The Horror Is Alive

by Noel Gagnon

Sabastien is lost amoungst an orray of zombies, undead, and lost souls in a mountian setting of Boulder Springs

center bThe Horror /b

iSome Fear Death... Other's Prey For It/i

/bIs Alive/b/center

iBy Noel Gagnon/i

The story begins in the mountain town of Boulder Springs, though a small town, Boulder Springs carries it's share of blemishes, it has a significant dark side. Over the last ten years it seems like an alternate power is trying to do harm to the civilians of Boulder Springs, but no one has ever been able to prove it, until Sabastien Locke, a successful writer, accidentally stumbled onto Boulder Springs, when his belated agent phones him and asks him to take sometime off at his summer home to get over his writers-block. We follow his story of murder, and deceit as he walks the streets looking for the truth.

Lets Begin Shall We....

Chapter 1: Over the Bridge, and Through the Woods...

I ran through the city streets in terrifying horror of what's behind me, I slam through gates and into yards, jumping fences, and dodging lawn furniture. I can't hear anything but the sound of my foot steps slamming down on the concrete and my heavy breathing. I sprinted down a long back alley and slammed through a set of side gates into a basketball court, I spun and threw the doors closed behind me. I stood in the middle of the court and I could hear whatever was chasing me walking slowly down the alley. I could hear the clicking of it's claws on the cold, wet cement of the foggy town. I slowly crept backwards as the steeps got closer to the gate. I noticed sky as I began to trip backwards, I slammed to my back. Laying face up with my knees in the air, It felt like a basketball underneath my knees. But it wasn't a basketball, it was the complete opposite. I sat up and the blood had soaked through my pant legs, and my leg felt warm and wet, I had tripped over a severed dogs head. I panicked and crawled back a few feet and quickly stood. I felt so ill looking at this poor animal who had been mutilated, but the feeling soon left when I looked to the gate and there was another dog standing on the other side of the gate looking at me. I stared for a moment, observing the beast. It's fur was missing, and most of the skin was missing too. Muscle just hanging off of the bones, disgusting, It made me ill to the point where I thought I might actually puke. Trails of blood were flowing down the creature's body. Behind the dog, I could see a trail of blood. I followed it, rubbed my eyes, and followed it again. I was definitely not seeing things, the dog had come from the abyss. I realized the dog couldn't open the gates so I let my guard down for a moment and started to walk towards it, as I got close to the gates the 'dog', slammed through the gates. Now standing on top of the busted down gates right in front of me, I stood in terror. I almost wet myself I was so scared. before I knew what was happening, my vision was blinded by a sight of darkness, with a bright, heavenly halo. "Daddy?." I sprung to attention. A nightmare! Again.

It's been four years since my wife passed, everyone tells me not to blame myself, but I have no where else to put the blame...

It was the strangest thing, a couple of days ago I got a call from my agent Stanley, it wouldn't be strange if I had of talked to him in the last 7 months. He was worried about my progress on my latest novel, a horror story about a couple who go insane from a local plant and kill most of their neighbours. So he insisted I take a week off and visit his summer cabin on the edge of a small lakeside community called Boulder Springs.

I had been thinking about a vacation for a while now, but I never really had the opportunity to go anywhere, the trips were always too expensive. A lot of things were too expensive for me to do, I'm a good writer, but everything I wrote never gets the recognition it deserves. I've pretty much written everything from mystery to thrillers, comedy to horrors, I've tried everything, just to get that big break that'll put me at the top with Grisham, Asamov, and dare I say it, Steven King. My love for writing goes back to when I was in Elementary school, as a student I learned to read and write at very early age, and as I progressed through High school and than College, I soon learned that my writing wasn't just average work, it was good. I never found out where I fit in with my work, was I a romance novelist, was I a mystery writer, but soon after I graduated I began to have these dreams, I would go to sleep just like any other night, but soon be shrouded with these visions, I knew I was dreaming, but I was conscious and coherent as if I was still awake.

I was tied up to a huge crucifix and there are a bunch of people standing around yelling at me in a language I didn't know. As I first started to have this dream I would try and kick and claw my way out of the restraints, but as the years passed I got use to the dream. As I dangle there looking at all these shabby, robe wearing people, all I can think about is a divine heavenly light, my sight is almost completely blinded by this white light, than suddenly the light is gone and all that is left is pain, my feet being nailed together through the wooden crucifix. I try to scream, but my mouth is so dry from dehydration. I welcome death with open arms, but it feels like an eternity before I finally die. I always walk up in a cold sweat, so I always go to bed with a face cloth beside the bed. I'm anal like that, I like my quarters clean.

As I sat at my dinning room table with a glass of cheap boxed red wine thinking about the trip, "If I take a trip it might distract me from my writing and make my writer's block even worse... I just can't, I can't take a break." As I sat there sulking in my wine, I heard soft steps behind me, "BOO!" my daughter Cheryl screamed as she grabbed my shoulders. Because of my line of work, she was infatuated with scary movies and stories. As for most girls Cheryl's age, she ran and played at school, but when most parents are reading their kids Winnie the Pooh or Dr. Suess books, Cheryl and I were huddled on her bed with the lights out reading the creepiest and scariest novels in my vast collection. My daughter Cheryl had recently turned 7, she was a pretty normal girl, except for these re-accuring dreams about me dying. She claims to have them, two or three times a week. They usually really give her a good scare, it's ironic, she can read novels that even scare the hell out of me, but one little dream puts her into tears.

I gathered my thoughts and came to the conclusion that a little vacation really wouldn't hurt. so, I packed up a few pairs of clothes, toiletries, my laptop and my Flaurous; my good look charm, It is a pyramid shaped satanic ritual stone that is said to hold the soul of an evil human. I called my sister Julia to baby-sit Cheryl well I'm away. Julia loves Cheryl to pieces so of course it was no problem that Cheryl go spend a few days with Auntie Jules. So I left behind my capital city life style for the quaint cottage life of Lake Alchemilla, hopefully to rid the plague of writer's block.

The trip is a gruelling three-hour drive, and something kept telling me that it wasn't going to be worth it. As I left the bright city lights behind me I noticed that the foliage of the dense forest around me was getting significantly thicker, and as I drove farther and farther into the night I noticed a thick fog started to engulf the headlights. Eventually the fog was so bad I couldn't see ten feet in front of the car. What I did see were a few speed limit signs, and than a hug billboard with a scenic picture of a lake with a couple of boats in the middle, that read "Welcome to Boulder Springs."

As I started to enter the city limits, I noticed a few building here-and-there; a gas station, a school. As I got my bearings on the map I had made sure to bring, I found myself pulling up the long winding driveway too Stanley's log cabin. As I pulled up the long driveway I noticed ahead at the foot of the stairs to the cabin there was a young girl facing away from me pointing into the house, I figured she was a relative of Stanley's. As I pulled right up behind her the fog was thin enough that I could make out her dark grey dress, with a white collar, like you'd see in a private school. The young girl, maybe 12 years old, had long brown hair down past her shoulders, normally I wouldn't care so much about one girl, but she was the first real person I'd seen my whole trip, and she also had this presence about her that gave me a very uneasy feeling, just as I opened the door to the car, she, still not facing me, walked up the stairs and into the house and shut the door. My curiosity was more than enough to wonder why she was in my new home, so I cautiously sneaked through the front door and to my surprise there was no young girl, but a tall, slender, beautiful girl. I asked her what her name was, "Alyssa" she told me. "Well Alyssa I'm looking for that little girl that just came through here." She just starred at me for a few seconds, than looked around the room, "What girl... I've been in the cabin hiding for almost three days, and you're the first person I've seen in months besides.... Never mind, not really important." I wasn't quite sure what she meant by that so I asked her to tell me what was going on in the town, she grabbed me by the hand and pulled me over to the couch, as she was holding my hand I felt very calm and relaxed, this was again the first 'sexual' contact I've had been widowed, "this is going to take a while."

As I sat there taking in all that had happened to this small town, I couldn't believe that it was a resort town and not a quarantine area. Four years prior to my arrival at Boulder Springs it seem there was a string of boating accidents. It all started with a few dinghies and there owners disappearing into Lake Alchemilla, than a few of the larger yachts and sailboats were disappearing. Earlier the previous summer the worst of all the accidents occurred. A larger tourist passenger boat that commuted between the 40 mile gap north and south that seperated Boulder Springs from civilization. With around forty-two crew members and tourists this made it the largest boating accident this state had ever seen, it mysteriously rolled over, most of the crew drowned as the frigid waters flooded the cabins of the huge ship, well some tried to swim to safety, but many drown trying to get to shore. There were only two survivors, when the ship rolled they were on the top deck and were thrown into the water; they said that when they submerged into the water they were overwhelmed by a horrific screaming sound. When they brought there heads back above water again, the screeching was gone, but they could see there crew members swimming towards a light about a hundred meters away. As they started to follow their friends towards the light they heard a woman's voice calling to follow her voice. As they swam on through the thick fog they could hear there friends ahead panting in fatigue from swimming for so long, but after a few more meters of swimming one of the men realized that there was something wrong, silence. He called out, but there was no answer and the light had vanished, where had everyone gone? The next morning the officials had found a man washed up on the shore, the strange thing was nor a trace of the forty-one others nor a piece of the boat were ever found. "That man they found was my future husband, Ash Mason. We met after the accident well I was working at the Hospital here in town." We chatted for a while about some of the twisted happenings of the small town, and she told me how her husband passed away. "I awoke one morning and Ash wasn't beside me, I reported it to the police, and they sent out a search party. Four hours later they found Ash barely alive on the edge of the shore, the same area of the beach where he was found during the accident. We kept him alive on life support for 16 months before he died peacefully one morning. Though a tragedy, I felt that it more a relief because I saw the pain he was in. Ash and I were just glad it was all over." I'm sure she was use to hearing it, but I told her that I was sorry to hear about what had happened.

After chatting for a few hours until morning broke, we packed up some food and headed into town. "I don't know what you plan on finding, I told you the town is deserted," she told me. "I'm only hear to relax and get some work done, a town isn't going to scare me away from that, I just want something to eat. A friend suggested a cafe near the police station or something." I explained to Alyssa as I fumbled through some of Stanley's family photos. Nevertheless we made are way into town, surprisingly she didn't ask about the little girl I had seen, but I tried to forget about it.

Chapter 2: Into The Fog...

As we made our way through the town, I had an eerie presence about me, I felt very uneasy almost as I had been here before. We drove a few laps around the deserted mountain resort town before finally parking in front of 'quarter to three' Cafe and heading out on foot. Before I even got out of the car, I realized that there was nothing, I mean, there were shops and stores, but no one in sight. "Alyssa, where is everyone?" I asked curiously. "I told you Sabastien, something weird happened recently." she answered abruptly. We figured that if we set out on foot we could look around in buildings for others that may be fortified, so we decided on taking a nice walk through this once beautiful town. We started south down Bachman Road, Bachman is the 'Main St.' of Boulder Springs, nothing goes in or out without going up Bachman unless you come off the lake. But with the string of shipwrecks on the lake, no one has dared sail those waters in years.

We walked the whole way down to the lake, and still no one in sight. "Sabastien, look." Alyssa's words and a point of her finger directed my focal point towards a large bridge, roughly four hundred and twenty meters across and standing approximately twenty feet off the water table. Just like any other bridge but with one large distinction, there was a huge cloud of fog covering the middle of the bridge, engulfing the center section. "It's not moving, that's odd" I couldn't believe my eyes, it just hovered there for the duration of time that we were lost in amazement. "I wanna go see what's inside." I said as I motioned towards it. "You coming?" I exclaimed as I started to walk a block over and onto the two lane bridge, Alyssa was quick to follow, as if to not want to leave my side, which I liked. we walked across the bridge using the southbound lane as a sidewalk, we weren't all that afraid of getting hit by a car. After a few minutes, I had morphed from being freaked out by the fog, to now being fifty feet away from knowing what the fog meant. "You wanna wait here?" I asked. "Yeah, this is too creepy, hurry though." she looked nervous, so that slowed my pace as I made my way into the fog.

As I stepped further and further into the thick, heavy mist I noticed one thing, this was way to thick to be fog, When it's foggy outside you can see atleast fifty feet in any direction, this was so thick I couldn't see my own feet. I was now standing in this desolate fog and I couldn't see which way was out, I turned to what I thought was the way I came in, but couldn't tell for sure. "Alyssa, would you mind calling out my name a couple times so I can get my barrings? ..... Alyssa hun, I need you to make some noise so I can tell which way is out, I'm kinda stuck." I said chuckling. Still no answer. I started to walk in what direction I thought was the way I came in, I was ninety-nine percent sure I had come this way. Again, step after step I walked through the thick fog, and after a few hundred feet I was still not out of the fog, I stopped and gathered myself. "I guess I was wrong." I thought out loud to myself, and on that note, I squared my feet and turned around one hundred and eighty degrees, and again started walking. This time I was sure this was the way I had come, it had to be, but after an unconscious two minutes of walking, I was still not out of this fog. "What the hell?" I was so aggravated in myself that I actually got lost. "Alyssa, please answer me hun!" I said with an impatient tone in my voice. "Sabastien, come to me, I'm hear for you, I'm not leaving." I heard from somewhere around me. "Alyssa!" I panicked, I was happy her game of leaving me stranded in the fog was over. "Sabastien..." I got a barring for where the sound had iminated from, and started to follow it. Hopefully for the last time, I again, step after step crept my way towards the voice.

