A/N: (laughs nervously) Hey everyone! I'm back! Well to be honest, I'm pretty sure I'm talking to an empty room. I'm pretty sure that everyone is gone by now, but if you come back your welcome to the free buffet that I set up over there gestures vaguely. I'm reeeeaaaaly sorry I took so long, bad thing after bad thing just kept happening. For old times sake I'm still going to do shout outs, hopefully you'll remember what you said....Zyte: Don't worry I'm odd too, I'm the one writing it and thank you for the lovely comment. Matro: Thank you so very much, and come back I love your stories...let the writers block go away. Turn-into-shadows (were you formally Tsunami?): Thank you for the lolli's it's always a cute gesture, and sorry I turned that week long wait into like 6 months. Corpasite: That was honestly a very sincere review and I really appreciate it, I'm sorry I took so long, next time I won't do that to you, you have my word. Blizzaga: I too enjoy other characters, specially chillins, thank you for your review. Nienna: I can tell you're a HP fan because you can sense the angst. I kinda wanted to make the character more human, emotions and the like, and I give you my guarantee that I'll read your fic. Pillarofautumn: It's good to see a Halo fan, or at least I think...I mean PoA? But thank you so very much for your reviews they were really heartening, it was your review that made me start writing again, it kinda just came outta no where. PsychoticMarine: Another Halo fan, yeah! I love you guys...but that really is a good idea about the marines...you should e-mail me, I have some plans for the future that may need just what your taking about. Oh and I too, am deranged...isn't it just fun? Toxin Blackheart: I'm really, really happy to see you review my work because your one of my favorite people (prolly cause you wrote back to my reviews).For so long I reviewed yours then I disappeared for a while, and didn't read much of anything. It wasn't your fic at all, in fact I miss it. I promise I'll read it and review it. Oh and a special thanks to DMReturns, Alareic, Geyser, JayMan, and Nateblizz for the reviews, I appreciate them. Okay, I'm done now I promise. This is the long awaited, and slightly shorter than hoped chapter 6....enjoy...I hope.
Cadence watched James from the doorway of the girl's bathroom with her mouth hanging open in mute horror, subconsciously backing up. A zombie in front of James broke off from the large group advancing towards him and lunged forward, making James jump backwards to avoid what was left of its outstretched fingers. His back hit the bookshelf behind him with enough force to sway the bookshelf and knock large volumes down from their places high above his head. He looked up, arms over his head protectively as he attempted to dodge what looked like an unabridged dictionary. He stepped sideways, and the book thudded down onto the ground where he had just been standing.
He stared at it for a moment, and only the hungry moan of the still-present zombie in front of him made him come back to his senses. He momentarily paused as he stared into the milky-white eyes of his former lab-partner, and closed his eyes as his swung the bat with as much force as he could, only opening them when he heard the sickly 'crunch' of crushing bone under unforgiving wood.
The zombie crumpled in front of him, only to be replaced by another. Without even thinking, he swung the bat down onto its head and cried out in disgust as the scalp of the zombie peeled off in a wet layer, the light hair still attached and matted with blood. The white bone beneath remained intact, and the zombie continued forward unphased, it's cloudy eyes alight with hunger. James cringed and struck it again, this time producing a sickly crack as its scull caved in like a broken egg shell, the stark white of it's skull mixing with the pinkish gray of it's brain matter.
Even before the zombie in front of him fell, another shambled into it's place, clumsily stepping on the body of it's fellow and completely ignorant of the brain matter now painted onto it's DC's.
James cried out involuntarily as he struck down another one of his class-mates, finally seeing that the horde in front of him seemed to have no end, the sheer number of the undead fueled by the still open doors. He backed up once again into the bookshelf, panting, and felt it sway slightly under his touch. His eyes darted quickly over the five zombies in front of him, each less than five feet away. He moaned out of sheer desperation as his mind cycled through endless escape plans, each becoming more ridiculous then the last.
As the small army of undead continued toward him, their mouths agape and red with blood, James began to lose hope.
The five zombies closest to him had closed the distance between them within seconds, and James had less than a millisecond to protect himself from the wall of mottled flesh, and gummy, coagulated blood before it hit him full on.
Cadence, still watching from the doorway, closed her eyes at the exact moment James was slammed painfully into the book shelf behind him. She heard him cry out in pain, almost from far away, and gritted her teeth to drown out the noise. Though she couldn't drown out the loud and dramatic 'boom' followed by the ground vibrating slightly, and it took her a moment to realize that the bookshelf James had slammed into had fallen over.
