Chapter Two

In a Town called Tempest

Elsewhere, a large truck collided with the supply entrance near the cafeteria of the High School, punching through the shutters of the loading bay and coming to a rest several metres inside the building. They were injured, two having gone through the trucks wind-shield, and several more were unmoving. Others however emerged from the back of the truck and many more through the hole left in the shutters. They kept moving, spreading through the building. The cafeteria staff never stood a chance.

Within minutes they numbered at least thirty.

These new arrivals started to spread throughout the school. The first class of the day was still in session.


Similar scenarios were playing out all across the small town of Tempest; the mayor would have raised the alarm, except… he was one of the initial victims. The Sheriff's Department who had encountered the first recorded instances of a zombie had got the ball rolling by calling the State Governor, he'd almost immediately declared a state of emergency, and quarantined Tempest and its environs. Local and State cops with units from the National Guard were assembling at the department's station, just outside of Tempest.

The situation was being treated, primarily, as a search and rescue operation. A handful of people from other agencies arrived, after the Governor made the initial announcement, to provide support and intelligence to the ongoing operation.


RPG

My name is Maestro. Well, pretty much everyone calls me that, at least. I work as a computer support technician in network engineering. In plain English: I'm the monkey that keeps big corporate support networks running and helping them make money. I'm on the hardware end of things, usually. Normally I'm in Canada but I'm over here, in the U.S., with my friend Sam and my big brother Davis.

Recently things have been really stressful. Partially because my parents recently moved in with me; they're getting older and need the extra support.

But when my brother Davis also moved in with me; that just added to the strain. He's a bit of an ass, but when his fiancée up and left him homeless, I took him in, I kind of had to.

This trip was supposed to be a sort of light-hearted intervention by Sam and everyone else who's convinced that I was burying myself in my work. For Sam it's also an excuse to geek out.

So here I am, at a role-playing game convention that is stupidly being held at a library. I mean, who holds an RPG convention, at a small-town library, in the middle of nowhere? And even though it was supposed to be several states away from half the people that I hate on the scene, they still came. Craig, Jordan and Greg, the bastards, they just had to be here. I'm still annoyed over their getting me thrown out of the last con.


I cursed as I checked various shelves in the back of the supply room. How have things gotten so bad?

Davis was behind me making discouraging noises.

I swear if he wasn't my brother, I'd knock him senseless.

I clenched my phone in my hand, hoping for a reply or any message at all, from Sam.

Davis finally asked, "What do you think happened back there?"

I just looked at him, "They died."

"How many of them?" Davis sounded hushed when he asked the question, almost as if he knew what the answer would cost me.

"All of them. Every single one of them."


Things had been going smoothly at the convention, right until the infected started to pour into the hallway, and we could see them through the glass partitions in the wall. How they got here, don't know, don't care, but as soon as I saw the first person go down, I just knew something was wrong.

'Listen up, everyone! If we work together, bottle then up, we can then push them back, hold a line and we will survive this.'

Greg, was being his typical ass-hole self, grimaced, "Don't listen to this poncey poser; we'll go when the right person is here." He was just trying to take control again. Ironically behind Greg, Jordan, who had accused my in the past of being frightened of my own shadow, was acting the coward with some of the convention organizers, by trying to make a swift exit out of one the closed side door. "We don't need his kind here, or his skanky friends."

"See Greg, that's why I said we all need to work together, put your personal feelings aside…" I reached to pick up my bag and felt a kick in my side.

Greg had kicked me. While down, he pulled me close and said, "You are the worst kind of scum there is, college jerk looking down on me just because of my skin colour. That's why I had you booted at the last convention. I also talked to Sam, and Sam shouldn't be wasting time with people like you, Sam doesn't deserve to have sicko's like you hanging around."

So I thought: What the hell? Greg's almost got the same skin tone as me. The only real difference is Greg uses way too much tanner.

I shoved his hands away, got back to my feet, stretched and said, "We need…"

That's when another person pushes me down, all the way to the ground this time. Somehow one of the infected managed to get into the room, and with Greg being an arse; I must have missed the warning, if there was one. It barely missed biting me.

My kick pushed it back; spun around by the force it fell into a nearby wall with a crack. This time I used the medieval re-enactment display tables to get back up. I pulled my bag up, studied the room and worked out how it got in. I wasn't thinking straight, I can admit that, I was enraged. I had tried to help; they tried to get even with me, almost getting me killed! What was worse was, well, we were having a crisis! And yet, to them their stupid narcissistic need to dominate me had prevailed.