For a split second time slowed, everything went weightless, I could feel my stomach leap into my throat and my balls rise into my lungs, my hair blowing to the back of my head and my brain racing to conceive what was happening. After all the nerve impulses had flashed to my brain and I had had time to congregate what was happening to me, it dawned on me, I'm falling. As the fog quickly disappeared I hit the water, in shock I quickly started kicking upwards, I could see the light and the bottom of the bridge, I made my way back to the surface but was stopped just before I could get another breath of oxygen by a wall, the top of the water was like ice, but not cold, I panicked and started punching the 'ice' to get out, I couldn't, as thin as it was, I couldn't. I couldn't understand what was happening, and I didn't have time too, everything started to go white, and the exfixeation had virtually crushed my lungs to the size of raisins, it hurt more then anything I had ever experienced, then, it was over.

A bright light dawned on my eyes, and as they opened I was greeted by Alyssa. "Are you an angel?" I asked the heavenly figure. "You could call me that if you want Sabastien." I snapped back to reality when I clued in to an interesting fact, my clothes weren't wet. I sat up quickly and Alyssa let out a little scream of surprise "Oh!" I checked myself over, and quickly looked around, "What's going on?" I asked in shock. "What do you mean Sabastien, you walked into the fog and if resisting you it vanished as you entered, you turned around facing me and fell backwards onto your ass, by the time I ran over hear you were already awake. What happened? Are you narcoleptic? prone to seizures? Low blood sugar?" I stood to my feet, and looked around the bridge was missing a major section closer to the otherside of the lake about sixty feet long. "I thought, I was, there was fog and water." I stumbled with my words trying to explain, but I just wanted to give up, I assumed what I saw and did was a hallucination or a schizophrenic episode, so I shrugged it off when Alyssa said "There was fog and there is water, now let's get off the water and back to dry land." She helped me get back to the end of Bachman where I had first seen the bridge and I turned my back to it, hopefully to never have to worry about water again on this 'vacation'.

We ventured our way west on Bloch St. and south down Levin St. We were only in town for an hour, but already the town started to rear it's ugly head, As we walked past the school the school bell rung terrifyingly loud, we swung are heads toward the school in awe, only for are eyes to greeted upon windows full of children. They were all just starring at us, "what do they want?" Alyssa asked me. "I don't know, there bound to know where their parents are though, let's go in and ask." So we wandered up the front steps of the eighty-year-old Medwich Elementary School and through the front gates. As we stepped through the entrance I noticed school pictures from kids in the school all over the ground. I picked a few up, Greg had drawn a picture of a dog I believe, and Stacy had drawn a house. I shuffled through a few more pictures when I found one individual picture that really stood out in the crowd, it was a giant scribble, circle, after circle, hundreds and hundreds of them, making a huge mess of circles with a ring of space about an inch wide left open in the middle. I was startled to attention by the name written on the bottom of the picture. In a red crayon read, Cheryl Locke. Alyssa brought me back to reality and said 'Let's not sit in the same spot to long, I've got the creeps."

Chapter 3: Medwich Elementary...

The School had a turn of the century look, faded-white shutters on each window, some shutters hanging only by a screw. The paint had fallen off long ago leaving cement walls, and the two story Elementary looked more like a prison than a place of learning.

As soon as we entered the school's main foyer, it was like something out of one of my horror stories; there were what looked to be mummy wrapped bodies strapped to the walls. Alyssa let out a piercing shriek from the stench of death that billowed through the school, "who could have done this?" We continued in search of anyone that might be able to explain what is going on in this town. As we slithered our way through the eerie school, Alyssa seemed very uneasy, "I don't like this at all, I want to leave." As we approached the other side of the school, we noticed there was a trail of blood on the floor. "Oh my god... what the hell, what do you think it's from Sebastian?" I pushed the door open, "I wish I knew, but something tells me were going to find out." As the door creaked open it all of a sudden slammed shut, Alyssa screamed, then we heard a crash in the classroom behind us. It's the weirdest thing because the trail of blood that had led to the locked door was now leading to the class that we had heard the sound in. I cautiously pushed the door open and noticed it wasn't a classroom, but a gym change room. All around us on the walls, was mold and blood, on the floors, the roof, everywhere. "Hello, if anyone is here... don't kill us." "Sebastian grow up." "I love all ghosts..." "Sebastian!" Just then the showers about twenty feet away came on with a little drizzle from the faucets, "Ahh, what the hell!" I wasn't sure what had turned them on and I wasn't in any mood to find out, "Let's get the fuck out of here" as we began to leave the locker room, I started to white-out, everything went blurry, like a head rush, and I hit the tiled bathroom floor.

"We're gonna be late, Dave!" "I know, shut up!" It was weird, I was still only partially conscious but I could hear a young boys words echoing through my head, as if I had taken control of the young boy. As "I" ran down the foggy streets I heard the soft moan of a dog and to my left a grate crashed. I flinched but kept running. Finally! There was the school, just ahead. We ran through the doors and headed straight for our first class, which we had together. We stepped into the class and I gasped. "Holy shit...." Matt muttered. A grotesque scene lay before us. All of the students lay on there desks or beside their desks. I winced. They were skinned. All of them. I bit my lip. "Clara, Diane, Blake, Leo, Nick, Destiny, and Austin. Gone, dead, forever." I dared to glance at the teachers desk and found that Mr. Shall was nailed to the chalkboard. I shivered. Puddles of blood soaked my feet. Beside me, Matt was crying. We turned slowly and walked out of the room. Suddenly, Pain stabbed through my leg and I spun around. A little skinned child with a knife had latched itself onto my leg. Behind me Matt screamed. I spun around and found that my friend was surrounded by the things and they were stabbing their knives deep into him. "NO!" I screamed. Matt twisted his upper torso and I saw blood running down his face. "Run!" he yelled weakly. " Run...." I watched horrified as they finished off my friend and turned to me. I ran like a coward. I didn't know where I was running, only that I had to get away. I hurtled into the locker room. I swung my head wildly around checking for little skinned kids and/or a place to hide, I found one, I climbed into my locker. I had heard nothing so far. Only one lone scream had launched itself through the night. I shivered and curled tighter. Suddenly.... Creeeeeeeek..... I was filled with horror. The door to the locker room was opening. A bright white Flash. A man with brown hair, blinded as to how much danger he was in. But he had a chance....a chance to stop it all. I smiled a thin smile as one of the skinned kids stabbed me to death. Boulder Springs had a chance....

I softly opened my eye's too the sight of Alyssa sitting beside me holding my head off the blood soaked ground. "Where... am I?" "Sebastian, are you OK now? You were screaming and crying, your eyes were opening and you were looking around... but they were so vacant." "I... was a child, I mean... I saw what happened to him." "To who?" Alyssa asked curiously. Instead of telling her the story, I stood to my feet, stumbled a bit from the head rush, and walked over to a locker. I stood for a moment trying to remember which locker "I" had climbed into, than stepped to the locker beside the first. "All right, calm yourself." I took a breath as I opened the locker door. I can't tell which was worse, the punch in the face from the stench of death, or the sight of a small child with his intestines ripped out and wrapped around his neck, almost as to choke him with. "Oh my god..." Alyssa muttered before beginning to throw up in the far corner of the locker room. I took a few steps back and nudged the door closed with my foot. Alyssa asked me, "How'd you know he was there?" As she wiped the puke from around her mouth. "Well I was unconscious I had a dream that... I was him. I watched him die threw his own eye's." "Oh god, you're bleeding." I looked down at my rib cage and it was all slashed open, multiple gashes covered my back, stomach and sides. "Let's go..." She said softly as she helped me out of the locker room.

There was something weird about the school now, everything was different, I mean, it was the same school, but everything was dark, there were blood trails all over the floor, as if something had dragged bodies through the halls. I turned around to see if there was anything in the change room, but it wasn't the change room anymore. Where the change room was, was now a classroom, I stepped back into the room and looked around a bit, it seems whatever happened to the school had definitely ransacked through this class. All the desk were pushed a side making a large path down the centre of the classroom right up to the front desk which was right up against the wall. Behind the desk was a huge chalkboard with a large bloodstain, and the words, "I will take care of everyone, forever" written in blood. I could only wonder what could have happened in this room, but of course as a writer my imagination ran away with me and I had visions of all the students sitting happily listening to there teacher at her desk giving a lesson and something ripping up the middle of the room throwing desk to each side of the room, until slamming and pinning the teacher up against the chalkboard. I tip-toed my way around the blood and mold covering the majority of the floor to the teacher's desk, and there amongst the blood was a single piece of loose leaf paper.

I step in here,

Peering at the rusted grates and bloody walls.

The very earth beats beneath my feet,

Like a sick heart.

I feel good....

I hear them.

Those unseen denizens of the night.

Their gibberings and wailings pierce the air,

As do the screams of those they feed on.

As they rip and rend and tear,

Like sweet music....

I see them now,

Their sore-and pus caked bodies,

Twitch madly as they bring their rins and their knives.

Their faceless faces are streaked with blood,

So beautiful....

They say I'm being punished,

But is this not a reward?

Solitude and silence,

Save for the sweet sound of pain...

So...

Now it's time to ring the bell,

And step into a silent Hell...

The townsfolk will do me no harm, They'll welcome me with open arms.

The sights! The sounds! The gore! The screams,

So sweet beyond my wildest dreams.

My eyes! My ears! They BURN! They BLEED...

So beautiful...

This is Boulder Springs.

And everything is...

Blood and Gore and Guts and Pain and Dark and Death and Everything is..... wonderful...

"Sebastian, are you all right?" "Oh sorry, I was just thinking... let's leave... now." We tried to back track to the entrance, but kept getting lost in the maze of classrooms. "Alyssa I'm gonna check in the guys bathroom and see if anyone is hiding in the stalls... OK?" "OK, I'll wait out here for you, please be quick." I entered the boys bathroom and again the same scene, blood and mold all over the walls. As the door closed behind me, I got a hinting feeling that I wasn't alone. I opened the first stall door, as it creaked open, I took a step back. "Just cause I'm a horror writer doesn't mean you don't get scared Sebastian" I said to myself to ease my fears. The second door I kicked open as hard as I could, nothing. The third door, I knocked on and said, "Don't be alarmed, I'm a writer." I slowly put my hand on the door handle and felt a light thump, so I let go and cautiously bent down to look under the door. Just as I got down on my hands and knees a body through the cheap tiles in the roof. I kicked myself back a few feet in disgust slamming against the wall. I sat there for a bit just starring at the body; I couldn't understand what it was doing here, especially in that condition, clothes ripped and bloody, face totally disfigured, a complete mess. It was just like the ones we had seen in the main foyer, mummy wrapped from head to toe, yet it's feet were wrapped individually, as if too let it walk. "Alyssa, you OK?...... Alyssa?" I got up from the floor and opened the door. "What the fuck!.... Alyssa? ALYSSA!" I had come out on the second floor, it may be hard to believe, but I entered on the first floor and came out on the second floor. All of a sudden, I heard a young girls voice coming from the girls bathroom, it was giggling, as if laughing at me for being so nieve to this world, I pushed the door open quite abruptly, "Who's in here... Show yourself!" but of course it was just an empty, just as the other bathroom was.

I turned slowly around all the way, nothing in the room with me. I turned around and let my guard down for a moment to wash my face in the sink. "Ahh... so good." As I brought my head up, "AHH!" I was startled to see Alyssa standing behind me in my reflection, "Why did you leave me Sebastian?" she said eyeing me down in the reflection of the mirror. "I didn't abandon you, I went into the bathroom and when I came out I was..." the sound of my words were soon overcome by the sound of my heart beating repeatedly, for I had turned around and Alyssa wasn't there. I turned back around and I could see her standing a little closer this time. "Alyssa... what's going on...?" I don't know what you're talking about Sebastian." I turned around once more to see that Alyssa wasn't behind. I turned towards the door and slammed through, I fell to the ground and looked back into the bathroom, but there was nothing there. "I'm so confused." "Sebastian, are you all right?" To my surprise Alyssa was walking up a flight of nearby stairs. "Alyssa, how'd you do that? You were just..." "Sebastian, I was downstairs waiting for you to come out of the bathroom when I heard you screaming from up here, did you find stairs, or a ladder in there? How'd you get up here?" I'm the one that's suppose to be asking you questions right know OK? I was in the bathroom and I saw you, but it wasn't you and... Fuck! I don't know what's real anymore." "Let's just try to get the fuck out of here."

So on that note we went back down the stairs and preceded to aimlessly wander the Medwich Elementary school in search of anything that might help us get out. We did eventually find a courtyard with a few trees and shrubs, we could see a lot of the surrounding windows were shut except for one on the second floor, thankfully right beside a drainage pipe. "I think I can climb it." "No Sebastian, you won't make it, it's too wet, you'll just slip off!" "I have to try, once I'm in I'll pull you up, OK?" I mounted my feet and began to make the ascend up the pipe, it was only about twelve feet high, but the rain coming down in the open courtyard was making it a very slippery climb. As I started to perch the window sill I lost my footing, now hanging vicariously from the window, I felt something's hand over mine, and I wasn't willing to let whatever it was give me a hand up, so I let go and feel into a shrub below. "Are you all right?" "NO! Fuck... something grabbed my hand up there, I know it may sound weird, but I felt a hand on top of mine, it was old used leather." "Sebastian, I'm really scared!" "I know... I am too." We wandered about the school for a little bit before finally realizing we were lost, "I can't believe were lost in this fucking living mind game!" Alyssa screamed. "Hey Alyssa, check this out." I had found the principal's office, "There might be a phone in here, come on." I walked up to the desk and there was a phone, but of course, the line was dead. I realized there's a time to be civil and a time for action so I picked up the chair and heaved it through the window to the office. "There! Now we have a fucking exit!" We jumped down to the grass below and made are way around to the front of the school, as we looked back there was one of the classrooms with a light on and about ten or fifteen small children in the window. "What are they Sebastian?" "I wish I knew, lets just go look for some people else wheres, they give me the creeps."

