A/N: Finished this a little sooner than I had expected, hope any and all of you like it, hehe
"The others!" Trent yelled in his panic while the zombies begin surrounding him.
Chaos ensued the corridor as cries and screams echoed through the halls, only just louder than the screeching fire alarms that all went off. The undead approach the musician and he could only try and look around for a saving grace. Fortunately, he saw a well placed baseball bat nearby. Trent hastily made for the foreign object while eluding the zombies. He quickly bent down and grabbed the bat and as he raised his head back up, he saw an old man get dog piled by the undead horde. Seeing the elderly getting eviscerated, Trent nearly hacked out vomit. This vision of disgust almost became the musician's undoing as another zombie lunges at him. Trent, quick to react, pushed back the baseball bat and then swung it hard into the reanimated corpse's skull.
Wasting no time from there, Trent darts through the halls, trying to avoid looking at the grisly deaths of those around him. He was nearly deafened by the sound of screams and alarms while avoiding each oncoming zombie and striking the ones that get to close with his weapon. He ran by one room where he saw the familiar stagehand get dragged into to be devoured by the flesheaters.
"Keep it together Trent! They need you!" the musician yells at himself while trying to escape the living dead.
Eventually he made it to the TIR Arena Lobby where the scene was just as dim. It was completely mobbed by the undead in the hundreds. People were getting torn apart left and right and Trent couldn't help but hack in his mouth watching the massacre. This next distraction caused a zombie to tackle the musician from behind. Trent is thrown to the ground while the zombie tries to get a bite into the neck area. He tosses and turns trying to throw the corpse off of him but to no avail. Trent finally takes one blunt end of his baseball bat and rams it into the zombie's face. Taking the opportunity to flip over, Trent finished it by swinging the bat hard enough to completely decapitate his reanimated assailant, otherwise told as knocking its block off. Trent stands back up and makes towards the door to the outdoor strip. Narrowly dodging the undead surrounding the doors, he slips outside.
Now he made it to the Silver Strip, an outdoor shopping and gambling plaza that centers Fortune City. Clearly the outbreak wasn't just in the TIR building, for the atmosphere just got grimmer outdoors. The first thing Trent saw was a zombified tourist feasting on the entrails of a newly slain woman. It looks up and snarls at Trent.
"Where do I go now?" The musician asked himself as he looks around Fortune City for a safe haven.
Suddenly, he heard a hauntingly familiar scream.
"STAY BACK!"
"GWEN!" Trent turned to the left and saw his gothic ex standing on top of the Strip Fountain being surrounded by the undead horde.
"TRENT?" Gwen turned back at him while kicking back a zombie who tried to climb up to her.
The musician quickly ran to the assaulting undead and clubbed them all down with his baseball bat. After the large blunt piece of wood dispatched the final zombie, Gwen hopped down from the fountain and happily hugged her ex.
"Thank you so much Trent!" the goth graciously said after releasing the brief embrace.
"Where's Duncan?" Gwen said, realizing her boyfriend was still amiss.
"Didn't see him" Trent answered back, "Have you spotted anyone else?"
"No, I haven't"
"Come on, we got to find someplace safe!"
The musician grabbed his ex by the hand and pulls her down the streets of the Silver Strip. They both see more and more death and destruction as the chaotic massacre of Paradise City continues.
"Just keep your eyes closed, Gwen!" Trent ordered as he leads her down the road, not wishing any more carnage to traumatize her further.
As the two ran for dear life, a sound of gunshot was heard from over the distance. Following the sound, Trent leads the goth to where the shooter was. There, they saw him and others fleeing from the undead.
The shooter turns to them, "GET TO THE SAFE HOUSE!"
They both look around for where said location was. One guy ran past them, almost knocking Gwen over, and made off for dear life towards a nearby alley.
"Trent, look!" Gwen pointed at a sign labeled, Fortune City Emergency Shelter.
"That's it! Come on!" Trent responded, ushering the goth to head that way.
