Wanderers,

Thank you for reading and reviewing.

Enjoy.

~Eliza


Sora felt his heart begin to pound as the door closed behind them. The basement smelled musty and damp. Blackness crept up around his feet and seemed to swallow him whole. He had never been in complete darkness like this before.

"Now or never, huh?" Axel tried to joke with him to lighten the mood, but his voice cracked at the end.

"We're going to die…" Sora accepted his fate and took a step down on the stairs. Axel heard his footsteps and followed him into the abyss.

The pair had readied themselves for this mission. They had trained and they had used Irvine to help them gather supplies they would need. Both of them had three hand-guns each, with plenty of ammunition in their pockets. Axel wore a rifle around his chest and Sora had a shotgun. Both men had two knives and Sora had a hatchet as well. Axel hated melee weapons and had opted to leave them to the brunet.

They made it to the bottom of the stairs before a low moaning could be heard. Every muscle in Sora's body tensed up in fear, and he head Axel swear under his breath. The red-head grabbed his flashlight from his pocket stuffed to the brim with ammo and knives. He turned the light on and looked around at their surroundings. Sora saved his battery incase Axel's ran out. They had no idea how long they'd be down here.

"Christ…" Axel muttered while the pair observed the main hallway to the basement. It seemed to stretch on for miles underneath the school and there were doors on either side that led into boiler rooms, offices, and storage. All of it was made of damp, mildew covered stone, even the ceiling. The hall itself had to be at least twenty feet wide and they could see no end to it with the beam of light. So far, they hadn't seen any biters, though.

"We've got our work cut out for us, huh?" Sora could have laughed if he didn't feel so much like crying. How in the world were they supposed to clear this entire thing out? The second they fired one of their guns it would draw every biter in the basement level to them and they'd be ripped to pieces!

"What should we do?" Axel asked before taking out a weapon so he wasn't completely defenseless.

"I say we go room by room for as long as we can with knives. The less noise we make, the less biters know we're here, and the more likely we are to make it out alive." Sora bit his lip and took out his knife. Axel exhaled and lifted the flashlight to the first door to their left.

"Put a knife in that hand, too, Axel. You can drop the flashlight and attack with your left hand if things get too bad." The brunet explained and waited for the red-head to get situated. Axel shone the light right against the door while Sora prepped himself to open it.

He had no clue what was on the other side. He could be walking straight to his death and he had to be okay with that. He had to open the handle, swing the door to the side, and let himself die if that was what it came down to. How else could they keep Roxas alive? The blond was barely hanging on as is. If they took him out of the safety of the college he'd die. Sora couldn't live with himself if his cowardice let his best friend perish.

He whipped the door open and expected to be greeted by a pair of rotten hands reaching out for him. However, instead of being attacked, Sora found himself walking into a completely safe and harmless room. There were no monsters ready to tear his throat out and eat him alive. He turned over his shoulder and looked at Axel, confused. The tattooed man shrugged.

Every single room was clear. There wasn't a single biter in sight, actually, but Sora could hear their moaning clear as day. It was soft and distant, but it was there, no doubt, and they were waiting for flesh. Their flesh, specifically.

"What in the hell is going on?" Sora spoke out loud after they cleared every single room. They had found two pairs of metal fire doors at the end of the hall that they couldn't see with just the flash-light's thin beam. The doors were a few feet apart, and one led down the same hall-way, and the other was on the right side of the hall connected to the wall all of the rooms had been on.

"No idea. Which one do we take first?" Axel motioned in the direction of the sturdy metal doors and stood back to stare at them. Sora looked from right to left, observing each set of doors carefully. There didn't seem to be anything different about them, really, except for the signs saying where they led to.

"So these ones go to the boiler room, the furnace, the generators, and the air conditioning unit. But these doors lead to the bathroom, storage, and some more offices. What seems less menacing?" Sora joked. The tattooed man rolled his eyes and tapped on the door that led to the furnace and other large appliances.

