"What... the Heck!! is this?"
That was the only sentence Rix managed as he crawled out of the hole, and even that came out broken.
The scene in front of him didn't make sense. Nothing in his life had prepared him for this. Almost half of Ashford College had been ground into dust under the falling meteorites-buildings he'd walked past every single morning, now nothing but brick and twisted rebar.
Rix staggered forward, legs barely holding him up, blood still leaking from a cut somewhere on his scalp. He didn't know where he was going. He just moved.
Then, through the haze, a cry came
He had nowhere else to go, so he followed the sound.
Under a pile of debris, a boy was pinned, walls collapsed over him, burying everything but his head and hands. His face had gone the color of ash, his voice shaking apart with every word.
Rix recognized him a second later.
Noel.
The class topper.
"Ple... please... help... me," Noel begged, voice thin and desperate, until he registered who was standing over him.
Then something in his tone shifted.
Noel had never been the harmless kind of smart.
Calculating...
Manipulative, in the quiet way that never got caught.
"Y-you're... Rix, right? Help... me now... get this off... if you help me up, I'll hel..help you too."
"Help with what?" Rix blinked, thrown by the sudden change. A second ago the guy had been pleading. Now he sounded like he was cutting a deal.
"I'll... show you my answers in the exams. I'll make you pass. Hell — I'll make you a topper. Just get me out."
Rix said nothing. He just stared.
'What the hell is wrong with this guy?'
Underneath the debris, Noel was already grinning to himself. 'Hooked him. Now get me up. Fast.'
Rix didn't move. He stood there like something had switched off in him.
The truth was, Rix wasn't actually cold-not underneath. He cared, plenty, when it came to people he loved.
Noel just wasn't one of them.
He barely had the strength to hold himself upright, let alone drag someone else out from under a building. But he tried anyway. He reached out, arms trembling from more than just exhaustion.
"Grab my hand. Tight."
"Yes — okay—" Noel's fingers clamped around his.
"One... two... three — HAAA!" Rix threw every last scrap of strength into the pull.
The debris didn't budge. Not an inch.
He tried again. And again. Nothing.
Finally he stumbled back and dropped to the ground, breathing hard.
"Ahh — fuck." He pressed a hand to his head.
'Should I just leave him here?'
He sat with that thought for a second before another one replaced it.
"Noel, how long can you hold on? If you can stay steady a few minutes, I'll find other students. We get a group together, we pull you out. Can you make it that long?"
Hope flickered across Noel's face. "Y-yeah... maybe five, ten minutes. My leg's stuck, it's bleeding bad, but, yeah. I can last."
No one had ever spoken to him like that. Like they actually meant to come back.
'Whatever,' Noel thought, already past the sentiment. 'Just get me out of here.'
"Good. I'll be quick." Rix flashed him a reassuring smile, pushed himself up, and took off running with whatever legs he had left.
Then, mid-stride, his thoughts did a complete one-eighty.
'Fuck that. There's no way I'm coming back for him.I don't even know when the next rock's gonna land on my skull. I need out of this college. Home. I need to get home.'
He had no idea if his house was even standing. Didn't matter. It was the only thing his brain would hold onto.
That was Rix, through and through-say one thing, do the exact opposite.
New goal: the front gate. Nothing else existed.
Back in the rubble, Noel waited. A small, satisfied smile sat on his lips, certain he'd just talked his way into a rescue.
It was almost funny- A man buried alive, convinced he'd outsmarted someone he didn't understand at all.
Noel stayed there in the silence, waiting for help that was never coming.
Rix ran through broken ground littered with bodies, classmates, strangers, faces he didn't recognize and some he wished he didn't. Further on, more bodies. Teachers. People who used to stand at the front of a classroom telling him to sit down and pay attention.
Near the entrance gate, a cluster of teachers was working to pull injured students clear of the wreckage. One face stood out.
Professor Harin..
The professor spotted him and shouted over the noise. "H-hey -- Rix! Come help with these kids!"
'Fuck.' Rix kept his eyes locked forward and pretended he hadn't heard a thing.
Smoke choked the air, laced with something sharp and metallic that made every breath sting. The whole campus looked like a battlefield, except there was no enemy. No war. Just a disaster with no one to point a finger at.
Except — 'was it really a disaster?'
'Could thousands of meteorites hit at once, all over the world, and still be called natural?'
Something about it didn't sit right. It felt engineered. 'But by who? Who even had that kind of power?'
The thought was still turning over in his head when he skidded to a stop near the parking lot.
Cars everywhere, crushed flat. He scanned past them toward the bike stand, and his stomach dropped when his bicycle wasn't where he'd left it.
'Where....!!?'
He spotted it a few meters off, thrown clear by some blast. He ran over, hauled it upright, checked the frame. A couple of dents, nothing worse. Then he looked at the chain and swore, it had slipped clean off the gears.
"Ahh, shit." He dropped to a crouch and started working it back on, fingers slick with grease.
Suddenly...
A shriek cut through the air behind him.
He spun around.
One of the bodies- crushed flat under a slab of concrete, was moving. Its head jerked once, twice, then its arms bent at angles no living joint should manage as it dragged itself upright out of the rubble.
Yellow foam bubbled from its mouth. It started toward him, throat working out sounds that weren't words.
"Akkk — harggk — koorrhh!"
Another sound, off to his left. He turned. A second body, cracking and shuffling upright, skull split open, closing the distance.
Rix went rigid. "Wh..what the.. zombies?"
He couldn't move. Couldn't think past the fact that something out of a movie was standing twenty feet away and coming for him.
More bodies stirred around the lot, one by one dragging themselves up out of the dead.
Run, or finish the chain?
Ten of them now, closing in from every direction.
"Fuck!" He dropped back down and kept working.
Fifty meters out.
Sweat ran down his face and dripped off his chin.
Forty...
His hands wouldn't stop shaking. A ten-second fix was turning into an eternity.
"C'mon... c'mon.."
Thirty....
Twenty...
He could hear the scrape of their feet on concrete now, close enough to make out.
Ten..
He stood, chain finally seated, every nerve screaming to move.
Something in his gut told him one bite and it was over. That instinct had never once been wrong.
Five...
He swung a leg over the frame.
Two...
He dropped onto the pedals.
One meter...
Half a meter..
A hand closed around his hoodie.
He turned and found himself face-to-face with a zombie, jaw hanging unnaturally wide.
"Kaghhhh!"
"Ge...Get off me, you ugly bastard!" Rix drove his boot into its face.
It didn't fly back like he'd hoped, just staggered, grip loosening enough for him to tear free.
He didn't waste the opening. He threw his weight into the pedals and shot toward the gate, the horde falling behind, too slow to keep pace.
He rode straight through the gate and didn't look back- toward home, toward whatever was left of it, chasing a place that might not even be standing anymore.
Behind him: Ashford College, in ruins, and the dead, walking.