Chapter 4: Today's Sermon; Survival...

So we wandered are way back up Bloch to see if we could find any signs of life, but of course the town was abandoned, we were looking in the window of a local hardware store, 'Cut-Right Chainsaws,' when we were startled by a loud bell, a church bell. I checked my map and low and behold there it was on the map, Balkan Church. We proceeded to follow the directions on the map until we arrived at the steps to the Balkan, the huge church was built at the turn of the 1600's. The Balkan had been around long before the declaration of independence was even signed, though no one knows who built it or why it was constructed. When the city started building around this area, they just refurbished the church and started using it as a catholic church. "Alyssa, I'm not sure what's going to be in here so I want you too wait out here for me, if I'm not out in a few minutes, you can come in after me. But stay out here!" I opened the door just a crack and peered in, all I could see was a small alter at the front of the church. I proceeded to slowly enter the Balkan, step-by-step I made my way up to the front were there were a few books and ritualistic symbols, all of a sudden I heard one of the confession booth door handles start to turn, however was in there was about to come out. I lightly ran behind the door, in which they were coming out, so I could jump them. I was quite surprised to see a crippled sixty-year-old woman, "You're not a monster." "AHH!" She screamed, I guess I had given her an awful scare. "Who... are you?" She looked at me for a moment, as if trying to come up with some kind of lie to protect herself from me. "My name is Dahlia Tuberes. Who are you and what are you doing in Boulder Springs?" I sat her down in one of the pews and told her the story about how I have had writer's block lately and that Stanley had lent me his place for a few weeks, just as I finished telling the story, Alyssa burst through the doors screaming and flailing around like some kind of Ninja.

"SEBASTIAN, I'm here to save you........! ....Oh!... who's she?" her look of hysteria quickly turned to confusing for she had not seen another human being in many months. "Alyssa, this is Dahlia" "You're the crazy old lady, I always see wandering around the forests on the north side of town, right?" "I'm not crazy!" Dahlia got up from the pew and ran out of the church through one of the side doors. "Alyssa, during are chat she mentioned something about a tragedy she was involved with, do you know anything about that?" "Umm... yeah..." Alyssa sat down with me and she told me, yet another, tragic tale. Back about the same time as Alyssa's husband drown Dahlia was also stricken with a tragic event. One foggy April morning Dahlia's two daughters; Laura, fourteen and Sarah nineteen, were both burned alive when there car mysteriously rolled down an embankment and smashed into a large old growth tree well on their way home from a friends house. Soon after the accident her husband divorced her and ever since than her life as had little, or no, meaning at all, she just spends the days soliciting an antidepressant drug she calls White Claudia, a liquid hallucinogen, to the townspeople. She is rumoured to spend the nights wandering the local forests crying for the "pain to end." I was very deeply disturbed by what Alyssa was telling me. "Sebastian, there's a lot you don't know about this place... it isn't like other towns... it's almost as if, maybe the town is alive. I know it sounds weird, but you have to believe me, this town has a presence that gives it a personality. I can't make you believe me, but you have to trust me, you can't put any trust in this town, or it'll crush you!" Alyssa exclaimed. "All right, I'll take your word for it, but for know we need to find something, anything. I'm not positive, but there's a good chance we'll need weapons, so why don't we go over to the police station and see if we can find any guns or something." "I remember going to the police station after my husband past to give a statement, it's... on the East Side of town."

So we ran for about a half a mile before we finally reached the police station, we burst through the doors in utter fatigue. "Shit! I'm outta shape." I said panting and moaning from the cramp brewing in my ribs. "You wuss, come on let's go for a few more miles." She said jogging in one spot to keep her heart rate up. "I take it your a runner?" "Yeah me and Ash use to run every morning before he'd leave for work." We searched the station head to toe only finding one weapon, but, a good one. "Holy shit!.. Alyssa, I found something in one of these cabinets." "What is it?" "Well, it will definitely do the job at hand, Haa Ha! Check this out" I walked into the room carry a Heckler and Koch G11 Advanced Combat Rifle, carrying three 45 round magazines side-by-side, and a 300 meter non-detachable optical site. Shaped like an AK47 on steroids this gun is huge, it was designed to shot holes the size of softballs right through elephants. "Isn't that a little big for a gun?" "There's no such answer to a question like that, did you find anything?" "No, just this police statement on the chalkboard there, something about a drug?"

Perennial herb found near water, Reaches height of 6 to 10 ft. Oblong leaves, white blossoms. Seeds contain hallucinogen. Ancient records show it was used for religious Ceremonies. With severe hallucinogenic effects. She called it White Claudia; we confiscated almost two litres from her home. The hallucinogenic effect was key.

"Well that would explain the drug that Dahlia was selling to the people here, but what do they mean by 'was key?" "Sebastian, it's all kind of starting to make sense... I think. Whatever is happening to Boulder Springs has been caused by White Claudia." "It seems Alyssa, that the police here knew about what was going on, so why would they be missing too?" Just than Dahlia waltzed through the door with a little smirk on her face. "So you gumshoes are starting to uncover the truth. Heh?" I opened the verbal abuse by asking "Dahlia are you the one behind all this shit going on in this town?" She looked at me for a moment than said, "No Sebastian... you are. You are the chosen one; you have been satanically brought here by evil powers to fulfill your destiny of opening the Black Zodiac, a powerful realm of evil. Upon opening the realm we will release Bethor from his ten thousand year sleep, and thus, opening the apocalypse." "You are one crazy bitch..." Alyssa said. "Am I crazy, well you can say that again when darkness falls over this place and bethor comes to life in the body of the chosen one, you, Sebastian have been foretold to bring the chosen one to us and something you will do well your here will awaken are god. Well Sebastian everything up until now is coming true in the prophecies. Sabastien before you die, you see the ring." "Hey bitch, you see this?" With the blunt handle end of the rifle I smacked her in the side of the head well her attention was drawn on Alyssa knocking her to the ground unconscious. "Sebastian that was quite uncalled for." "Well she was pissing me off! Lets just cuff her to a chair and continue our search for... whatever, hand me those" I said well pointing to the dozen or so handcuffs hung up on the wall. So we took a few minutes and comedically cuffed her to a chair and cuffed the chair to a desk, than throwing the key down the bathroom sink. "I think that outta hold her." Alyssa said with a cute little smirk. "I think you're right, so where else haven't we checked in this town, where could someone be hiding?" I asked Alyssa as we walked down the front steps. "Well there is the old Brookhaven Hospital, but I haven't been there since I quit, and I don't really like it there." "Well I could go inside do a quick search and than come out and get you. Come on lets go, you lead cause I have no clue where I'm going."

As we were about to leave for the hospital I heard a faint crackling; I quickly turned in time to see a small handheld pocket radio, sitting on one of the tables in the room. "That's odd, it just turned itself on!" Before I could even reach for it one of the mummies jumped up from behind a large desk and grabbed me from behind, slamming me forward into the table with the radio on it. The impact stunned me, but not enough not too push him away and jump to the side far enough that I drew my newfound assault weapon and pumped a forty-two-calibre shotgun shell into its head. The creature was catapulted about six feet backwards from the impact of the shot and than laid on the floor motionless. That's when I proceeded with the trash talking, "Yeah! And that'll teach your ass to touch me, bitch!" "Sebastian, the radio is off. Whatever these monsters are, they give off some kind of static to this radio, geez this is going to come in real handy." Alyssa said with a smile and a chuckel. "All right let's get out of here, I'm sure that shot alerted more of. them." I said gesturing towards the corpse.

Chapter 5: It's Just A Needle, It Won't Hurt...

So we took a quick walk to the hospital because It was only about a block and half away, and when we arrived, the Brookhaven Hospital looked more like an insane asylum than a hospital. A huge brick wall surrounded the compound with a rusty gate entrance with, what looked like a, security booth. "This is the hospital?" "Yeah the owner wanted maximum security at all times, we all had to check in before we started and sign out when we left, sometimes when he was having a bad day he would make the guards search are bags. We heard rumours that they conducted experiments down in the basement with some of the patients, none of the people I was friends with here ever saw or witnessed any of that first hand though so it is just a rumour." "That's sick!" "Yeah, but anyways you go ahead and I'll wait here... Sebastian, can... can I take the gun, it'll make me feel better." "Sure here, I'll be back in a minute." Little did I know I would later wish I had have taken the gun with me.

I entered the hospital through the main door; it opened into the waiting area for patients. I started my search by checking behind the desk for check in dates; most of the dates were all weeks prior except for one. It read, Jack Finney, the date was about three days ago, I couldn't understand why anyone left alive in this town would 'check in'. "Hello, is anyone here?" I screamed at the top of my lungs, so if they were hiding they would hear me. I started to climb over the reception desk in the waiting room when I heard a shot fire in the room behind the counter, the shot startled me and I toppled over the desk onto my face on the floor. "Crap that hurt." I cautiously opened the door expecting the worst because I knew whatever was on the other side of the door was armed. Low and behold there was a middle-aged man with dark brown hair and light framed glass standing over what looked to be one of the mummy wrapped doctors. The corpses was wrapped in the same old looking wrap as the mummies in the school, but this time was wearing a doctor's trench coat with a stethoscope around it's bloody neck, the only thing that differentiated this corpses from the others at the school was that this ones face wasn't wrapped. Perhaps this one was a little more human. I obviously startled the man in the glasses because he jumped over and behind a desk taking aim at me. "Who are you?" He cried. "I'm Sebastian Locke, I'm in town on vacation, I'm not here to hurt you, please put down the gun... It's scaring the shit out of me." "Just than Alyssa ran in carrying the huge assault rifle, " I heard shots, is everything ok? Doctor Finney?" "Alyssa, what are you doing here, I figured you would have been turned into one of them." He said well gesturing towards the dead mummy doctor. "Oh my god! What the hell is it?" "It doesn't matter it's dead," I pointed out. "Doctor Finney, do you know what's happened to the people here?" I asked. "I'm afraid I might know why, in fact I believe Ms. Mason might also..." "Alyssa, is that true, do you know what's going on here?" I asked. "Not exactly, well... you know I use to work here, and well... we did a lot of experimentation with our patients. It's not like we hurt them or anything... or at least... we didn't mean too. A lot went down in the basements here, a lot of stuff that I can't tell you." She confessed to me. "Alyssa, please, I need to know. Even if you don't tell me, my curiosity is going to make me going in search of an actual answer, you realize that right?" "Sebastian, I'm sorry... I can't." "Well... Finney, can you stay with Alyssa well I'm gone?" I asked him with a simple reply of, "all right."

Chapter 6: Into The Darkness...

As I left behind the only two people that may be able to help me I aimlessly wandered the halls of the hospital ever wary of what might be lurking around every corner, I had my eye's pinned ten steps ahead of me at all times because I did not want to find another one of those mummy doctor things. I attempted to search every room, but the hospital was an immense maze, row after row of rooms lined the hallways, it was like a scene out of One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest. Soon after I started the search I realized that not only was I probably not going to find anyone alive, but someone might not find me alive. I entered what looked to be an examination room; it was a small room with a table in the middle. The table had a bloody cloth over it and straps as if too hold down someone, or something's, arms and feet. But almost as if coming from the walls I heard voices, at first it was subtly quiet, but the voices grew louder. All around me I could hear the voices, "Let's get her prepped, quickly." "As you will notice I make a small incision here just below the base of her neck, to the let the blood flow a little easier before we make the main incision here just above the equilibrium." "Nurse Mason would you mind applying pressure here."

I couldn't understand where the voices were coming from, and I didn't really care, it's not like hearing voices was the first weird thing to occur on my vacation. So I turned to leave when the voices turned to horrible screams of pain, the lights flickered away, and an incredible hum started to rumble through the hospital almost to overcome the screams. I panicked and stumbled back out of the door slamming against the door across the hall and falling through the door into the room. Now laying on my back on the floor I quickly scrambled to my feet and put my hands over my ears, the hum was so loud it almost hurt, I turned around to check out the room I had fallen into. It was just as the other room, but the table had one of the mummy doctors on it strapped down with some kind of hat on, with wires leading from the top of the hat up into the roof. The body convulsed violently, slamming up and down so hard it actually ripped its right hand out of the restraint. I walked closer to check out what was the story behind the corpses, "Oh my god! It's Finney... But... than whom was Alyssa upstairs with... Alyssa!" I slammed back into the hallways and sprinted through the halls of the hospital trying to find my way out of the maze and back to Alyssa as I ran up one of the quick corridors I heard three loud bursts of rifle fire, "Alyssa!" I followed the echo of the shots and actually found my way back up the stairs and body checked through the doors to the office.

Their Alyssa stood in the corner of the room crying and in the middle of the room laid a twisted mess of blood and muscle. "Alyssa, I was down in the basement and I found, I think I found Finney, he was strapped to an electroshock bed receiving a good dose of wattage." "I heard the hum, than Finney went crazy he hit the floor screaming, than he came at me, I panicked... and..." "I know I heard the shots, it's ok." I comforted her in my arms for a moment well she got her composure. Than led her out of the room, I sat her down in one of the waiting room chairs, "I'm going to look around in the basement a little more, I've got a feeling there's something down there, I mean, something had to of turned on the electroshock generator, right?" I left Alyssa upstairs and made my way back into the labyrinth of doors and hallways. I could still here the hum of the generator, but its surge of energy has been diminished over the ten minutes I was upstairs. I searched most of the rooms to no prevail, but came across one room in particular, it was a small room with white wall paper, no blood, and a bed with nice, neat, clean white sheets on the bed and a small bed side table with a plastic bottle full of a liquid. "I guess it's water?" In the corner there was an old broken looking TV with a VCR sitting on top of it. I walked up to the bed and could make out an indentation of a small child in the beds mattress, I looked under the bed and around on the floor, there was nothing. So I sat on the edge of the bed and opened the drawer in the table, "It's a dairy of some sort..." I opened to the first page, but almost everyone of the pages were empty except for one page near the back that read...

