"If anyone outside the door calls your name, do not answer. Do not open the door. Even if I say I have returned, do not respond."
A message notification on her phone lit up the darkness of the dormitory with a faint glimmer.
Emma Smith lay in bed, the duvet pulled over her head, feeling cozy and secure. But right then, her phone began to flash rapidly in the dark room, one notification after another.
She didn't know how much time had passed when the messages finally stopped. Silence returned to the surroundings.
Emma Smith opened her sleepy, hazy eyes. The room before her was pitch black.
The dormitory was empty.
Had physical education class not ended yet?
She felt as though she had been asleep for a very long time...
Confused, Emma Smith reached out and grabbed the phone beside her pillow.
The moment she unlocked the screen, a faint, subtle noise came from outside the window. In the stillness of the night, it sounded particularly eerie.
The dormitory curtains were drawn, leaving the room devoid of light. In the darkness, it felt as though a shadow in the corner was staring deathly hard at her.
Emma Smith hopped off the bed in two steps and slipped on her slippers.
The flip-flops made a distinct clack-clack sound against the floor, ringing out with terrifying clarity in the quiet dorm.
She intended to pull back the curtains to check the situation outside. But she had barely taken two steps when the iron door behind her suddenly let out a deafening bang.
Emma Smith whipped around instantly. In this pitch-black world, what lay before her was the terrifying unknown.
The "person" outside began to pound on the door frantically, the noise accompanied by bizarre, piercing shrieks. This wasn't a normal knock; it was the frenzied battering of a mental patient or a wild beast throwing itself against the metal.
Thinking of the Texas Chainsaw Massacre movie she watched last night, and recalling the recent reports of a gruesome murder case in Tianbei City, her heart leapt into her throat.
When her roommates left that afternoon, they had locked the door from the outside to prevent intruders. Because of this, the 'thing" outside couldn't turn the handle.
Receiving no response to the pounding, the "person" outside soon quieted down.
Clutching a pair of scissors from her desk, Emma Smith silently crept toward the door frame.
Suddenly, her foot stepped into a puddle of viscous, icy liquid. Terrified, she jerked her head down to look.
She couldn't see a thing.
Emma Smith furrowed her brows tight, straining her ears to catch any movement from the hallway.
After a brief moment of silence, the dormitory door was hit with another violent crash. The door in front of her vibrated intensely, as if it were about to collapse; even the furniture in the room shook with the impact.
It was as if someone had used all their strength, likely getting a running start, to slam their entire body weight against the door.
The person outside was actually trying to smash open an iron door with their bare flesh!
Emma Smith's eyes went wide. Her sleep-addled mind snapped instantly awake.
Emma Smith stared deathly hard in the direction of the door. As her eyes gradually adjusted to the dark, aided by the faintest sliver of dim light, she could finally make out the situation inside the room.
The floor beneath her feet was covered in a black liquid. Even worse, more of the black fluid was slowly seeping in from outside, flowing through the gap under the door and pooling on the floor, emitting a pungent, metallic stench of blood!
After the failed impact, the "person" outside suddenly spoke...
"Dorm 209, I'm the dorm matron. I need to check for prohibited items! Open the door!"
It was indeed the matron's voice.
But the problem was, the matron usually carried a massive ring of keys at her waist, jingling like a landlady, she would never slam her body against a door! Furthermore, the matron was as thin as a stick insect; if she slammed herself against the door like that, her bones would have shattered long ago.
Emma Smith remained silent, unconsciously holding her breath.
She crouched down right where she stood, listening with bated breath to the movement outside.
After calling out twice and receiving no answer, the "person" outside let out a roar that sounded nothing like a human being, then dragged its body away, the sound fading into the distance.
It sounded as if the matron's body had been crushed into a pulp, leaving a long, trailing smear of blood on the floor, blood that was still trickling through the crack into Emma Smith's room...
…
At this moment, Emma Smith didn't dare turn on the lights. She grabbed the coat from the side of her bed to cover herself, then immediately turned on her phone, lowering the brightness to the absolute minimum.
She opened the university's official WeChat group and saw hundreds of unread messages.
[Tianbei Know-It-All]: There have been several incidents of students biting people this afternoon. Those students have been restrained, and the school has already called the police.
[Invincible T-Rex Warrior]: Holy sht, I just saw a guy in the bathroom bite a chunk out of another guy's face! It was fcking disgusting!
[Green Bamboo]: A lot of people have already fled the school. Everyone is terrified of being bitten by these lunatics!
[Tianbei Know-It-All]: The school doctor said this might be some kind of virus that drives people into absolute madness. Currently, the infirmary has observed that out of the four people bitten, two died, but the other two seem completely normal.
Two hours later.
[Tianbei Know-It-All]: The people who were bitten but didn't die... they are no longer "human"!
These things have intelligence. They know how to disguise themselves as normal people, but they have lost all humanity. They are nothing but high-IQ, flesh-eating monsters!
The two monsters in the infirmary tricked the doctors and escaped. The entire infirmary has fallen. Massive numbers of monsters are spreading outward!