A/N: So, I've decided to do one of these. It's actually quite fun, even though I've only just started. This will have absolutely nothing to do with the High School of the Dead anime/manga, other than the zombies part, so if you're looking for that, you've come to the wrong place. Still, you may as well stick around now that you're here.

Anyway, the OCs that I've decided to use, other than my own, come from FallingSunset, FightForYourRightToLife, CrimsonButterfly07, metalProtagonist, shippofan2k, and BladeOfTheEclipse so far. Not all of their OCs will be in the main group, but they will be an integral part of the story. And I'll still accept OCs if I find a place for them, in either another surviving group, as a lone wolf, a temporary member of the main group, or as an angry enemy who wants nothing more than to kill everyone and everything.

Either way, I'm still accepting OCs...anyway. Here's the first chapter. I hope I didn't screw it up too badly. Here ya go!

Disclaimer: I don't own shit.

Chapter 1: High School of the Dead

On the highest point on the tallest building in the small city of Ironwood, California, two teenagers stood at the edge of the roof and watched as the beginning of the end of the world unfolded below.

The boy, with wildly curly hair the color of root beer, stared down at the carnage with hard gray eyes. An old army field blouse swirled around him, and he pulled it closer to himself when the cool wind bit into him through his black t-shirt, shivering as a cold ball of fear tightened in his gut. This wasn't possible. It just couldn't be; these kinds of things only happened in movies and games; the dead weren't supposed to come back to life in reality!

As he witnessed his school being devoured by the undead from on high, he found that he couldn't force himself to look away as a group of creatures, appearing almost human (almost, but not quite, with sheets of flesh hanging from sinew and tendons, bone peeking out from ruined skin), tore apart the school janitor, Scruffy. The boy had to look away, not from squeamishness, but from guilt and anger. He wished that he'd gotten the chance to actually learn Scruffy's real name.

Now that his attention was diverted, he turned his gaze onto the other occupant of the roof. Her auburn hair was cut into a jagged bob, and her green eyes were wide with terror and disbelief. A light gray hooded sweater much too large for her willowy frame hid her black Abbey Road shirt, and she hugged herself protectively, as though it would save her from whatever evil had been unleashed upon the world.

Beyond the school gates, the world burned. Plumes of black, oily smoke rippled through the already-polluted sky, leaving a brown, smoggy haze that turned the weak, late-winter sun into a morose, sickly yellow orb above them. From their vantage point, they could catch the sounds of sirens and screams, and the occasional distant explosion, followed by another column of smoke to drift heavenward, like penitent hands praying for God to save them all.

"Felix," the girl almost-whispered, her voice quavering slightly. The boy, Felix, turned back to her in surprise; this was very much unlike the girl who had befriended him nearly three months ago. "What are we going to do?"

Felix frowned, also acting wildly out of character. His name literally meant 'Happiness and Luck', but he didn't feel much like either at the moment. That shouldn't stop him from bringing a bit of normalcy back into the world, if only for his friend's sake. It was just a good thing that he was such a good actor, having kept up his facade for the better part of his life.

So, mustering up his grit, he forced out a playful grin, nudged her in the ribs, and said, "How about we get high, Torch? Maybe this is all a figment of your imagination from being too stressed out. Overachieving does have its downsides, y'know."

The deep scowl that marred her otherwise pretty features almost made him sigh in relief. Shock could never stand against a good joke, after all. Or anger, come to think of it.

"We're in the middle of the apocalypse and you want to get stoned?" the girl shrieked. "Jesus, Villalobos, I should've just left you alone when I found you up here. And stop calling me Torch! I've told you millions of times that my name is Serafina! Even Sera would do!"

The smirk that stretched Felix's lips wasn't all faked this time. It was so easy to get Sera riled up. "Don't get your panties in a twist, Firebug. Chill out."

"Chill out?" Sera repeated, her tone a bit shrill. "There are flesh-eating monsters down there and you want me to chill out? This is fucking insane! I don't...I don't know what to do! I-" Halfway through her breakdown, her voice gained a harsh edge of hysteria, and Felix sighed.