Ask doctors to let me quit being in charge of that patient. It's too weird. Still alive, but with wounds that won't heal. Every time I change the bandages, they just fill with blood and puss again. Told the doctor I quit. Won't work at the hospital anymore. The room filled with insects. Even with doors and windows shut they get to spite me. To the hospital... Feeling bad. Need to throw up. But nothing comes out. Vomiting only bile. Blood and pus flow from the bathroom faucet. I try to stop it, but it won't turn off. Need drug. Help me...

"Alyssa... uses White Claudia... that means that she might too be one of them." I starred at the page in the diary trying to comprehend all that had been happening to me, when the eerie silence of the dark hospital halls was filled with the loud sound of static. I peered out of the room into the hall to see if I could see anyone that might making that sound, but all I could see was a light peering through the doorway of one of the rooms down the hall. I cautiously stalked down the hall and leaned around the corner of the room to see what was making that sound and giving of the light. "Shit... that's all... just glad it's not one of those mummy things." My suspicions of horror or death were overcome by a television that had probably turned itself on from the generators power surges. The room was small like the others, but had six beds, three on each side of the room. The beds had a white sheet draped over them and an dentations of bodies under them. I walked in, and knelt down to turn the TV off, but I realized as my hand was almost on the knob that the whole encasing around the tube was covered in blood, it kind of startled me so I fell back onto my ass. "All right, that is seriously gross." As I sat up to get the hell out of there, my heart skipped when the static filled picture tube on the television was filled with a picture of the room that I was standing in, or at least I thought it was the same room, they all looked the same. As the room was empty in reality and on the TV, that all soon changed.

I was starring at the tube in awe of what I was seeing, on the set I was witnessing what looked like a routine examination of a patient, until the audio kicked in, it was so loud it almost blew the speakers on the set. "Doctor Finney would you mind starting the first incision." I watched as Finney walked into the picture warring a long white robe and small transparent mask over his face. I watched in horror as a young boy, maybe twelve years old, was experimented on. It was hard for me to hear what anyone was saying because the audio was so scratchy, creating a very creepy environment.

"Now watch as Doctor Finney, starts to........ You'll notice that his incision is little and delicate..... Oh God! Nurse apply pressure here, quick!" I watched in horror as the little boy began to convulse and bleed everywhere all over the table, as if the incision on his chest had cut through his heart. Just as I thought it couldn't get any weirder, Alyssa came into the picture and started trying to stop the bleeding. "Nurse, this is your patient, what should we do with me?" than Alyssa looked up from the dying boy and said, "Let's just get another one... Let's go this isn't a party!" Most of the doctors left the room except for Finney and Alyssa. "Alyssa, I would like to ask you something, seriously? Why do we do this, I mean, it's disgusting we're trying to build something that could destroy us!" "Finney please, get a hold of yourself. We're doing are job, we get paid to do this, and do this we shall." "But......" Alyssa interrupted with "The Scars from the past shall remove the nail that stops time." There conversation was ended by more static, and when the static faded I was left with the images of the nurses wheeling in another little child, this time a girl. "Oh my god... It's...her!" I said to myself in the confines of the labyrinth. As I watched the tape I realized that the new child they had brought in might be the girl I had seen at Stanley's cabin when I first arrived here. "Doctor Finney, this is Krishan, she just turned ten." "Thank you Alyssa. Well Krishan, I'm Doctor Finney, I'm going to do some tests on you and see how you react. The tests might hurt a little, but there for the best." "Dilectua Melesalo Detulatea." "Doctor Finney, Krishan isn't like the others here, her record show a psychiatrical evaluation that shows satanic episodes, I thought she might be the one were looking for. She has a powerful energy around her that I thought we could harness for the project. At least if she doesn't work out than we'll have one less patient to worry about." "All right, Alyssa would you mind making the first incision and injecting." "Ok Krishan, this is probably going to hurt... a lot. So just relax and take a deep breath." And on those words I watched as Alyssa cold-heartedly plunged the scalpel into the little girl's stomach. The little girl, restrained to the bed, started to scream and cry as they continued to cut deeper and deeper into her stomach. Finally the little girl stopped screaming, "Fuck, I wish we could keep these little bastards alive long enough too..." His words soon turned to an eerie silence of astonishment as the little girl's eyes opened and began to talk, "Why are you doing this too me, why are you doing this too me?" "Krishan, how are you feeling?" Alyssa asked her with a look of disbelief. "I'm fine, why?" "Do you know where you are?" "I'm at the BH hospital, why?" "Alyssa quickly, make the injection." Alyssa began to open layer after layer of the girl's chest eventually finding the girls small barely beating heart. One of the bedside nurse grabbed a small vile filled with a small amount of red liquid, the nurses handed it too Alyssa and she started to slowly drip the liquid onto the surface of the little girls heart. Whoever was manning the camera came in real close to document the effect of the liquid. "OK Krishan it's all over, OK? Were going too sew you back up now and you'll be good as new." "It's not going to work you know?" Doctor Finney was the first to ask, "What do you mean?" The little girl took her attention away from the ceiling and straight into Finney eyes and said "You're trying to force me to come, but I won't be told what to do, I won't I... I..."

Before the girl could finish, her eyes kicked back into her head, her head cocked back, and she convulsed a little as blood began to pour out of her mouth and nose and the sound of the girl's life gurgling away as her mouth filled with blood. She slammed her back up and than down onto the bed a few times before finally lifelessly sinking into the mattress. "Doctor Finney, I can't do this anymore, every time we lose one it's like I'm losing my own daughter." "Alyssa please, this operation is very precise. I need your skilled hands here......."

Again the tape was cut short by more static, though this time the static didn't seem to stop. I checked out the VCR and pressed the fast forward button, as the static sped along, I noticed a blur of picture, so I rewound the tape back a little bit to see what it was. I waited, watching the static for a moment, until the picture kicked in. It was the same room, but the camera had been knocked to the ground and there was no audio. I could make out some feet running around the bed, but it was hard. The tape only lasted for a few seconds, but what I saw was horrifying. Krishan was the one who had knocked over the camera, and she was the one making everybody run around, it seems that she had somehow broken out of her restraints and gone after everyone with a scalpel. I saw her catch one of the nurses in a far corner and start slashing at her. She at one point grabbed a vile of the red liquid and smashed it over one of the Doctor's heads. As the tape ended back to static the audio kicked back in and I was left with the picture of Krishan standing in the room alone, crying, "Why did they have to let me out... I was happy."

Chapter 7: Biohazard X...

I picked myself up from the floor, and stood for a second as fixed my pants, hoisting my belt up and down to centre them. I made a few steeps towards the door and heard a light rustle, I stopped dead in my tracks and didn't move a muscle. Eyes locked dead on the door in front of me, I heard it again, one of the sheets were rustling on the examination tables with the bodies on them. I slowly brought my hand down to the trigger of my rifle, I turned my head slightly to look at whatever was making the sound through my peripheral vision. I noticed a little movement under the sheets, but I figured whatever it was I could lock in the room, so I put my eyes back on the door and took two more steps, when I heard a shuffle. Again the sound was behind me, I slowly turned my head to the bed again, the lump under the sheet was gone. I spun around quickly and there standing just out of my peripheral vision was a pale blue face, eyes set far back in her head, almost pure red I'm not sure how she could even see. She hit me in the chest with her hand and made this horrible hissing sound, I landed on my ass and slide about six feet until I bumped into the door. It looked at me for a moment and made a vague attempt to crack its neck, looked at me for a moment, and than it took a quick step towards me. I knew she was going to attack, so I drew up my rifle and put on of the auxiliary light grenade rounds into her chest. Her head slammed forwards as her body was thrown backwards, she crashed back first into the solid brick walls of the basement.

The echoes over the rifle shot left the eerie basement of the hospital totally dead, you could hear a pin drop onto a soft pillow, and that was quite unsettling seeing as how these things can still sneak up on me. I gathered myself and rose to one knee, I still my the rifle up and ready just in case she made on last attempt to kick my ass. So I cautiously crossed foot-over-foot until I was standing over her. She had a hole the size of a watermelon blown straight through her chest, and I noticed well I was looking at the hole she had a small retractable blade tucked in her lab coat. I dropped my guard for a moment as I reached for the blade, when she hissed, and sprung up and bit me on the side of my neck. I struggled to get her off, but she had such a tight grip on the skin, I grabbed her hair and tried to rip her head back, but when I pulled her hair just ripped out of the roots. I grabbed her face and pulled her off my neck, taking a huge chunk of skin with it. As I pushed her head back, I slammed it into the wall as hard as I could and dove back onto my ass, brought up the rifle. "Guess where you made your mistake... Fucking with ME!" The echoes rang through the halls of the basement and than back to me a few times as I put a hole clean through her head. She slammed violently against the wall, her eyes set straight on mine. She just stood there for a moment, looking into my eyes as if starring straight through me into my soul. I like to think that maybe she now realizes that I have the power to overcome anything this force can throw at me. The force that is ruining this town. She starred at me for a few last moments as her eyes slowly shut, and her back slid down the wall, as her knees buckled and she collapsed to her knees, than flat on her pale face. I knelt there for a moment making sure she was dead, when I noticed my shots had gone straight through her, and into the wall. I walked right up to the wall to get a closer look and sure enough the wall was a fake, I stuck my finger into the hole and used it like a hook to rip at the wall. I eventually had a hole big enough for me to look through so I peered in, but it was pretty dark so I couldn't that well. I wanted to see what was back there, cause I'm sure anything worth walling up was either really important or very deadly.

I picked the TV up off it's stand and threw it as hard as I could at the wall, a huge chunk of the bottom of the wall. I picked the TV back up, the screen was totally smashed, and I pitched it at the wall on more time. The second attempt had knocked a hole big enough for me to walk through, and the light from the room had gone through the hole so I can see a little ways in. I slowly stepped through the hole and took a few steps to the side so I could let the light guide me, as the light opened the darkness I noticed I was standing in a long hallway. There were glass walls stretching as far as my limited range of sight would allow me, but I figured if there was something in the hallway it would have attacked by now. So I walked into the darkness of the hallway.

I couldn't see anything at all in front of me. I put my hand to my side and dragged it along the wall as I walked, it was cold, like steel. I was scared as hell, I couldn't see anything. I stopped to catch my breath and this almost in-audible, low hum billowed from down the hall, as if traveling towards me. As it slowly caught up to me, and than passed me, the room suddenly filled with light. "Oh shit!" I noticed a horribly rugged, cut, dirty man starring back at me. Through the glass walls were halogen tubes placed sporadically here and there, the image of my own reflection scared the hell out of me. I now had some light to walk by.

Running down the long hall, I eventually came to stairway, it looked like it went on forever. I noticed the stairways was divided down the middle, half the stairway were stairs, the other was a rail system of some sort. I followed the rails behind me a few feet and found a little push cart with three seats on it, a scribing on it said 'EEP - emergency escape pod." I pushed it to where the incline of the stairs started, sat down on the sleigh-like pod, and pushed myself off. There was an automatic breaking system of some sort on the pod, cause I didn't gain any unsafe speeds. It slowed as I reached the bottom, I figured I was about five hundred or a thousand feet down, the ride felt like forever. "The Hive?" I said to myself as I read off a logo on the doors at the end of the stairway. I pushed open the double doors and enter a huge warehouse-like reception area, I assumed it was a reception area because of the large desk with that logo again on it. It was a circle, with a red and black pattern on it, the pattern was etched like a cut on a pizza pie. I walked behind the desk and picked the phone up off the floor, of course, dead.

I hunted through the desk for anything I could find that might tell me what this place was, or if had anything to do with what happened to the town. As I rifled through someone's things, I heard a clanging of what sounded like metal dragging on metal. I stood up and remained completely motionless, holding my breath, all I could hear was my own heart beating out of my chest. I gripped my right hand tightly around the grip on my rifle as I stepped out from behind the desk. The sound continued, louder and louder. I knew it was getting closer. There was corner that I couldn't see around and I could hear that the sound was coming from down that way. Besides the way I came in, and the door marked exit, that hallway was the only other means in and out of this large room. I stood with my rifle drawn up and pointed at the corner. I stood and waited. The dragging was very rigged and loud. I could now hear the breathing of whatever it was, very crispy, wet, gurgled breathing. I knew whatever it was just about to come around the corner. Silence. A sense of sheer confusion ran through me, I stood for a moment in alert attention with my weapon drawn at head height. About a minute passed and I took a few side steps around the corner. Nothing. I peered down a long hall and at the end an elevator. I stood at the beginning to a hall, expecting horror. But there was nothing. Than I heard it again, that wet breathing, it took me a moment to get my bearings as to where it was. Behind me. I stood for a moment to let it think it had the upper hand, before diving forward onto my stomach and rolling onto my back. Before me stood one of the zombie people, but unlike the doctors and nurses before this one, this one had no mummy wrapping, and a very nice suit on. A little torn, ripped and bloody, but other wise quite nice looking.. I brought my rifle sight up to my eye and put the sight crosshair right on it's forehead. "This'll teach you to scare the shit out of me." Another patented shot rang through the halls of the Hive. I stood to my feet, "that's right!" I yelled at the twisted corpse. I heard a clang behind me, metal on metal again. I spun around and drew up my weapon. "oh shit." My eyes barely focused on a number of zombie business people I couldn't count, I put the sight of the rifle up to my eye, found the face of the zombie on the far left, and took out the first row of them. Boom, Boom, Boom, Boom, Boom. The first ten or fifteen zombies were laying on their faces, I pulled my rifle down to check my remaining supply. "Damn rights!" I still had a half clip left from all I've been through.