My fist flew, hard, into the next person's face, before they even laid a hand on me, or Davis for that matter; breaking the guy's nose. Then I kicked him below the belt.

I actually feel bad about that, no guy deserves to get kicked in the balls, though I wouldn't have felt very guilty if it had been Greg standing there. The guy fell to his knees holding his, well, you know.

I grabbed a shield from the display; it had weight and was good and solid; almost like what I imagine a real one would be like. I used the shield as a ram, pushing my attackers back towards the barricaded door. Somewhere in there I climbed over a table, smashing Greg in the face with the shield. That I don't feel guilty over, at all. I also lost track of Davis in the chaos. I shoved Greg back into the barricade at the main doors. I jumped, using Craig like a stepping stone, upon landing I kicked the bolt holding the base of one of the doors closed. With the weight of zombies on the other side, the other bolt at the top couldn't hold and both doors crashed open, through the barricade that we'd put in place to, temporarily, reinforce them.

With Greg and Craig having already broken the defensive line; to settle their vendetta; as the zombies poured in, they flanked the line and moving through the gaps, almost in a wave. But they weren't the only ones. Through the line, jump onto a table, run the length of the table grabbing an armful of stuff that might be useful. I hurdled the last display, one of character models, landing beside a fire door, the one that Davis was standing next to.

I bodily shoved him through, kicked the door shut behind me, then dumped everything I'd grabbed on the floor, I grabbed a slim replica dagger, turned quickly and shoved it between the metal locking bar and the door and into the door frame. Then I hammered it deep with a replica Viking war hammer, it was only then that my memory poked me, the other fire exit was blocked by a big display, effectively I'd just sealed everybody else into the main room, with a zombie horde.

That was when the screaming started on the other side.


Rei

At the very last second, a pair of hands grabbed me from behind and pulled me into a building, throwing me down to the floor inside. I didn't even register where the man had grabbed me. I watched from the floor while he bolted a heavily reinforced steel door. Shock kept me static on the floor, until the man grabbed my hands pulled me to my feet and then dragging me to a bar, and pushing me down onto an empty barstool. I finally managed to break away from my shock enough to notice some of my surroundings, which is why the first thing that came out of my mouth was the completely inane comment, "This appears to be some kind of bar."

The man had walked all the way round the bar and was now standing behind the counter by the time I said this. After clearing his throat, "You're right; this is a bar, well a nightclub actually. The 'Flaming Flamingo' serves, well, pretty much anyone, but our clientèle tends to be of a certain variety. You're more than safe here, so have a drink and I'll fill you in on the situation. I'm Cliff, by the way."

"Rei. … I'm …not old enough to drink…"

Before I could protest any more Cliff said, "I know that, you can have some juice, or squash. Whichever I manage to find first. But I bet that after we talk, you'll probably want something stiffer, a lot stiffer." He grunts, then turned to pull a tumbler from the back wall. "You're not the type that people come here for, so you don't need to worry about any advances here." Huh? Cliff looked amused by this lack of understanding.

"You mean I'm not old enough to be here, or I'm not adult enough…"

Smiling, Cliff handed me a brochure for the club. I turned bright red, as I looked at just the front cover.

"So you're…"

"Nah, I only work here. It's one of the better bars in town for tips," he paused, grinned widely and then gestured towards the till, "also I make ten bucks more an hour working here. And the dress code suits me." I finally noticed that he was dressed in leather from head to toe. Leather pants that matched an open waistcoat; with a pair of lurid cowboy boots on his feet. I couldn't tell if he was supposed to resemble a biker or a fictional cowboy from the Wild West. Cliff pushed a half-filled tumbler of orange juice across the bar into my hand. When I picked it up, my shaking hand showed how good an idea it had been to only part fill the glass, any more and I'd have spilled it all over the nice clean bar.

"So what is going on?" I asked just as another man at a table shouted drowsily for a drink and then planted his face back on the table again. Snoring ensued as I looked at the man with surprise; I hadn't noticed him until he'd shouted.

Cliff obviously misinterpreted my question, "Huh, oh, that's Philip, he's a regular. He'll be up in a few hours in time for something to eat and drink so just ignore him for now. William, my boss, should be around here somewhere as well."

