Talia's heart pounded in their throat, similar to the way their shoes were pounding on the asphalt, paved road next to a grassy soccer field.
Entirely different sounds, but difficult to distinguish from all the noise- noise, noise, noise. That was the right way to call it, when you don't know what it is. Just plain noise. Of everything in the world that felt like screaming at that very certain moment.
It wasn't that hard to keep a steady pace. They were out the gate from the trail and nearly to the track, running running running. Never stopping. That was just their mindset. It started in little pieces, little breaks, but by this meet, they had been running without stopping. That was the point, wasn't it?
It was odd to them, however- how the crowd seemed to be slowly dispersing. It was still loud though- specifically where the stands, the bleachers were. Where the finish line was. The screaming was constant, and that was alarming. It made their heartbeat go up, higher and higher.
But still, they kept their pace in check. Not too fast, and not too slow, they still wanted to make a PR.
"Almost there." They mumbled. There was no one behind them, was there? It was just their footsteps they heard.
'Don't even bother looking behind. Focus on passing up the others.' Their mother's voice echoed in their head.
"Almost there." They huffed again, moving one foot after the other. One after the other. That was enough to distract themself, at least for a little while. At least until they made it back to the track.
Once Talia had finished, she knew she was wrong about everything. The crowd wasn't screaming. They were cheering! Cheering for her!
She caught her breath as she finished the final sprint, ripping her sticker off of her shorts to hand to the man in front of her.
She didn't know the danger in her way until it nearly bit her face off.
"Hey! Don't- don't do that." Talia stumbled back, feeling a rough hand on their shoulder. The man in front of them looked sickly, practically dead.
"What the fuck..." They took a few steps away from the man, then started running across the field. No one seemed to notice. Weren't they supposed to notice things like that?
The screaming didn't exactly seem to be nice this time. Talia knew they were supposed to notice things like that, but at the time, it didn't occur to them.
Everyone was screaming. Were there still people crossing the finish line?
Stupid thought. Of course people were still crossing the finish line.
But the course was spread out. It was a stupid course, with a stupid loop, but it was still spread out. So then why was everyone just screaming, cheering continuously-
Talia felt a sharp pain in their head as it collided with the ground. They hadn’t been paying attention to where they were going. “Aw fuck, I’m sorry- woah!” The man fell over on top of them, groaning. No intelligent noises were coming out of this person’s mouth. They looked dead too. Nearly everyone was looking dead.
Talia struggled to shove the man off of her. His head kept jerking around mindlessly- jaw snapping as if to take a bite. “Please- just don’t-” Suddenly, the man’s head popped off.
“Get lost, creepo!” Bonnie Castellan, a sophomore on the team, had decked the man’s head clean off. She kicked the torso over and stomped on the detached head, spraying blood and brain matter on her crisp white shoes. “Hey, you alright?” The sympathetic look she gave Talia was completely different from the nearly-manic expression she had while killing the sickly man.
“Yeah, I just- yeah. Totes.” Talia stammered out, half-laying on the ground like an idiot.
“Good. We gotta get out of here!” Bonnie yanked Talia up by the arm and broke into a mad dash away from it all.
Megara Simons scrambled around the concessions stand, looking for her car keys. Billy Campbell, a lanky freshman runner who seemed to be at the right place at the wrong time, looked around the small shack with her.
"Shit, shit, shit..." Normally Meg wouldn't be cursing in front of a student, but at this point, shit had hit the fan, so who cared? Not her. Not really. "Of all the things to lose, why did it have to be my car keys? Why now?" She rummages through the drawers, looking frazzled. Her ponytail coming loose. A sticky note ends up in her hand.
"Note to self: Order a keychain." Meg mutters to herself, slightly distracted. "That was two weeks ago, the dang thing still hasn't come..."
"It's probably somewhere around here, Miss Simons!"
Billy runs circles around her, checking most of the counters and hard to reach spots. Despite being a year younger than most of the freshmen, he was pretty tall already. "As soon as we get those, we're outta here!" Billy chuckles nervously as he dashes to the window, opening it up a bit more to check on the boys outside: Kelsey and Tommy Rigby. Let's just day they were also at the right place at the wrong time. "You guys aren't dead, right?!"
Tommy grins wryly, giving Billy jazz hands. "Nope! Totally not, haha-"
The shorter of the twins, Kelsey, staggers back as a zombie grips his shoulders, slamming against the wall. Tommy punches off the zombie trying to take a bite out of his brother and stomps on it's head hard, splattering blood and brain matter on his left shoe. He glances up at Billy again, his grin turning a little more sober. "Just, ah- what's the ETA on those keys?"
Billy doesn't have an answer. Tommy glances back out at the panicking crowd of spectators for the first cross country meet of the season, slowly turning into a small horde of the dead, bit by bit.