THE LAST HOPE

FROM THE UNIVERSITY

Several hours earlier...

The sky outside had already begun to darken, a dusky purple bleeding through the clouds as evening crept across the city. The lights in the hallways flickered with inconsistent power, and the once-vibrant campus of the Technological Engineering Institute had become a place of fearful whispers and cold silence.

Inside a third-floor classroom, the windows were barricaded with desks and metal chairs, and the doors were reinforced with what little furniture the students could find. The air was stale, thick with anxiety, sweat, and the quiet static of fear. A dozen university students, most still in uniform, clustered in uneasy silence around a single figure near the window.

Raina stood tall, her long silver hair catching the weak light that filtered through the blinds. Her posture was graceful, though tense, like a dancer in the moment before a leap. She held her phone tightly to her chest after ending a call, her fingers trembling as she turned to face the others.

“He’s coming,” she said quietly, but there was a firmness in her voice that made several heads lift. “My brother… Adrian. He said he’s on his way here. He’s bringing others.”

The room stirred. Whispers bloomed. Hope flickered.

Angela, a striking girl with soft pink curls and sharp eyes, stood up. “Wait—Adrian? Your brother? Is that really true?” Her voice trembled with a cautious kind of hope.

Raina nodded. “He promised. He’s already on the move.”

“What do you mean ‘others’?” asked Denise, the girl with violet-dyed hair and an oversized blouse tucked into dark jeans. “Like… people from campus? Or something else?”

“I don’t know,” Raina admitted. “He didn’t say who. But… he was serious. I’ve never heard him sound like that. Like he was already fighting for his life.”

Niel snorted from across the room. Leaning back in a broken office chair, his long legs stretched arrogantly in front of him, he tossed a piece of paper into the trash and didn’t bother to hide his disdain. “Your brother’s gonna rescue us? This isn’t a video game. He’ll just get himself killed.”

“Yeah,” muttered his friend, John. “Unless your brother’s secretly a Navy SEAL, he’s no match for those freaks out there.”

“The military couldn't even hold the cities. You think one guy with a hero complex is gonna change anything?” Bert added.

Raina’s gaze lowered. Their words stung more than she cared to admit.

She had begged Adrian not to come. Told him it was too dangerous. That the city was falling apart. But Adrian was stubborn maybe even reckless. Once he made a decision, there was no turning back. It was a family trait.

Still, she kept her voice steady. “I believe in him.”

Niel smirked, his voice dripping with sarcasm. “Cute. Hope doesn’t keep you alive when you’re running from a blood-sucking freak.”

Angela shot him a glare. “That’s enough, Niel. What’s your plan then, huh? Sit here and wait to die?”

“Better than running into those things,” he shot back. “You heard the screams. You saw what they did to the janitor. And what about Mark? He went to the cafeteria to find food. That was four hours ago. He didn’t come back.”

The silence after that was suffocating.

Angela crossed her arms. “Still doesn’t mean we should just give up. If Raina’s brother is coming, we need to hold out. That means rationing food. Securing water.”

“Angela’s right,” Denise added. “We’ve got enough snacks and water bottles for maybe a day. We don’t know how long this will last, but if someone’s trying to reach us, we owe it to them and ourselves not to fall apart.”

Niel laughed bitterly. “You all want to cling to fairy tales? Fine. But when reality hits—when that door gets torn off its hinges and you see one of them looking you in the eyes—I want you to remember who tried to tell the truth.”

Raina didn’t respond. Instead, she turned back to the window, raising her phone to try the signal again.

No bars.

Her thumb hovered over the call icon. Nothing. Not even emergency services were reachable.

She pressed her lips together, her brows furrowing. “No signal,” she muttered.

“Of course there’s no signal,” Niel sneered. “The whole city’s gone dark.”

Suddenly, Bert’s voice cut through the tension. “Wait. Guys—shh. Look at this.”

Everyone turned as Bert held up his phone. “There’s a live broadcast. From the White House.”

Raina and Niel were closest to him, their shoulders brushing as they leaned in. Niel stiffened slightly, catching a whiff of Raina’s perfume—lavender and something warmer. For a moment, his cynicism faltered, replaced by something softer, more selfish. He had always admired her from a distance, but never had the courage to say anything. Not until the world had gone mad. Not until they were trapped in the same room, maybe forever.

But that moment shattered as the President’s face appeared on the screen, bruised, pale, but calm.

«My fellow Americans,» he began. «Today, we face an enemy unlike any other in our history. A threat that defies science, logic, and reason. The dead are walking. This is not fiction. This is not a drill. This is our reality now. And we must stand together—military, civilian, everyone to confront this nightmare. We will—»

Suddenly, the screen trembled. There were screams. The camera jerked.

Monsters—mutated and grotesque—rushed the podium. These weren’t the vampires the students had seen through the windows. These were something else. Larger. More violent. A different class of horror.

The President’s security opened fire but it wasn’t enough. The camera caught a flash of claws, a scream, and then blood. The feed cut out in static and silence.

No one moved.

Then a girl whispered, “He’s… dead.”

“President of the United States,” another muttered. “Gone… just like that.”

Bert sat down hard, his face pale. “Within twenty-four hours, the U.S. government collapsed…”

Angela gasped. “So… there’s no rescue?”

“No military. No hope,” John added, eyes wide.

But Niel only smiled—softly at first, then wider. “You know what this means, don’t you? Society’s gone. All the rules—gone. We’re in a new world now. Like every damn apocalypse story out there.”

He looked around at the others, eyes lingering on the seven girls huddled near the barricades. Then he turned to Bert and John, voice dropping to a near-whisper.

“Come here,” he said. “I’ve been thinking.”

John and Bert leaned in, curiosity piqued by his sudden intensity.

Niel’s smile twisted into something darker. “We may not get another chance. We might die tomorrow. But tonight... there’s still time. Time to live. Time to enjoy what’s left.”

He tilted his head slightly, eyes locked on Raina. Then Angela. Then Denise.

“You feel me?”

John’s jaw tightened. Bert looked uncomfortable, but said nothing.

Angela noticed the way they were whispering. So did Denise. So did Raina.

And none of them liked the look in Niel’s eyes.

Not one bit.