The double doors banged open, and the whole room erupted into chaos.

The zombies swarmed in like a pack of bees, mixing with the lines of eager fans and making their way quickly to where Jack and Yamimash – Aaron, his brain corrected - sat together behind a long table.

At first he had laughed (he did not giggle, thank you very much), thinking it was all some sort of a show. It was, after all, a fan convention.

But then the shrieks of terror didn't stop.

And the smell hit him.

Now, Jack had lived in the outskirts of Northern Ireland all his life. Heck, even now his home was located near the woods, in a small rural town, ten minutes away in any direction from farms with cows and chickens everywhere. It took a lot to make him gag.

But blood was a whole different story.

He dry-heaved over the table.

"Jack!" Aaron's voice squeaked beside him. Jack looked up, both palms down on the table above some papers and fan-things. A flash of sadness passed his heart at this, but his friend's current predicament soon took first concern.

Aaron screamed as a deformed man in a ripped Markiplier tee grabbed his neck from behind. By this point, the whole room on the other side of the table was in chaos, scattering all over the place like collective waves.

Jack knocked his chair over in his haste to act, a half-choked yell of alarm on his lips. He might've screamed "SECURITY" at some point, because that was the second thing that popped into his head, the first that had any semblance of normal. The first thing was first, was the horrified realization, of a zombie, wobbling its head up to the ceiling, as if in preparation to –

Jack didn't think. He just acted.

He still had his black ballpoint pen – a quite nice one, at that – clutched white-knuckled in his hand. He flipped it like a knife.

Then he stabbed the tip right through the zom-zom's eye.

It snarled and roared in pain. An inhuman sound that shook Jack out of his shock-infused stupor and brought him back down to reality.

"Jack, c'mon!" Aaron grabbed his wrist and tugged him away gently but firmly, cutting short the start of what would've been a long and no doubt fatal stare into the heart of chaos itself, when he would've been prone to any attacks. "We gotta find Mark, Bob, Wade… they were in the room with us before right?"

"Rum," Jack mouthed numbly. "Yes. No. Yeah – I mean, we gotta find Maerk. You're right, let's go."

They ducked their way along the wall, sticking to the black heavy curtains that surrounded 'backstage'. Jack couldn't recognize any of their friends anywhere. He tried not to let his blood run too cold at that.

By the time they finally made it, it seemed most of the hysterics had been taken outside. The smarter people had run off out of the door somewhere, which Jack was unreasonably greatful for. He couldn't help it. They – or, some of them, at least – were his subscribers. His viewers. His friends. How could he not feel somewhat responsible for them?

Meanwhile, the less smart people were chasing the smarter people.

Jack told himself not to dwell too much on that.

"BOB!"

Aaron rushed forward, hand leaving Jack's for a moment and making his heart momentarily stop at the loss of contact. He followed closely.

Before they could reach the opening in the cloth though, Bob's unmistakable form sprinted out faster than Jack had probably ever seen him move before, and he barreled straight into the first line of –

Oh shit. Jack slung his arm around Aaron's neck and pressed his forearm to his eyes. Breathing hard, eyes red, he gobbled out an incomprehensible exhale and rounded the black cloth.

Mark and Wade were standing there, far closer to the open than Jack expected them to. Aaron stumbled after him, his hands holding onto Jack's arm, but he seemed to be doing that to keep it there instead of trying to wrench it off.

Mark, wearing his trademark lucky flannel over an Earthbound tee, was on his knees and elbows, head held in clenched fists as barely-heard sobs shook his body. Jack figured Aaron would be better off talking to Mark since they were closer, so he approached Wade first.

The guy seemed to have frozen in his spot. His eyes were wide and shiny. His face was set in a rare expression of complete and utter bewilderment, as if he really couldn't register anything of what was happening. Jack didn't blame him. All of them were kind of in that state right now, bodies moving on autopilot on sheer guesswork and knowledge from The Walking Dead alone.

Jack said nothing. He could hear Mark and Aaron working something out in the background, but their voices were both under the safe volume so the knowledge remained in the background. Instead, he placed a gentle but firm hand on Wade's shoulder and forced him to look him dead straight in the eyes.