With a slight glimmer of hope, she opened her eyes, only to see the decomposing face of an infected student not more than a foot away from her, eerily white eyes set deeply into a flakey yellow skin, small cracks revealing dried and blackened blood, and it's slack jaw open and drooling. She screamed in utter surprise as the putrid smell washed over her, and took a step backwards, her back slamming into the closed door behind her.
The zombie in front of her lunged towards her, and with a clumsy sidestep, she managed to avoid it's bloodied fingers, only to fall into the arms of another zombie, this one, to her horror, in a much more advanced state of decay. She screamed again, all thoughts of James' safety forgotten, as she wrestled uselessly against the zombie. It gripped her shoulders with a surprising amount of strength and began to move it's face towards her exposed neck like a creature of the night.
Terrified, she formed her splayed fingers into a fist and lashed out with her last remaining strength. The zombie, undeterred, continued it's maddeningly slow decent upon her neck, it's putrid breath washing over her face in sickly waves. She punched again, and again, and again, until she began to feel the cold wetness of blood on her battered fist. With her other hand she grasped the zombie's brittle fingers, hoping to pry them off of her bruised shoulder. With a sickly snapping sound, she felt its grip loosen, and was suddenly able to pry herself away from it with a straggled yell of triumph.
Almost as an afterthought, she pushed herself against the wall, barely avoiding the zombie she had evaded earlier. Suddenly finding herself overwhelmed, she grasped the handle of the door in front of her and pushed her body against it, landing in a crumpled heap on the other side. Spinning her body around, she kicked the door shut, cutting off the view of the former captain of the football team, his once good looks diminished by missing tissue and gore, and his famous throwing arm hanging limply by his side, the fingers broken and useless, shards of bone sticking through the rubbery flesh.
Suddenly overwhelmed by darkness, Cadence blinked her eyes several times, hoping to adjust. Almost instinctively, her hands went up to her shoulders where she was gripped so hard only seconds before. Letting out a long, deep sigh, she dropped her hands and got up from her position on the floor, her eyes searching the dark room for an impossible solution.
Realizing how very alone she was, she let her thoughts wander to James and her friends, only a doorway away from her. As visions of their bloody deaths, their lifeless eyes, and their final words began to form in her head, a loud 'bam' , followed by another and another, shook her from her reverie. Spinning wildly, she found that it was the door, now shaking violently on it's hinges, being pounded on from the other side.
Suddenly feeling trapped, she began to search around the dark showers frantically. After finding nothing but dripping faucets and moldy shower curtains, Cadence's gaze fell onto the cold lifeless body lying awkwardly on the ground. Her eyes lingered on the dark, tacky splotches of blood covering it's back, and legs, and the gaping hole in it's skull where thick blood still oozed sluggishly out. She stepped forward, squinting at the mutilated face she thought she recognized. With a slight frown she leaned closer, her face mere inches away, when the pounding on the door seemed to double. She jumped in surprise, suddenly panicked at the thought that the door might not hold.
"What am I going to do?", she asked the silent room.
'Bam! Bam! Bam!'
"How am I supposed to get out?"
'Bam! Bam! Bam!'
"What happened to all of my friends?"
'Bam! Bam! BAM!'
For a second, Cadence didn't understand what was happening, and why the room was suddenly so silent, until her wide eyes met with the now open door in front of her, and the shambling outlines of the undead.
She had less than a second to respond, and all she could think of doing was crouching down into a little ball and crying, wishing James or someone was there to save her again. Her thoughts turned back to James, and in a flash of beautiful realization, she remembered that he had warned her that the locker room down the hall had a broken window in it.
Finally taking action, she turned her attention back to the now overcrowded door, and saw her opportunity slipping away as the zombies began to fill the room. Reacting quickly, she ran full speed at the horde, and turned sharply at the last second, tripping over her own feet, and slamming her shoulder painfully into the opposite wall. She squeaked, and rubbed her arm quickly, only vaguely aware of the zombies only feet behind her, and kept going as quick as she could in the pitch black. Up ahead of her and to the right, she could see a dim pool of light reflecting off of the dark tiles, and was there only seconds later to discover a small window in front of her, allowing the light of a full moon to spill in. It was indeed broken; the shards of glass littering the floor at her feet and mixing in with a large pool of blood surrounding what could only be described as a hunk of meat. She cringed and held her nose as the overwhelming smell of blood and death began to assault her.