Just as the two was about to take off to the safe house, from the corner of Trent's eye, he spots a familiar scrawny figure in the distance.
"That's Cody!" Gwen shouted for him.
The two run towards the geek who appeared to be motionless as they approached him.
"Cody! The safe house is over here!" Trent hollered as they ran up to him.
The geek, in a petrified state, gives no response as his arm is extended outwardly in the air.
"Cody? What's wrong?" the goth asked as they finally reached him.
"…" The geek's eyes were widened by the devastating ordeal he had just witnessed.
Trent turned towards Cody's line of sight to see the true horror that broke the gap-toothed geek.
"Oh God…" Trent silently stated to see none other than the wannabe farm girl, disemboweled by a pack of ravenous undead.
"Beth…" Gwen immediately plants her face in Trent's chest, weeping intensely.
"…I thought… I thought I had her…" Cody dreadfully stated as his arm was still reaching out to nothingness. Suddenly, the geek started gagging and falls to his knees. Bending forward, Cody begins hacking out bile as a reaction to seeing death right in front of him.
The zombie horde continues to approach the trio with hungered, crimson eyes.
"Cody, we have to get out of here!" Trent told the traumatized geek, "Cody, come on!"
Cody was unable to even make a movement as to evade the walking dead. All he could do was look up, and stare at the aftermath of Beth's gruesome demise.
This lack of reaction caused all three of them to be surrounded by the living dead. Trent readies his baseball bat, ready to take on the mob, but then noticed a large figure behind the reanimated corpses.
"Chef!"
Chris's long time assistant swings his cleaver around and slices an opening for the three, "Come on!"
Trent, not letting himself lose another friend, grabbed the geek and pulled him with Gwen and follows Chef Hatchet towards the safe house. Zombie after zombie tries to intercept the pack, but with the combined strength of Trent's bat and Chef's cleaver, they were able to fend them off.
"You sure the Emergency Shelter is the best idea?" Gwen asked skeptically as the four ran.
"It's the only shot we got!" the musician reminded.
After running down the narrow alley, they see a set of automatic doors before them. Sparing no more seconds of detour, they dash through as the doors close behind the four. Trent, Gwen, Cody, and Chef continued to run down a corridor and see a handful of other survivors. Still uneasy of following zombies, they turned back behind them as a reinforced steel gate blocks everyone off from where they just ran from. Relief had finally been brought to the group, but a certain uneasiness soon followed as everyone heard poundings from the other side from the ravenous undead trying to break through the ten ton doorway.
"Are these all that made it?" None other than Chris, himself, was there to reunite with the four amongst the other survivors.
Trent turned angrily at the host and grabs by the collar "YOU BETTER NOT HAVE FUCKING BEEN BEHIND THIS!"
"I swear, I had no idea!" Chris defended himself.
"…I couldn't save her… I couldn't save her…" the geek tearfully mumbles to himself.
At long last, everyone had a moment to breath as they, and the other survivors, coped with the pandemonium they just eluded. Trent also noticed another steel gate that was on the opposite side of the room from the one that protected everyone from the undead. He then looked around to see his fellow survivors. He sees a woman trying to get a signal on her cell phone but to no avail. He then spots the gunman from earlier. Following suit, he saw the blue Slicecycle rider he chatted with in the locker room just before the outbreak.
"No one else made it?" Gwen fearfully asked.
"…I don't think so" Trent sadly answered.
As if on cue, a hand grabbed Trent from behind. The musician, startled, jumped forward and readied his bat for what came at his rear.
"Hola mis amigos" None other than Alejandro with his patented smirk was the fourth Total Drama contestant to make it out of the zombie attack.
"Of all people…" Trent subtly muttered.
"Aren't you a cold one," The Latin Mastermind smugly stated, "I was just on my way here for my TIR match with the nerdling over there and it appeared more people than I anticipated hungered for my Latin bod.