"Let's just take this one first." He shrugged his shoulders and got his flashlight and knife ready. Sora nodded in agreement and placed his hands on the push handle for the storm door.

Well, here goes nothing… He opened the door and peered inside. It was too dark for him to see so he had Axel shine the light around. So far he couldn't see any biters, but the moaning had definitely gotten louder. He pushed the door open a bit more and stepped inside the new hallway. It was identical to the other one so far, mostly because it was pitch black and Sora could see, just like the other one.

"Okay. Baby steps." Sora whispered to Axel as they walked down the hall. They took slow and deliberate strides, trying to make sense of their new surroundings. They had their knives ready to kill in their hands.

It was Sora who felt it happen. His leg, though he couldn't see below his waist, appeared to have made contact with something. He instantly recoiled from the object in fear, not knowing if it was a hand or something else. He turned to call for Axel's light, but the red-head made contact with the same thing a few feet away. He broke whatever it was, though, and Sora heard a faint click as doors opened around them.

A trip wire. A motherfucking trip wire. Sora looked down with his own flashlight and saw the booby-trap laying limp on the ground. He heard an electronic buzz and listened as the metal storm doors locked behind them. The moaning of the dead was louder than ever now that a portion of the doors on the sides of the hall had opened.

"It was a fucking trap! They already cleared the place out, and that bastard didn't send us down here to kill zombies, he sent us down here to be executed!" Sora cried out in realization. Biters began pouring toward their doors and he moved the flashlight away from any of the openings. He didn't want to see the horde coming to murder him.

"This way!" Axel grabbed his wrist and started dragging him down the hall away from all the biters.

"Wait! There could be more wires! Shine your light at the ground!" Sora exclaimed while they ran. Both of the men moved their beams to the floor and jumped over another trip wire that was only a few feet in front of them. They managed to avoid opening another round of doors and setting free more zombies, for now.

The pair kept running until they heard the horde behind them set off the next trip wire. Sora swore and Axel grimaced as the moaning got louder when more zombies joined the hunt. The brunet looked around for anything that might help them, but he couldn't seem to find anything in sight. They were going to die in this hallway, torn apart by a hundred biters chasing them down. He felt tears spill down his face when he realized that this would truly be his fate.

Never again would he laugh with Roxas. He'd never hug his sister or share a sly smile with Leon. His days of practical jokes against Larxene with Demyx by his side were over. Cloud would never tousle his hair with a stupid grin on his face ever again. He would never see Axel with his trademark sexy smile either, because all he could see on the red-head's face now was terror.

He'd never see Riku again. The Silveret had promised him they'd be together once they found a cure. He'd never see him again. He'd never curl up in his arms. Never lay his head on his chest. Never kiss those lips. Never see him. Never smell him. Never hear him. Never touch him.

"No!" Sora exclaimed, frightening his red-headed companion. "I will not die here!" Sora set his mouth in a grim line and burst through a door on his left. The sign outside had said that it was the furnace and generator room. Upon going inside the brunet realized he could see a small fire coming from the furnace's pilot light. The generator was running.

"That fucker's had this basement cleared out for ages!" Axel closed the door behind himself and looked at the well maintained and running appliances. "They must come down here all the time! Shit!" He hit the wall in fury and ran a hand through his hair. Sora looked around with his flashlight for anything that they could use to fight off a large number of biters. He kept coming up dry, until…

"Gas!" He cried out, running toward the generators. Axel followed him warily, unsure of what the brunet was talking about. He didn't make it to the man's side, though, because the door burst open behind him and biters began pooling inside.

"Oh, shit!" He cried out before whipping the rifle off of his chest and shooting with his flashlight in his teeth. He needed to buy Sora time to do whatever it was he needed in order to get them out of there!

