Chapter 6: Midtown High Madness

Howls rang out through the school and blended in with the blaring alarms to create a chaotic never-ending two-tone shriek that was only rivaled in sound by the thousands of students screaming and running through Midtown High school in pure hysteria.

Running from the Monsters.

There were at least a hundred. And they were all in search of Bronte. The same Bronte whose biggest challenge was making music for Peter Parker's video slideshow in memory of Jimmy Hudson no more than twenty minutes ago.

Now, he was like all the other students in Midtown High. Running for his life. After he'd made it to the bottom floor, he'd joined the flowing tide of students heading for the main exit, only to find a number of the bipedal canine monsters waiting for them. Bronte was almost consumed by the stampede in response to the students seeing the creatures and immediately turning the opposite direction.

That was when true chaos descended. When everyone realized every exit was guarded. It became a game of chase, and the High-School interior was their only boundary to work within.

"AHHHH!!!"

A student screamed behind him as one of the beasts broke through the ceiling and landed on her, causing the hallway full of students to part like the seas. Her continued screams were immediately dwarfed by the sound of a classroom door to his left being blown off the hinges in response to another Monster attempting to pounce on them.

Bronte hit the floor in a slide as the wolf-like Monster soared overhead and crashed into a handful of students. Their frantically flying booted feet and ankles smacked into his head and face as the stampede washed over him.

"Shit!"

"ACK!" He yelled in pain as someone's heel smashed into his eye and another person's boot cracked his nose loud enough to convince him it had been broken.

He eventually slid to a stop at the end of the hallway, dripping blood, spitting out a tooth and grunting in pain as he scrambled to his feet. His lungs felt like they were lined with shards of glass, each breath a pain that rivaled the sting in his nose and jaw.

Despite this, the smell of wet dog could still be perceived perfectly through his compromised senses. In fact, the smell was only growing stronger.

More were coming. As the thought entered his mind, a handful of howling Monsters appeared at the end of the hall behind him. The two that had attacked the students he was running with simply looked at him from atop their bundles of beaten, slashed and broken students.

Bronte felt sick, but he remembered Laura's words.

Simple words that he had no choice but to follow. Run. He had no idea who she or her sword-knuckled compatriots were, but it was the best advice he'd been given all day. So, he followed it.

In a rush, he bolted down another hallway. The walls made of windows that showed him a horrifying sight. The rooftops on the other side of the high school. All through the hallways and crawling on the walls like hellish furry geckos. The Monsters were everywhere, entering the school like an infection hellbent on reaching Bronte.

The sight of dead and bleeding students sent a pang of guilt running through him. He shook it off as best he could and kept running.

After running for ten more minutes, his stamina had reached it's end as his adrenaline reserves seemingly emptied. His breaths became ragged, and his feet dragged. Luckily, the hallways were quiet. The chaos beyond a distant echo that made his hurt pulse in his chest like a steady ominous beat.

He needed to find somewhere to recover. His nose was broken, he had a swollen eye last time he checked, and he was missing a tooth.

With no other ideas circulating his mind he closed in on a classroom and entered briskly. It was a large classroom. Horrifyingly large thin windows at the back of the classroom that let him view the raging storm outside perfectly. Each blast of lightning gave way to the beasts' shadows outside. But surprisingly, that wasn't what froze him where he stood.

Students. At least fifty all stacked against the walls and underneath desks. They looked at him with eyes wide enough to make the whites seem comically large in the shifting darkness.

"B-Bronte??" somebody said, knocking him out of his stunned state.

"...Yea ..."

"A-are you ok? You're bleeding pretty bad." The voice said again, followed by a man rising from where he sat in a corner in front of a few students.

Bronte quickly recognized the man by his thick eyebrows and mustache.

"Mr. Smith.." Bronte whispered as the man approached him with a tissue.

"Just keep your voice down. The authorities should be here pretty soon." He said as the teacher began wiping the blood from his face.

Bronte flinched, thinking the searing pain coming from his nose would be too much to bear. To his surprise, there was no pain.

"What the...." He whispered before grabbing his nose.

Nothing. Bronte grabbed the wipe from Mr. Smith and removed the blood from his nose and face. Still nothing. It felt as good as new.

"Well. With that much blood, you'd think somebody just broke it." Mr. Smith whispered.

"Right .... " Bronte said before his hand reached up to his eye that was previously swollen. No more. Just like the gap in his teeth where one had been knocked loose.

Daken's words found a way into his head suddenly, "Can you heal yet?"

"What the hell is happening?"

"What?" Mr. Smith whispered in reply.

"Noth--...." Bronte stopped midsentence as the smell of wet dog rose to alarming degrees.

His head spun around to face the door as his nostrils flared to suck in nosefuls of scent rich air.

They were coming. They never stopped coming for him.

The urge to join the students huddled in the corner was enough to drive him crazy. His hands sweat enough to drip, and his knees wobbled at the idea of entering the hallway again. It was a different world out there.

"Bronte, I know you must've seen unspeakable things out there. But you're safe here, just come sit with us. The authorities will be here soon." Mr. Smith whispered at Bronte's back.

Bronte wanted to believe the Ethics Teacher. But he couldn't help continuing to remember the Monsters staring at him as they drooled over the bodies of dozens of dead and unconscious students. Would they have perished in such a way if he wasn't running alongside them moments before?

They were after him, not every student inside the school. And in the pursuit of their search, they'd continue to rip through everything to reach him.

"They're coming..... everyone in here will die-- unless I leave." Bronte thought to himself.

The smell of blood and wet dog rose.

"Bronte?"

Bronte shook his head, "Shit... shit, man!"

The students watched him in silence as he approached the back of the classroom where a cabinet hung stapled to the spiked white wall. Without a moment's hesitation, he elbowed the glass to shatter it and took the fire extinguisher out of the case.

"You're leaving? Are you nuts?" One of the students asked.

"That makes three people who've lost their minds." Another female student replied in a hushed whisper.

Bronte froze, "Who else left?"

"Peter and Gwen. They dropped off a handful of students and then they were gone."

"Weird..." Bronte replied more to himself before heading for the door.

"Bronte, what are you doing?" Mr. Smith said as he stood in front of the door.

"I have to go, Mr. Smith." Bronte announced, flinching as a bolt of lightning lit up the room in a wild flash.

That didn't seem to make his claim very believable.

"As your teacher, I cannot allow you to endanger yourself like this. Come on, Bronte. Be reasonable." Mr. Smith pressed.

"Mr. Smith, respectfully, you need to move." The smells were growing more powerful. He could even hear their breaths as they bounded down the halls. If that was possible.

Mr. Smith shook his head.

They were only a couple hundred feet from the classroom.

Another bolt of lightning hit.

"I'm sorry, Mr. Smith."

"It's fine, Bron--UGH!" Mr. Smith's words were cut short as Bronte charged him and shoved him off to the side. To his surprise the teacher was lifted off his feet and sent into the desks on the other side of the room.

Before the teacher could fully recover, he was gone, shutting the door hard behind him as he took off into the hallway.

As soon as the door shut, a dozen or more black blurring shapes dashed past the window...