It's Now or Never

An original Resident Evil fiction written by: Xenogears

The following is an original story using elements from the game series, Resident Evil, created by Capcom. Any Resident Evil likeliness, similarities or direct takes are used without permission. Anything relating to anyone, whether alive or dead, is purely coincidental, and unintended.

Chapter Two:

Beginning of the Nightmare

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October 10, 2002

Skokie, Illinois

Skokie Police Department Station

12:47 PM

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Officer Paul McHenry knew something was wrong with the town as soon as the murders started: Skokie had not seen a murder case in a good, long while so the very fact that someone had died was enough to grab his attention—let alone the fact that the victims had all been eaten. Still, he had other work to deal with, so he put it in the back of his mind. However, when the murders started to escalate in number (once they had reached about 20 or so), nothing could pry his attention away from it this time. He, like many others, had strayed from their normal beats and spent their shifts driving around the township limits, from Old Orchard mall to Cicero and Touhy. But for the past week his searching had turned up nothing. This troubled the police officer greatly, especially since they seemed to be occurring more and more frequently and coming closer and closer to both Niles West and North high schools. But there was little else he could do. Still, something told him that something big was about to happen that day.

When he had arrived at the station earlier in the day, his cop instincts told him that something very bad was going to happen. Oh, how his instincts were right: at approximately 10:00 PM, the station had heard the first moans outside. At first, they had wondered what it was, so three officers had gone to check it out. Only one of them came back, screaming in a frantic hysteria, "Lock the doors! All of them!"

No one believed his story at first, but when they had seen the cannibalistic creatures approaching, it suddenly dawned on them to start barricading themselves into a room. One of their own had gone out and pointed his gun at them, to try to get them to stop, but they converged on him like a pack of wolves and ravenously devoured him right in front of their eyes. Now there wasn't a single person who didn't believe what the officer had said.

Officer McHenry and his fellow officers were barricaded in a white-walled break room with not much to go on for ammunition. They had used every chair and table in the room to barricade the one and only door, so Officer McHenry was sitting on the floor, his back to a wall. He knew that they would need to find a way to escape, and soon. He wasn't thinking about his own survival; no, he was worrying about his son, Matthew.

'He should be sleeping by now,' he thought. 'At least, I hope he is.'

He wished that he could somehow reach his son and tell him what was happening, so that he wouldn't endanger himself by going to school. Or, how he could reach his divorced wife who now lived in Indianapolis, and tell her not to visit them this weekend. But now, it seemed that that wouldn't be happening. Leaning his head into the wall behind him he gave a deep sigh and closed his eyes. The situation was far beyond hopeless, and those things were still at their door, moaning, pounding, hoping to sample just a taste of their flesh. The zombies—as he now accepted the fact of what they were—were still here, infesting the police station. They wouldn't give up, he knew. At least, if George Romero's accounts of the things was correct, anyway.

'So we escape, or die trying,' he mused ruefully. 'Not an all too pleasant way to go out, either…'

Every once in awhile, he could hear the sounds of screaming and sporadic gunfire off in the distance. He wished dearly that he could help his fellow officers that were in danger, but he had no choice but to stay in this room. He didn't know how many of those zombies there were, but he knew that they would eventually break through the barricade. So what could he do? Was there anything he could do?

Paul's snapped open as a sudden plan popped into his head. It was risky as hell, but it was much better than the alternative.

"Okay," he said as he stood up, grabbing everyone's attention. "This is what I'm going to do. It's a long shot, but it's worth the risk."

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October 10, 2002

Skokie, Illinois

Niles West High School

Room 3620: Physics

12:45 PM

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Matt knew that something was wrong when he was at his bus stop. Everything seemed too...quiet, too still. While he was waiting for the bus, not a single car passed by, which was very strange. The wet mist that was a foot high didn't help to relieve him either. And then, when he had gotten to school, it seemed that the school was less populated than usual. The sky was dark and foreboding, and the winds (was it just him, or could he hear moaning off into the distance?) were the only real noises that were heard. He had a gut feeling that something was wrong. Now that the Principal, Mrs. Singer, had announced a school lock down, he was really beginning to suspect something was up.