"Serafina McKenna." He said it as evenly as he could, resting his hands on both her shoulders to command her attention. Her eyes, wild and frightened, focused on his face almost desperately. "Calm down. Panicking is not going to do anything but waste time and energy. I know you're not some loser girly-girl who needs someone to spoon-feed her everything. Now chill the fuck out and think for a second!"

While he spoke, he felt the rise and fall of her shoulders slow down until her breathing fell back into a regular rhythm and she wasn't at risk of hyperventilating. After taking a final, fortifying breath, Sera closed her eyes and let it out in a gusty sigh.

"Better?" Felix asked, a small smile playing at his lips.

She nodded, returning the smile. "Thanks." But as she cast her gaze out across the mayhem below, the smile slid from her face.

They didn't have to worry about much at the moment. The large stretch of roof they were on was above the fourth floor of Ironwood High School, and it was only accessible by way of a metal ladder that led down to the gymnasium roof, where only a few of the...creatures were stumbling around. Behind them was what had once been a poorly-placed storage shed before he'd commandeered it early in the year. Luckily, he'd managed to turn the shed into a haven for himself whenever high school life became too tedious (which was practically always to him), stocked with a few bedrolls, blankets, pillows, and even a mini-fridge stocked with munchies aplenty.

And for when he got bored of sleeping, he kept a small tool kit and some spare parts to keep his hands busy, as well as some...less legal supplies to stave off boredom. Felix had always persisted that his proudest accomplishment was planting and growing three plants of the species cannabis sativa indica directly above the school's police liaison office, while Sera had always persisted that his proudest accomplishment was surviving past the age of ten with his obvious lack of self-preservation.

So the...creatures couldn't reach them, but neither could they get down without risking becoming so much bloody gore on the ground. Felix sighed and began to look around again. Students, teachers, and school staff were either running for their lives (in a scarily real sense) or being devoured. Some were fighting back, but they would eventually be overrun by the overwhelming numbers. It seemed as though whenever one of the creatures bit into a living being, the victim would turn into a flesh-addicted berserker with only death and destruction as a purpose.

A scream very close by made his head jerk in the direction of the gym. There, on the roof of the gym building, was a girl in gym clothes with long, dark hair flailing wildly behind her as she limped away from a number of the slow-moving figures with a dented metal bat in hand. His quick eyes spotted the open door which led down into the gymnasium itself, and more and more of the beasts were making their way up to the roof in their shuffling gait.

"Hey, that's Hailey Cook!" Sera suddenly said, leaning over the rail. "Yeah, look, see the blonde in her bangs? I'd recognize that anywhere!"

"Yeah, I have no idea who that is," Felix deadpanned. "You do remember that I've been in this school for all of three months, right?" As they watched, the girl spun on her heel and whacked the nearest creature in the head with her bat. It fell to the floor, and she paused a moment, only to shriek and start running again when it began to slowly get up.

Eventually, she hit the wall of the main building, only about five or six yards from where they were, and looked around at the beasts slowly boxing her in, and Felix ran into the shed.

"What the hell are you doing?" Sera called after him. "She's gonna be zombie chow if we don't do something!"

Felix resisted flinching at the word 'zombie.' Of course he'd made the connection; he'd be stupid if he hadn't, having played all manner of video games in arcades and used his ninja skills to get into movie theaters across Texas as a young runaway back in the day. He didn't want to think of these creatures as zombies because that would just cement the fact that this was actually real. So instead, he reached behind the leafy cover of his marijuana plants and withdrew his most prized creation: a bong made from a three-foot-long, thick steel pipe. It was just heavy enough to bash in the skulls of those...things, with enough heft to allow him some breathing room if things got out of hand.

"Stay up here, Torch," he said, running over to the ladder with his makeshift weapon in hand. "Shout out if you see those things start to flank me, got it?" And without waiting for an answer, slid down to aid this Cook girl.

[HEY, IT'S A PAGE BREAK]

For Hailey Morgan Cook, the day had started out as normally as one could expect. She'd gotten up, taken a shower, and gone down make breakfast for her sister Miki and Miki's husband, Akira. After chowing down on a delicious meal together, Miki had dropped Hailey off at school, where she'd met up with her friends and gone to gym class.

