Dead Man Walking: Living By Day, Dead By Night - Chapter 18

Chapter 18: Establishing Dominance
“What the hell do you think you are doing, man? You can’t smack our teacher like that! What the fuck is wrong with you?”

These were the words that Gregory spoke before making the worst mistake of his young life. The young boy, perhaps no older than sixteen, had dared to shove Zane after the black-haired youth had bitch slapped his teacher for making a huge mistake, one that could easily cost the group their lives.

Already things were spiraling out of Zane’s control. There were more mouths to feed, and unlike Elena and Olivia, these mooches did not have the abilities to fight by his side, or carry his burdens. Worse yet, one of these fools had immediately challenged Zane’s authority in this situation.

Nobody knew what thoughts went through Zane’s head, or how quickly they had flashed by, but almost immediately after Zane took a step back from Gregory’s shove, he did the unthinkable. Raising his bat in the air and swinging as hard as he could down on the teenage boy’s skull. Killing the boy in an instant, as his head caved open, spilling blood and brain matter onto the floor.

Zane had struck just in time for Elena to come down the stairs and witness the event. Yet he did not stop with a single strike, as if he were venting years of repressed rage in a single moment Zane struck the deceased boy’s skull again, and again, and again, before finally kicking what remained of it. After which he spat on the corpse, before turning his vicious gaze over to the other survivors.

While swinging the bat so that it rested on his shoulder, Zane pushed the bangs out of his eyes that were as dark as the abyss, but somehow lit aflame with a sudden rage as he spoke his thoughts aloud in a tone so chilling all who bore witness could have sworn the temperature in the building dropped a solid twenty degrees.

“Does anyone else have any opinion on how I conduct things around here?”

Neither Olivia nor the students she had saved made a comment. They were scared so shitless; they didn’t even notice the screams coming from outside the doors of the building, as the survivors were torn apart by the Walkers that surrounded the campus grounds.

Instead, they were attracted by the blood dripping from the makeshift war club, which coated the steel bands like a sanguine paint job. Even Elena was absolutely stunned by the sudden outburst of anger that Zane had shone in that moment.

And as silence prevailed for several seconds without anyone daring to even take a breath, Zane himself sighed heavily before grabbing hold of Gregory’s corpse. The same emotionless expression he was so well known for had replaced the sudden and violent outburst of emotion, almost as if it had never occurred in the first place.

In fact, the only evidence that Zane had lost control of his repressed rage, was the pool of blood that lie where Gregory’s corpse fell, along with the streak which followed it, as Zane dragged the body up the stairs and to the rooftop where he intended to dispose of his newest victim.

But just as he was about to turn the corner on the staircase, he looked down at Olivia, Elena, and the other survivors, who still stood frozen in fear. It was then that he issued a warning to them all about the dire circumstances that they now found themselves in.

“Nobody goes in or out of this building… Make yourselves comfortable, because you are now under my roof.”

Once Zane had turned the corner, and disappeared from sight, Elena sighed a deep breath of relief, before comforting Olivia, who had fallen to her knees in terror over what she had just seen. The woman struggled to contain her overwhelming emotions as her own student hugged her on the spot.

“That could have been me…. Gregory died because of me!”

Olivia immediately burst out into tears, overwhelmed by fear and guilt, as Elena struggled to comprehend what had caused Zane to suddenly snap. In fact, she immediately interrogated the others, who revealed that Gregory had shoved Zane immediately after the man had slapped the shit out of Olivia for saving them.

Elena was of course not a mind reader. She did not know what Zane was thinking, why he had reacted so violently. But she knew the guy well enough to know that right now he needed his space. And thus, she simply did all she could to help Olivia and the others overcome their current sense of dread.

—

Zane sat in a classroom looking out the window out at the main building, by now all of those classrooms which had been boarded up for the past 48 hours were no doubt broken into by the giant undead once known as Keith, and the Stalker who appeared to be organizing this whole affair.

His hands were covered in blood, and laying next to the desk he sat at was the bloodstained club which he had used to kill Gregory not long ago. But rather than actually clean himself off, Zane found himself doing something peculiar.

In his hands was a book, taken from the personal library of the teacher who once ran this classroom. It was that was not exactly something one would normally find in a high school. But, the history teacher who used to operate out of this classroom was a peculiar man. One who Zane had some respect for, if not simply because of the passion which the man spoke of his subject.

Zane turned the page and pressed his bloody finger against a specific quote in the text. One which he was intimately familiar with after reading this novel several times during his former history teacher’s lecture. The passage perfectly exemplified the actions which he had just taken, and the mindset behind them.

“If an injury has to be done to a man, it should be so severe that his vengeance need not be feared.”

A bloody fingerprint was left behind, obscuring the passage in a menacing way as Zane shut the book and left it lying on the desk. He then stood up from his desk without saying a word and grabbed his bat before scaling down the stairs.

Where he once more witnessed the Stalker gazing up at him from the grounds below. With a slight nod of his head, Zane turned his attention back towards the new survivors that he was now forced to look after.

How long he could live like this? Nobody knew, but Zane would do his damndest to survive this troubling times, because at this point in his life, survival was all he knew….