He was also quickly becoming really, really bored.

Since the lockdown had been placed into effect, the teachers had stopped teaching, and classrooms had started to turn into end-of-the-day Study Halls: full of talking, but not quite too loud. Still, he was bored out of his skull. Even his calculator with little video games had done little to ease his boredom. So when Peter, Craig and Kevin had hatched a plan to defy the lockdown and escape school, he jumped at the chance.

"Hey, Mr. Matherson," Kevin said, coming up to the teacher with his other friends. "We, uh, really, really need to go to the bathroom. Can you maybe spare us a pass?"

The teacher eyed them suspiciously. "So you want to go to the bathroom all at once?"

"It looks suspicious, I know, but I'm telling you, we really have to go."

'Come on,' Kevin thought. 'Take the bait, take the bait...'

The teacher kept his leering stare on them, eyeing them up and down. "You're not going to try and go and cut school or something, are you?"

"What?" Kevin said, feigning surprise. "No, of course not."

Mr. Matherson gave a "humph" before continuing. "Whatever. I know that you know that the security guards really know how to fish out those who try to do crap like that in school. So it's your asses on the line here." Reaching into his desk, the Physics teacher pulled out a yellow bathroom pass the size of his palm. "You've got five minutes."

'Yes!'

"Thanks!" Kevin called as he and his friends hustled out the door.

After clearing the Science Wing, they reached the main hall of the third floor of Niles West High School. The teens stood hugged to the walls, while Peter peeked around the corner. Finding the halls all but deserted, he went into a silent run for the stairwell and gave the signal for the others to follow. They didn't bother to try and take the stairs to the second floor to get their coats from their lockers, since they would most likely be caught. So instead, they stood hunkered around the windows of the third floor stairwell. Peter said, his voice just above a whisper, "Okay, I bet that they're watching the front and back doors, so we'll have to find another way out."

"Two steps ahead of ya," Kevin said gleefully, motioning for the stairwell windows. "These windows are old, so they still have latches that allow you to open them. It's only a small drop to the roof and, from there, the ground. We can get this done, guys."

"Kevin my friend," Craig said, slapping him on the shoulder. "You are a genius."

"Something you don't even come close to," Kevin said with a grin.

Craig looked at his friend with disdain, wondering why he took this kind of guff from them every day. "Shut up, MacDonald."

"Hey, what about Ji Hae?" Peter asked Matt. "I'm sure she'd love this."

"Ji Hae?" Matt responded, shaking his head. "No, she wouldn't like it. Besides, I don't want to get her involved. If we get caught, well, we'll all be in deep shit, right? I don't want her to get in serious trouble because of our own stupidity."

"Her loss," Peter said with a shrug of his shoulders.

And so Kevin and Peter worked the windows until they could open wide enough for them to climb out. Kevin and Peter had to bite back the biggest joke of their lifetime when Craig attempted to climb through the window, thanks to a stern look and a "Don't" from Matt.

After they had all landed on the roof one story below, they dropped another story onto a steel awning of the back entrance, and from there they landed on the asphalt of the Teacher's Parking Lot. Surveying the scene around him, Matt noticed that not only students were absent: there were much fewer cars parked than normal. Opening his ears he found that the sounds of the busy I-94 "Edens" expressway nearby were simply not there, nor were there any sounds of passing cars from Gross Point road. There was barely any wind either. It was if the forces of sound had been eliminated from existence entirely, with the sole exception of the rain that pelted them from above. Matt couldn't help but to suppress a shiver.

"Guys," Matt told his friends, his voice quivering slightly for reasons other than the cold. "This is getting freaky."

"Yeah," Craig said, looking around. "No sounds of cars, people...something's wrong with this town..."

There they stood, no one daring to move an inch, lest something bad happen. After a long silence it was Peter who decided to be brave and step forward.

"Hey, let's not think about this now," he said, moving up to the front of his friends, trying his best to look calm and in control. "We skipped school for a reason. Let's just get the hell out of here."