And then all hell broke loose. Halfway through warm-up stretches, Mr. Wilson, the chemistry teacher, had stumbled in with a horrible wound on his face where it looked as though a wild animal had taken a chunk out of his cheek. Mrs. Nguyen, her P.E. teacher as well as the tennis coach, had immediately rushed forward to help him to the small room where medical supplies were stored in case of emergencies.

In the split-second when Mrs. Nguyen had reached out to grasp Mr. Wilson by the shoulder to lead him away, the injured teacher's head had snapped to the side and bitten the coach's middle fingers off, leaving three fountains of crimson in the wake of his teeth. Poor Mrs. Nguyen hadn't even gotten the chance to scream as Mr. Wilson had descended upon her and proceeded to rip her throat out with his jaws, a wild look in his eyes, sclera all red and bloodshot, while his skin seemed to have gained a yellowish tint.

The class couldn't have descended into panic more quickly than if they'd been told that a nuclear bomb had been launched to their precise location. Hailey, for her part, hadn't panicked. Instead, she glanced around and located the equipment locker, already open and ready for the day's classes and rushed to it, bumping past her classmates already heading for the door. Unfortunately, whatever Mr. Wilson was, he wasn't the only one. Even while some of the students managed to escape, even more were brought down by these creatures (zombies, her mind supplied).

After taking stock of everything in the storage locker, she grabbed the baseball bat. Not many people knew this, but her grandfather had taught her how to use a sword from a young age, and even after her mother died, and she moved in with her sister, she still drilled herself in the forms of kenjutsu, and a metal bat was close enough to a sword for her.

But when she turned back, she saw only the berserkers, feasting on the remains of the unluckier students. Another thing many people did not know about Hailey was that she had a crippling fear of being alone. And while she was most definitely not alone in the gym, she was the only living human, which was close enough to set off her monophobia.

Luckily, she hadn't attracted the attention of the beasts, and she forced herself to head to the bleachers, which had thankfully been left open due to the upcoming basketball game that would have been held that night. She crawled in and wedged herself as close as she could inside and only then allowed herself to succumb to the shivering horror of loneliness.

Eventually, after an unknown amount of time, she felt a shudder go through the entire frame of the bleachers and felt the benches begin to grind backward. Only reflex saved her from being crushed between the closing benches. Who had pushed the button? Who had made the bleachers start to close?

No, she thought, gathering her wits. Questions later. Now, get the heck out of the way of being crushed. So she dashed out of the scissoring steel girders that held up the bleacher's structure and headed for the dwindling light at the end of the quickly-closing tunnel. For a brief moment, she pictured herself as Indiana Jones, racing a boulder to freedom.

As the gap between the nearly-closed benches and the wall became smaller and smaller, Hailey threw herself the last few feet and executed a perfect dive-roll to spare herself from landing like a pancake on her stomach. Surging to her feet with her bat in hand, she looked around and her face drained of color. One of the creatures had bumped against the button, and the heavy grinding sound of the retracting bleachers had drawn the attention of the dozen or so of the things still in the gym.

Hailey almost froze up. She was so close to losing herself in her monophobia once more, but she spotted a door at the top of a staircase leading up from the catwalk above the opposite set of bleachers. She could do it. She knew she could. And so she dashed forward, dodging the grabbing hands of the creatures while heading for the other set of bleachers which, thankfully, were still out. She took the benches two at a time, which, in hindsight, proved to be an almost fatal decision.

Three-fourths of the way up, as she made a flying leap to the next bench, her leading foot slipped just enough for it to twist around, causing a sharp cry of pain to escape her lips. Terror and adrenaline allowed her to struggle up the rest of the way, across the catwalk, and then up the staircase that led to the door. She pushed it open triumphantly, but as she took in the roof's occupants, another eight or nine of the beasts, she let out a frustrated shriek.