With my, now over heightened, sense of self-consciousness, I re-drew my assault rifle and continued to fire rounds. The zombies noticing their fallen comrades began to flee towards the elevator, some continuing to charge me. As the smoke from my cinder-red barrel cleared, I noticed one zombie left at the end of the hall, waiting for elevator. Little did he know, he lacked the intelligence to push the button. Just thinking he was trapped, began to become very hostile, as I walked towards him he began to hiss and shriek at me, hoping to scare me off. "Now what?.... All you friends are dead! What are you gonna do? Where you gonna run?" It made a few more hissing noises, as if attempting to drown me out. "Shut up!... Now you join your friends." I was maybe 20 feet from it, I drew the sight up to my eye and put the crosshair right between it's eyes. Click. I pulled the gun down to see the last barrage of zombies had left my clip empty. "Shit..." I looked up. It knew I was empty. It made on last hiss as it charged at me with it's mouth open, screaming. I jumped and grabbed a rafter above me, as I got within kicking distance, I wrapped one thigh around each side of it's head. One quick torque of my hips, and I had one more dead zombie. I released my grip from the rafters and dropped to the floor. I looked down at the zombie, and spit on it. "Fuck you!"

As I began to walk towards the elevator, I heard a hissing. It took me a moment to figure out it was coming from the zombie I had just killed. I walked over and it was on it's back. breathing very lightly, almost undetectable. "How are you still alive?" It reached into it's pocket, and I wasn't sure what it was grabbing for, so I quickly grabbed it's hand to make sure it wasn't trying to go for a knife or gun. I helped it pull it's arm out of it's jacket pocket. It was a small palm-sized CPU. It opened like a laptop, monitor on the top half, keyboard on the bottom half, but it was the size of my hand. The zombie was of no use to me anymore, so jumped to the rafters again, hung for a moment by one hand, and came crashing down, boot first, onto the zombies skull. I felt the crunch of bone compacting underneath my boot. I walked towards the elevator with a faked limp like I had seen in action movies, "Who's the man?! WHO'S THE MAN!?" I screamed at the mass of bodies, kicking some as I walked past.

I got into the elevator and reached for the buttons, than it hit me. "..... Where do I go? I wanna find out what's going on, but... I don't know this place at all. Maybe..." I opened the palmtop, 'Bing bong, you have mail' "Shit, zombies got this, and I'm doing my working on a type writer. Go figure." There was a touch-navigateable screen with a few icons that I could select, "Hive schematics... A map of this place, that'll come in handy.... Log's?" I clicked the button and a static-filled picture came up of a brawny, bald Black man. I looked at the top of the handheld and sure enough, there was a pinhole sized camera. The audio cracked in and out until finally becoming clear.

"Report time, 09-16. At the beginning of the 21st century, the Carousel Corporation had become the largest commercial entity in the united states, 9 out of every 10 homes contain it's product. It's political and financial influence is felt everywhere. In public, it is the world leading supplier of computer technology, medical products, and heath care. Unknown to even it's own employees it's massive profits are generated by military technology, genetic experimentation, and viral weaponry. We used the Hospital above as the emergency entrance to the Hive, it allowed us to bypass the first 20 sub-levels. The Hive itself is located underground, deep beneath the streets of Boulder Springs and Lake Alchemilla. A top secret research facility owned and operated by the Carousel Corporation. The Hive houses over 500 technicians, scientists, and support staff, they live and work underground. There research is of the highest importance. 5 hours ago the Hive's primary defences were activated and the Queen went homicidal, the Queen is a state of the art artificial intelligence, she's the computer that controls the Hive. She sealed the Hive and killed everyone down here, when we realized what was happening, my team was dispatched to shut her down. Why she did it, we don't know. The T virus is a major medical break through, although it clearly also possessed highly possible military applications. Even in death the human body remains active, finger nails and hair continue to grow, new cells are produced. And the brain itself offers more electrical charge and takes months to dissipate. The T virus provides a massive jolt bringing cellular growth and a trace of electric impulse. Reanimating the body, they have the simplest of motor functions, perhaps a little memory, virtually no intelligence. They are driven by the most basic of impulses, the most basic of needs. The need to feed. We are now sealed into the Hive, she has trapped us in. We won't last long. If for some reason, anyone ever dares to re-enter, and you read this, for the love of god, get out. We've encounter three Gen-Y products, the Gen-Y is one of the Hive's early experiments, produced by injecting the virus directly into living tissue. Results were... unstable. Every time it feeds on fresh DNA, it will mutate, becoming a strong, faster hunter. It's already killed and eaten five members of our party, I personally put four bullets through that beast. The genetic mutating is threatening the world, if this outbreak were to escape the Hive, the world as we know it would most likely be over."

The log came to an end and displaying the length of the recording, than returned to the main menu of options. "This explains everything. The T virus mutated the population of this town, doesn't really explain the creepy, paranormal shit going on up at the surface." I got into the elevator and pressed a random number, 4. The elevator started it's decent slowly, but increased to very quick speed.

As it came to a stop on Sublevel 4, I drew my rifle as the doors slowly opened. Thankfully nothing. I stepped out, and looked at my surroundings, "a lab." Well I was close, there were more than six or seven labs on either side a short hallway. I strolled down the hall casually looking into the labs, when I came across on that was flooded. "Wonder what this is all about?" I noticed one of the rooms up ahead had bullet holes in the glass, and there was a slow stream of water pouring out of the holes. I walked down the hall, and I could see clearly through the water filling the rooms. Pens, paper, test tubes, there was equipment floating everywhere. I made my way down the hall, and peered into the room with the bullet holes. "My god." There were three bodies floating in the water, two male bodies in white lab coats hanging in the water, and a girl clearly water logged, sunken to the bottom. "What a horrible way to die." As I looked into the aquarium of death, the female technician that was face down on the bottom began to convulse, she kicked around for a few seconds than sunk back to her watery grave. "Awful, simply awful. Why would someone let this happen?"

I made my way past the rest of the labs and down to the end of the hall, there I had to make a choice, left or right. "Accessing schismatic of the Hive." "If I take a left, I will end up in the living quarters for the employees... If I take a right... there is no right..." My map didn't indicate a right turn. "Interesting, maybe they're hiding something." I made my way down a few uncharted hallways and stairwells until I found myself in a large room. It was like a warehouse, a huge, high roof, steel girders reaching to the roof, and huge cargo containers filled the room. I slowly made my way in between the containers to reach the other side of this huge room. I heard a deep toned thump. I stopped moving and slowed my breathing to see if I could hear it again. Thump. I could kind of tell it was coming from my left. I slowly stepped foot over foot, as quietly as possible towards where I thought the sound was coming from. Thump. I stopped again, the sound was coming from one of the containers, they were all around me. Thump. I turned around and peered in between the cracks of the doors to the containers. "Nothing...?" As I checked a few of the containers, I realized they were all empty. I continued to make my way through the labyrinth of containers. Thump. Again the reverberation, but now as if following me. I stopped for a moment, than it dawned on me. "Shit..." I slowly turned my head upwards to the roof, and on top of the cargo containers was one of the technicians. "Hey You!" He jumped from the top, I jumped out of the way and he came slamming down face first onto the concrete floor. "Ouch, what the fuck made you to do that!" As I towered over the creature, it reached out with a horrible, crispy hiss and grabbed my left shoe. It was obviously on the brink of death, or in extreme pain, because it had no energy to attack me with, but still it tried. Clawing at my shoe, trying to do any damage to me before death overwhelms it, again. "Look at you, look at what you've become. But for what?! You sorry sack of shit." I raised the blunt end of my rifle up above my head, and knowing what was about to happen, it let out one last ditch hiss and claw at my shoe as I slammed my rifle down on the top of it's head. "Poor bastard." I found my way out of the warehouse and continued my way through the Hive into the depths of its core.

Chapter 8: Tea With The Queen...

The series of halls and corridors were lit with red and amber lights, like that of an alarm. The core was fairly small, within the huge confines of the Hive. It was one small hall that opened into a small control room, and a large locked steel door. I sat in a small rolling chair, as I gazed at the nerve centre of the hive, a large computer monitor in front of me and buttons and knobs all around. "Wonder if it has solitaire?" I chuckled to myself as I typed in random code I could remember from my computer science courses I took during my years at College. if:Q=lock NO if:Q=unlockYES. "It couldn't be that simple." I started to rewrite the code, if:Q=lockYES if:Q=unlockNO. I switched around some of the code to trick the queen into opening the doors, there was a loud, deep click from behind a wall, and watched as a door opened from the wall off to the side. The door came out of no where, it was just a flat wall, than a seam broke and the wall opened. "Interesting?"

I walked through the new door and into a short hallway, maybe 20 feet long. There was transparent glass walls, and fine art on the other side. There was dim lighting over casting the pictures, they looked 17th century colonial British art. "There beautiful, must have cost a..." Click. the door behind me shut, I turned to the door I was trying to make my way to, it too was starting to close. "Shit!" I started to sprint towards the closing door. "Damn it!" I screamed as I was huffing my way to beat the door, before it closed. I took one more stride before diving, my hip slammed against the side of the huge, steel door as I dove through at the last second. I spun as I landed flat on my stomach. "Oh god, oh..." I laid on the cold concrete for a moment, I had hit the door pretty hard. I got up on one knee as I looked around. "I'm screwed." The room I was in was completely empty, and I was now locked in. "You should not have come here." A little girl's voice reverberated through the small room. "Hello?" I questioned in confusion. "You should not be down here, you don't have access to this area." the voice told me again. "Who are you?" "I am the Queen, a state of the art..." "Yeah yeah, I already know. Why did you trap me in here." "I needed to scan you." "Scan me, for what?" I asked curiously. "The T Virus. You've been down here for quite awhile, I figured you would have come in contact with one of the victims." I pondered what she was saying for a moment. "I've kicked a little ass, but none of those 'things' ever touched me." "The scan is complete, and you have been cleared. But you still have breached the rules and regulations of the Hive." "Well I don't know what to tell you, I basically walked right down here, you didn't try and stop me, wouldn't that make it your fault?" As I stood cold and alone in the dimly lit room, I couldn't help but listen to the eerie silence of the Hive. I heard the clicking of the door I entered, and light started to shine through the door I had been locked in with. "You may return to the surface Mr. Locke." I guess I had found a legal loop hole in the rules and regulations, but still suprised she didn't just kill me I asked "Do you know what has happened to Boulder Springs?" I listened to the light static of the speakers as the Queen analyzed my question. "The T Virus was developed for severe military applications, it reanimates the body..." "Yeah Queenie, I already heard this. How did the city above get involved?" Again a moment of silence. "When the Hive was constructed we installed everything to be flawless and state of the art, what we didn't incorporate for was the blow-off valves for the ventilation system. Seven hours ago, we had an outsider, like yourself, breach the Hives security during the technicians break hours. He entered the lab area using a stolen security card, and stole a brief case filled with samples of the virus and the anti-virus.

Before leaving the lab, he placed the last tube of the virus on the top of a time lock door. A few minutes after he left the Hive, the door closed knocking the virus to the floor, shattering the tube, and releasing the glass. I locked the Hive completely, but the Virus travelled through the ventilation system, and into all the corridors and rooms of the Hive. The employees and technicians were trapped in these rooms and halls, and when the virus entered the rooms, there was nothing I could do. They had to be sacrificed to contain the virus within the Hive. What I didn't account for was the sequential blow-off valves on the ventilation system, when the pressure became to great in the system, the valves open at the surface and release the pressure. It released the Virus straight into the city centre above. I have no reports from above, but I can imagine the outcome wasn't pleasant." I stood in awe for a moment as I proceed in my mind everything that had been said, I couldn't believe that something like this could actually happen. Virus', Zombies, Doctors, Nurses, businessman, the Hive. I'd only seen this kind of drama in the movies, why would it actually happen to someone, why would it happen to me. I understood everything, I just refused to believe it. "So what happens now?" I asked the Queen. "Well, You can decontaminate yourself in one of the many chambers of the Lab area, and the scan proved you healthy and free of contaminates. So I guess you are free to go."

Chapter 9: Alone In A Busy Hallway...

Without saying a word I turned back towards the door as it opened and left the Queen's Chambers. I got lost a few times, but eventually found my way back into the lab area. As I got close to the lab, I heard chatter, talking. I popped my head around a corner and gazed down a small hallway, about half way down the hall there was a crossroad. Two hallways intersected, so I figured the voices were coming from one of the two ways, I stepped foot over foot as I crept towards the intersection. I stood with my back right up against the wall, I could see down the right side of the crossroad, I spun out and faced down the left side of the new hall. The voices I heard seemed to have no owners. I did a few turns and double takes, but there was no one around. The voices were right there, I could hear them all around me.

