Chapter 37- More Harm Than Good
The male student\'s screams echoed out as the zombies that followed him out the window, either landed on top of him or next to him before joining the two zombies in devouring him.
The first two zombies seemed to snarl at the latecomers, but after the zombies that fell through the window snarled in return, what looked like a confrontation about to erupt didn\'t happen and the two groups eventually went back to eating.
The students on the tennis court all watch the harrowing scene of this male student getting eaten in dead silence. But suddenly, several students dropped to the ground and began sobbing uncontrollably. The last hope that all of this was fake was shattered, and the reality of their situation began to ruthlessly settle in.
"How is this possible? Is this really a zombie apocalypse?"
"I can\'t stay here; I have to go home!"
"Idiot, if this is happening here then what\'s stopping it from happening outside? The government might even be mobilizing the army already to deal with the zombies."
"How do you know that? What if the outbreak is starting here? I mean, why did it start in the middle of the day after everyone had already entered school? It doesn\'t take that long to turn from what I saw, probably four minutes or less, so no one could have carried the virus in during the morning and then became a zombie at lunch, likely, it started here."
"If that\'s the case, does that mean the outside world is still safe? Then we need to escape and go tell the authorities!"
"Idiot, we can\'t leave! The zombie has probably already taken over the school, how can we get out? Plus, who is to say the zombies haven\'t already left the school to start the apocalypse?"
"I don\'t care about that, I\'m leaving anyway! Not just this school, I\'m going to leave Itaewon, and Korea altogether! You guys\' better hurry up, if our school is really ground zero for this zombie virus then we might have a chance to get as far away from this place as possible before it spreads!"
"Yeah, right. Forget about leaving Korea, no plane will be flying right now. And how are you going to leave Itaewon? By train? Where do you plan on going after leaving, Busan? Idiot, haven\'t you watch any zombie movies?"
The male student who said this had a look of scorn on his face as he looked at the boy who suggested leaving.
The boy who suggested leaving in response sneered and said.
"Yeah, I have watched zombie movies and that\'s why I won\'t stay in this school. What if the government decides to bomb this place because it\'s ground zero?"
The look of scorn on the male student\'s face fell, and he suddenly began sweating.
"How can the government bomb us, this isn\'t a movie, stop scaring me."
The students of Class 1A now knowing they were in the middle of a zombie apocalypse, had varied reactions. Some completely broke down in despair, while others started planning to leave, determined to survive. However, weirdly, some male students who have perhaps read too many novels and comics started excitingly chanting the word \'status.\'
Jin-woo looked over at these students with a weird expression on his face. He and Seong had only ever read pure fantasy comics, so he wasn\'t sure why they were performing that action and even getting disappointed afterward.
From the crowd, Yoon-min\'s voice suddenly spoke over the noise.
"Enough! Can you guys take this seriously? Forget any zombie movies, zombie comics, or anything zombie-related you\'ve read before! This is real life and something that someone else conjured up for entertainment doesn\'t apply here!"
All the students quieted down somewhat. Yoon-min, seeing this, looked around at everyone and said with a serious expression.
"We have to decide what to do, and fast. That hoard is going to target us at any moment, and we\'ll be surrounded. Are we going to stay here and wait for rescue, or are we going to-"
However, before Yoon-min could finish his sentence, a piercing scream thundered out from the tennis court next to theirs. Everyone turned to look, and immediately their faces went pale.
Soo-ha was now straddling Ho-jin with her teeth buried in his neck. Blood was gushing everywhere but his screams didn\'t lessen, it only increased.
However, Jin-woo\'s eyes suddenly met Ho-jin\'s from across the fence, and in those eyes, he saw burning hatred.
Jin-woo\'s face changed and he suddenly spun around and looked at the more than a dozen zombies that were beneath the broken window.
One.
Two.
Three.
Four.
Four of those zombies\' heads suddenly snapped up before they turned to look in this direction. At the next moment, they dashed toward the tennis court. That was enough to alert the rest, and they all tracked behind the four, following Ho-jin\'s screams.
"This bastard! He\'s purposely screaming to draw the hoard to us!"
One of the two boys who had stepped forward to help Ho-jin— his friends—said angrily as he walked over and kicked the fence.
All the students\' faces changed, while some glared at Ho-jin. However, he had long stopped screaming, only gurgles came from him as blood filled his mouth and spilled onto his blazer, staining the golden emblem \'ISH\' red.
BANG!
BANG!
In no time the hoard of zombies crossed the jogging distance between the west wing of the high school and the tennis court before slamming into the fence surrounding the courts.
The students who were seated on the ground near the fence all scrambled up and backed away. The zombies pressed themselves up against the fence, snarling at them like starving animals that finally found food.
The students\' faces were drained of blood, and they began to panic.
"What are we going to do now?"
"No, I don\'t want to die!"
"Damn it! We can\'t stay here, what if these zombies draw more to us?"
"Yeah, from what we saw when they fell, more are definitely in the west wing."
As these statements began to fly around, some students glanced at Jin-woo and Ye-jun. They were the Class President and Class VP, when there was no teacher around, they were responsible for protecting them. Some students also glanced at Yoon-min, his earlier display of taking charge almost seemed like second nature to him.
But only a few students here who were in the same class with Yoon-min in middle school knew that he had been the Class President for every one of his middle school classes, and the votes were unanimous since everyone in those classes were his friends. In fact, 1/3 of the students in middle school were either his friends or people who knew him and had a favorable impression of him.
However, at this moment, neither Yoon-min nor Ye-jun knew what to do so they remained silent.
As for Jin-woo, he stepped away and headed to a bench at the back of the tennis court, leaving the students to discuss things among themselves. Rather than sitting on the bench, Jin-woo sat on the ground and leaned his back against it. He kept his head down, knees drawn close to his chest, and eyes closed.
Now that he had calmed down somewhat, he was beginning to realize that the sense of danger that he felt had come from the zombies. But why was that? Why could he predict a zombie outbreak happening? Maybe it was a coincidence?
Jin-woo shook his head.
After everything he felt and saw just now, he couldn\'t just pass it off as a coincidence. The truth is plain to see, he had somehow predicted the zombies coming after his class.
Thinking back to what could have happened if he hadn\'t stopped that girl from coming onto the tennis court, Jin-woo shivered slightly.
If he had to guess, maybe he had an ability like Spiderman where he can sense danger in advance? But Jin-woo didn\'t know why or how he had such an ability.
Perhaps it didn\'t even matter if he had it since it didn\'t seem like he could do anything about it, and it also didn\'t look like it was going away anytime soon.
However, Jin-woo couldn\'t help but contemplate whether this ability had something to do with his schizophrenia. Maybe this ability had caused his schizophrenia?
Jin-woo suddenly shook his head once again and let out a sigh.
He didn\'t want to think along those lines... He didn\'t want to convince himself that his entire life was a lie, that he had been living in fear and mistreatment because of an illness he didn\'t have. He really didn\'t want to find out that what he had wasn\'t a crippling illness, but some superhuman power. That would do more harm than good to him.
As Jin-woo was in his thoughts, he suddenly felt something bump against his forehead. He glanced up and saw that someone was holding a bottle of water in front of him. Jin-woo instinctively took the water, though after taking it he looked up, and then froze.
The person he saw was none other than his bully Seo-joon.