"No, I, mean… what's going on outside? It doesn't make sense. It's impossible…"

Cliff smiled at me, his craggy face filled with laugh lines, scrunching with amusement, he launched into an explanation. The long way round, "Right, so any-ways, I was here, setting up for fruity drink night," the lack of understanding must have shown on my face, "half price on fruity drinks," he sighed at my continuing lack of comprehension, "it's the theme for tonight. Where was I… oh yes, I was watching the news–" He pointed to one of the big hanging TVs. "And there's some kind of outbreak. Seriously freaky shit. It looks like if you're cut by one of them, bitten or even just get infected, you become one of them." The drink that I'd been raising to take a sip from, slipped from my suddenly numb fingers, it bounced off my knee and shattered on the floor, "Yeah, like I said, seriously freaky shit. Wait. I'll tidy that up later. Do you want something stronger?" I swallowed and nodded absently, Cliff pulled down two bottles from behind the bar; one of something called Lillet, the other of Plymouth Gin. "Anyway, those infected start to act, well, crazy. They try to bite or hurt anyone around them, perpetuating the cycle." Cliff had just measured out a small amount of the Lillet and twice as much of the gin into a shaker, before adding a small amount of ice. Topping off the shaker, he then started to shake it vigorously, "According to the 'experts' on the news they appear immune to pain. Nobody knows what it might take to stop one. Some of the talking heads on CNN were arguing about what happens when someone goes terminal and whether they can be brought back. Though personally I doubt it's possible."

"Terminal?"

The shaking stopped and he grabbed a metal device that looked like a flattened whisk. "Well, as I figure, you take the no pain thing," he pulled the top off the shaker, "no eating or sleeping," grabbed a small glass, "add no eating or sleeping or, well," he began to pour the liquid into the glass through the whisk thing, "anything except attacking. Your body would start fall apart, right? They'll just keep going as long as they've got the fuel to keep going."

I looked at the orange liquid that had finished filling the glass and asked, "What do you mean by fuel?"

Cliff shrugged while squeezing the peel of a lemon in a metal crusher over the glass, "Your guess is probably as good as mine at this point."

I pondered this for a moment, but before I could follow the thought too deep, Cliff pushed the fresh drink to me and said, "Drink this and stay sharp," and then pulled a shotgun from behind the counter.

I hadn't heard a noise, or much of anything. So I turned on the stool to follow Cliff as he walked from behind the bar and across the room, he was loading shotgun rounds from his bulging pockets as he went. He was halfway across the room before I saw the others. A tall, distinguished man whom I assumed was William was standing between two others.

Too late I saw that the others were, odd. I watched in horror as the men around William grabbed an arm each and pulled, tearing him apart – limb-from-limb – William screamed for a few moments as blood sprayed across the room in wide arcs as he wobbled from foot to foot, before going down underneath the two others. Cliff screamed as he charged in, firing at the first, and swinging the butt of the shotgun into the head of the second, with a meaty crunch.

I fell back onto the bar at the sound of the shot, before grabbing and downing the drink. The burn of alcohol going down cleared my mind of the fear that had been rendering me unable to function.

Clifford shouted back to me, "Take the broom from behind the counter. You gonna need a weapon! And a bottle lets them get way too close!" He pumped the shot gun once, places it against the second things head and blows its brains out, all across the dance floor. He's panting while he reloads and racks another round. "Follow me; someone must have opened the loading door. Gotta secure it before we're overrun."

With that he ran through the door that they had come through, I heard several screams before I managed to get over the bar and grab the broom. Running for the door, just before I reached it, from out of the shadows of the nightclub a 'walker' lunged for me. Where the fuck did that come from?


Penny

Noticing that Angie was deep in thought, an old thought ran through its well-worn groove. She gets so preoccupied that she forgets everything else. While thinking this I completely failed to notice the staggering corpse of the man until he was almost on top of me.

I screamed.

I was just about able to push him back, when the store clerk assisted me by grabbing him around the neck and pulling it away from me; unfortunately the clerk was bitten by the second corpse, the female one that had been coming around the side of the service station, the one that both of us missed. They struggled for a moment and then the three of them started advancing on me again.

