Chapter One
Hi, guys! This is my second zombie fanfiction - I was out of ideas for the other story, Apocalypso, and Monochrome. If you've read the synopsis of my story you should already know who is the main protagonist and where is this particular high school of the dead located.

I'd sincerely appreciate reviews, follows, and favorites! Criticism is greatly accepted as well. Feel free to correct any spelling mistakes. I take great pride in my writing and I want to improve. Well, read on!

Short pants of breath escaped from my chapped lips as I desperately ran for the apartment door, never stopping to look behind me, for if I did, I would be dead meat – literally. I was running away from a huge crowd of zombies that never tired, never stopped, and never gave up chasing their lone, single prey – me.

My pace started slowing down as my stamina depleted, having run from the apartment entrance up the stairs to the ninth floor. The undead limped and staggered pretty quickly for something, well, dead, and shambled their way up the stairs, hot in pursuit for my live flesh.

I skidded unsteadily on the dry unclean carpet that had not been vacuumed since the start of the man-eating apocalypse, meaning a lot of dried blood caked within the furry skin of the carpet, and the stench of rotten flesh hung in the thin, air-conditioned air.

The apartment room was my only chance. Owned by my friend, a gun nut, I could grab some artillery and mow down the incoming hordes of dead with a machine gun. The problem was, the zombies were catching up, and even though I was pretty close to the apartment room, I was half sure I was toast before I could reach the door.

You see, the thing is – zombies stagger and sort of sprint in my world; welcome to my lovely paradise of blood and guts. All my life I've dreamed of a zombie apocalypse to happen and did not expect to survive and expected zombies to be slow, dumb bastards that only knew how to stumble slowly and bite and chew.

I slammed into a short, stout figure with meaty arms and a large belly opened up with entrails hanging loosely at the front and the sides of her shirt. Her ghostly white, lifeless eyes bored upon me as her surprisingly strong arms pinned me down, her ghastly teeth dawning closer to my exposed neck. I pushed her back with my effort, but it would only be a matter of time before I drained up all of my strength and became zombie fodder.

My heart felt like it was about to burst. Every molecule of my strength was focused to keeping this fat zombie away from biting a chunk of my flesh. My eyes darted from left to right, and I saw the group of zombies I was trying to run away from clamor in hunger as they surged forward like a pack of wolves, coming ever closer, ever closer…

In a last burst of strength, I managed to shove the obese zombie a few feet back, and hastily got back up to my feet for another round of sprinting. But as I propelled myself forth, the obese zombie, though too heavy to rise, had its meaty hand gripping my left leg tightly, causing me to lose my balance.

I fell onto the blood-soaked carpet with a heavy thud, shooting arcs of pain up my face and from a new, freshly formed scrape on my cheek. Tell you the truth; I was already at my wit's end. I felt like giving up, after all there was nothing left for me in this dead world anymore. The infected were coming, let them come; I was already dead since the apocalypse started anyway. Searing pain stabbed my neck in the form of rotted teeth, and blood poured like a waterfall from the torn veins and arteries.

My vision darkened, and the pain of other parts of my body being torn apart enveloped me, and I closed my eyes…

RINGGGGG!

My eyes blearily opened as my vision came into focus. I was sleeping with my face plastered on the plastic table, of moderate quality. I had been listening to a boring lesson in Biology Class on why zombies were pure fiction and would never exist in our modern world, and had dozed off, which explained the zombie dream. Luckily, the teacher, Miss Amy, did not notice that I had been sleeping in her class, and I had successfully been rejuvenated by the one hour nap without any detention, as the bell had rung. It was lunch time.

You see, studying at an extremely expensive school known as Swift's International did not necessarily mean high quality equipment, fun lessons et cetera. By the way, my name's Gerard Olive, and I'm a relatively normal kid in my current junior year in high school if you exclude the fact that I get weird dreams like the zombie one quite frequently. If I had to describe myself to others, I'd say I was a sixteen year old junior turning seventeen in late November, and surprise everyone with my body statistics. For instance, I'm a little over six-foot-one, and I weigh less than a hundred and twenty pounds. Light, isn't it? In fact, I'm sick of people telling me to eat more when one of my best friends Ethan Tanner has seen me devour a whole conveyor belt of sushi at a restaurant before, earning lots of looks from other families and friends trying to enjoy their meal.

