You'll notice some inconsistencies in the names towards the end of the first chapter, where it refers to the zombie Kiku knows as both 'Kaoru' and 'Im Song'. For some reason the website has decided to be a little annoying slug and is preventing me from changing the name in the editing or even when I replace the chapters. And I also have to apologise for that AN I can't change which is babbling about some people I made up. I made no one up. Brain, what are you doing? This is why you should sleep in between writing chapters. Again, I apologise for the mistakes and confusion caused by them. repeat: IM SONG. Repeat: ARTHUR AND FRANCIS ARE THEIR PARENTS. I prostrate myself at your feet dear reader. Please kick me.

Disclaimer goes here.

Thurs 27th June '13

It's 7:45 a.m. We're planning to go 'over the top' in less than an hour. The others are discussing the strategy to get out of the school in one piece. From the looks of stuff, that'll be extremely fucking difficult.

Sleep was totally absent from the Math room last night. First time all year. Heracles liked having a nap in a lot of the lessons, but he really went for it in Maths. He was a marathon sleeper, but I'll bet if he's still around right now he's not sleeping. Hell if he's around right now he and Sadie are probably stuck in a room with Mo or something and trying to murder each other. If those 3 guys are alive, they are together, Hera and Sadie are strangling each other and Mo looks on in exasperation. Whoa, whoa way off topic Alfred, get back to the subject.

Like I said no one slept at all last night, too busy talking. I didn't want to sleep. What if the doors were breached while I slept and I woke to dozens of teeth tearing into me? The idea of waking to someone I was taught by or taught with nom nom nom-ing away on my bones had the same effect as the six energy drinks I chugged in two minutes for a dare last spring, when my heart beat so fast I thought it might have stopped and I literally could not sleep for 56 hours. My heart didn't go so fast this time but sleep was entirely out of the question. The others must have been thinking along those lines because no one mentioned sleep.

Luddie was the first of us to start moving. He got out of his corner, stretched, checked the views out of all the windows (which Antonio hadn't gone near, thankfully) and reported the school ground to be swamped. By zombies. He stumbled over that part. Ivan popped out of his shell and joined him at the window. Antonio reminded me of a cart on track with his pacing. He didn't interrupt his track at all while the rest of us gathered around the window until I caught him by the collar and gave him a sort of one-armed hug. He relaxed a little after that.

Our conversation went something like this:

Bella: Jesus shit.
Me: Hot damn!

Bella: I mean shit! This is insane!

Luddie: The grounds are swamped aren't they? I think I see someone alive running…

Ivan: It's the PE teacher.

Luddie: What's chasing him?

Ivan: Can't you see?

Luddie: I lost my contacts.
Ivan: You need glasses?

Bella: Guys! Not the most pressing issue right now our fucking PE teacher is getting run down by-

And they caught him.

Kiku walked quite calmly from the window and threw up in the trash. He didn't come back. We watched the zombies for a while. They're like ants, ants that have forgotten they're part of a hive. An angry swarm, freed from group thought, stripped of purpose without their society, except for the one reason provided by a sole remaining instinct: eat. The strength of these bastards is incredible. Remember those gates I mentioned seeing the first behind? DE-stroyed. Torn to pieces of pointy steel by a thousand of those things looking for food. Last night, the streetlights showed us the zombies tearing away with revolting gusto at the bodies they brought down after the gates first came down. Those bodies are bones and the bits the zombies didn't like now. It's impossible to identify the bodies from the shredded uniforms, which have always been soul sucking-ly anonymous anyways, and we don't have to carry student ID cards here either. The dead all look the same. The walking dead are still recognisable as we discovered from the Im Song. I haven't looked for anyone I know. My eyes skipped over the details I knew onto a stranger. I don't want to start my record of the dead yet.

We did our talking in the dark. There were some other classrooms far across the front of the school. All the lights were on and the zombies were moths to a candle. The barricade lasted maybe four minutes. The lights stayed on, so we could see the silhouettes rip each other to pieces. Luddie suggested we leave the lights off in case they attracted the zombies to us. So we did. I'll admit I was uncomfortable; I've never been the biggest fan of the dark. But the streetlight slanted in and we had some moonlight, all together enough to see each other by and negotiate our way across the room, unless you were Antonio who tripped over a chair then Kiku, ran into a wall twice and the blackboard three times.

