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It wasn’t supposed to end like this.
Yang Xiao Long, a previous softball player on Beacon’s team, pressed her body against the metal of the large navy doors, the only thing separating the living from the dead. It jumped and jolted as they tried to barge their way inside Beacon’s cafeteria. The school-turned-survival camp was meant to be a light in the darkness, a symbol of hope after its sister school, Signal, fell under the fury of a horde. Now, it was nothing but rubble and bodies added to the masses of undead.
“Hurry up with those barricades!” A girl with midnight hair shouts. Blake Belladonna, the representative for Beacon’s book club, orders her teammates, sweat pooling along her hairline.
A girl with dyed crimson hair drags a sturdy wooden lunch table over to the door. Yang parts ways with the entrance, and a hair before Ruby slams the table against the door, a walker manages to squeeze its hand through. Yang slams the door shut, severing the monster’s decaying arm.
A disgusted “Ew!” echoes through the room. Poised by the back end of the room, Weiss Schnee curls her nose in disgust. “No amount of semesters here will get me used to that.”
Yang huffs. She palms her sun-colored hair away from her face. “Okay, the door is barricaded. Now we work on an escape plan.”
The room is silent. The girls look at each other, worry and fear on each of their faces.
Yang’s brow furrows. “We do have a plan, right?”
Ruby shifts uncomfortably from foot to foot. “There’re walkers everywhere outside,” she frowns. “And unless something distracts them, they’re gonna stay focused on us until they get inside.”
The atmosphere is tense as the girls assess the situation. This could be the end for them; they’d all die in the abandoned cafeteria of a place they once called home.
“We can’t let that happen,” Blake forces the words from her mouth. “Look– if we can open that window over there,” she points to the wide window on the far left of the room, “and throw something out, they might get distracted. Then we can escape.”
“That’s… cutting it close,” Ruby mumbles.
Weiss throws her arms up in the air with an exasperated sigh. “This is it! We’re dying in here!”
“No, we’re not,” Yang snaps. “Let’s do what Blake says. Move as fast as you can and don’t make a single sound.”
The girls nod. Ruby and Blake crouch by the window, opening it wide enough to fit something small. Clutched in Weiss’ hand is a mug from the storage room behind the kitchen. With practiced aim, she tosses the mug, the porcelain shattering on the concrete sidewalk outside the cafeteria.
Ghastly moans and dry wheezes sound like alarms at the noise. Dead eyes follow the source. Weiss smiles triumphantly as the walkers begin to amble to the broken mug. As gentle as the beat of a butterfly’s wing, Blake lifts the window enough for the girls to crawl through.
Ruby leaves first, aided by Yang. Her finger hovers over the trigger of her gun as she shifts her weight to the back of her, moving away from the distracted horde. Weiss follows her— then Blake, then Yang. The brawler clutches her softball bat close to her chest. She lets out a soft grunt at the impact of the grass under her feet.
The girls stalk around the walkers, aiming for the opening at the end of the horde. There, a path led to Vale, and in Vale was a way out of this hellhole. Blake’s eyes were trained on the exit, her ears twitching and fluttering at the wails of the walkers. Ruby follows her close behind, her footing light and careful.
But not careful enough.
A hand reaches out and yanks Ruby’s ankle, dragging her to the ground with a shout. Skin falling off of the bone like meat falling off the rib, a walker groans, its teeth hovering over the exposed skin where her pants failed to meet her socks. Ruby aimed her gun and fired once, twice, three times into the walker’s skull. Blood spurt from the wounds, splattering on her clothing and Blake’s back.
Waves of wails and wanton moans assaulted the girls’ ears. The walkers turned their attention back to the survivors with one goal in mind; ripping them to shreds.
Yang’s eyes widened so far, they stung. “Run!” She pushed Ruby to her feet. “Go, now!”
Ruby stood with a yelp. A walker stumbled forward, its hands extending like rotten rope toward Weiss. She swung her knife, the dull blade lodging into the flesh of the monster. With a swift kick of her leg, the walker fell to the ground. Blake fired her pistol into the crowd of walkers, hoping her shots would at least slow the horde. Despite her efforts, the horde was quickly upon them, surrounding them from all sides.
Yang swung her bat, the metal slamming into a nearby walker’s skull. It elicited a nasty mush as blood surged from the impact, the crimson fluid coating the woman’s hands. She dislodged the bat from the walker’s head and turned, the metal quickly meeting the rotting skin of another monster.
Between the noises of the undead, a familiar voice rang out. Weiss shouted to her friends, “There’s an opening!”
True to her word, a thin split in the horde led to the forested path to Vale. Determination and adrenaline setting her movements ablaze, Yang kicked down a walker, her eyes set on the exit. She grabbed Ruby’s arm in a firm grip as she ran, holding her sister close.
The exit was within reach, Blake could extend her hand and brush the nettles of the forest flora. It proffered itself like a promise, a whisper of hope of their moment of darkness. Blake pushed her legs to a sprint, her muscles aching, her heart pulsing in her chest as the horde began to clear. Clacks of cobblestone morphed to the crunch of grass as the group burst through the thick of the horde, finally seeing a brighter path ahead, a path of opportunity, of hope, and of the guarantee of life.
Blake pushed her legs faster, and her peripheral vision blurred. Her only focus was making it away from the undead, making it to Vale with her friends, making it unscathed. She tunnel-visioned, not even acknowledging the ache in her thighs anymore.
The blur of her mind distracted her entirely, rendering her unprepared when a flash of sickly gray pounced from her right.
The cat faunus shrieked as a walker lunged at her, its teeth bared like a wild animal. It tackled her to the ground, knocking her pistol from her hand.