She limped as fast as her twisted (probably sprained) ankle would allow, turning once to bash the closest of the things in the head with her bat, only to groan in dismay when it only got up with barely a pause. On her wounded foot, she could move just fast enough to avoid the slow-moving creatures, but she soon found herself backed up against the sheer cliff of the main building, which stretched up three floors higher than the gym.

This was it. She was going to die, eaten by what had once been her classmates and teachers. Would she see her mother again? What would Grandfather say when they met again? Would they be proud that she'd at least tried?

She was torn from her thoughts by a hoarse voice shouting, "Hey, you undead fucks! Come get some Mexican food, you pieces of shit!"

As one organism, the creatures' heads swiveled toward the voice along with Hailey's. A boy, maybe a year older than her with a wild shock of dark curly hair, wearing faded and threadbare clothes, and holding a piece of metal (was that a bong?) was waving his arms and making a spectacle out of himself as the creatures began to shuffle over his way.

The boy's cloudy-gray eyes met her blue ones, and he gestured with his weapon (drug paraphernalia) to the corner of the main building. "Head over there! There's a ladder that leads up to the top of the main building. I'll keep 'em distracted, and Sera'll help you up!"

For a moment, she was too stunned to move, but when she caught sight of one of the stragglers grabbing for her, she cracked it over the head and limped her way in the direction he'd indicated, thanking whatever powers there may be for that guy, whoever he was.

[WHEN SUDDENLY, A WILD PAGE BREAK APPEARS]

What in the hell was I thinking? mused Felix as he dodged another pair of reaching hands and smashed the rounded end of his bong into the creature's face. Wasn't that Coach Nguyen?

With reflexes born from years on the streets of Houston, Texas, he twisted out of the way of a gnashing mouth and broke the perpetrator's mandible before backing up to give himself some breathing room.

Zombies. Obviously, that's what they were, now that he'd seen some of them shrug of wounds that would've killed a normal human, or at least stalled them for longer than it took to get back to their feet. Hell, he'd landed a blow that had literally caved in the chest of one of the beasts, but it had only stumbled a moment, then grabbed for him again.

Head shots. That's what made these things stay down. He'd taken out four of them already with his trusty bong (and boy, was he glad that he'd made it now), but there were still about seven of them still on the roof, with more trickling in through the open door to the gym. He had to stop them from coming up, or he'd be overwhelmed before the girl could get out of their greedy hands, and then he'd have died for no good reason (and fuck if he'd let that happen).

So, after dropping the zombies with quick kicks to the back of the knees (geez, these things had worse balance than a drunk with an inner ear problem), he headed to the doorway. One of the things was just coming up the last of the steps, with probably half a dozen behind it, and Felix grinned. If he had to do this, he might as well make it fun.

Raising his foot before him, he thrust it out, slamming the ball of his foot into the creature's sternum with a roaring, "THIS...IS...SPARTA!" The lead zombie toppled backward, falling into the one behind it, which teetered and dropped onto the one behind it. It was like watching an undead domino trail, but he refrained from watching in lieu of shutting the door quickly and knocking the feet out from under the beast who'd been trying to sneak up on him before squashing its skull with his heavy traveling boots.

Grunting, he dodged the remaining six and slowly led them to the edge, walking parallel to the low railing in order to get them in a row. Then he proceeded to either kick, push, or slam his bong into them to shove them off the roof, where they landed with six wet thuds.

With that done, he looked up to where his haven was and saw Sera giving him a thumbs-up, indicating that she'd gotten Hailey up to safety.

Sighing in relief, he shouted, "How's her leg?"

"Twisted ankle, nothing major!" Sera yelled back. "You wouldn't happen to have any Ace bandages in this place, would ya?"

Grinning, Felix began climbing the ladder back up. "I practically live in this place, Torch. 'Course I've got medical supplies."

Together, they entered the shed, where Hailey was looking around in wonder, sitting on one of the crates he used as chairs. When she caught sight of them, she tried to stand, only to wince in pain and settle back down, eyes on Felix. "Thank you," she mumbled. "I...I would have been eaten if it hadn't been for you."

