It had been a Wednesday.

For every kid, it had started like any other day: texting friends, waking up late, fights with parents, and so on. It had been normal for most of the day, in fact. At 1:23 PM, on January 15th, 2024, was when the world was turned upside-down. It was a day that everyone would remember. Although the memory terrified Lucy Write, even though she should have been focusing on the events around her, she closed her eyes to remember that day eighteen years ago.

Lucy had been fourteen then, with her biggest worries being about the hottest break-up or the latest rumors about celebrities. So, she had not been too concerned when Zach Green, the kid who sat behind her in math class, had not been coming to school since Thursday the week before. She had assumed that he was cutting class or had come down with a cold. Nothing more serious than maybe the flu. That's how it always was. So she dreaded not a disaster but attempting to understand the schoolwork before her.

1:23 PM came. It had just been bad luck that Lucy was in biology -- and not just because they were having a pop quiz that day (she could barely remember the anatomy of a frog, thank you very much). She found that much out the moment glass flew across the room from a window. Shocked gasps and screams filled the room. A boy with brown eyes, black hair and a lean frame stained with crimson and cut up from his less-than-welcome entrance came through the shattered window.

"Zach," Lucy gasped, shooting up from her desk.

His eyes looked mad and his veins bulged from his skin. He jumped up at a girl. She tried to run, but Zach held her wrist. She screamed as his grip tightened. He held her hand to his face and examined it. Lucy couldn't remember that girl's name -- she knew it began with an "S", though. She did remember what she looked like perfectly. Her expression in those moments was burned into her mind. The girl had been pretty. Not stunningly beautiful, but pretty. She had long red hair that was tied up in a high ponytail, forest green eyes and milky skin that was covered in freckles. Lucy remembered that she was in the drama club, and was damn good at it. She wondered where the girl would be if not for that day.

"Wh-what the hell?" the girl quivered.

That's when his teeth sank into her flesh.

"Dios..." a girl across the room gasped, dropping her water bottle and splashing liquid to the left of her desk.

Lucy was frozen. It all happened in minutes, but it had felt like hours. The whole world seemed to slow down inside the room. Zach let go of the girl and licked her blood off of his lips. She collapsed onto the classroom floor in what had seemed like relief. A brief and quiet moment passed where she remained sagged on the tile and he savored the metallic flavor that was in his mouth. Her eye twitched and she scratched her collarbone. Soon she was scratching her whole body and a rash erupted within seconds — red and angry, almost as if she had put on a red suit over her body. Bloody boils began to spread across her skin. The girl moaned in pain. Not able to watch any longer, Lucy broke the glass case around the fire extinguisher with her fist, spreading her blood across the floor as it shattered. Zach whipped around, drawn by the noise, and saw her.

Damn it all, she thought. The girl who had spilled water across the ground, Nina, rammed Zach in the stomach with her elbow. His hood fell as he was slammed onto the floor and he let out a strangled cry when the sunlight hit his face.

"Lucy, right?" Nina asked, looking at her.

"Y-yeah?" she stammered, bloody knuckles wrapped against the fire extinguisher nearby. Nina was on the lacrosse team, and had hardly talked to Lucy before.

"Get everyone the hell out of here."

Lucy nodded and gathered the students plus their teacher, Mr. King. She winced as Nina started letting out several Spanish curses at Zach, who had grabbed her ankle. Lucy battle-rammed the door with the extinguisher, making white foam explode across the lab, which coated everything in sight and swore when she saw a group of unfamiliar people in the same state as Zach. She grabbed the door handle tightly and swung it closed before any of them could catch sight of her. She nodded at the others.

"All right, everyone. Unless you want these things to give you a one-way ticket to Hell, you better run faster than you ever have! Got it?" Lucy yelled. When she received nods from the others, she tightened her grip on the handle and cracked it open to peek out into the hall again. The rest of the classes were also filled with terrified kids and teachers. Noticing a familiar face in one of the windows, she dialed up a number. As she waited for an answer, she handed the members of the crowd anything she thought could be used as a weapon: scalpels, fire equipment, bottles of chemicals, even large shards of glass. She gave a hand signal and they bolted through the door.

"Why are you calling me right now, you idiot?" a male voice hissed from the other end of Lucy's call.

"We're running," Lucy said simply, ducking as a man tried to go for her throat. She was operating on adrenaline alone, and the way she bent would leave her in pain for weeks after the invasion.

"What? Outside?"

"Don't be stupid, Tristin." Lucy let out a grunt as she dodged one invader's punch. "I'm taking them to the freaking bathrooms. It's the safest place right now. Weaponize your class and get your asses out here." She kicked one attacker in the crotch, making him hiss.

"Weaponize? With what?"

"How the hell should I know? Anything you can get your hands on!" She looked behind her and saw a crimson-stained Nina taking two at a time. Lucy wondered what had happened to Zach. She didn't want to find out, really. "I'm using a fire extinguisher as a battle ram and half of these kids are waving shards of glass around for their lives. Damn, I'd love to have a gun right around now!" Which was saying something, since she was completely against guns. She bashed a man in the chest. "Meet us at the girl's bathroom, all right? It's bigger than the boy's. So I've been told."

"Okay." Tristin sighed heavily. "Good luck, Lucy." He didn't say good-bye, and Lucy was glad — it would be painful to hear.

"You too." She ended the call.

It was ironic for her to recall that day now, considering the situation she was in now, all these years later. She and the others were still fighting against the same enemy, not seeming much closer to winning than they were eighteen years ago. It was pretty much the same as before except that, now, she knew it was the end for her. No second chances or fighting her way out. Lucy was on a mission for the others, and it had been a simple one when she had first received it. It had gotten complicated quickly, however, and she had discovered that she could turn the tables. Except she couldn't, now. It was hopeless, she understood that much — she wasn't stupid. She had been bitten exactly fifty hours ago. Soon, the disease inside her would win against her.

Soon, her body wouldn't be hers to control anymore.

Lucy had been praying since she was bitten: praying for the disease to pass in time, praying to make it back before the disease won, praying to be saved from this fate that she now faced, praying to just be able to go on a few more hours and be able to do something with what she found. But it had been for nothing. Now, in the face of the end, she only let out hysteric laughter.

"Guess you don't think I'm good enough to save, do you, God?" She paused, then shrugged to the sky. "I'll have plenty of time to regret my decisions in Hell, I guess."

She clenched her fist, making her bloodstained knuckles turn white. In her hand, she held what could change everything. If she hadn't gotten so reckless in her last fight, it would. Lucy looked down to her hand, then to the fragment of rough, faded brick wall behind her. She took the item and added a short message to it, then hid it. She cut her palm open, wincing, and wrote out a short note onto the wall in her own blood, using the code she knew only one man could decipher. She hoped he still remembered it. She walked to the other end of the plain that she was on, not wanting to give away the location of her hiding spot. She closed her eyes and sat against an abandoned house. She cleared her mind and accepted her fate. Within the next four hours she wouldn't be Lucy anymore.

She would be one of them: nameless and savage.