Vitaly Podvorchan, Period 7, 5/17/2023

 

Blog 4

D&D Retelling as World War Z

Brooklyn, New York USA

[Sean Zhao greets me in his office after being reluctant about letting me interview him. I sit across from him as he twiddles his thumbs. He clearly has done well for himself, with shiny quartz all around the room. The left half of his face is covered in cloth. In civilian life, he was just a student entrapped during the outbreak]

They all just left us to die in there, those rat bastards. I was in my lunch period in the library doing my thing and I heard over the loudspeaker a gruesome yell and what seemed to be a cry for help. We saw the teacher put her phone down and rush to lock the doors to the room. Her face was pale as she started boarding up the doors and immediately told us to get down. We all hoped this was a lockdown drill, maybe someone entered the school, but deep down we knew what was happening. We get under our desks and last thing I know, all I hear is rampage outside. This wasn’t a lockdown drill, the Zacks made it to our school and broke in. Hell, I don't know why the government pushed us to continue to go to school because we were in a “safe zone”, their incompetence led to the demise of all my classmates.

How did you end up surviving after they broke through the library door?

Sheer luck. I remember hiding under a pile of bodies as they broke in, must have thrown them off their scent. Some other classmates did the same and weren't as lucky, or made the slightest sound and were mauled in front of my eyes as I couldnt make a noise. After hiding out for a few hours, but what seemed to be weeks, there were only two Zacks near the library, the rest swarmed over to the staircase nearby and went downstairs. Luckily I wasn't the only one who managed to survive, my peer Michael managed to live out the rampage the same way. We kind of gave each other a look and realized this was our time to try to escape, such an opportunity would present itself again soon. I grabbed a stapler and beat a smaller Z’s skull to death as Micahel stabbed the other in the neck with a few pencils he had. We moved through the hallway trying not to alert the Z’s in the staircase next to it and found a small haven in the chem lab. 

There were empty rooms throughout such a big rampage?

I was dumb enough to think so. The room was pretty quiet so as we walked in we assumed we would be safe, until a Zack lunged out at me from behind the door. I was able to pin it to the ground as Micahel grabbed the nearest glass flask, broke it upon the desk and stabbed it in the back of the head. He was able to save me but the stab into the Z just sprayed a whole lotta of blood into the left half of my face. I knew I had to be quiet but I freaked out. They didn't tell us anything, if the Z’s infected us through blood or by bite, so I thought I was a goner. Micahel talked me through it, we realized that 2 stories down was the exit so that calmed me down.All we had to do was get this blood off my face before it infects me. I at least wanted to escape before I turned or made him put me down. You think I wanna die in this damn school? I was two months from graduating, I'm getting out on my own terms at least. We know now that bites were the way to be infected, but we don't risk anything. With another one of the glass shards, Michael painstakingly tore the skin off where blood was and any areas near, hence the cloth I wear now. Luckily most of the Zacks were all in the school, so we decided to jump out and that would be our path to freedom. If we jumped we might sprain a leg, but those Z’s were slow so it was the only way for us to get out without blowing up a whole staircase. We jumped into a bush and hobbled down and made refuge by jumping house to house, most were empty so we raided the fridges while we waited out for rescue.