Concurring with Peter with a grunt or nod of their heads, the others fell into step behind him, Peter leading them on as if he were a Sergeant, and they were his grunts. Reaching the nearby corner of busy Gross Point Road/Central Ave. and Oakton Street, they found a scene like one out of a creepy movie: overhead streetlights were changing their colors, but no cars were driving by. Now, all four boys felt a chill creep up their spines, forcing them to shiver. This was, after all, one of the busiest intersections in the entire township: two major roads and one minor one intersected here. Even at noon there should have been something driving by. It seemed that the only things that were actually living were the trees that swayed slightly with the breeze and rain.

"Is it just me," Kevin voiced the others' fear. "Or has it gotten much colder all of a sudden?"

"It is just you," Peter snapped, though he felt the same way. "So shut up."

"Where should we go guys?" Craig asked.

"I say we head for the library," Matt said, stepping to the front.

"Why the library?" Kevin asked him.

"Dunno. It just seems...safer there than out here. Something's going on, and I got a feeling that it's not good."

"Maybe there's someone there who can tell us what the hell is going on here," Peter said.

With a nod of his head, Matt took up the lead for the mile walk to the library, not caring about getting soaked by the rain, slowly increasing in volume. Along the way, everything they passed looked as if it had taken a hint from the corner they were previously at. It was deathly silent, with the exception of the frigid wind that tore into their skin through their thin clothing. Life itself seemed to had come to a standstill. Even the large weeping willow that they passed on the way seemed to be lower than usual, as if it were reaching out for them, trying to entangle them in its vines. Matt slapped away a vine from the tree as it brushed across his face. He seriously hoped that the way it was swaying was because of the wind. Yet, with the way things were going he wouldn't be surprised if the tree suddenly reached out and grabbed him. Not wanting to test out the theory of his, he ushered on the others at a quicker pace, setting a brisk jog for himself in the process.

Upon reaching the library ten minutes later, they started to walk toward the entrance though the drive-up entryway, when a speeding car came toward them. Matt cried out to the others and just managed to dive out of the way just in time. Whipping their heads around, they watched the vehicle speed forward at perhaps 60 MPH, and slam into a signpost as it made a screeching sharp left turn back onto Oakton Street. The young men stared at the sight for a good long while, as the chill raced up and down their spines again, this time with more intensity and accompanied by a wave of nauseating fear. After a time, they rose from the ground as one and walked toward the front entrance. Craig found that his own knees were a little shaky as he followed the others in.

Letting the doors close silently behind them, they dried themselves off as well as they could. But perhaps halfway through that, they slowly realized that the library was just as quiet and vacant as the outside. The only difference between the two was the absence of the wailing wind, the low hum of florescent lights and the heating system being its replacement.

"You have got to be kidding me," Matt said, his voice barely above a whisper.

"Goddamn," Peter commented aloud, taking a look around. "This is like the last fifteen minutes of Devil's Advocate."

"Well," Craig said, shaking the water from his hair. "Let's make the best of our trip. Where should we go?"

Matt thought for a moment. The second and third floors were off-limits due to construction, so they really only had access to things on the first floor. But, then again, they hadn't come this far for nothing. He wanted to call his folks, true. But he also wanted to see just what was going on up stairs. Vaguely, he remembered the time that he played on a construction site when he was a little boy. Just for a moment he forgot the oddness of the situation he was in and let himself become encompassed by the giddy feeling of jumping around a half finished building that h had experienced so long ago.

"Let's see how the construction of the second floor is coming along, shall we?" Matt said, once again taking the lead. "I would hope that there's at least someone up there."

Without any disagreement, the group headed up the nearby stairs, to the second floor of the library. Formerly the Youth Services, it was now designated as an extension of the Adult Department of the first floor. Again, it looked just as deserted as the streets.

While the second floor's expansion project was much along the lines of becoming complete, the third floor expansion wasn't nearly as finished. Upon reaching the pinnacle of the staircase, they found themselves in a construction zone that wasn't shielded by the windows of the lower floors. Instead, a ripstop nylon tarp covered the holes where the windows should have been, but it did little to stop the invading rain and biting cold from the outside. It fluttered with the wind every few seconds, flapping violently at times. There were a few walls up, but they were made of plywood and not very strong. The ceiling was a jumbled mess of concrete, wiring and pipes. The floor was still wood supported by steel beams—having yet to have its floors constructed—and the light bulbs overhead – the only source of lighting—flickered every once in while, usually in sync with the speed of the wind. To complete the scene, an overturned wheelbarrow or two and construction tools cluttered the pseudo-floor. Somehow, Matt felt disappointed.