A lonesome moan from somewhere in the darkness behind her was all it took to bring her back to her senses. She immediately stepped forward, careful not to step into the tacky pool of blood dominating most of the room, and made her way over to the window, all the while her feet crunching on broken glass. She looked down, and immediately felt her stomach fall down to her feet. What bothered her about the sight wasn't the architect's decision to build the library up against a hill, but the fact that it only seemed to affect the part of the library that she was currently in. To the left and right of her were long stretches of grass that led off into the distant darkness, and the rest of the campus. But, in front of her, a narrow grassy path grew right up against the school, followed by a sheer drop into the dark woods below.
The sound of crunching glass behind her caused her to spin, her heart joining her stomach as she saw the narrow hallway begin to fill with the slow, plodding forms of the undead. Her options suddenly narrowed down to one, she turned back around, and quickly calculated just how far she would have to jump, and what the cost would be if she missed. Closing her bruised hand into a fist, she punched out the jagged pieces of glass still clinging to the frame of the window and stepped up quickly onto it.
The wind whipped at her still damp hair and caused her to shiver slightly, as she gazed down at the dark treetops below her. An overwhelming fear began to clutch at her heart, causing it to speed up just as her stomach began to flutter uncontrollably. Just as she began to have doubts about whether or not she could do it, she felt a cold, stiff hand clutch at her calf. With a yelp, she pulled away, and kicked back with all the strength she could muster, feeling connect with something soft.
It's now or never!
So, with one last deep breath, she hunkered down and pushed off as hard as she could, aiming and praying that she'd hit the grass to her left and not thin air. For a moment, she felt nothing, and saw nothing as she soared through the cold night air, the wind whipping and pulling at her flailing body. The feeling of weightlessness ended abruptly when she collided with the solid ground, the grass doing nothing to cushion the fall. The 'thunk' she made when she landed echoed against the high brick wall next to her, and floated off into the woods, and for a moment she didn't dare open her eyes, instead choosing to press her face into the cold grass, and reveling in the sudden silence.
When it began to press against her ears, she lifted her head and looked back, her ribs screaming in agony as she stretched to see her left foot dangling off the edge of the cliff she so closely missed.
With a heavy and relieved sigh, she stood up slowly, clutching at her ribs, and looked down to survey the damage. Her knees were a bit scuffed up, as were her hands, but the real damage was a dull, throbbing pain located somewhere in her right side. With an angry growl, her eyes fell back onto the ground where a large, flat rock lay blending in with the grass. Her eyes now narrowed in frustration, she lifted up her shirt gingerly, and found nothing but pale skin. Knowing full well a bruise would be making an appearance in the near future, she began walking with no real sense of where she was going.
The only thing she knew was that somewhere in the building less than two feet away from her, on the other side of the very wall she avoided looking at now, her best friends, whom she'd known all of her life, lay dead or dying. With that last thought, her nose began to sting and her throat began to catch slightly, her carefully erected barriers fighting tooth and nail to subdue to tears that wanted to badly to come to the surface.
With those thoughts still circling through her head like a dark poison, she continued on, no longer bothering to keep quiet, reassuring herself that she hadn't heard anything for a while after all. Her eyes trained on the hard ground, she continued on without any set destination.
"Where can I go?" she asked herself aloud, a small chuckle escaping along with it, "There is absolutely no one left but me, Cadence. And where is there a saf-...".
A sound from up ahead, sharp, quick, and quiet broke her from her reverie. It happened so quickly that Cadence barely had time to register if it was real or not. She paused and automatically pushed herself up against the wall, hoping to blend in with the shadows as she strained to hear the sound again. There, she heard it again, this time much more clearly. The quiet 'snick' of fabric being ripped, followed almost immediately by a wet crunching sound.
Suddenly frightened of what lay just around the corner, Cadence squatted down, knowing her only options were to continue forward or go back to the cliff behind her. To her disgust, the sound continued, growing more fevered as she heard what sounded like meat being torn from bone and cartilage.
Oh no oh no oh no. Gotta go somewhere, but where?
Taking one last calming breath, she pressed herself tightly against the wall and slid over, the fabric of her shirt catching on the brick of the wall, until she was right up against the corner of the building. She shivered absently as the crunching sound continued, and with one final deep breath, peeked her head around the corner.