"We need to go," he said.

Right then, a bloody woman with a wound on her neck and skewered, broken glasses stabbing shards into her glassy eyes ripped through the divider wall behind Wade. She hadn't seen them yet, but then a couple more zombies filed in after her through the hole, and Jack's heart dropped to his stomach. They were officially screwed.

For the second time that day, Jack had to drag a man. He hooked his arm under Wade's and half-carried him as a side-along, passing Mark on the way and kinda punching him in an effort to snap him out of whatever state he was in right now. "Yami! The door! We have to get outside!"

Aaron nodded, but his eyes flickered to Mark and Wade's states and his face hardened impossibky quickly. He seemed to suddenly gain an order of business to carry out. He stomped over and slapped both Drunk Minecraft members in the face.

"Guys!" he hissed, and if Jack hadn't been there himself he might've doubted it was the same person. "I'm jetlagged, I'm stressed out, I miss my girlfriend and I forgot about breakfast this morning because Jack here wanted me to come with him to fucking Gamestop, and I just want to make it clear right now that I did not come all the way here, parting with the Queen and Country to see my friends get ripped apart by BLOODY ZOMBIES OUT OF ALL THINGS. Now will you get yourself together and cooperate, PLEASE."

A pause. Then Wade stammered out some half-swallowed apology that sounded more like it was meant for an angry mother.

It worked. To some degree, at least, as Jack hadn't even noticed the stench of blood rounding up on him until Mark's fist had rushed past his head. He could feel the contact ruffling his hair a little bit from how close it was.

He swiveled around. A large woman with torn olive skin and a dislocated jaw was scrabbling at the ground with her bloody nails, rasps and gurgles erupting out of her throat every so often. Almost automatically, as if in a game and he was just pressing buttons to insert a command, Jack lifted his knee high and brought it down on her head with sickening crack. Her forehead caved under his shoe.

"Erm, thanks, Mark," he huffed. "Now, about the door, please, Yami?"

The wrenched the door open and stumbled outside, to the space in the back of the building. It was the emergency door, so as soon as the four of them slammed their backs against the door, slamming it closed, they all let out a simultaneous breath of relief and sagged a bit. Hollow bangs and groans resounded from the inside, mixing with far-off shouts and sirens in the distance, and the drone of the compressors sitting beside them. It was late morning still, the dimmed sun shining high above in the Boston sky. From here, all they could see was the outer fences of the venue.

Then they spotted the bloodstains from the corner of their eyes.

Aaron's breath hitched in his throat. Wade's eyes were wider and more doe-ish than usual. "We should get going," he whispered faintly. And they moved.

They scrambled to their feet and walked numbly over to the fence, where they decided it was better to try to look dead straight ahead than try to face whatever was going on at the front convention parking lot, which, according to Aaron's mumbled comment, was just around the corner of the building, right there to their left. So close.

Mark stayed quiet throughout the whole ordeal, pale and slightly unresponsive. Jack was trying his damned best not to yell and curse and punch something. Wade had tears in his eyes that he was trying to hide.

The side gates were open. They all breathed another sigh.

"Are we not going to take a ride?" Jack suddenly blurted out, breaking the four's silent argument on who gets to step outside first. "You know, like, a getaway car. Or truck. Or minibus. Or something."

"No, Jack," Aaron said softly. His soft dark eyes flickered around, and Jack was suddenly reminded heavily that death was all around them, tangible in the air. They could never draw too little attention. "We're not. If you want, we can. Just... Not from here. Not from this place."

Jack stared at him. "Okay."

One by one, Mark eventually coaxing Wade to go first without a word ("Oh c'mon, Wade," he would scoff later, when he was somewhat back to talking and when they were safer, "I was willing to out you in potential danger because I knew already there was no potential danger. DUH."), they filed out to the empty streets outside.

From there, there was no question on where else to go - as the rule was always with survival games, if there was no reason to go after enemies, then you shouldn't go after enemies. To their left was where the entrance would be to the parking lot, as well as the main road to the rest of the city. They made eye contact with each other and, as one, agreed to avoid all noise like the plague.