I slung my bag over my shoulder and walked out of the Biology classroom with Niqulos Tudline, an English guy, also a part of my best friends group. My lean physique contrasted with his broad shoulders and buff arms and people would wonder why me and him were best friends, as one looked to be an average kid and the other a sporty kid. Sadly, most rich kids in Swift's International School were judgmental and rather self-obsessed with themselves.

As we dropped our bags onto the cold marble flooring of our math class, we made a beeline for the canteen, which was already teeming with kids from the ages of freshmen to seniors. I could hardly see over the crowd at the menu for today's grub; many seniors above five-ten were blocking me and Niq. While the queue slowly moved along, I told Niq about my latest dream in Bio class; he sat next to me but did not wake me up as he was also sleeping.

"Whoa, Gerard, the way you describe those zombies… I'm wondering why the fuck don't you take Literature." Niqulos exclaimed as we got closer to the food counter. I shrugged, saying that the stress of an added subject would cause my grades to drop; my results weren't very high these days and I was aiming for a scholarship to ease my dad's burden of working too much.

"Besides," I added, "Literature, as I've heard, it's very boring with all the Shakespeare shit." I turned to the lunch lady whom, as usual, was wearing a mask of stone again. She never smiled once, not even the first day of school when Ethan and I had approached her counter. "I'll have the fish and chips, please."

After tendering my fiver, and neglecting to collect the change (it was just a nickel), I grabbed my plate and armed myself with a knife and a fork, prepared to slice the fried dory fillet apart so as to stuff it in my mouth. "I'll have whatever he's having," Niq said, referring to me, and once both of us had our sides of fish and chips we started looking for an empty table. "Over here!" A rough voice with the South American accent rang out, causing me and Niqulos to walk over to where Juan Carlos Perez sat with Aladdin (whose real name was Alideen), and Ethan.

Juan was a rather tall Mexican dude, with tanned muscular arms that attracted lots of girls, but his nose was flat like a pancake, spoiling his features. Aladdin was of slightly above average height, an Indian but following the culture of a Muslim. He never really told us off when we ate pork in front of him, but instead accepted it, as it was not Malaysia – it was the Big Apple, New York. Ethan was a boy of slightly above average height as well, his dad was Caucasian American, while his mom was African American, and though not exactly fat, Ethan was slightly stout.

"So, how was Biology class, Gerard, Niqulos?" Juan asked in a light tone, while taking a large bite out of his pepperoni pizza slice. "Sam Yee told me he saw you guys taking a nap." As if on cue, Sam Yee approached our almost-full table with Gordon Ng. Sam was a rather tall Northern Chinese, wearing rectangular glasses with a black frame and red colored sides. He always walked in a funny fashion, hunching a lot, and never failing to crack the rest of our group up with his behavior. Gordon was a boy of slightly below average height, a Southern Chinese, wearing glasses similar to Sam's except it was slightly bigger. He had a darker complexion compared to the rest of us, except Aladdin and Ethan, and one side of his face was darker than the other, presumably from birth. Gordon and Sam were skinny, though Gordon was skinnier than me and Sam was slightly heavier.

We chatted a bit about how boring school was; a bunch of misfits we were, not standing out and arrogant like the superstar jocks, not belonging to the huge band of nerds that all sat in one place, and just being us. Niqulos and I usually ate the fish and fries or sometimes even fried chicken, while the rest of the group ate a variety of pizza, sushi, steak, lamb chop et cetera. Rarely pork, so as not to offend our Muslim friend Aladdin. Ethan ate extremely little yet was a bit stout.

I told them about the zombie dream, Niq adding some extra facts along the way. Ethan had heard a similar story from me before, as we were friends longer than the rest of them. Everyone listened attentively as my story drifted to the part where I was devoured alive; my nerves tingling as I grimly remembered the pain that flooded through my neck. It was silent in our table while the drone of the other kids floated across the cafeteria. Finally, Aladdin spoke up. "Well, it's just a dream, right?"

I scratched my head nervously, while Sam Yee just continued munching his steak. Ethan cleared his throat. "So, what's after lunch?" Juan broke the silence. "I think its sports," Gordon spoke up between bites of lamb. Sports at our school depended on which sport we were having; the sport rotated every five weeks, so we had just completed badminton, and were currently moving on to basketball. A word of advice if you see me – do not ask me whether I play basketball or not, or whether I'm good at it. It gets annoying after a while.

