DEGREES OF DEATH

Chapter 5: The Knock at the Door

 

The classroom door handle moved downward at an agonizingly slow pace. The brass hardware groaned softly, cutting through the absolute silence.

Daniel pressed his left palm flat against the wooden door and closed his eyes. The nerves in his palm detected a faint physical vibration. Something was leaning its weight against the outer surface of the door, breathing with a heavy, wet rhythm.

Bianca watched the handle move. Her eyes widened, the last remnants of her sanity shattered by absolute terror. A tiny sob escaped her pale lips, a mere tremor of breath catching at the back of her throat.

But in this new world, even the smallest sob was a trigger for an explosion.

Thud!

A brutal impact shattered the classroom’s quiet. The wooden door shuddered violently. The frame groaned as if about to rip away from its hinges, and white dust from the ceiling showered onto their hair.

Startled, Bianca drew a deep breath to release a hysterical shriek.

Daniel covered the two meters between them in a flash, wasting no time on verbal warnings. The old rules of politeness had been thrown into the trash. He slammed into Bianca, pinning her back against the brick wall.

His left hand clamped down roughly over her mouth and nose, pressing her head hard against the bricks.

"Hmph!" Bianca thrashed wildly, her fingers clawing at the sleeves of his jacket.

Daniel locked his gaze onto her eyes from two inches away. His stare was as cold as ice, completely devoid of anger. It was pure predatory instinct, disciplining a member of the herd to ensure collective survival.

The creature outside slammed into the door again, the blows resembling a sledgehammer smashing through fragile wood. Thud! Thud! Thud!

Xavier stood frozen in the corner, his knuckles turning white as he gripped the metal leg of a chair. Chania covered her ears tightly, holding her breath in silence.

Daniel leaned closer to Bianca’s face, tightening his grip. Her oxygen supply dwindled rapidly, her face flushing red from the strain. Daniel deliberately chose to leave her on the verge of breathlessness rather than risk her vocal cords drawing death into the room.

"This is your final warning," Daniel whispered near her ear, his voice carrying no decibels at all. "If you make another sound, I will break your jaw to keep you quiet forever."

Bianca stopped struggling. Her terror toward the monsters outside was now entirely replaced by pure dread of the man holding her down. She gave a jerky nod, her tears wetting the spaces between Daniel’s fingers.

Daniel slowly loosened his grip, allowing her to draw thin, steady breaths through her nose.

Outside the classroom, the brutal pounding stopped.

The creature had lost its auditory guide. A harsh snort followed, like a hound losing a blood trail. Long fingernails scraped down the wooden surface of the door.

The slow scratching tortured the limits of their mental endurance. This absolute silence felt far more lethal and suffocating than the sound of shattering glass in the corridor. They were being tested by a blind monster with infinite patience.

A few seconds felt like hours before the abnormal footsteps returned. The sound shifted slowly away from the door of classroom 3-A, growing fainter by the second. Without any mechanical sound waves to track in the corridor, the creature finally dragged itself down toward the ground floor.

Daniel withdrew his hand entirely from Bianca's face.

He straightened up and stepped back, the emotions in his chest shifting drastically. The extreme tension that had burned through his muscles melted into absolute relief. His theory had been proven in the field. The monsters were completely blind, entirely enslaved by sound.

Daniel stared at his own palm in the darkness. He had just physically harmed a terrified girl. In the old world order, he would have ended up in a police interrogation room. Today, that merciless cruelty was their golden ticket to survival.

The old logic had to be buried deep. Fragile humanity was dead weight to a survivor.

Time crept by with agonizing slowness inside classroom 3-A.

Darkness swallowed the room without mercy. The afternoon sun had long since died beneath the perpetual overcast sky, and not a single neon bulb glowed anywhere on campus. The main electrical grid had been cut from the city center hours ago.

Night arrived, bringing a chill that pierced their skin. The humid air that had felt suffocating earlier turned into a cold, uncomfortable dampness.

Xavier sat leaning against the leg of the instructor’s desk, his hands anxiously digging into his jeans pockets. He let out a soft click of his tongue, breaking the silence.

"Damn it," Xavier muttered under his breath.

Daniel turned from his watch by the window. "What is it?"

"My backup phone is gone." Xavier felt around the tile floor with panicked, restrained movements. "I just remembered. When we ran to the second-floor balcony this afternoon, I left my small pouch plugged into the outlet at the juice stand in the downstairs cafeteria."

"Forget it. The cellular networks are completely dead anyway." Daniel turned back to watch the exterior.

"It’s not about the internet signal, Daniel." Xavier wiped his face roughly. "There’s a printed photo of my mom inside the clear case. It’s the only real photo I brought to campus."

Daniel fell silent for a moment. He understood the sentimental value of the item for his friend. In a world that had just ended, memories of the past were the only sanity left. But the risk of retrieving it clashed directly with the logic of survival.

"That item isn't worth your life, Xavier." Daniel's tone flatlined, cutting off his friend's hope. "We’ll look for an evacuation route out of the campus complex tomorrow morning when visibility is better."

Xavier looked down dejectedly, offering no argument against the absolute command.

Daniel crept back to the window overlooking the central cafeteria area on the ground floor. He nudged a dusty curtain aside with his left index finger.

The view below resembled a sleeping execution ground.

Hundreds of dark silhouettes stood frozen among the dining tables and food stalls. They did not attack one another. They simply stood with their heads hung low like deformed statues, patiently waiting for a new sound to trigger them.

Daniel scanned the juice stand area tactically, looking for the path of least resistance for tomorrow's escape.

Suddenly, a rectangular blue glow caught his attention.

The bright light emanated from the counter of the fruit juice stand on the ground floor. A phone screen had lit up automatically, cutting through the dense darkness of the cafeteria. The screen flashed constantly, displaying a nighttime alarm that had been set beforehand.

The clear backing of the phone case reflected the dim light, exposing a worn photograph underneath.

It was Xavier’s backup phone.

The primary issue was that the phone was not in an empty, safe area. It was flashing bright directly in the center of dozens of auditory creatures, and the glowing screen was slowly turning the heads of the monsters toward it.