Chapter 41: James

Keaton walked calmly back to the office and stopped in front of the doors.

He inhaled a breath slowly and raised his hand.

Then, he knocked on the doors frantically.

"James, help. There are intruders! And they have killed all of my spiders!" he said with an anxious tone.

"What?! Are you sure? Your spiders aren’t easy to deal with." James opened the door of the office and asked to confirm.

"Yes, I’m very sure of it." Keaton pointed to his back and said, "We better inform Professor Charles now."

"Go and inform Professor Charles while I take care of the intruders."

"You can’t do shit without those spiders of yours." James narrowed his eyes and said.

"I will..." Keaton nodded at him and stepped to the side of the doors.

James walked past him and he glanced into the office.

There was no one else inside except for the body of the young woman with her eyes opened wide, staring blankly at the ceiling.

The scene in front of him was like a piece of art to him.

Everything was perfect and he soaked in all the emotions that had lingered within.

He grinned to himself with his head tilting to the left and right while doing so.

This went on for a few moments before his grin disappeared again.

Remembering that the show was going on, he turned around and headed towards the room of Professor Charles to add on to the excitement.

...

"Check the cupboards." Alex said when they entered another room.

After they had defeated the huge spiders, they went around searching for the students inside the building.

While they were doing so, they also tried to find anything that was useful within the myriads of rooms and storage areas.

There were many cupboards in this room they were in at the moment, and they started to rummage through the cupboards.

Alex had opened one of the cupboards and saw some boxes that looked like medicine in it.

Although he didn’t recognize what they were, he’d rather keep them than miss out on something useful.

He waved his hand across these boxes and in the blink of an eye, the boxes disappeared after they were put into his storage space.

"Do you think all the students are dead?" Terry said while he rummaged through the cupboard that was in front of him.

Brian shrugged and said, "If they aren’t killed by the mutated beasts, then I doubt so.

"I would have captured the students when the Apocalypse just hit, and charged an astronomical amount of money for their services in the future.

"Why kill them when they would be so much more useful instead?"

Riley gave him a side-eye and said, "No wonder there’s no one who can afford the medical services anymore."

Terry sighed and grumbled, "I guess engineering students aren’t as cool and sexy huh."

Both Brian and Riley rolled their eyes at him and they continued what they were doing.

Alex, who was listening to their banter, agreed with what Brian had said and he pondered on the different possibilities.

The bodies they saw earlier hanging on the corridor were numerous but it was much less than the number of students the school of medicine had.

And the fact that there weren’t other bodies inside the building where they had searched so far, confirmed that there must be some students who were still alive.

They might have hid somewhere like what Teresa and her students had done or they might have been captured by someone like what Brian had suggested.

He hoped for the former and knew that he had to prepare for the latter.

"We have to be much more cautious than before.

"I think that we might not be the only Awakened around here." Alex said and the others glanced at him.

"I see no traces of the spiders within the building apart from the entrance and the lobby.

"It was as if the spiders were guarding it." Alex recalled what he had observed so far and said.

"You mean there’s someone like the Awakened we dealt with in the Business Building?" Brian asked and Alex nodded his head.

"I guess it wouldn’t be an easy day for us today." Terry said and gave out a sigh.

Both of them still remembered how troublesome it was to deal with Jack who can control the mutated beasts.

The mutated rats under his control swarmed them and it wasn’t easy to deal with it.

"Relax, you have big daddy here this time." Riley, unaware of how it was when they dealt with Jack, thumped his chest and said to Brian and Terry.

"Tsk. You better do all the work later, if you want to call yourself that." Brian and Terry shook their heads at him and said.

"Shh... I hear footsteps some distance away." Suddenly, Alex shushed them and put his finger up his lips.

Riley, Terry and Brian glanced over at him and he pointed in the direction from where the footsteps were coming from.

"I will go check it out." Riley said and he approached the door as quietly as possible.

He peeped his head out and saw a figure down the corridor in an open area.

The figure was crawling on the ground towards them.

Riley narrowed his eyes to see more clearly and after some squinting, he could make out who it was.

It was a young man wearing a white coat with blood on his face and body.

A trail of blood followed where the young man had crawled.

"You said you heard footsteps?" Riley glanced back at Alex and whispered.

Alex nodded his head at him.

"Then, I guess it’s a bait." Riley waved at the others for them to come have a look.

The others did so and they saw the young man crawling on the ground.

It didn’t tally with what Alex had heard.

There must be someone else waiting for them.

"Help... me... There are others..." The young man raised his arm and tried to wave at them.

It started to sound more and more like a trap.

Alex pondered for a moment and glanced around at the surroundings.

There were other corridors and paths that led to the open area where the young man was.