She was barely able to control her gasp of surprise and fear as she took in the decayed back of what looked like a dog. Using every ounce of bravery she possessed, she continued looking, surveying the remains of a coarse gray coat of fur, splotched with thick red blood, and a partially decayed tail swaying slightly with pleasure. It took her only a second later the distinguish it's height and build as not a dogs, but a ridiculously large dog's.
Cadence jumped back behind the relative safety of the wall after the dog let out a particularly large crunch, it's jaws snapping loudly.
Was that the janitor? Oh crap, what now?
Before she could come to any real decision, she heard a lone howl echo across the grounds, turning her blood to ice. It sounded again, and another howl joined the chorus, followed by another. The crunching sounds beside her ceased, and she suddenly heard what sounded like wet sniffing sounds.
Her eyes wide with horror and realization, Cadence stood up, attempting to prepare herself for whatever was about to happen next.
Okay, okay...can dogs catch scents from up wind or down wind? It can't be growling at m-...
A loud bark, followed by a throaty growl ripped her from her thoughts, and suddenly she was running, running as fast as she could. She chanced a glance to her right, the small gap between the two buildings almost too dark to see through, but the dozens of red eyes glaring at her weren't easy to mistake, nor was the gray blur that was now suddenly moving toward her.
Go, go, go! Left is to the boy's dorms, too far. Straight is the Educational Building...not safe though. Administrative office? No, too far away....
Behind her, a particularly loud bark erupted, even the violent snarl scaring her slightly less than the sound of bounding paws on the ground too close behind her. She felt herself getting tired, her pumping arms and moving legs draining her energy, her lungs stuggling to get enough oxegyn to her body.
Taking a sharp right up the sloping lawn of the grounds, she felt herself speeding towards the boy's dormitory, the brick building growing steadily larger the closer she got, the hill she was running up slowing her down. She chanced a look over her shoulder and noticed that the dogs were no longer there anymore, the dark trees of the forest the only thing in sight. She slowed down to a walk, and stopped, spinning around in a full circle before finally coming to rest. Relief quickly overtook confusion as she turned around slowly, hands on her sides as she struggled for oxegyn, trying desperately to remember exactly when she stopped hearing the sounds of the dogs pursuing her.
She turned back around, staring at the direction she just ran from, noting the dark meandering line in the grass where she had run so desperately only moments ago. Her line of sight following the line, she traced her steps back to the library in the distance, and wondered how exactly the dogs didn't catch her.
Okay, well, time to stop wondering. I need to get inside, maybe find another living person, or a weapon, or better yet an army. If wishes were zombies I'd be dead-...
A lonesome and intruding howl broke her from her thoughts, and she turned around slowly, praying that her ears were playing tricks on her, and saw the pack of dogs that had formerly been pursing her, standing some distance away, barring her from admittance to the boy's dorms.
No! That's not possible, it's like they knew where I was going. Smart dogs?
Without a further thought, she turned right around and ran back down the lawn, retracing her steps back towards the forest. Her mind reeled with options as she heard the sound of pounding paws on the grass behind her. She screamed in desperation and she steered herself towards the side of the Educational Building she was facing and ran with all of the energy she could possibly muster, the effects of the hill helping her to gain speed. Glancing back, she could judge just how close she was to the dogs by how much detail their rotting, festering bodies were in the almost complete darkness.
"No, no no! Go, go, go!", she screamed aloud, not even realizing she was spurring herself on.
The building in front of her neared, the singular door in the wall looking like a merciful sanctuary, just as the dogs behind her gained distance; she could feel their hot breath on the back of her calves, could hear their rotting lungs grunting with exertion, and with the strength of one already doomed, kept running, and seconds later slammed into the door.
She grabbed the handle with sweating hands, not bothering to look back, and pulled with all her strength, and with a scream of rage and shock, found that the sturdy metal door was locked, and that she was trapped.
A/N: Wow, you have no idea how much I wished I hadn't of taken so long. I REALLY hope that some of you are still out there, and aren't too mad at me to review. I would be sooo happy to know that some of you don't hate me. And if your new to this story, I'd also like to threaten you kindly to review....I LOVE REVEIWS...they make me want to continue. But anyways, as to not piss people off, I've already started to write chapter 7...soooo......
NEXT INSTALLMENT: New characters, new mysteries, new monsters, and more angst....we may even have a mental break down a comin round the mountains....