Author's Note: Ah, yes. The soothing sound of rainfall…Come on, guys! Why so suspicious? Maybe everything will just work out for them from this point on…=D
His chest jolted and his eyes were open already, even before he was conscious. What had woken him up? Something in him or something around him? Confused, but completely alert, he looked frantically around him to try and locate the cause of his sudden awakening. He was sitting up, just beginning to calm back down and tell himself it was nothing more than a pointless dream when a loud crash brought him rigid out of his relaxation. Downstairs. Something was happening downstairs. He leapt out of bed, tumbling out the door and running straight into the railing of the stairs, looking down to hear the door practically bursting from its hinges. Something—and he had a pretty good idea as to what—was pounding on the other side of the it, and had to have been moving even the heavy sofa they'd pushed in front of it as an extra precautionary measure in order to do so.
He looked to the side as Terry came stumbling out of his room with Chips at his side, eyes wide as he searched the area. "What's going on?" he cried, voice a little less than confident as he spotted Tyler.
He opened his mouth to yell to him, but it was just then that a tremendous crunch was heard, and it was assumed that the door gave way under the arms of screaming undead. "Shit! Run!" Tyler cried, waving his arms.
"Where!?" Terry sputtered for a minute before Ana and Nicole were suddenly out in the hall as well, Nicole bumping right into Terry and startling him into words. "They've gotten inside, get out!" he motioned for the two women to follow him.
"What the hell-" Kenneth came storming out of his room, but was caught without his gun for once, looking around in momentary confusion at his companions before he shook his head. By some pre-ordained grace of nature, he had always been a fast-thinker and a level head. "Hurry it up, get down the damn stairs before they trap us up here."
"I know a way out. There's a side door." Ana said, boldy running down the stairs. Unwilling to let Ana go alone, Nicole was suddenly after her, along with the ever-faithful dog.
"Ana, wait!" she chirped.
"Nicole!" Terry unsuccessfully tried to call her back. He nearly went after them, but just as they had gone, there were faces at the bottom of the stairs.
"Damn it!" Kenneth cursed as he leaned over the railing. The lodge was quickly becoming overrun. He turned back to see if they could escape down a second set of stairs that was located at the opposite end of the hall, only to find that, to his horror, the corpses had beaten them to it. They'd gotten upstairs, and the remaining group was surrounded at both ends.
There was no choice, they had to get down somehow. Luckily, Terry still possessed his handgun tucked into the band of his shorts in an unadmitted paranoia, and it was loaded. Just now realizing this, he pulled it out and readied himself to shoot.
"Just run!" Kenneth screamed, backing up as a screeching zombie came straight for him.
"Kenneth!" Terry shouted, but before he could react, Kenneth had grabbed the corpse and tossed it back a good ways with the better part of his strength. He quickly turned and made his way towards Terry, grabbing Tyler by the shirt and thrusting him out of harm.
Terry fired three shots at the creatures coming up from the stairs closest to them, hitting one in the head and two in the chest. They crumbled back down the stairs in shock, but did not deter their followers. There was a gap, however, between them and the others as they rolled heedlessly to the floor below. Enough to make and escape through.
"Come on, quick! We gotta get to the others!" Kenneth headed down the stairs while it was temporarily clear, Terry and Tyler right behind him. For the moment.
Before Terry set foot down the stairs, hands grabbed at him, tearing him back and slamming him to the wall in a blurry smear of pain. The gun flipped out of his hand and hit the first step, firing a shot into a wall. "Ahh!" Terry shoved at the gnarled zombie that was gnashing its teeth at him, using his knee to push the creature in the stomach and trying to pry its hands off his shirt.
It somehow didn't even occur to Tyler to go for the gun. He felt a foreign surge of a pure, primal instinct as he leapt forward towards the scene. Almost against his own will to act, he grabbed the zombie around the neck with both arms and tore it away from Terry with a strength he knew was not his own and a growl that was anything but human, hurling it to the wooden floor with a crash. It's head broke open and spit a variety of nasty fluids, but it was quickly scrambling to its feet again. Tyler was moving back to Terry and the stairs when a mob of ghouls knocked him straight to the ground.
"Tyler!" Terry made an angry move forward, but a hand from the stairs caught him by the arm and yanked him down. He looked up to see Kenneth, nearly striking out at him as he did so.
"Move it!" Kenneth ordered, dragging him down.
"Wait! Tyler's stil-!" Terry pulled against his grip.
"We can't save him, kid, come on!" Kenneth was bordering on pleading, using his brute strength as an advantage to force the younger man down the stairs. Begrudgingly, Terry frettfully obliged.
Ana was frantically looking around, horrified that here companions were no longer behind her. Nicole stood with the door half-open, frozen in midstep as her fear increased wildly around that same fact. "Where are they? What's taking them so long?" she began to panic.
Ana felt a cold grip on her stomach, knowing that they couldn't stand here much longer but unable to leave when three of her fellow survivors still hung back.
Kenneth and Terry came bursting back into the lobby, Terry running to meet Nicole immediately and Ana crying out in something that she couldn't quite dicern as either shock or relief. "What are you waiting for? Get the fuck out of here!" Kenneth demanded as he went for the door.
"Where's Tyler?" Ana felt an icy dagger in her lungs and continued looking at the entrance to the lobby, backing up slightly.
"Come on, Ana! We've gotta go before this place fucking collapses on us!" Kenneth shouted at her, turning back.
"Not without him!"
"Damn it, Ana, we don't have a choice!" Kenneth had a note of sympathy in his voice, but his hand found her arm roughly all the same and forced her out the door with them.