Felix shrugged, waving off the gratitude. "No worries, chica. You're just lucky my bong's not made out of glass, or we'd have both been screwed." As he talked, he opened one of the cupboards he'd set up himself and withdrew a bottle of water, a roll of Ace bandages, and a medicine capsule. He tossed her the bottle and the medicine, saying, "Take two of those for the pain and swelling. I'm Felix Villalobos, by the way. And Torch seems to know you already."

Hailey caught them with a grateful nod and a bright smile. "Hailey Cook." And after a questioning glance at Sera, she nodded. "Yes, Serafina's my partner in Home Economics class."

"Hold out your foot," he directed, and Hailey complied, sticking her injured leg into his lap. Felix gave Sera an amused grin while Hailey popped two of the small tablets into her mouth before taking a drink of water. "You take Home Ec.?"

"Yeah, but she's not really good at cooking," Hailey mused as Felix began to wrap the bandage around her foot. "Or sewing. Or washing clothes, for that matter..."

"Thank you, Hailey," Sera snapped irritably while Felix chuckled. She waited for him to finish making sure the bandage would support the ankle before whacking him in the head. "And it's harder than it looks. I'd like to see you try to get a two-day old chocolate stain out of a white blouse."

"Haven't you ever heard of Oxy-Clean and bleach?" Felix asked with a raised eyebrow. "Geez, I thought you were supposed to be smart."

After taking a second to try coming up with a proper come-back and failing, Sera instead responded with, "That's beside the point. We're stuck on the roof of a zombie-infested school with only a few provisions that probably won't last too long and a shelter that'll barely fit all three of us."

"So, what should we do, then?" Felix replied. It wasn't a challenge, which surprised Sera. He just looked at her expectantly, as though she were the one in charge.

"Why are you looking at me?" she wondered. "This is your little haven, isn't it?"

"Yeah, but I'm just the pothead mechanic," he answered with a small smile. "I'm the furthest thing from leadership material you can find. You, on the other hand, are an expert martial artist with straight A's and a better strategic mind that Napoleon himself. So get to strategizing, Torch."

"Who does he keep calling you that, Serafina?" Hailey asked curiously.

"Don't ask," Sera grunted, settling down onto a crate and thinking. "I need some concentration if the stoner over there wants me to come up with a plan."

The other girl fell silent, but Felix gave her a reassuring grin. "Don't worry. She's always like this when she's forced to use her mind."

Hailey smiled back, then gestured around at the room in general. "You said you practically lived here," she pointed out.

Felix rubbed the back of his head with a sheepish grin. "Yeah, it's my home away from...well, I guess the technical term is home. I'm here more than I am there, though, so...yeah, this is basically where I live. It's not so bad, either. I've got the showers in the gym, the Dumpsters right over there," he jerked his thumb to the right, "and free electricity so long as nobody finds this place."

"Why don't you stay at home?" Hailey asked, then instantly regretted it when her new acquaintance's smile dropped, replaced by a grimace for the briefest of moments.

He forced a smile that looked almost painful. "My dad's a jerk. I think it's where I get my jerkiness from, but Torch says that I can't blame it on him."

"And your mom?" Hailey inquired tentatively.

This time, Felix didn't even bother to try to make himself smile. Instead, his eyes moved to one of the small windows and out at the bruised sky. "She died a long time ago. I probably wouldn't be living in a horribly-placed storage shed if she was still around," he added with a wry smile as his eyes cut back to Hailey's.

Nodding sadly, Hailey mumbled, "My mom's dead, too." She let out a surprised, reluctant giggle when Felix wiggled his fingertips against the exposed part of her foot's sole, where she was especially ticklish.

"C'mon, Cook," he said with a raised eyebrow. "We can't be having a pity part until we find a way out of this mess."

"Luckily," Sera said, standing suddenly as she peered out of one of the other windows excitedly. "I think I know a way out of here!"

A/N: And there you have it, duckies! The end of the first chapter! Tell me what you think, or give me a new OC. Either way, PLEASE REVIEW! I NEED FEEDBACK! I'M A ZOMBIE AND YOUR REVIEWS ARE FLESH! REVIEEEEEEEEEEEWWS!