I stood alone in a busy hallway. It took a moment to turn back around but when I did, I was surrounded by the voice that had plagued my self-conscious. I twisted around and around, I was in the middle of a long hall, there was a locked door behind me and wall in front of me. I could hear them talking as if time had flocculated and the physical beings had got through, I turned back to the door and there were two technicians wearing white lab coats walking right at me. "Stop.. STOP!" They passed right by me, as I stood their I heard an announcement over the intercom system. 'Lunch will be served in twenty minutes.' I was excited for a moment until I realized that none of this existed, well not in this time anyways. A few more technicians scurried out of some of the surrounding labs, and a tall man, wearing dark jeans and a business jacket came motoring out of a side hall. He was very cautious about what he was doing constantly looking over his shoulder, he walked up to the door in front of me, hit a few keys on the security keypad and enter the room. I quickly tried to jump into the room as the door was closing, but forgetting that the door only existed half in reality I slammed into the closed door of my dimension. "Crap!" I shook myself off and took a few side steps to the viewing window. The man walked into a small corner and placed his hands on two joystick looking controllers, I assumed that they controlled some kind of claws or hands on the other side of the glass he was standing in front of, but I couldn't see through the glass because of the angle I was at.

The man played with the controllers for a while, maybe five minutes, and than took his hands off and rushed over to a computer, checking his watch along the way. He typed on a few keys and ran back to the controllers this time lifting up a small door underneath the controllers to allow him access to pull out a large steel briefcase. I, again, assumed that whatever he was playing with on the other side of the glass was now in the briefcase he was holding. He quickly checked his watch again and darted over to a nearby table. He placed the briefcase on the table gently and open it via a keypad on the face of the case. He slowly pulled a cylindrical tube, maybe the size of a toilet paper roll, out of the case and placed it on the table beside him. He checked his watch one last time and ran out to the hall with the briefcase and placed it carefully on the floor, quickly sneaking back in he picked the tube off the table and placed it on top of the door itself. "What the hell is he doing?" I asked myself as I watched the man leave the room again, picking up the briefcase and scurrying off and around a corner. I peeked back into the room and watched as the door, obviously on a timer, slowly closed, knocking the tube down to the ground. I watched as a light gas emitted from the puddle of multi-coloured liquid on the floor wafted up to the ceiling eventually filling the room. "Answers... I need answers." I sprinted around a corner and into a long open hallway, at the end the tall man, taking a left. I sprinted as hard as I could to catch up to him. Just as I started reached the end of the hall, he quickly ran back from the left, this time going right, I don't think he knew this place very well or where he was going. I followed about ten feet behind him, until he came through a small emergency door, we were in the reception area that I had been in earlier, except the body's weren't zombies, they were normal people, shot up and laid out in the same pattern as the ones I had killed, so I assumed it was another ripple or rift between my dimension and this one.

He ran through the doors I had came through, but when I burst through the door, nothing. As usual, my dreams of finding an answer ere shattered. My self-conscious had been awakened from this 'dream.' I sat back on the sleigh-like emergency escape pod, it slowly began to roll forward. "Wait!" I jumped off and pulled the EEP off the tracks. "These bastards are gonna stay down here!" I ran back into the reception and grabbed a small office chair. I came back into the EEP hallway, shut the double swinging doors behind me, and shoved the chair leg through the handles, locking them in. I didn't know if this was the only exit, but that's one less that they have. I re-railed the EEP and hopped on. It crept up the large incline of the hallway and eventually began to increase in velocity. The ride took about five minutes, and was quite pleasant actually.

Chapter 10: Quarter to Three...

As I re-enter the hospital, beaten and battered. I couldn't help but ask myself, as usual, a thousand questions. Everything I thought I knew about what was going on here was wrong, what happened to the people here? Why are the only ones left children? Why are there mummies walking around? Why am I here? I seeked answers to those questions and I was going to look in the only place I knew. Alyssa. I made sure to pick up the plastic bottle, I figured at least it would give me something to drink.

As I made my way back upstairs I mentally prepared the questions I was going to ask her. I opened the door to the room where I had left her, but she was gone. "Alyssa!" I called, but with no answer. I looked around the room a little to see if I could find anything that might lead me back to Alyssa, nothing; it was as if Alyssa vanished. As I left the room I was again halted by a ripple, a draft of energy that seemed to waft past me, I felt and heard it, by what use to be the hospital was know that eerie school with the blood everywhere. I quickly turned, the examination room I had just came out of was now a bathroom. "Uhh... I was just... OK, wait... Uhh?" I was so confused it almost hurt; I couldn't understand what was happening. "Alyssa?!" This time I actually got a response, "Sebastian, help! Quickly help!" "Alyssa I'm coming, just keep yelling." "Sebastian please hurry they're coming!" I sprinted through the halls of the school slipping here and there on the blood on the floor. Finally the screams were so close, but the screams were being drowned out by the sound of static. The pocket radio I had taken from the police station was starting to howl again. I eventually bursted into what appeared to be the gym, and immediately noticed Alyssa encaged upside down in large box with no walls, just the frame of the box. Her hands and feet were bound, and there was a large creature standing behind her on a small ledge. It was warring the same mummy wrap as the doctors I had seen at the hospital, but was, I guess, naked. Holding a huge spear in one hand and Alyssa's neck in the other, I approached this altercation very cautiously, "Alyssa are you OK?" "I don't know, this thing doesn't talk." "Alyssa... Where's the gun?" "It's in the bleachers behind you." I stealthily moved towards the gun, and picked it up, just out of sight of the creature.

I snuck under the bleachers and took aim at the creature through the G11's 1:1 optical scope; this gave me an almost flawless shot at what ever it was. I finished up taking aim, and lightly pulled the trigger forgetting for a moment that this was one of the most powerful assault rifles on the planet. The sound of the rifle shot echoed through the gym a few times before silence once again fell on the school. "Alyssa, are you OK?" I walked over to her, the shot had grazed her head and she was bleeding a little from the scratch. "Sebastian... for a writer you are a shoot pretty good." I untied Alyssa and we left the gym, than the school. We eventually found ourselves back at the 'quarter to three' caf‚, Alyssa made us a couple of cups of coffee and I started to ask her about what I had seen on the tape. "OK Sebastian, as I said before there is a lot you don't know about this town, but I do. The hospital isn't all about making people feel better, some of the officials started to test radical new drugs on some of the patients, usually to children because they have high immune tolerances. Krishan was one of my favourite patients; she was always happy and had a smile on her face. But she did have another side; she had had past incidences where she believed that something was inside of her trying to get out. I mean it sounds crazy and all, but sometimes when we were alone in her room, that side would come out, and start talking to me, but it would know stuff about me that no one would ever know, my deepest darkest fears. Well when I noticed Krishan's name on the test list I tried to get them to change it, take someone else, but they wouldn't they insisted on using Krishan. They said she had the power to survive through the procedure. They were right about surviving, but they never could have guessed the consequences. It's like as soon as White Claudia started to..." "Wait! You mean the red liquid was... White Claudia!" "Yeah, we would manually place the drug onto nerves to see if we could stimulate the nerve enough to bring back feeling to the dead cells. But in most cases the shock from the hallucinations was enough to kill them, except for Krishan, it seems that as soon as she had recovered from the treatment, the episodes she was having had gone. But she believed that the evil spirit inside of her had been released by the incisions we had made when performing the procedure. She just kept saying 'Are you happy now, we're all going to die because of you!" Over and over those words still plague me because they have yet to be answered as too why she would say that. Sabastien, when you left me in the school, I found a class room, and I found this on the floor just inside the door." I accepted the paper, book report binder she was handing me and looked at the cover, nothing. " What's this?" I asked her still starring at the empty cover. "Read it." I flipped the page open and the title at the top of the page along with the first couple of paragraphs were covered in blood, I turned away for a moment thinking about what had happened to the owner of this folder. As my eyes turned to the pages I began to read into the minds of another one of Medwich's students.

But before I fell asleep...I heard a noise. It was coming from inside my room. It was the cry of a baby at first but then it's wail turned into an inhumanly piercing shriek that made my ears ache. Again and again the shriek rang out and revebrated off the four bare walls of my room. I couldn't move, I couldn't scream. My heart pounded in my chest and my bottom lip trembled. Suddenly the shrieking stopped and a new sound emerged from the dark, It sounded like something was snuffling at the air. Then... "Eh?" I heard 'it' say. Then it began laughing maniacilly in its baby voice but again it turned into a morbid shriek at the end. My heart stopped and my body went rigid as I heard whatever it was shuffling across the carpet of my bedroom floor....towards me. Without warning, the thing dove under my bed sheets. This time I really screamed. I didn't know what is was but it was small and the skin of the creature was hard and leathery. It scurried about everywhere over my body at an insane speed as if looking for something. Still screaming, I lashed about frantically but by bedsheets seemed to constrict around my body.

With a great effort, I finally pulled myself from my bed. My first instinct was to turn on the light and reveal the monster but as soon as my feet hit the ground, a pair of cold hands grabbed my ankles from underneath the bed. They pulled me under with such force it felt like my legs broke. Again, I couldn't struggle. This monster, whatever this one was, forced itself down my throat. It felt sickening as its cold, hard skin rubbed against the insides of my mouth and made me gag and choke. I was pretty sure I would vomit if the thing wasn't in the way so my stomach acids just churned over and over until my chest burned. The thing seemingly seeped in even though it felt too large to enter my body. My pain was at it's peak when I felt it's disguting body enter inside me completely.

"Grghrrrrrrrrrrrgh!!!!"

My entire body was about to burst! I was so confused and in horrific pain.

"THIS.IS.ALL.THEIR.FAULT!!!"

That was the last thought in my head before I blacked out.

My family was in the dining room, enjoying a hearty breakfast like it was thanksgiving. They all laughed and ate their food with content like those families you see on TV commercials where everyone is 'happy'.

It seemed like they didn't have another member in their lives at all. Little did they know that the beautiful morning would soon be engulfed in a firestorm of vengeance.

A short time later, I ambled into the room to the family that was alien to me. As always, they ignored me completely as I sat down to the rectangular table, laden with white cloth. They continued to act like the Brady Bunch for quite some time while I just sat there, my shoulders hunched and my eyes directed to the floor until my mother finally gave notice of me and laid out a plate of food that looked like the type of scraps an uncaring owner would give to a dog. I gave no sign to my pitiful breakfast.just sat there.

Then without warning, I leapt to my feet and flipped the table to its side, sending plates and glasses smashing to the floor. My sisters shrieked backing away against the wall while my parents stared at him, recovering from my sudden outburst. "You will immediately explain yourself, young man!" He bellowed sending spit inches from his face. I stood like a statue, my face obscured by my hair. "EXPLAIN YOURSELF!!" my father repeated. Still nothing. Now my father advanced on me, grumbling under his breath. "Scott!" my mother grabbed her husband by the arm but was quickly shook off. Scott turned away from me and looked into her eyes. "No more of this Lydia, I've had enough" He said "Its about time Austin learned some disclipine" But when he turned to face his son, I was no longer staring at the floor but straight into the eyes of the father that never cared. Then, my face began to bleed. My eyes, ears, mouth and nose hosed out dark red blood that quickly trailed down my clothes. The Twins screamed, Scott stood rooted to the spot and Lydia began convulsing as she stared in shock. I was completely covered in my own blood. The floor underneath my feet however was totally devoid of it.

The only part of my body that wasn't a sickly red were my eyes. They were totally white. Even my pupils seemed to have dissappeared. Now I glared at the family I hated, teeth bared, eyes opened wide and spoke in a voice that was not my own. "Killing you here would not be enough.instead, I will plunge your souls into the underworld of this beloved town. There you shall all experience pain beyond imagination."

After I said thas, I spread out my arms and the world surrounding my family was engulfed by darkness.

The connection between myself and the students hear at the school was once more made and broken, as if the town was trying to show me something, as much as I didn't want to know, it tried. Looking at this makes me feel like someone is groping around in my skull. Before I threw the folder to the ground and conitnued I noticed at the bottom of the last page written in blood, Glad Austin is being sent to Mr. Kauffman for help, this 'story' scares me and has reflected a lack of effort for any actual work in this class. F-.

We chatted a little about some of the children that had come and gone through her years at the Brookhaven hospital to get my mind off the poor Medwich students, but eventually we got kind of bored and decided too venture out and discover more of the mystery that is Boulder Springs. We decided to drive the rest of the search because we both felt a little more protected. We aimlessly drove the streets of the small mountain town, but we could find anything out of the ordinary. We even revisited the school and police station, but nothing. "Do you think it has stopped Sebastian, what ever is enslaving this town?" "I have no idea, I. hope so." As we drove dizzyingly around and around the small town, we could still find no signs of life. "Why don't we just head back to Stanley's and get a good nights sleep." I asked Alyssa, but with no answer, "Alyssa. Alyssa?" I peered over and saw her beautiful face all pressed up against the window, she was in a deep sleep. So I pulled the map out of the glove box and followed the directions back to Stanley's, as we pulled up the long driveway the radio started to scratch a little, as if the static wasn't scary enough, the sun-setting cast a low orange glow through the trees creating a very dark environment in the area of the cabin that was very eerie and calm. As we perched the top of the driveway and the cabin came into site, I noticed the little girl again. "Alyssa wake up, quick!" "What? Where are we?" "Alyssa look!" I quickly got her attention on the stairs to the cabin. "Krishan!" She screamed as the little girl, once again not facing me, quickly spun to reveal herself. Sure enough it was the same girl I had seen in the video at the hospital. Before I could say anything else, Alyssa burst out of the car and started to run too the girl. As Alyssa started to reach out to touch the girl, she started to twitch and spin her head around, almost as if she was in fast motion. Any normal person would have snapped their neck from the speed of the twitches, but the little girl seemed to withstand it fine. Alyssa was kind of startled by what she was seeing and feel back into the dirt of the driveway. The girl stopped facing away from us and said in a soft voice, "Before you die, I will kill you." Than just walked up into the cabin, but she couldn't just walk normally, Her steps were quick with short pauses in between.

