The Last Day

Your legs are aching. No amount of jogging or PE exercises could have prepared you for this, but then again, nobody had really expected this to happen. No one had expected such a strange onslaught of an apocalypse. Sure, there were jokes here and there as people do, but now that it has become an unwelcome reality, everyone is on the edges of their seat.

If they are still alive, that is.

It is needless to say that you and your friends are scared. No, more than scared. You are terrified. Yujin is one of the better athletes of the school; her confidence is automatic when it comes to running and dodging. However, the sweat from fear and exercise has become constant. It has slid down to the red gashes on her cheeks. She keeps throwing glances back at the greedy mass of zombies running towards your direction, and each one subtracts any hope inside of her.

As for your other friend, Jo Yuri is on Yujin’s back, clinging onto her for dear life and crying in her ear. Both girls are scared to death as they hold onto each other.

And Yena? Her hand never leaves the clasp of yours. Her stocking-clad legs have not been through this much use and stress, but they manage to keep up with the pace Yujin has raced. You hate how it’s the wrong moment to think about how beautiful your girlfriend looks—despite the wounds on her cheeks and legs, her adorable face still makes your heart melt. It is such a pity that you can’t kiss her; you are being chased by zombies, and one wrong step or poorly timed pause can guarantee her death and yours.

“We have to go to the gym!” Yujin shouts breathily. Her voice strains from trying to keep at a volume high enough to be heard over the sounds of the zombies. While their sounds are disgusting groans and yawns, Yujin’s voice is clear and smooth. It calms you down a little, but allows you to register what she said.

“The gym?” you ask. “I thought we were planning to go to the sound room!”

Yes, there had been a plan all of you had formulated to play a song in there in order to distract the zombies, hopefully long enough to get out of the school. Yujin has her tape record of the song she had produced and written with Wonyoung, the class president. It is called “LOVE DIVE.” You’ve heard it before, and like it so much that you feel that its debut does not deserve to be in a wacky sound room, but instead on a famous show where it can reach heights in the music charts. But it has to be done if you want to live.

Turn the curve down the hall. Rapidly go down the winding staircases. It would have been more convenient to use the teachers’ elevators, but one of your professors has turned into a zombie inside there, too. And you truly do not want to be killed or to see her face now that she is literally walking dead.

“We can’t do it now or we’re gonna die! Faster!” Yujin says. Even with Yuri on her back clinging onto her for dear life, she expertly jumps over the banister to get down early. Yena follows her lead. However, she stumbles just a little. In that moment, the cliché scenes of the main lead tripping while running and eventually getting captured by their predator flash through your mind. But you catch her before she falls, which she kisses you for gratefully.

“What if there are zombies in there?” asks Yena.

“There aren’t. It’s the last safe place.”

Last safe place. The words remain in your mind as you continue keeping up with the girls. All the while, you are deep in thought. How long was it until all the other safe places became dangerous? What places were they? And, above all, how long will it take until the gym loses its safety, too?

Your fellow classmates and schoolmates have been in the same situation as you are: on the run in a place where they are supposed to be safe, looking for an escape. All of them have turned into zombies, just like your teachers. They are all ganging up on you, just dying to make you one of them. So, is there really a chance to wind up out of here unscathed? Or is a death really inevitable?

“Are we almost there?” a sobbing Yuri asks out loud. She is covering her ears, shutting her eyes in hopes of blocking the terrible world from being her reality. Unfortunately for her, it doesn’t work. “Please say we’re there already, please please please!”

“We are!” Yena shouts. The gym is slowly surfacing in your vision. The afternoon light is bright enough to show that it is free of zombies. It is—(or was)—used to hold pageants that Kim Minju, a senior like you and the girls, always wins and other activities. The little events your school holds used to have such little meaning to you, but now every part of you yearns for another boring conference, another senseless anti-bullying orientation. Anything except this, you keep praying. Anything.

Yujin gets in and holds the door open. Her observant eyes keep track of the steadily approaching crowds of zombies. “Get in, get in!” she rushes you, swaying her arm inwards in emphasis. “Come on!”

Yena jumps into the gym and so do you. At the last moment, Yujin shuts the door. The mass of corpses babble against it, seeking you out with blind eyes, not knowing why there is something blocking them from their food. But not for long for—

“Yujin!” Yuri screams. She falls off of her, and quickly becomes hysteric. “They got her, oppa, help me!”

You try to. Oh, you try to, you really do. Grasp Yujin’s right arm to tug her away from the open bars, but it is too late. Somehow, the zombies have tugged your best friend from the door and have busied themselves with her. Her arm is steadily being devoured by more than five. Their teeth sink into her sun-kissed skin as if it were merely paper, drawing great amounts of blood.

“No, Yujin!” you reach for the knob to open the door. You have to save her! She can’t become a zombie like them!

“Don’t, fffuck!” Yujin cries out as the zombies tug her to the ground. There is skin hanging off her arm that a smaller zombie consumes, but now, almost all of them go for every part of her body. Her legs are being bitten through and so is her neck. “T-there’s no use!”

Gone is the cute dimpled Yujin who playfully teases you about Yena. This Yujin—this one who is screaming for her life and begging you to leave her be because there was nothing you can do about her situation—has replaced her. Replaced the dimples with fine cry lines, the smile with a scream. Replaced her with a Yujin that is nothing more than food for the dead.

As the zombies tear and eat of Yujin, Yena screams, hands covering her mouth. Yuri has fallen to the floor and can do nothing but glance at the dying girl with wide-set, scared eyes.