"BETH IS DEAD!" Gwen shouted at him, "The last thing we need is your fucking assholish attitude!"
Interrupting the tension, the other steel gate opens before everyone. Everyone nervously looks before the second gate opens to reveal an aged man with ruffled up grey hair and a beard who also wore a Fortune City Security uniform. He nods to the survivors, and they, including Alejandro, wasted no time in complying by running past him into their safe haven. Trent grabbed Cody by the hand and, with Gwen, they were the last three to enter open gate but are then halted by the elderly man.
"Woah woah woah! Hold on a second, son" the surviving security officer said to the musician.
"What?" Trent impatiently question.
"Is there a problem?" Gwen added.
The elderly man pointed at the goth's feet. Minus a dazed Cody, both Trent and Gwen gasp at the bite marks on her ankle.
"But when?" the musician asked shockingly.
"I don't know… I don't know," Gwen said in a panic, "Must've been when I was on the fountain!"
"What do we do now?" Trent asked the security officer.
"Only a matter of time before she turns" the elderly officer responded.
"Isn't there anything we can do?"
"Yeah" the officer pulled out a pistol from his pocket and pointed it at the goth.
Trent quickly stepped in front of her defiantly.
"She can turn at any time, and I have to keep order here until the military arrives in three days" the elderly man informed.
"Three days?" Trent inquired.
"Yeah, the reserves will already be mobilizing. But their first priority is to quarantine the city. And that takes time," he elaborated, "They'll enter the city at first light three days from now. That's the standard procedure"
"But what about Gwen?"
"We have to keep order, and a ticking time bomb is the last thing we need for the survivors" the officer said as he readies his pistol once more.
"Sullivan, stop!" a red headed woman walked towards the group. Trent was quickly able to identify her.
"Hey, you're that lady from the news I saw earlier" the musician stated, "You're the leader of that protest group, CURE"
"The very same, Stacey Forsythe. Look, there's another option for her" the leader of CURE informed.
"Tell us!" Gwen impatiently ordered.
"There's a medication made to sustain the effects of the infected. It's called Zombrex. It's not a cure, but it does postpone the effects for twenty four hours"
"Well we don't have any Zombrex here, so what do you propose we do?" Sullivan inquired.
"I know where they can get some" Stacey rebutted, "There's a pharmacy in the Royal Flush mall"
"But it's flooded with the undead" the aged security officer reminded.
"I am more than willing to get it" Trent firmly stated, there another way out of here?"
"There's an air duct here you can use to crawl out through to take you to corridor that leads right to the Royal Flush Plaza. Zombies aren't smart enough to break through"
"Thank you, I'll get right on it"
"I suggest you take this" Stacey handed Trent a two-way radio communicator, "That way we can keep in touch. There's closed circuit cameras all over the city. Our camera room has monitors, but they are playback only. But I will keep an eye on them"
"And so will I!" Chris happily stepped in, "When I collect the tapes, I will be able to muster in the most extreme reality show ever!"
Everyone only glared at the former Total Drama host.
"What? Just trying to make the most of our scenario"
"Anyways, best of luck, sir" Stacey tells the musician.
"It's Trent, but thank you" the musician took the communicator and proceeded to the air duct.
"Trent, wait! What should I do?" the goth asked.
Trent looked back at Cody, who was still silently mumbling over the gruesome death he had witnesses, "Take care of Cody"
Gwen nodded, "Good luck Trent"
"The infection rate varies from person to person, but you better hurry" Stacey informed, "Oh and Trent, if you find anyone alive out there…"
"…I'll do what I can" Trent answered. He then noticed another brochure with the city map in it and grabbed it before finally leaving.
Sullivan looked back at the first gate to hear the pounding and battering of the undead on the other side. He then turned a switch to close off the second ten ton gate, securing the safe house.
To Be Continued…
A/N: There you have it, the first causality had occurred. Who will make it out alive? Find out here on Total Drama: Terror is Reality.