Day One: Introduction to Perpetual Panic
Disclaimer: I do not own characters (humans or zombies), story settings, or plots from the game Left 4 Dead.
She huddled in the corner of her closet, her only comfort: her pet snake, Tyelur, slithering around her shoulders. But her pair of XMA kamas from her martial art classes, a throwing weapon that slightly resembled a shuriken, several pocket knives, two katanas and four daggers from her brothers room, a shotgun and two 9mm Maxsell Jackal auto pistols, completed with silencers—clenched so tightly in her hands that her knuckles were white—weren't exactly discomforts, either. Joi had been this way for two days now. She gave it two more hours for the plan that her group of friends had set up years ago to play out. This plan had been created just in case something like this—they had liked to call this the "zombie apocalypse"—really did happen. Four two years there had been constant meetings and discussions at their good friend Eric Fryers house. And though they had thought of this event as the best thing that would ever happen to them—if it did—Joi still found herself shaking in the fetal position, in her house, in the closet of her bedroom with the barricaded door.
Joi had two duffle bags sitting next to her. She had filled the first bag—which had "ATA ACADEMY" printed white across the side of it—with the lightest, non-perishable foods she could find, which wasn't easy in her house. She was a vegetarian, and had slowly gotten her parents to eat less meat. Most often you could find their fridge stock-piled with fresh fruit or vegetables of all kinds. So the best non-perishable foods were in cans, which happen to weigh a bag down pretty well. However, she found an abundant of dried fruit, soy milk, cereal, wheat thins, pastas, coffee grounds, tea packets, ramen, and food for her beloved pet snake: soon to be unfrozen mice. The second bag, however, was filled with any weapons she could forge from the garage and house, keys for her car, house, garage and cabin, her cell phone and charger, her gasmask, a jacket, a first aid completed with the best pain pills in her house: Tylenol Codeine, and two of what would probably prove to be the most useless items ever in this crisis: her Macbook Pro, and iPod with both of the chargers.
It was when her snake fell still around her shoulders that she too fell asleep. It was a restless sleep, the kind of sleep that you tend to get when you fall asleep in the back of a car. Her dreams matched suit, they were full of distorted creatures with decaying skin that vomited blood and made horrible noises. But it wasn't the horrible zombies that woke her up it was the shaking of the ground and the feeling of her companion coil around her arm in fear. Joi quickly picked up the closest weapons to her—which happened to be her XMA kamas—and opened her closet door a mere crack. When she was sure she didn't see anything she rushed out of her closet to the window. But before she could reach the window Joi found herself running directly into a silhouetted figure in the darkness. The figure wrapped its fingers around her shoulders.
"GET OFF OF ME!" she screamed, "QUIT TOUCHING ME. FUCKFUCKFUCK!" She flailed, throwing her kamas around her body in a panicked attempt of protection, her screams still piercing her "opponents" ears.
"Joi! Joi, it's me! Brian! Love, CALM DOWN! We have to go, now," his demanding voice is what calmed her struggle, and also what caused her knees to buckle underneath her and her breathing pattern to quicken. She was lucky that Brian expected this reaction because he somehow managed to catch her before she hit the ground—he knew her far too well.
Joi had stayed in perpetual panic ever since she was rescued. Joi can now be found staring blankly in front of her, her eyes unblinking as she ran up a flight or so of stairs. She feels a force pulling her somewhere, but she doesn't register where she's going, or what's going on, for that matter. Was she even still breathing? She didn't care. She managed to pull her eyes towards the unknown force pulling her forward. It was Brian, her boyfriend. A sigh of relief swept over her. It's him, it's him...I'm safe, I'm safe. This all wasn't possible in her mind, this wasn't happening. She kept picturing herself waking up to the sound of her cell phones alarm and getting ready for school like she normally would. Yes, that's what was going to happen soon. She would wake up and get ready for school.
Brian picking her up was what brought her out of, what was thought to be by Brian perpetual shock, not panic. Did I fall? Why is he picking me up? But it was when Eric Fryer came into sight, and she watched as he basically sniped zombies from a balcony of sorts that she lost consciousness.