DEATH HAS ITS WONDERS

DHIW CHAPTER GUIDE

. . . please read the chapter guide. It has all the necessary info like links to other chapters and content warnings

wc: 2031

chapter 3 of 6

⚠️ this chapter has graphic depictions of gore and violence

Otherwise, enjoy~

The halls were empty, but the way every sound we made echoed back to us almost felt like the darkness was mocking us. The buzzing of the ugly lights might as well have been laughing at us as we confidently strode down the halls, splattering blood under our shoes. It was quiet- too quiet. It felt suspicious being so empty, not a single zombie in sight. It had the same eerie feeling as a horror movie moments before a jump scare.

Oddly enough, I was relieved when we finally ran into one. Riki took it out in a single hit with his bat. I detour away from him just to look down the stairwell. I gasp and step back at the sight before me. A girl from class eight is being hoarded. That's why they'd been quiet, they're all on the bottom floor and they're being fed.

The sight and sound of the girl's flesh tearing nauseates me. The zombies peel away at her, leaving her muscles exposed and cold. Blood runs down her wounds and spills onto the floor. Her wailing is agonizing and terrifying, but it's nothing to the zombies anymore. They're all far too gone. One of the zombies bites into her throat, causing her to choke on her own blood. I look away, it's too much. I may never get the image out of my mind.

Riki is facing me, looking at me with a sorrowful gaze. He looks as if he pities me for what I just saw. Now isn't the time for pity. I push back the aching in my heart and hide the fresh trauma that's been branded into my mind. Not a word is said between the two of us. Our eyes will speak in place of it.

We still have to act. There's a job to be done, and it doesn't pause for us. Riki takes the first step, guiding me to one of the closets. He opens the door and gestures to me to step inside before him. He follows behind me and closes the door. My body is weak from witnessing the girl be eaten. I let myself lean against the wall. The cinder blocks scratch my back as I sink to the cold floor. The room is hard and damp, only lit by the sunlight that comes in through the tiny window. I hug my knees that are pressed into my chest.

I look up to see Riki. His brows are furrowed in deep thought as he observes different parts of the room. I follow his gaze to a number of objects. That's when I realized what he's thinking. We need something to block the staircase as we go. Something like a checkpoint. It has to be strong though, and big enough to block the entire thing. I look around for myself now, seeing what all is available to us. A light bulb... useless. A cardboard box... also useless. A long rope... not too bad! We could make a sort of net to hold them out. I jump up from the ground and grab it with a newfound hope.

Riki turns around to face me. His expression is completely new, now flaunting a determined smile. That simple look refreshed my mind and I feel a touch of life inside of me again. He opens the door and we go out with confidence. Confidence that everything will be ok.

The zombies have made their way to our floor finally. There's only a handful right now, maybe six or seven. Still not too much for us to handle. Riki doesn't hesitate to use his bat. The heads of the nails bash into the zombies head with ease. Its flesh is too rotten to try and fight it. The bones of the skull crush on impact with a crunching sound. The zombie's face is severely deformed. The part.of the brain that was still working had to have been punctured by something, whether it be the nails on the bat or the crushed bones of the skull. It falls to the floor, blood and pus drains from the impact site. The pus is disgusting. It's white and green and looks like it has a thick texture. It mixes poorly with the thinner blood that surrounds it as the two substances pool around the corpse. It looks terribly infectious. I try not to gag as the smell of blood and decay fills the room.

We move forward nonetheless. Riki takes on the zombies at the staircase, and I eliminate those who've got past him. It's simple as they don't have the best balance. One of them slips in the blood and falls on top of the already annihilated one. Their weak bodies collide in a disgusting show of fireworks. Rotten flesh and infected blood splatter on the ground. They're more fragile than I'd thought. The panic in me starts to dissipate and I'm really a bit underwhelmed. I merely kick the next zombie in its shin, causing it to break its leg and lose its balance. I can't look away as it falls over on its own broken leg bone. The bone pierces through the body flawlessly and with ease. The sound is sloppy and disgusting. I'm gonna have to get used to this.

The rest of the staircase is mostly clear, so we take that time to rope off the top floor. And by we I mean I'm gonna stand there and watch as Riki does all of the work. I can undo knots phenomenally, but tying them? I'm lucky I can tie my shoes. We haven't spoken in a while, and I honestly don't feel much of a need to. I'm comfortable in our silence. Perhaps it's because we're close, but it's more likely that I'm just too preoccupied with watching his hands work their magic. It's common knowledge that I find hands like his attractive. After tying the last knot, he looks up to me with a proud smile. I'm not sure how to respond, so I smile back and give him a thumbs up. He laughs at my gesture and gets up. He tied it in such a way that nothing lacking basic cognitive abilities could get through. Anyone else can easily get in. Our next step is to safely clean up the mess of bodies that still litters the ground.