The brunet quickly collected as many of the heavy canisters as he could. He popped the caps off of them and threw one of the smaller ones in the doorway at the biters Axel was trying so desperately to gun down. It spewed gasoline in all directions, covering the bodies with a thin mist of fuel. Sora ripped tow parts of his shirt off and shoved them in the pilot light of the furnace before throwing one on the group of zombies.

The tiny flame on Sora's shirt piece made contact with the gasoline and ignited the entire group trying to get inside the door. Axel cried out in surprise at the sudden blast of heat and began back pedaling toward Sora, shooting far more accurately now that the room was ablaze with light. In the flicker of the flames Sora looked to his left and saw another door.

"Go!" He called out to the red-head and shoved him in the direction of the newest exit. He grabbed two plastic canisters of gasoline that they were using to run the generators and took off for the door after Axel. Zombies still tried to climb over the pile of dead biters near the door and lit themselves on fire as well. Sora let out a short, nervous laugh at their stupidity.

They made it out into the hall, only to see nearly fifty biters pooling at the narrow door where the flames were spreading outside. They realized their prey had left the room once they heard their foot-steps and turned to continue down the hall after the two men. Luckily they had taken off in a sprint before this point and now had a solid thirty foot lead on the massive horde coming after them.

Sora handed one of the canisters off to Axel and began stabbing it in as many places as possible. It spewed out gasoline all over the floor behind the men and Sora stabbed his own container so that it did the same thing. Sora struggled to keep the flame going on his shirt piece while they frantically ran down the hallway. They had no idea where they were going, and they were completely blind until Axel's canister ran out of gas and he left it behind. He had a free hand for a flashlight now and quickly shone it down on the ground.

"Jump!" He exclaimed, but Sora was too late. He broke through the next trip wire; releasing biters from their confined rooms behind them. The red-head looked at the brunet in horror before the smaller man held his breath, ducked his head, and threw the little flame into the gas trail.

The hallway seemed to explode. Biters ran out of their rooms directly into the flames and caught fire, chasing down the pair until they couldn't run due to the tissue damage they received. Axel and Sora sprinted as fast as they could toward the next set of metal storm doors that had surfaced in the horizon. They were a hundred yards away. Fifty yards away. Twenty yards away.

They didn't care what trip wires they set off anymore. All of the biters that came outside of their rooms were quickly engulfed in flames. Smoke began filling the hallway and the two men choked and sputtered as they ran for safety.

"Sora!" Axel yelled before pulling out his pistol and shooting a biter that came out of a room in front of them. The trip wires must have switched direction once they got closer to the large storm doors they had chosen not to go through the first time.

"Just keep running!" The brunet struggled not to throw up from all the smoke he was breathing in, the way his sides screamed in pain as he ran, and the horrible smell of rotted flesh burning.

"Sora, we're not going to make it!" Axel watched as more biters cleared out of the rooms and into the hall ahead of them. Sora pulled out one of his hand-guns and began blasting away at the biters by the light of the moving, flaming horde behind them. Zombies crumbled and dropped in front of the storm doors, leaving a narrow opening for the pair to squeeze through and out the door.

They crashed through the storm doors and kept running for a few feet. They skidded to a halt and the red-head reached to close the doors so that no biters could get through. Sora threw his back into it and screamed in pain at how hot the metal had gotten already. He kept his back pressed into the door while Axel used his hands to help close it.

It happened so fast that the red-head had barely any time to respond. A biter worked his way inside the door and reached out for his hair. He ducked his head to avoid his grasp and quickly moved one of his hands to his pocket for his pistol. He put the gun up to its head and shot the monster in-between the eyes, watching in triumph as it crumbled to the ground. Axel kept his arm in the opening for a fraction of a second too long. Just as he was recoiling a biter stuck his neck in the door. It used its hands to grab Axel's wrist. It used its mouth to clamp down on the tattooed man's hand.

The red-head threw his head back and screamed in pain as the zombie tore into his flesh and ripped it off into his mouth.