This is our plan of attack: fashion some sort of sharp/blunt weapons from objects inside room ( going with the theory that the best way to kill a zombie is to destroy the brain because that's the control center for the motor functions, so thusly the brain is moving the body moving the nom nom nom-ing teeth, with thanks to Luddie for the science), take down the barricade, venture into the hallway, retreat using Bella for zombie bait if zombies attack or alternatively Ivan because he'll take longer to finish eating and increase escape time, reconstruct barrier and evaluate stratagem. If escape is successful proceed to lockers on the floor above to retrieve phones, call our families then police then army then the CIA then who the fuck knows might as well drop Jesus a call 'cuz we're in the shit without any help. Get out of the school possibly gaining fellow students or teachers, procure vehicle (driver's licence while we're at it), flee city, find safe-house, stock up on whatever and ride it out unless someone pulls a deus ex machina outta their ass and lands us a helicopter lift to Area 51, an alien saucer with giant zombie-killing lasers, a dinosaur to ride through the masses of undead surely filling the city streets by now. Something like that please.

On the subject of weapons, Bella thinks it appropriate to carry a knife. A KNIFE CONCEALED IN HER BRA! MOST OF THE GIRLS I KNOW KEEP BOOBS OR PHONES IN THEIR BRA BUT NOT BELLA DUBIOS, ON NO THAT IS WAY TOO ORDINARY FOR HER! CAN YOU TELL I'M FREAKED OUT BY THIS? I know she's the daughter of the Belgian President or whatever they have over there, but a lot of kids in this school are the offspring of somebody with an important status in their home countries and as far as I know they don't have flip knives tucked into a secret pocket in left brazier cups…and Kiku has just admitted to me he has a bokuto/wooden sword in his locker, Luddie admits to wearing a gun holster during his summer holidays in case of kidnappers and Ivan apparently has once used a flamethrower. Ok I've been proved wrong. Here's me and Antonio with no track history with weapons, feeling like defenceless sillies. Yaaay. We're gonna die first.

Kiku mauled a broom for the metal staff part of it and I assume he'll be pulling a Buddhist monk style – no wait that's in China, he Japanese. Let me correct myself : karate with a broom stick/staff. Ivan's being normal for him, which is stranger than fiction for the rest of us. You might not believe me, but right now I'm watching him half in the ceiling via access from a gap where the panel he actually punched out of its frame was. God knows what the nutbag is doing up there. Here he comes… aaaaand he's got a pipe. A pipe. Ok, a pipe. Suits him for some reason.

He just said "We had better leave soon because I may or may not have accidentally flooded the ceiling." A water pipe apparently.

(Added at a later date, which is to say I put the book down for half a minute to accept my own water pipe)

I'm armed now. Heavy piece of pipe to crush skulls with. I think this calls for another yaaaaay because I'm going to be a zombie killer. Outside of video games. Christ it's all I can do not to piss my pants. Not like you could tell though because my pants are already soaked from that water pipe leaking. Bella is pulling the barrier down. Kiku tests the weight of the pipe in his hand and Ivan is suggesting a few pointers – and how the fuck does he know how to handle weapons like these is what I want to know. Antonio isn't much of a cage lion now, more of a scared kitten. He's always had the brightest smile. That smile is back, nervous, but back. The familiarity is comforting, 'cuz every time I've seen that smile, it's been alright. Before tests, big sports games, medical tests which have a nasty habit of bringing on panic attacks due to needles and darkness, my two big fears. Antonio smiles, it'll end up alright. He smiles at me because he wonders why I'm bothering to record the events we have experienced up to this point.

'cuz Tony, since you're telling me it's going to be alright, it won't hurt to tell whoever else reads this book it will be alright too.

Barricade down, doors open. The hall is empty. Ivan and Bella won't have to be zombie bait yet. Gotta go now. One more reminder to myself: it's gonna be alright.

Oooh I feel so bad about those mistakes. I'm sorry it ruins the flow of the story. Aaagh. I'll be way more careful about these things in the future. Lots of blood and guts and gore and swearing in the next few entries. I'm not great at writing action. You have been warned.