"Alyssa! Are you ok?" I asked as I ran over from the car. "Krishan... what happened to her?" I gently helped Alyssa up to her feet and cautiously brought her inside, and once again the little girl had disappeared. I helped Alyssa into the bedroom and laid her down for bed. As I sat there watching her drift off too sleep I couldn't help but be reminded of my ex-wife, Elizabeth, her and Alyssa looked a lot alike, but nevertheless I digressed to the couch for a good night sleep.

As I started to fall asleep I was thinking about everything I had waiting for me back home, Cheryl; my seven year old daughter, My dog; Sameal. Everything was running through my mind about home, I guess I was home sick, but I my curiosity was stopping me from just getting in my car and going home. I thought of this whole thing as a test I really wasn't willing to fail, I felt like one of my protagonists in one of my novels. Eventually my thoughts were nulled by my slumber and I drifted off into a deep sleep.

When morning came I slowly opened my eyes and checked my watch, "11:45. Shit I slept in... I wonder if Alyssa made me breakfast, he he." I chuckled to myself, stood up and stretched, the couch had put awful knots in my back. "Hey Alyssa, you decent?" I said as I walked into the bedroom with my hand over my eyes and a smirk on my face. "Alright, lets get a move on, I'm sure there's more to see in town, lets go!" When I finally realized there was no answer I pulled my hands down to reveal that Alyssa had left sometime during the night. "Fuck! Where the hell did she go?!" As I turned around to check the rest of the house I was abruptly halted by the sight of blood splattered all over the wall behind the door. As I stood almost in tears thinking about what had happened to Alyssa, I noticed writing in the blood. Someone, or something, had dragged it's fingers through the blood to write a message to me. It read,

If you want to see me alive Sebastian, I insist that you hurry too the Lakeside Amusement Park, your faith will await you.

I'm waiting for you here, here at our special place.

As I sat there with tears streaming down my face, I was startled by my pocket radio throwing itself on and Alyssa's voice start to play through. "Sebastian, help me.... Sebastian, where are you?" "Alyssa! I'm here, can you hear me?" The radio faded to silence and than turned itself off. At least the thought of Alyssa being alive pushed me onward, onward to the Boulder Springs, Lakeside Amusement Park.

Chapter 11: A Loud Silence...

As I breached the gates to the park I had cold shivers running through my body, making every hair on my body stand on end. The amusement park was mostly quiet when I heard the sound that now instinctively pushed my senses to full alert. The radio, the only thing I could depend on besides I G11, began blaring static. It had created a Pavlovian reaction in me over the time since I had found it. I heard the white noise of the radio, and knew that there was something going to crawl, run, or fly out of the darkness and try to kill me. Whenever that white noise began to crescendo, I listened for every sound, stared the darkness in the face until it revealed what was after me. This time was no exception. The pitch-black abyss harboured nothing but monsters. I had given up on hoping that Cheryl would suddenly walk out of the dark, smile at me in the strange, knowing way she always did... Then we'd suddenly be back in our car on the highway rather than in the middle of someone's demented version of hell. I had long since stopped hoping that this could be a dream. If it were, I'd have to be insane to dream it.

The white noise from the radio got louder. Since actually looking for the creature was fruitless until it got the flashlight's radius, I tried other tricks I'd picked up for detecting where the attack was going to come from. The rusty metal grating that served as the ground in this dark, decayed version of the Boulder Springs Lakeside Amusement Park did not quiver. Okay, so it wasn't anything big, those mummy creatures made the ground quiver a little when they jumped around at me. But it could be one of those 'Zombie' kids we saw at the Medwich Elementary School. I wished more than ever that I could see everywhere at once. There was a faint squeaking from somewhere around me.

My finger twitched on the trigger of the gun. My heart was racing already, and I hadn't even seen the monster yet. The anticipation was probably going to be worse than the actual battle. I'd been in this exact situation so many times by now, but being used to it did not stop it from being terrifying. More squeaking. The second I saw movement in the dark abyss around me, I fired the G11. My gun was the only reason I'd survived this nightmare so far, and it would help me again now. The movement didn't stop, even though I was sure I'd hit my target. I was not even close to an expert with guns, but I was sure I'd hit it that time. Warily, I moved closer, watching the moving darkness to keep my target in sight. It wasn't until I moved closer that I saw what it was. My alertness relaxed slightly. Not a monster, at least not one I could fight or that could hurt me. It made me want to curse a lot more. I'd wasted a bullet from I very limited supply on something that wasn't even a threat. It was hard to make out the creature, but its outline looked like that of a baby or small child. Except it had a larger head and it was black-transparent, as insubstantial as a ghost. I hadn't run across these little things before, but it set the radio off, so it was bound to be a threat. They didn't seem to notice me, in fact, as if they existed only half in this dimension. I watched as this one stumbled forward, making a small squeak when it hit the ground. It was only there a second before it slowly faded away for no apparent reason. The radio dimmed with the creature until it was deathly silent again.

Telling myself not to be so jumpy next time, I continued to move around the perimeter of the amusement park. The only clear objective I had at the moment was finding Alyssa, who was trapped in this hellish nightmare as well. Now I was creeping around a twisted nightmare version of the amusement park looking for her when she was very likely dead. Not that I chances for surviving were much better.

Finding the answer to what had happened to this town was still at the front of I mind, but at least I had an idea of where Alyssa was. Once I found Alyssa, we might find some hint of where to go next. I hadn't realized it until a little while ago, but someone had set up this town like a puzzle, with only one right way to go and dead ends everywhere else. Whether it was just rotten luck, I was being herded somewhere, or someone was playing games with me, I didn't like it.

For some reason I had a faint memory of the layout of the park, but the vague memories of the amusement park's layout turned out to be little help. I had intended to head for the Ferris wheel first to get my bearings, but the only path going there dropped sharply, into nothing but blackness and remains of twisted metal. It looked like the aftermath of an earthquake. So the Ferris wheel was no longer an option. The only place I could think of to go was the carousel. If that was collapsed as well, I was really in trouble. Most of the paths had collapsed, leaving dead ends into the seemingly infinite blackness below the metal ground. I'd never figured out whether it was bottomless or not. If it was, it certainly wouldn't surprise me. I liked to think that there was very little that could surprise me any more, but every time I said it, something else came along that could knock me on my ass. I couldn't count how many times my radio had blared and one of those things had popped out of the dark, scaring the hell out of me. A few feet didn't give much time to get my gun out, but 'not much' was just enough. I was still alive, after all. And if all else failed, I would just run like hell. There was no shame in running as fast as I could when I saw one of those mummies. I wasn't a marine or soldier or anything. I was a writer for god's sake. I'd barely touched a gun before, never had a rational reason to be afraid of the dark, and certainly hadn't believed much in magic and superstitions and alternate universes. Something about being trapped in the middle of a nightmarish alternate dimension made me more inclined to believe.

It took almost twenty more tense minutes of wandering in the dark to find the carousel. I'd lost I bearings more than once, had a grand total of five false alarms with those ghost creatures and met one real mummy that had almost gutted me with a knife before I managed to blow it's head off. Every such battle made me more fearful for Alyssa. Where the hell was she? Alyssa was supposed to be wandering around here somewhere. The memory of her begging me for help kept me going. The memory of her voice, begging "Sebastian, help me.... Sebastian, where are you?" Was all that I needed to spur me on.

"Oh god, please let me find her soon..." I whispered as I fumbled with the rusted gate that led to the main part of the carousel. "She's just an innocent girl... I never..." I realized that talking might attract more monsters, so I kept the rest in my mind. "Okay, so she's not my wife or anything, But I have to find her, I have to tell her, I have to get her away from this place... She's just a girl; I can't let her die here..." The latch on the carousel gate opened with a little effort. The path was collapsed everywhere else, maybe I could cut across here and get to the rest of the park. I still had the Ferris wheel in mind as a destination. If I could see anything beyond my flashlight range, I would have been able to see it from here.

The ghostly stillness of the carousel made this place seem even more deserted. I had such fond memories of being here with my wife, going on this ride with her, but because I had never been here before, that confused me. Cheryl had a carousel toy in her bedroom back home, a music box that played a distorted version of "Twinkle Twinkle". It seemed like the perfect vacation spot even though I was still haunted by thoughts of my dead wife. I'd had the idea that coming here could somehow get me past the loss, make something happy out of memories that made me depressed. Now I had memories that would give me nightmares, nightmare of Alyssa dying in my hands. Amazing how such happy things were gone so fast. Cheryl was at home waiting for someone who might not come. My wife had been dead for years, and the carousel was ironically just as dead. There was no movement, no music, and it was in the middle of a nightmare world. Even the plastic horses seemed dead. Many of them were broken off their poles and smashed to pieces. The ones that remained fixed in their permanent gallop on the metal poles stared at me with dead, glassy eyes. The horses weren't the only things staring at me with dead eyes.

I kept a firm grip on my gun as I walked across the still carousel. Even though my radio was silent, I still expected something to jump out and attack me. It would take me forever to unwind from this high-strung state of alertness. Assuming I get out of here alive. I still felt like the horses were staring at me. Being here so long must be getting to me more than I thought.

Among the broken horses, something stirred. The soft groan was barely audible, and went unnoticed. There were sirens in the distance that distracted me. I'd never figured out what they were for or where they were coming from. The groan repeated, louder and longer, like the whisper of a demon being summoned. This time I couldn't miss it. It made me freeze for a second, enough time for me to wonder why my pocket radio wasn't going crazy with static. Then I scanned the dark carousel, my flashlight beam bouncing around in the shadows. I'd met a few creatures that my radio didn't react to. The flashlight beam revealed little out of the ordinary as it darted from shadow to shadow. The definition of ordinary was quite different here, but I'd grown used to it. There were broken carousel horses.... rust... some blood stains... Nothing strange. This dark amusement park had far less in the way of gruesome scenery than the hospital or school had. Rooms full of blood-and -fluid-soaked hospital beds, mutilated corpses hanging like decorations from walls and ceilings, mystery blood stains as abundant as rust on the metal walls, rooms crawling with zombie-like mummies that had once been nurses and doctors... That had to have taken ten years off my life.

Chapter 12: Final Showdown...

I was ready to give up when my flashlight caught something near the other side of the carousel. I adjusted the brightness on the flashlight beam to get a better look. A body, slumped in a rusted wheelchair, rested between some horses. The head was nestled against the chest, but I couldn't make out the clothes all too well. A nurses uniform. The flashlight beam bounced all over the place as I ran to the other side of the carousel, weaving between horses to get to the wheelchair as fast as I could. It took me all of a few seconds to get there, but that was too long for me. I had to see, had to show myself that I was dreaming... That this could not possible be who I thought it was. I remembered seeing wheelchairs a few times, in the alleyways of the town and in the school and hospital. All had been broken, and all had blood stains around them. This one was stained with red, but I'd need a closer look to know if it was rust or blood or both. That was hardly a concern. She wasn't moving. I had to see if she was still alive.... Unfortunately she saved me the trouble.

Before I could reach the wheelchair, she raised her head a little, eyes still closed.

I slipped the gun to my side as I slowed to a jog, then stopped entirely when I was a few feet away. "Alyssa..." I said in a low whisper. She didn't reply. Her head was moving a little, eyelids fluttering as if they were trying to open but couldn't. I really didn't know what to make of this. There was the possibility that she was just taking a breather before she went on to the rest of the park.....But I didn't believe it for a second. She wasn't just resting, she looked more like she was asleep. Alyssa wouldn't just fall asleep like that, especially not here in the middle of this amusement park when monsters were roaming everywhere.

"Alyssa, wake up!" I said. Though I wanted to move closer, there was a certain wrongness about this that made me want to stay back. Then again, it was my instincts telling me that, and I'd discovered that my instincts weren't worth crap a lot of the time. I'd barged into rooms I was sure would be swarming with monsters, and found absolutely nothing. Other times I was sure a room as safe, only to be greeted with a blare of static from my radio and shuffling moan of monsters as soon as I opened the door. The bad feeling I was getting would not be ignored, but I was sure I'd feel like an idiot when Alyssa suddenly stood up and asked me why I was just standing there looking at her.

Unfortunately, that didn't happen. Alyssa did stand, but she was so wobbly on her feet she had to use the arms of the wheelchair for support. When I considered going to help her, she had managed to right herself, thought she was leaning so heavily on her right leg she looked like she might fall over anyway.

When Alyssa looked at me, her eyes finally open, My first thought was that she had taken drugs. Her eyes were blood-shot, so much that her real eye colour wasn't distinguishable. When she took a shaky step towards me, she was defiantly having trouble keeping her balance. "What the hell...?" I said to myself. Raising my voice a few notches, I called out, "What's wrong with you?" Alyssa stopped, and cocked her head as if she didn't know where his voice was coming from. Her blood-shot eyes searched me, but didn't show a hint of recognition. She's was out of it completely. Maybe Alyssa hadn't been able to handle all this horror and distortion of reality. I didn't think she'd be stupid enough to lose herself in drugs right now, but I really didn't know a thing about her. Maybe she was a drug addict and I hadn't known it.

Alyssa glared at me emotionlessly for a moment, swaying a little on her shaky legs. Then she took another step towards me. Sebastian countered by backing up a step. The nurse looked at me again. One arm lazily dropped to her side. A second later, she drew a gun from under her white apron.

