The One Percent
Prologue
It's been twelve hours.
Twelve hours since I watched the world fall apart around me almost literally, around me. Twelve hours ago it was 10:45 am. Twelve hours ago I was a twenty-one year old dude on my way to class at the community college down the street from my house. For once in my life I was making good time, I arrived fifteen minutes early for my English 101 class and had decided to wait outside the classroom until the prior class was finished. I was there for five minutes, surrounded by three other over achievers who were waiting also, when a dark-skinned female clicked her teeth and made a face down at her Samsung Galaxy.
"Mmmm… I don't have any service." She sighed, annoyed as she looked up from the screen and looked around at me and another older guy.
The older guy was the first to respond. He had to be in his early forties, probably just trying to go back to school to make up for missed time when he was young. He took out his trac phone and shrugged. "Me either." He made a passive frown and stuck it back into his jeans.
They both looked at me and I slipped my iPhone out and unlocked the screen, illuminating the Dragon Age, Elven Alienage symbol that was my background. My green eyes flicked up to where an almost full set of bars usually were but now was just the little circle that indicated no service. I looked back at the two and shook my head. "Yeah, that's weird…" I mumbled and ran my free hand through my black hair. I looked back at the young woman who had started to say something about how the class should be starting soon anyways but was cut off when a shrieking howl ripped out across the building, followed by a tidal wave of bangs and screams. The three of us froze and for a moment we just stood there, unsure of what to do. Then, as if a switch was flipped we all just moved. The doors to classrooms immediately around us opened and professors and students started to file out, confused.
"What's going on?" I heard a voice in the sea of students ask.
No one had an answer but everyone had an idea, soon the hallway was filled with confusion and people started to freak out about no cell reception and before chaos could fully form, one of the professors, a male who was across the room from the class I was waiting on yelled above us and started to initiate lock down, the plan that took place in the event of a school shooting. People began to try and shuffle back into the rooms, some people already started to cry out of fear of the unknown. Only a hand full of people made it into the class rooms before suddenly I was being shoved against the wall and the hallway became too crowded. All around me people started to scream at the top of their lungs. As bodies were shoved and pulled. I looked around wildly and locked eyes with the dark-skinned girl for a moment before she was tackled into a group of three other screaming students by a howling and biting professor whose shirt was covered in blood and dirt and other fluids.
My eyes widened and I felt panic and bile rise in my throat, I was only one horrifying witness away from screaming out and completely losing my shit, but somehow I kept it together. I tried to stand and was immediately knocked back down by a sea of screaming and writhing bodies. I gasped for air but it was suffocating underneath my peers, and for a moment I was brought back to a memory of me talking to my best friend, Kyle, about how this year at BPCC was going to kill me. I've never wanted to be psychic less in my life, than in that moment.
I rolled to the side and immediately was stuck between two moaning and crying girls. Weird, I had wanted this at one point in my life, well minus the crying, but for some reason it did not feel right at this time. I tried to push myself up into a standing position but I guess desperation and fear made one of the girls pull me back down.
"What are you doing? Let me go so we can get out of here!" I yelled and did my best to loosen her grip without harming her.
She just kept whimpering and crying and when I looked down I saw why, there were three guys all wild and twitching and chewing at her bare legs. I screamed and jerked my arms away from her just as she started to twitch and convulse beneath me. I was finally able to find my feet and I stood up only to look out into a bloody hallway covered in screaming bodies. I watched as people chewed on other human beings, then those people would twitch and writhe and climb back to their feet, screaming and sniffing the air.
I wasn't sure what bothered me the most though, people being attacked by people or zombies or whatever the hell they were or… that they didn't attack me.