This time though, Angie smashed one of them in the face with a full bottle of window cleaner, knocking it down, smashed the female one in the face on the back swing and then she threw it into the clerks face. With all three of them on the ground, she grabbed one of the pump handles and just kept hitting them until they stopped moving. She grabbed my hand and together we ran into the gas station.

Inside she quickly slammed the door shut and turned the key that was already in the lock, grabbing the keys she fumbled until she found a second key which she used at the top and the bottom of the door in other keyholes that I had completely missed. Then she ran to a large food dispenser, "Come on Penny, I need your help!" Running over, I get a decent grip but all we manage to do is rock it in place, "No Angie. Together. On three. One, two… three!" We managed to jerk it off its base, "Again! One, two… three!" With the second movement we manage to get the machine so that we can rock it back and forth towards the door. Finally after five minutes of panicked sweaty effort, the machine is blocking the door. And we've piled up some of the shelves against it, to increase the friction should they manage to start pushing it back.

Angie collapsed near the door looking exhausted. I, however, run to check the back. It would be a horrendous bit of irony, to block off the front and have the zombies come round from the back. Thankfully though the other door is locked, bolted and is already barricaded. Returning to the front of store I found Angie crying and shaking.

Before approaching her, I note that the windows had shutters down on the outside and that no lights were on. Looking like this, no one would have thought anyone was in here or that it hadn't been opened up yet. The clerk was probably fortifying this place up, when he saw our difficulty and came to help.

Behind the counter a broken phone hangs crookedly from the wall. On the counter a name tag sits, face down, picking it up on my way to Angie I see that the guy's name was Cole. He definitely knew something was up. My focus switches over to Angie as I reach her. The tag falls from my hand as I envelop her in a hug, she then starts pulling me as close to her as she can get. She's crying into my shoulder and rocking back and forth while I'm just about sitting in her lap. Murmuring soft words to comfort her, she slowly quiets.

I wonder if they're attracted by noise.

I didn't even grab my purse, the only important thing I have is in my pocket. I'll hold onto it for now, the time isn't right yet. I– wait, the only

"Damn." Angie looks at me from eyes red with crying, "Did you bring your cell phone in with you?" She shakes her head in a mute no. "The phone behind the counter is busted, and my cell phone is in my purse."

"Where's your purse?"

"Outside. In the Car."

"Oh …Fuck."


Missi

I found myself standing on a cafeteria table freaking out at the various crazies surrounded me. I always wanted to be more popular, but not this kind of popular. I mean, come on, they're trying to eat me!

Just a few minutes ago I was back in consumer auto repair class, again. Why is it that everything turns to shit for me in there?

Anyway, this guy had burst in; I think someone said his name was Jason. Yeah, so he was screaming about monsters. I mean come on, monsters, who would have believed him? Well we certainly did when he just disappeared from sight and then all we could hear was his screams. If I was inclined to faint, I definitely would have, right then, it's a shame really, now I have nightmare fuel for, like the next thousand years.

Anyway so these two really weird, blood splattered people then came in through the door, and Mr. Walker, who was brave but really dumb under the circumstances, walked right up to them and demanded that they identify themselves. The two things just killed him, and they weren't quick about either. Like I said: nightmare fuel. So the class were screaming, or frozen in shock or falling over and all the other things that people do when they panic. I didn't. OK, ok. I tell a lie, I fell out of my chair, on my ass and screamed like a little girl, ok?

So yeah, girls are screaming, the guys are freaking out; one guy grabbed his desk and tossed it at one of the things. Yeah, his desk! Even managed to hit one of them, it hit the chalkboard and fell. But they weren't dead, oh no, that would have been too easy. It was still moving, and yeah, there was the other one as well!

Right so everyone is panicking and everyone is trying to flee. Like that was going well. The down thing was by the door, up thing is still coming, and if there are two there's gotta be more of them in the hallways.

Yeah. Fuck my life.

So how did I go from consumer auto repair to the cafeteria? Well, I went out the window, I was all set to run across the school field when I saw more of those things coming from, well it looked like from everywhere. So I turned tail and ran in through the nearest set of doors, right into the cafeteria.

But there were just as many inside as out, so I got up on top of a table and hoped that well:

they couldn't climb (what were the things that couldn't climb? Oh. Wait. Daleks. Scratch that idea)

if they could climb, I could kick them in the face, it might knock 'em down, or slow them up. They might not be able to get too close.

And it's working! For a while, anyway, but at some point these things, hell, zombies, are going to overwhelm me with numbers. Yeah, exactly. FML.