Her teammates shouted her name, or something akin to it. She couldn't tell. Ringing buried itself deep in her ears as her attention honed in on one singular thing:
The walker teeth lodged in her hip.
Her vision swam, and the world slowed. Pain erupted from the wound, traveling through every nerve ending in her body and bursting from her throat in a raw, ear splitting scream. Her balled fists hit the walker in the head in an attempt to shake it free, but it stayed latched onto her side like a leech to a blood vein. A furious shout sounded from her left before Yang's metal bat slammed against the assailant's head, splattering its blood on Blake. Its teeth yanked skin off of her hip, the olive patch ripping away from the gnarly wound in strips. She shrieked, white-hot pain rendering her into a mess of tears and shivers. Yang stomped the head of the walker in until its brain matter blended with the dirt it lay on.
"Blake?" Ruby's little voice trembled.
The wound pulsed and glistened with crimson. Blake covered it with a shaking hand, her throat tight with tears. She got bit. Dear god, she got bit.
She was going to turn. Any minute now, she'd become one of them. She'd lose herself, lose her humanity, everything. Hot tears poured from her face as an abhorrent cry ripped her throat to shreds.
Weiss dropped by her side. "Blake, move your hand," she rushed. Her pale fingers latched to Blake's wrist to pry it away. "Move them, please!"
Blake fought, letting out terrified, incoherent babbles, begging Weiss to let go of her hand. Ruby stepped in, holding Blake's hands away as Weiss examined the wound. It was already graying around the infected area, her veins puffed like a gorey twist on a peacock's feathers. The cat faunus wailed, and her ears rested flat on her head.
The persistent moans of the horde drew closer. Yang watched, her body cold with fear. "Blake," she breathed, "Blake, you-"
She blinked away tears, her hands gripping so tight onto the handle of her bat that they were likely to bruise. Her focus narrowed to the walker horde approaching her and her teammates. She wouldn't- couldn't- let another person get bit. The brawler lunged for Blake's gun and fired into the horde, her arms jumping back at the unfamiliar recoil.
Blake didn't register a thing. She heaved, her breaths coming fast and heavy. Her mind refused to take in her surroundings.
Weiss' voice broke through the silence.
"Blake," the heiress shouted. "I'm gonna do what I can, okay?"
That sentence sparked something in Blake. She kicked her legs defiantly, her chest upheaving with labored breaths.
"No!" Blake shrieked, tears flowing from her eyes like the blood from her wound. "Don't let me- don't- I don't wanna die, Weis-"
"I know, I know," Weiss cradled Blake's head, her fingers wrapping themselves in her midnight curls. "I know that. Ruby?"
The young girl looked up, her eyes filled with raw fear. She was only a child, roughly seventeen, and yet she was witnessing things beyond her comprehension and liking. Weiss felt a pang of discomfort and guilt, especially at her request.
The heiress' gaze stayed locked on the sniper's. "Hold her down."
Ruby flinched but did what she was told. She straddled the shaking faunus, keeping her legs and arms secured. Weiss reached for the hip, where a pocket knife resided. She flipped it open, her bloodied hands shaking. She could feel Ruby's eyes on her, watching her. Knowing.
"I'm out of ammo!" Yang's shout broke through her trance. Ruby unclipped her gun and tossed it to her sister. Little time was wasted before she cocked her sister's gun and continued firing into the crowd of walkers.
Weiss lifted her shirt and pressed her hand against Blake's stomach, the wound pulsating between her forefinger and thumb. Her hand trembled around the knife like a newborn doe learning to stand. With two quick inhales to prepare herself, she sunk the tip of the knife into Blake's skin.
The faunus bucked, letting out a deafening cry right into the heiress' ear. She flinched, but focused her gaze, hastily circling the blade around the wound. Blood pooled and overflowed down Blake's side, staining the grass and Weiss' pale hand. The blade sliced through the bulging veins, puss oozing from the incisions.
Blake babbled and sobbed. She tried fighting the impromptu surgery, wriggling against Ruby's grasp. The teenager let out a shuddering sob as Blake cried out a blend of words, barely decipherable to human ears. The crying from her friend only worsened when the only understandable word Blake cried was a call to her mother like a fearful child.
Weiss sliced away at the meat of Blake's skin, wiping the blood away to check the area of the bite. If any indent of the walker's teeth was still visible, she'd have to go back in, cutting around the bite and digging her blade into the skin to uproot it like dirt from the ground. At one point, Blake's eyes slammed shut, her muscles going limp.
"No!" Ruby shrieked. Her hand violently shook the faunus' head, trying to startle her awake. Her tears dropped onto her friend's face. "Wake up! Blake, wake up!"
The faunus’s eyes fluttered open and shut, her silence more terrifying than any scream or shout or sob could be.
Weiss finally dropped her knife, her hands shaking like an earthquake. She ripped part of her shirt and pressed it to the wound. "Ruby, give me your scarf now!"
The teen removed her scarf and handed it to Weiss. She wrapped the scarf around the ripped fabric of her shirt and Blake's torso, keeping the impromptu gauze in place. Just as she finished, the gunshots from Yang ceased.
"I'm all out again," she shouted to her teammates.
"We're done anyways, we need to go now!"
Yang rushed over and scooped Blake into her arms, her heart thumping so hard that it hurt when she saw the amount of blood the Faunus lost. Her face was pale beyond that of a healthy person, and it had a tilt of gray to it. Yang ignored the limp weight of her friend, ignored the ache in her legs, ignored the roaring pain in her right arm. All that mattered to her was making sure Blake’s okay.
Making sure Blake lives.