It was then that I noticed her eyes weren't just blood-shot. They were red.

I jumped back a few more steps, almost tipping over one of those carousel horses. Alyssa's arm came up, but whatever had happened to her, she wasn't able to aim well. The gun was lop-sided, and it barely seemed she was aiming. More like shooting in her sleep. But her aim wasn't destroyed completely. I ducked behind a horse just in time to hear the sound of a shot fired, and the bullet 'ping' off the horse instead. "Whoa, whoa, Alyssa, calm down!" I babbled, "It's me, it's Sebastian, Sebastian Locke!" Two more shots were fired at me. The first went wide and didn't hit anything, but the second went into the floor next to my foot. I fumbled for my own gun, quickly making sure it was loaded. I had three clips left, which would do me for about a hundred and thirty more shots. "What are you doing?!" I called out, "I'm not a monster, I'm not going to hurt you, just god, stop shooting at me!" I yelled the last part as another bullet plunged into the ground an inch from me. That made me decide to move from my lame hiding spot. Alyssa's aim was more accurate every time. I dashed out from behind the horse, running towards the back of the carousel. I could always jump off and run, but I wouldn't. This wasn't a monster, this was Alyssa! Something had happened to her, and I wasn't going to leave her here.

Bullets followed me across the carousel. I wasn't sure how many bullets her gun held, or how many clips she had left, but my only immediate concern was moving fast enough to avoid those bullets. I counted five fired so far. Maybe four. I was fairly sure her gun could hold ten bullets. When I had done a full circle of the carousel, I stopped behind Alyssa's wheelchair. To my surprised, Alyssa had barely made it a few metres from where she'd started. The woman really was moving like a zombie. At the moment, she was in the process of turning around to face me, but doing it agonizingly slow. I fiddled with my flashlight a moment, widening the beam to get a better view. The back of her shirt looked bloody and torn. A tumerous lump protruded at the base of her neck, on her spine. That gave me flashback to the hospital. The doctors and nurses had all been like this, all had a little parasitic...thing...attached to their spines. The zombie hospital staff tried to attack me until they were stone-cold dead, going so far as to claw at me when I knocked the knife or other weapon out of their hands and pumped five bullets into them.

There was no time for questions. Alyssa was possessed, and I was more than likely going to have to kill her. If only there were a way to get that parasite off... I'd tried it once, back in the hospital with a doctor I'd put a few bullets in. I'd used its knife to pry it off, but the results had been less than I'd expected. The second the squirming creature was detached and it died. And so did the doctor. A gush of blood and fluid had burst out of the back of its neck with the parasite, and it had died thrashing madly on the floor, screaming in agony. That wasn't a death I wanted to inflict on Alyssa.

I shot at her a few times, trying to hit her legs or arms rather than anything vital. If I avoid killing her, maybe I could find a way to get that parasite off. She flinched a little when a bullet went into her side, but not much. Even when blood began to soak through her shirt, it barely slowed her down. She fixed her dead eyes on me, moaning like a hungry zombie. She held her hands outstretched as she lurched forward, towards me. I gripped the rusty wheelchair firmly and ran at her with it. "Have to get her down, just knock her out or something." I thought to myself. I collided with Alyssa before she could aim her gun. She was thrown off what little balance she had, teetering a little. So was I when the carousel suddenly started up. The lurching of the ground as the ride started up threw me enough to separate Alyssa and I. She was knocked down, but I lurched forward and hit my jaw off the metal handle of the wheelchair. My hands flew to my mouth even as the carousel started gaining velocity. I'd bitten the side of my mouth when my jaw hit and my chin was cut. For a second I wondered if I'd need a tetanus shot, as the wheelchair was quite rusted and blood-covered. Tetanus was the least of my worries. Alyssa was getting back on her feet, or lurching, more accurately. The carousel was spinning faster. I scrambled away before Alyssa could fully recover herself. It was harder to keep my balance now that the ride was moving. I entertained the idea of jumping off the ride, but it was moving faster every second, far faster than it should. I'd likely end up falling into one of the bottomless pits if I missed the jump, or breaking a leg if I landed on solid ground. Then I was as good as dead anyway.

The carousel music blared out, making it even worse for I. It was a sound like a piano that had half the strings cut and rest damaged or de-tuned completely. There was still an underlying happy melody in there somewhere, but it was so twisted and corrupted it wasn't close to recognizable.

I turned and ran backwards a few steps to see if Alyssa was aiming at me again. She was just lurching her way towards me, her gun hanging limp at her side. I aimed at her leg again, but my aim showed how little use I'd made of firearms during my career as a writer. The shot missed completely. However, it made Alyssa raise her gun again and fire an impossibly accurate shot. Accurate for a zombie, at least. It only missed me by a few inches. She had four bullets left by my count. I had thirty left till I had to reload. Okay, I could work with that. I dashed to the far side of the carousel, looking for a good angle to shoot at her from. The new few minutes were a demented game of tag for I, with Alyssa as 'it'. I had to run like an idiot around the carousel, keeping enough distance between us so that I could dodge her return fire as best I could. For every bullet I fired, she shot one back. If she tagged me, I was as 'out' as one could be. Eventually, I counted ten bullets fired. I dashed around to get behind Alyssa before she could turn around. Rather than waste my last few shots, I picked a steel pipe I noticed on the ground, probably knocked off one of the horses. Guns weren't the only useful weapons when it came to dealing with these satanic creatures. A solid blow to the head with a steel pipe was surprisingly effective, even on monsters. I lunged the last few feet towards Alyssa, bringing the pipe across for an impact to the side that would have cracked a few ribs on anyone else. Alyssa staggered, but recovered in a second. She punched me with amazing strength, an impact with my arm that was sure to leave a bruise. With another swing of my pipe, I landed a hit on the base of her neck, just above the parasite. That stopped her for a second longer than the last one had, but she kept coming. "Just...fall...down..." I forced out between swings of my makeshift weapon and attempts to dodge Alyssa's counter-punches. I didn't want to kill her, just get her unconscious. Then I could come back later with a way to cure her and get that parasite off without killing her like my amateur surgery attempt on the doctor in the hospital.

It was I who's guard slipped first. I was too slow bringing my pipe back for another swing. Alyssa managed to clock me, punching me clean in the jaw. Having already hit my jaw off the wheelchair, the dull pain was doubled. Warm blood trickled down my chin from the widened cut. I swung my pipe blindly to buy myself a second to recover from that punch, missing completely this time. But Alyssa didn't punch me again. She aimed her gun and fired. Pain stabbed into my chest all of a sudden. I stumbled back until I tripped over a broken carousel horse, landing on my back on the rust-eaten metal floor. The metal pipe made a hollow gong on the floor as it rolled from my hand. My attempts not to scream only dummed it down to a moan as I grasped weakly at my jacket. Warm. Wet. Sticky. And pain like someone stabbing me over and over again. "She used all her bullets!" I thought frantically; "She didn't shoot me..." She couldn't shoot me, she had no goddamn bullets!" Had I counted wrong? Had there been more than ten to begin with? It didn't matter now. The world spun around out of the corner of my eye, but the ceiling I was staring at seemed stationary from my position. I raised my head painfully, my chest screaming pain. She was still there. Alyssa stood there staring with dead zombie eyes. The gun came up. She was going to shoot again. I awkwardly aimed my own gun and fired. One shot hit her stomach. She didn't flinch. But she didn't fire either. The gun was raised further until it was at eye level. She looked at it a moment, then threw it to the ground. She advanced on me again. I stopped trying to stop the bleeding and grabbed my gun with one bloodstained hand. Two loud shots rang out above the distorted carousel music, but only one hit her. Then the gun clicked empty. I fumbled to set the second clip in the holster, but couldn't manage the dexterity needed to load my gun with pain stabbing me and the fact that I was getting dizzier every second. Plus my hands were too sticky from trying to stop my bleeding. The clips only fell from my clumsy fingers when I tried to load them. I gave up in the gun and reached into my jacket, searching for anything that could be used as a weapon. The only thing resembling a weapon was a knife. A kitchen knife I'd grabbed at the hospital ages ago. "--I'm shot, I'm going to die, GOD this hurts, it hurts." Throwing was less my thing than shooting, but the knife actually managed to hit close to its mark and plant itself just below Alyssa's ribs. Her dead eyes widened just a little. She stopped in her tracks, clutching at the weapon firmly embedded in her. I watched frozen from a moment, almost able to ignore my own pain with the hope that the knife might have stopped her for a few minutes. I'd killed zombie nurses with less than that, maybe it would stop Alyssa too. It had to... Alyssa's fingers clumsily wrapped around the black, non-descript handle of the knife. Her lips parted slightly. A small grunt rose in her throat as she roughly yanked the blade out of herself. She was bleeding, but not enough. The knife had done nothing but give Alyssa another weapon. I reached into my bloody jacket, searching for something else, anything else. I needed a weapon, but found absolutely nothing. Just junk he's picked up along the way. Whatever I touched was thrown. Some pieces of metal that were in my limited reach and a pipe. Everything either missed Alyssa completely or had no effect, but I no longer care. I tried to reach the pipe, but it had rolled away. I did get a good look at my hand though. I hadn't known it was quite that bloody.

"Cheryl...." I moaned. I was never going to see Cheryl now. Her haunting "Daddy... I love you..." Replayed in my head. "I'm not going to save her... I'm going to die, Alyssa is going to die if she's not already dead... Damn it, why did she have too turn into one of them, why couldn't I help her?!" Alyssa was on me in a few seconds. Her red eyes burned their image into me. My flashlight still shone bright in the dark, so I saw her raise the knife over me. One bloody hand made a weak attempt to grab her wrist, but it only diverted the knife and made it slash my arm instead. Alyssa only brought the knife up again. I tried to deflect it again. There was nothing else I could do. Alyssa managed to stab me twice, but it was getting harder to notice. The pain from the bullet hadn't relented a bit, and it never became any more tolerable. The stabbing was just more pain being piled up on top of that. Blood was pooling under me now, staining my clothes, my flashlight, everything. A little had splattered on the glass over the beam, making a section of the beam distorted. My chin was still bleeding from Alyssa's punch. Blood loss and pain was making me less and less coherent, but I couldn't seem to pass out yet. I'd been out long before this when I'd been attacked by those demon-imp-child in the alleyway. Alyssa's third stab met something tucked in my jacket. Something I'd missed while I was throwing things at her. I shoved one hand into my jacket. The pointed edges of the Flaurous were there, but that wasn't what Alyssa had hit. The only thing there besides the Flaurous. I pulled out the bottle of red stuff I'd picked up in the hospital. The knife had slashed a hole in the plastic container, making the contents drip over my fingers when I pulled it out.

When Alyssa leaned in too stab me again, I reacted instantly. I crashed the thing into Alyssa's head. The entire contents of blood-hued liquid spilled over her, dribbling in rivets down her hair and neck. She had managed to nick me with the knife, but I had gotten my newfound weapon all over her. The result was instantaneous. Alyssa jerked back up, thrashing and screaming like she was in more pain than I. She staggered back a few steps, then collapsed to the ground, still writhing and screaming at the top of her lungs. I managed to push myself up a little more to watch. She was trying to tear at the parasite on her neck. If she tore it off it would kill her, just like it had the doctor at the hospital. But I noticed the parasite writhing as well. It was detaching on its own. I vaguely wondered why, but I was losing consciousness quickly. The distorted carousel music was blending with her screams, making one big lump of sound to me. It eventually sounded like she was screaming my name. A sudden shake brought me back to half-consciousness for a moment. Alyssa had her hands on my shoulders. She was bleeding a little, but whatever damage the parasite had made her resistant to hadn't gotten any worse. She'd survived. She was still saying my name occasionally, and things I couldn't make out. Her eyes were back to normal, I noticed. They reminded me of my wife's eyes. The words weren't important. "......not going to die! Sebastian Please! Cheryl needs you, there's no one else! Sebastian answer me, don't you dare close you.... " Cheryl was the only word I salvaged. Nothing else had any meaning for me. The pain is unbearable, and all I can see is darkness, except for a small ring of sunlight that my failing cornea's are picking up. Now that I have retold the story one last time to myself, I guess there's nothing else left for me too do, except die. Thank you too whoever was listening... wherever you may be. Maybe I'll see you soon....

Infinity and Time are two words that rarely come together. The thought of an eternity of time before the creation of the universe is mind-boggling. We say the big bang created everything, but what was occupying this space ten seconds before it, the days, months, millennia, eternity leading up to the days of creation. Time maybe is infinity, we won't ever know. Most likely the time leading to creation looked like an infinite abyss of black, blacker than anyone could fathom. No stars, light, air. Nothing. Nothing, like the existence I live right now. Nothing, No Alyssa, no Cheryl, no Boulder springs. Nothing.

As I cautiously reopened my eyes one last time, I was surprised to see Cheryl looking me straight in the eyes. Her beautiful, cheerful face smiled down at me. At first I thought this was all one last wonderful hallucination, or that Cheryl had been killed in this town and that it was me being welcomed into heaven by my deceased daughter. "Daddy, there's a call for you." "Am I dreaming..?" "No Daddy, are you sick?" I quickly checked myself over and there was no blood anywhere, I was so confused. I curiously walked over to the phone and picked up the receiver, quickly checking my hand for cuts or bloodstain. "Uhh... Hello?" "Hi Sebastian! It's Stanley. Just wanted to ask how the latest book was coming along. Thought you might want to talk about taking a break for a little bit." I sat up in amazment, a moment of silence fell over me. "I can't Stanley, I got some work to do, I'll call you in a few weeks, thanks though...."

T h e E n d.....