It isn't going to be an easy task. We head to the lab to see if Juno and Taehyun have any protocols for us to follow while cleaning. We're careful not to slip on the way there, and upon arriving, we try to minimize the amount of bodily fluids we track into the room. We're surprised to find Taehyun by himself. They usually work as a pair. He looks up from his notebook, waiting to see what we need.

"Where's Juno?" I ask before proposing the real question. Taehyun, who was leaning forward onto the desk, readjusts himself in the chair and is now leaning back. He sighs before replying.

"You'd think a virus that kills upon entering the body would be enough to scare someone, especially a scientist, out of doing certain things." I purse my lips in slight disappointment. Riki laughs in a low voice.

"What else do you expect out of those two?" He jokes. Taehyun shrugs.

"What are you two really here for though?"

"Do you have any protocols for cleaning? Especially for the pus that drained from one of the zombies." Seeing Taehyun's glossy boba eyes light up at me mentioning the infectious pus was the last thing I thought I'd ever see. I wasn't sure if I should awe at his cuteness or be disturbed.

"Just go work on clearing the floor below for now. I wanna collect samples." We agree because who would actually want to mess around in that... except for an absolute madman named Taehyun. I'm sure Juno would enjoy it as well, but she's rather preoccupied.

The sun is stretching past afternoon, but it hasn't quite reached sunset. I look outside the large window at the lawn painted in red. We confidently stride down the stairs and down the hallway. We look into the office, the staff have destroyed each other. The lights don't work on this floor, but we can access the cafeteria now. We're so close to getting in the cafeteria when we meet a crowd of zombies. I gasp out loud like an idiot. They can see us now. There's so many, at least forty, maybe even a hundred of them. That was a bit much for the two of us to take on alone, and now they were headed for us.

My first instinct is to run. I'm not leaving without Riki though, so I grab his hand and pull him into the nearest room. It just so happens to be a cramped janitor's closet. It's nowhere near the size of the last one. Riki's breath is heavy and it blows on me from our proximity. In fact, we're so close right now that I can feel his body heat radiating from him. His hot breath mixes with mine as we recenter ourselves. After we calm down, our eyes lock. We can't really see each other, but something is there. Something is between us. He extends his hands out, gently placing them on my arms. He carefully pulls me into him, and who am I to deny him? I want this.

I take it upon myself to wrap my arms around him and lay my head into his chest. I feel protected in his embrace. He takes his hand and lifts my chin up to look at him. He towers over me, almost strains my neck to look at him. I feel my blinking slow as he leans in toward me. My eyes flutter shut and I feel his lips press against mine. His kiss is gentle but firm. My lips part and he takes the invitation. His tongue finds its way inside of my mouth. His taste fills my mouth. I swear I could kiss him all day. He sucks lightly on my bottom lip as our breath mixes. He presses another soft kiss on my lips.

The moment is over when the door opens. Riki pushes me behind him, ready to face whatever it was. Luckily it was just Beomgyu. His hair was disheveled and he was out of breath. He looks at Riki and then back at me. His brows furrow.

"No," Riki confirms before Beomgyu can even ask.

"Unlike you, we would rather not die from a zombie infection to the genitals," this makes Beomgyu snicker and he leads us up to the top floor again. The zombies that had previously invaded the floor were all on the ground.

"How'd you kill all of them?" I ask.

"Well, there's a thing we call post-nut clarity. Apparently it helped Juno think up a really cool defense tool." He explains while trying to indirectly credit himself for her intelligence.

"You sure it wasn't the studying and work she's done with Taehyun?" I say, knowing that discrediting him will upset him.

"Certain" He says with confidence. We step through the net Riki made and a feeling of safety washes over me. The bodies and puddles are gone. Someone, most likely Taehyun, had cleaned them up. The classroom was sterile and organized just as we'd been keeping it. Everyone from all of our assigned groups has returned. We had a very successful morning. For the rest of the day, we'll finish clearing the entire school of zombies and start cleaning up.

"We need a top and bottom floor team." Juno says. Top floor will start expanding usable rooms. Some of us will even have our own rooms. Bottom floor will clean and reinforce broken walls and doors. I offer to take the top floor. As soon as I do, Riki volunteers for the bottom. I feel my heart sink when he does. I'm a bit shocked too. After all that we've done together? After that kiss? Maybe It didn't mean anything to him. It was probably all a big mistake.

DEATH HAS ITS WONDERS

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