Emily

As I walked away from Ash and the new girl, Saeko, one thought kept intruding. I should have been thinking about class, but instead my thoughts were centred on Saeko's home-town; Tokonosu city, I'd never heard of it. Ever. Now that isn't unusual, I don't know everything, after all. But what was odd, was that I should have known. I'd done a project in Geography to find out the name of every city, town and village with 'city', 'town' or 'village' in their name. Admittedly it was back in fourth grade, but I should not have forgotten about one of them. Especially when I could remember the exact number of places from Japan that was included, it was thirty-four, in case you're interested. It was a while ago, but what were the chances of a new town/city growing in just nine years? Being large enough to have a high school? And in Japan as well.

I mean, they have a population of over a hundred-and-ten million, in an area smaller than many of the American states. The number of people per square kilometre is vastly larger in Japan than here. There simply isn't space to build a new ci–

A huge but distant crash interrupted my train of thoughts. I hate it when that happens; usually it means I have to reassemble my entire line of questioning from the start, if I want to get to the last thought I had been thinking.

I had been a few steps from the stairs, when my thoughts were interrupted. My first thought was: Accident. If I'd had a mobile phone I'd have called 9-1-1. As it was I knew there probably wasn't anything I could do to help in that respect, but I did have some first aid training. DR. ABCDE. Danger –assess for danger to yourself and others; Responsiveness; Airways; Breathing; Circulation; Deformities and Extraction rounded it out. Well I had to be closer to do, any of it, so I started down the stairs going slowly. It would be just my luck to have the ceiling fall in on me when racing to help someone. Or have the floor collapse out from under–

Distant screams were echoing up the stairs. OK, so it's bad. They're hurt but conscious, or the injuries are so horrific it's causing panic. Hopefully there isn't too much bl–

When did the screaming stop?

I was only a half-dozen steps up from the first floor, when I came to a stop. An alarm was going off in the back of my head.

It might have been going a while, but it had just ramped up to, well, at least ten big, strong men swinging large hammers into an enormous gong. Hard to ignore that.

To be honest it was kind of freaking me out, I had two instincts, one saying to go help and the other saying, you fool, go no further!

I was completely frozen by indecision. That's the difference that the Misfile has made for me, I've learned to listen to my instincts, not just the ones I've trained, but my innate instincts as well. If I hadn't Bronwyn wouldn't have freaked me out so much.

But now they were in conflict, and I'd never had to deal with that before. So, indecision …yeah.

The screaming starts again, but it's closer, a lot closer.

Someone is running across the bottom of the stairs, they're looking over their shoulders, they trip. My heart is in my throat, but I don't know why, not yet. While she's struggling back to her feet, the floors too slippery, something emerges from the corridor, grabs them and bites down. They scream so loud it hurts, but they break free in a spray of blood. I think the logical parts of my mind shut down about here, because when the victim broke free the thing was pushed and pivoted enough that I could see its face.

I think my instincts said something along the lines of: Seen enough? Zombies. Got it? Run!

The next thing I was really aware of was skidding onto the corridor at the top of the stairs; I did it with a controlled slide that I couldn't have repeated with decades of practice. Then I was running like, well, zombies were behind me. Which was fair, because they were!

Ash's classroom was right in front of me, I'm still running for it when more zombies make the turn at the other end of the corridor, they're closer to the door than I am. I don't have time to think, I just push for every bit of speed that I can. My instinct chimes in at some point to put on the breaks or I'll overshoot. Both feet stop, and leaning back I slide to a stop right in front of the classroom door. I grab the handle force it down and spin round slamming the door behind me.

All my weight is on the door; my knees have turned to jelly. I ignore everything else as I seek out my anchor, the one who makes sense of the crazy world around me, her green eyes meet mine, it's almost like we're the only two here in this crowd. She goes pale as she reads something in my face, and stands.

I manage to choke out one word. "Z-z-zombies–"

Someone snorts in laughter. And the whole room breaks out in conversations and laughter.

"Miss McA–"

"How far behind you are they?" I'm panting, and only Ash's question registers out of everything else going on.

The door rattles in its frame, creaking under the force against it. The room is now, deafly, silent.

I answer Ash's question, though it didn't really need answering anymore, but it was the only way I was going to keep any semblance of control, "Not… far… enough."