Chapter 1
Chapter 1
Lily and her friends, hiding in a classroom during the zombie outbreak, discover a phone with a cryptic message to meet at the greenhouse at midnight and bring a key. They decide to leave their safe room and head across the school.
The lock on the classroom door clicked open by itself, and Lily's hand shot out to catch the handle before it swung wide. She pressed her ear to the crack, listening. Nothing but the distant shuffle of feet somewhere down the corridor. The others watched from behind overturned desks, their faces pale in the dim light.
"Could be the wind," Tom whispered, but his voice betrayed he didn't believe it.
Lily shook her head. The air was still. Something had to have triggered the lock. She remembered the rumors of an antidote — a cure hidden somewhere in the school, in a place only the fireflies knew. That had been a week ago, before the phones went dead and the streets grew quiet.
"We need to move," she said. "The science lab. If the antidote is real, we'll find answers there."
"But what about the noise?" Mia hugged her knees. "What if it's them?"
"It's not. It's too quiet for that." Lily didn't know if she believed herself. She only knew they couldn't stay in this room forever. Their water was almost gone.
Tom winced as he shifted his weight. The gash on his arm had stopped bleeding, but it still looked angry. Lily had used the last of the clean cloth to wrap it. They needed proper supplies.
Just then, a soft blue glow flickered from the storage closet at the back of the room. Lily felt a prickle on her arms. She hadn't seen anyone go in there.
"Stay here," she said, and crept toward it.
The door was ajar. Inside, a phone lay on the floor, screen lit with a message. She picked it up, careful not to make a sound. The text read: "Meet at the greenhouse at midnight. Bring the key."
She stared at it. No sender. But the phone was fully charged, which meant someone had been here recently. Or was still here.
"What is it?" Mia came up behind her.
Lily showed her the screen. "Do you know what key they mean?"
Mia shook her head. But she pointed at the phone's wallpaper — a photo of a rusty old key on a chain, lying on a wooden bench. The bench looked familiar. The greenhouse.
"Someone left this for us," Lily whispered. "They want us to find the key."
Tom limped over, reading over their shoulders. "It could be a trap."
"It could also be help," Lily said softly. She felt the weight of the phone in her hand. This was the first hint of anything beyond survival they'd had in days.
Outside, the moans grew louder. The zombies were moving through the hall again.
"We have to go now," Lily said. "The greenhouse. We have until midnight."
They gathered what little they had: a half-full water bottle, a flashlight, a box of crackers. Tom winced as he stood. Lily wrapped an arm around his waist to help him walk. Ben handed his jacket to Emma, who was shivering, and Sarah pushed the classroom door open a crack. The hallway stretched before them, dark and empty for the moment. But the moans were closer now.
Lily glanced at the phone one more time. Midnight. That gave them hours. But the greenhouse was on the far side of the school, past the main courtyard. They would have to cross open ground.
"Ready?" she asked the others.
No one was ready. But they nodded.
They stepped into the hall, and the door clicked shut behind them.