You can’t watch it either. But every part of you is frozen. Your mind screams at you to turn away and save yourself from the trauma, but you remain in place. Try to close your eyes, but just look on at the horrible scene that Yena, Yuri, and you are forced to watch: Yujin getting killed brutally before you. And there is nothing you can all do but mourn her, even if her new zombie form cares not for it.

Your heart sinks. It turns out that it did not, in fact, take long for the last safe place to stop living up to its name. The difference is that its dangers have only taken Yujin down with them.

-

All things adapt to change, whether they like it or not. It is a rare thing for a caterpillar to defy nature and not evolve into a butterfly despite the gooey and painful process. Children change to new time schedules for school without much bother as they grow up. Adults learn how to deal with overbraring coworkers and bosses.

It is a natural part of life. If things do not adapt, they die. Simple and clear.

Right now, you aren’t sure if you want to live anymore. Yujin is dead. Your parents haven’t texted you for over three days now. Almost all of the people you know and love haven’t either. It doesn’t take a high IQ to understand what has happened to them.

You have no reason to live, except for Yena, who loves you, and Yuri, who would die without you and Yena to care for her. You do not want to go on anymore, but they need you, and you need them. You have to continue living.

It’s only seven in the evening, but everything is pitch black. There is barely any light in the sky except for scattered stars and a full moon. You have barely slept these past few days, so you feel yourself slowly giving in to sleep. Stop yourself; you have to eat dinner first with Yena and Yuri. You can’t go run on an empty stomach.

The dinner is your school lunches left unconsumed. The sandwiches haven’t reached expiry dates yet the last time you checked, so the three of you sullenly munch on the chocolate sandwiches your mother made you all those days ago. You remember how you snapped at her when she was telling you to eat breakfast, telling her that you have an exam to catch. You remember her disappointed face, her sweet smile, and her reminders that never pause: Don’t hurt yourself, okay? Keep yourself safe!

The memories hurt your heart more than it should. You had become selfish. You’d taken for granted everyone you love. But you instead direct your focus on Yuri. Now, it is your job to apply the moral lessons your mom has taught you. “Are you okay, Yul?” you ask the quivering girl.

Yuri is hugging her legs and rocking herself back and forth. Her small body is shaking from head to toe under the green uniform. She is babbling, too, as if in a trance. I’m going to die, I’m going to die, I’m going to die, is all you hear, but it is enough to haunt you.

“Leave me alone!” She breaks out of her trance temporarily to yell at you. She throws her sandwich to the floor and runs off for the bleachers. From there, her sobs reach max volume.

You back off a little despite your irritation. You have to let her become angry because who wouldn’t be? You and the girls have cycled through so many days of running and trying to go on that you have failed to remember that this isn’t normal. A high schooler, even if all of you are already in senior high and adults, should not be put through so many tolls like this. No high schooler should have to fight to live and look over their shoulder just to see if death has caught up. No one does.

“She’s in shock,” says Yena gently. She places a hand on your shoulder and gently pulls you away from the scene. She does not want you to see every bit of horror there is. “Let her be; she needs her rest. We all do.”

You nod. You try hard not to let your tears flow. But they do, anyway. By the time you turn around to face Yena, they’re freely streaming down your face like a river. The lantern beams down on your cries.

Yena hugs you tightly and kindly lets you sob into her shoulder. Your heart is heavy with grief; if the government had assisted the moment they knew your high school was the root of the apocalypse, Yujin and thousands of other young students wouldn’t have had to die. You wouldn’t have to go through this shitty fucking day.

You catch a glimpse of Yujin creeping along with the zombies at the door. Her eyes are bloodshot. Her lovely skin has turned as gray as the clouds tonight. She has become like all of them: a walking, lifeless corpse.

Yujin had a life ahead of her. She was going to become a singer, she had always said, with Wonyoung and Gaeul. She had had so much to live for, and now, one of these days, she is going to die another horrible death by someone who just wanted to stay safe from the zombie epidemic. She is going to die another horrible death that she does not deserve one bit, and the guilt from knowing that it is your fault is eating you up from the inside so painfully.

“I should have let her in,” you say, wiping your face embarrassedly. “I should have let her in first. I was a fucking coward.”

“There was nothing you could have done,” says Yena softly. She kisses and cradles your wet cheek.

Despite the sweet gestures, her words sting more than any rough insult ever could, because it’s the same old thing people say everytime for something that is completely your fault. They’re senseless, the complete of opposite of reassuring. But you don’t snap at her for that; Yena is only innocently trying to make you feel better. It isn’t her fault that there is nothing to say.

You laugh a little. “Can’t believe we lived through Yujin growing up and a zombie apocalypse together,” you say, shaking your head.

Yena laughs, too. “It’s a strange world we live in, isn’t it? A strange, strange world.”

It is, indeed. You sit with Yena at the gate to give Yuri space. There, you wonder. Has it already been five days ago when you were worrying about a social studies quiz Mr. Lee had, only to be greeted by an onslaught of zombies at the canteen? You ran with all you could that afternoon and found shelter in a junior classroom.

That was when all things went wrong. The world you knew went into wild directions: suddenly, your friends were dead. Not only dead, but zombies! You had initially believed that zombies were impossible, another silly thing made to entertain people in movies and comics. You had never wanted to be proven wrong, yet here you were.

You suddenly hear a whimper. Jerk your head in the direction you heard it and see that Yena is crying. Now, your heart feels as if it is being squeezed for every bit of blood it pumps. Nothing hurts you more than seeing her cry.