Lunch was finished, silence swept over the canteen as the last of us exited the cafeteria; some groaning at the prospect of basketball while some smirking, eager to pulverize the weaklings, and cracking their knuckles for the umpteenth time. The kid that played basketball best was Juan, who had an advantageous reach with his unbelievably long arms. He was also in the school team, out of around three hundred students in our age group – now that is impressive. Everyone chattered while the teacher, Mr. Pam, took the attendance.

Mr. Pam assigned us to teams of five according to our skill level in basketball. The pros all grouped up in one big huddle, eyeing each other like slaughter time; the average stood dumbfounded, most of their friends either in the pros or the weaker players, while the weaker players groaned inwardly and chatted about how much they wanted to skip sports. Needless to say, Juan was with the pros, Sam Yee was with the normal players, and the rest of us were grouped together with the bad players. We looked out of place; tall kids who stood amongst a bunch of short people who sucked at basketball. I hated being with the weaker players sometimes, as there was this short and annoying kid – his name was Sam Long, a Caucasian-American kid who manipulated his friends and took advantage of others. He and I have shared some bad history together, involving a girl that he 'loved' and I liked. After I started to avoid him when his true colors were shown clearly, he spread rumors about me; like how I was a pervert, and antisocial. The first one was fine, as I did not take the word pervert seriously (we're all teenagers for god's sake), but the second one pissed me off. If anything, he was the antisocial one, knocking his friends off the ladder to try and climb the social ladder but failing. All of my true friends avoid him as well, as they know him as much as I do.

The ball was passed to me, and I dribbled it in rhythm, looking up to a skinny, gawky boy blocking me – Shaun Teak. He was an arrogant guy who could be fun for a laugh sometimes but held too much pride; he was a really rich guy who had a rather snobbish attitude and a sensitive exterior. However, he was tall – taller than me. "Ethan, catch!" I tossed the ball to Ethan while Niqulos tried to intercept the path of the ball, but Ethan caught it with ease, readying for a two-point shot. However, Sam Long had deliberately knocked into him on purpose, sending him off-balance and the basketball flying free in the air. Sam Long and his bunch of shorter friends were laughing at Ethan, who could barely contain his rage. Taking the opportunity to score a point, I snagged the moving ball on the ground and shot it in, earning back my best friend's pride.

"Well, that was a nice move, Samuel," I chuckled mockingly as I clutched the ball with both hands. Niqulos hid a smile, Gordon smirked lightly, and Aladdin full out exploded with laughter. Eventually, he stopped shrieking with giggles after we all stared at him like he was crazy, and then the game continued. We ended the game with our team leading by a couple of points, causing me, Ethan, Aladdin, Gordon and some random guy called Sampson to cheer. We ended the day thinking about all these events, and soon we all returned to our respective homes, bidding each other farewell until the next day.

My feet came into contact with the cool, smooth marble tiles that made up the flooring of my house. Something was cooking in the kitchen, something that gave my stomach growl. I dumped my bag on the floor and showered, washing the sweat off my body, and went into the dining room to find my dad and my mom eating instant noodles, my brother's and my seat vacant. I greeted them, and hungrily wolfed down the instant noodles as fast as it was cooked – roughly two minutes. "So, how was school?" My dad asked me, brandishing a newspaper as he set it down on the birch table. "Same old, same old," I replied. "How was work?" He gave me a cheeky grin and answered, "Same old, same old." Then his expression turned serious, like he was going to say something deadpanned. "There's some sort of sickness happening in the heart of Hudson, hopefully it doesn't spread to our area here in Manhattan, but the thing is – I get to skip working tomorrow!" That was cool, maybe we could all go for bowling – that was if my school allowed me to take leave too.

After dinner, I flipped about the channels on TV, all of them news, even the cartoons and TV series were covered up by urgent news. The news reporter was talking about the new virus that started infecting the population of Hudson, and that there was a high chance of spreading to the other areas of New York and the rest of America. Schools in Manhattan that wished to continue giving their students education could carry on with lessons, while all schools in Hudson were closed. There was footage of people chasing other people, like catch. It seemed like the new virus was all about rabies or something. Sighing, I switched off the TV and climbed up the staircase to my room, which was decorated with posters of guns and food. It was still a little early to sleep at eight-thirty, but I was tired after basketball and wanted to rest.

That's the ending for the first chapter. Next story gets a bit more... dead...

Thank you for reading!