muttered, taking a step back. “Because if anyone is hiding a wound, I’ll throw them out that window myself.”

“You’re insane, Niel,” Xavier cursed from the floor, trying to sit up while clutching his chest. The curly-haired guy dug into his wet jeans pocket and pulled out his phone. The screen lit up brightly, drawing everyone’s attention.

“Vier, try calling the police. Or the army. Anybody!” Bianca urged impatiently, her voice rising an octave. “Tell them our campus is under attack by terrorists or whatever this is! We need to be evacuated, tonight!”

Xavier tapped at his phone screen with a violently shaking finger, his face illuminated by its blue light. But as the seconds ticked by, the hopeful expression on his face slowly melted into one of empty despair.

Xavier’s hand fell limply into his lap.

“Vier? Well?” Chania pressed, looking up with a hopeful face.

“It’s dead,” Xavier whispered hoarsely, his voice cracking. He turned the phone screen toward his friends. In the top right corner, there wasn't a single signal bar. Just a circle with a slash through it. No Service.

“Try the Emergency Call feature! It has to connect to a satellite!” Noah argued in a panic, fumbling for his own phone, but the result was the same.

“Cell service, campus Wi-Fi, it’s all completely down,” Xavier wiped his face roughly. “The city’s transmission towers must be destroyed or intentionally shut down. We’re… we’re completely isolated, guys. No help is coming.”

That sentence hung heavy in the stale air of the shed. Outside, beyond the cold concrete and tin walls, the growls of the horde were a constant drone. The sounds of nails scraping on metal and hungry snarls seemed to mock their desperation. They were trapped in a dark box, waiting for their turn to be eaten.

Bianca started crying again, sinking down to hug her knees. Noah and Alex exchanged pale glances. Xavier just stared at the floor, what was left of his sanity crumbling.

Daniel let the panic fester for ten seconds. He watched his broken friends, then turned his gaze to the racks of sports equipment around them. His pragmatic brain wouldn’t allow him to join in their sorrow.

Sorrow didn’t kill zombies. Weapons did.

“Okay, that’s enough crying,” Daniel cut in. His voice wasn’t loud, but its tone was so absolute that Bianca’s sobs stopped instantly.

All eyes turned to Daniel. The guy in the wet shirt, splattered with black blood, walked over to an equipment table. He turned on his phone’s flashlight for a moment, placed it face-up so the light would diffuse, and started rummaging through a metal cabinet.

“You think the police are going to fly in on a helicopter to save a bunch of regular students like us? Don’t be naive,” Daniel said, tossing two aluminum baseball bats onto the floor with a loud clang. “All we have is each other now. If we want to live, we have to get off this campus on our own two feet.”

“Get out?! Which way, Niel?!” Alex protested. “Do you hear that noise outside?! There are hundreds of them!”

“We’re not going outside. We’re taking the underground tunnel that connects this indoor facility to the medical school,” Daniel answered quickly, pointing to a steel door at the far end of the shed. “But we need real weapons. Ditch the broom, Ca. It won’t break a skull.”

Daniel broke the lock on a corner locker by smashing it with an iron hammer he found in a toolbox. The locker door swung open, revealing a row of equipment for the university’s archery club.

He pulled out a sturdy, black recurve bow and a quiver full of a dozen arrows with carbon-steel tips. He tossed the quiver to Bianca, then handed her the bow.

“You’re an archer, right? I saw you at a competition last semester,” Daniel said sharply.

Bianca caught the bow awkwardly. She swallowed. “Y-yeah, but… I’ve never shot at anything living, Niel. Let alone a person.”

“They’re not people anymore, Bianca. They’re walking corpses that want to chew on your intestines,” Daniel cut in, devoid of emotion. “From now on, you’re our eyes. Take out anything that gets in our way before it can smell us. Understand?”

Bianca looked into Daniel’s cold eyes, then down at the bow in her hands. Slowly, she nodded. “Understood.”

Daniel moved to the tool bench. He grabbed two rolls of thick, black cloth tape. He called over Alex, Noah, and Xavier.

“Gimme your weapons,” he ordered. Daniel began to wrap the tape tightly and precisely around the handles of the aluminum bat, Noah’s iron pipe, and his own teak club. He deliberately layered the tape to create a rough, grippy texture.

“Your hands are going to be slick with cold sweat, or worse, blood,” Daniel explained, tearing a strip of tape with his teeth. “If your weapon slips out of your hand mid-swing, you’re dead. This grip will make sure it sticks to you.”

Xavier stared at his bat, which now felt solid and secure. He swallowed, looking at Daniel with a mixture of awe and horror. His friend was transitioning from law student to military commander way too fast.

“Now listen up,” Daniel stood in the center of the group, looking at each face that was now waiting for his command. “We stick together in a tight formation. Noah and Alex, you’re in the back, watch our blind spot. Bianca, you’re in the middle with Chania, focus on long-range shots. Xavier and I will take the front.”

Daniel gripped his teak club. The veins in his forearms popped. “The second we open that door, nobody splits off. No noise. And if something lunges… you smash its head without hesitation. A second of doubt will get us all killed.”

They all nodded in unison. The earlier despair had been replaced by a raw will to survive, a will that Daniel had ignited in them.

“Any questions before we move?” Daniel asked, picking up his phone.

No one answered. Daniel nodded, satisfied. He swept the beam of his flashlight from Alex’s face, to Noah’s, to Bianca’s, and then to Xavier’s, checking their readiness.

Finally, the beam of light moved down to check on Chania, who had been leaning silently against a metal locker the whole time.

The light stopped on her leg.

Daniel’s breath caught in his throat. The atmosphere around him seemed to plummet below freezing. His jaw clenched, his eyes narrowing with a deadly intensity. His grip on the teak club tightened until his knuckles were bone-white.

Under the dim glow of the phone’s screen, a dark, wet stain was spreading from behind the tear in Chania’s jeans, right over her knee. The stain was slowly dripping down onto her sneakers.

“Your knee,” Daniel muttered. His voice was suddenly frigid, as cold as ice. There was no trace of a lover's concern in his tone, only that of an executioner contemplating a sentence.

Every head snapped toward Chania’s leg. Noah and Alex instinctively took a step back, raising their weapons.

Daniel closed the distance, shining the light directly on the wound. “You’re bleeding, Chania. Did you get scratched when you fell in the parking lot?”

Chania looked down, her face ashen. Her lips trembled violently. With a shaking hand, she touched the sticky, thick red stain, then stared at her own fingers. A tear fell, splashing onto the dusty floor.

“Niel,” Chania whispered, her voice trembling uncontrollably as she looked into Daniel’s eyes, which were filled with a lethal suspicion. “This… this isn’t my blood.”