"Not much to look at," Kevin commented.

"Man," Craig said, his teeth chattering from the cold. Or was it fear? "This is starting to scare me. I mean...shouldn't there be some construction guy up here chewing us out, calling the cops on us?"

"I know," Matt answered, taking a few steps forward, trying to locate anyone around on the floor. "There's definitely something wrong with this place. I mean, this just isn't...natural."

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He didn't know how long it had been since he had been asleep. All he knew was that he was tired, itchy, cold and above all, hungry. He opened his eyes, but saw nothing. A sense of panic welled within him, but was quickly subdued by his overpowering need for food. He needed food—warm succulent meat. Now.

He tried to stand on his own, but he found that his arms were weaker than he thought. So, he grabbed for something to help him. He didn't know what it was, but it was round, thin and long, but also thick and cold. He grasped onto it, hoping that it could help him to his feet. Instead, once he pressed his weight into it, it fell over, sending the thing and others like it clattering to the floor. The thing that he had grabbed onto had fallen on his back, but he felt no pain. He simply lay there for a few more moments then crawled out from under the pipe (he remembered it being called something like that), letting it hit the floor. From there, he found his strength to stand. His skin itched, but he found that he could tolerate it to the point of it being completely normal.

He stood in place for a few moments, listening and waiting. At first, nothing. Then, he felt the presence of something nearby. He could hear...breathing...heartbeats...footsteps. He could feel warmth, he could smell...flesh. Food. He tried to break into a run, but found himself reduced to a stumbling walk. This frustrated him to no end. Perhaps if he raised his arms, he could go a little faster? Ah, yes, that worked.

As he rounded a corner, he could feel that the warmth intensified, the breathing sounds increased, along with the heartbeats. But the footsteps slowed, and they seemed to be going in the opposite direction. Away from him. He gave a moan of frustration. He wasn't allowing this meal to get away from him!

He then started to stumble forward as fast as he could, wanting more than anything to get a taste of that warm, juicy, wet, succulent flesh. After what seemed forever, his hands latched onto something hard, but warm, oh, so warm. The heartbeat was fast now, and the breathing turned into a...what was it called? A scream?

Then he lowered his face to the warm, fleshy part next to the hard part and bit into it. Oh, did it taste so good. He took another bite, and toppled his prey onto the ground, and started to bite ravenously into the soft, warm fleshy parts of the body.

He was itchy. But man, was this tasty.

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Matt's ears picked up on a sound from the other side of the floor: the sound of multiple metal objects hitting the ground. They spun at the direction of the noise and stood in place, not even moving a muscle. Matt's pulse began to beat more rapidly, his breathing came on at quicker intervals, and his senses jumped to a new height. He was entering fight or flight mode, the most primal of instincts. After a few long moments, there was no other following noise, and the young men relaxed with a sigh of relief.

"Just the wind, eh?" Craig said with a nervous chuckle.

The others nodded in silent agreement, but still kept their eyes on the direction of the noise. It was then that another sound of metal hitting the floor sounded, but this time it sounded as if it were only one object, hitting with less force…as if it had landed on something else besides the hard floor. They dismissed it once again; just the wind knocking over some more pipes, perhaps.

Craig walked forward, the fear that was once present in his voice now almost completely gone. "Let's go look around, yeah? I'm gonna check out what that was."

"Wait a minute, Craig," Kevin said. "We should stay together here."

"Ohhh," Craig tormented him. "Is itty bitty Kevin afrwaid of da boggey man? Do you think dat monsters are gonna come out and hurt us?"

The left side of Kevin's face twitched, something that usually happened when he was angry. "Don't even start with me, Miller."

Craig simply laughed at him. "Let's just have a ball! We're free from school! Everything's gonna be fine!" And so Craig went on ahead, but turned around one last time. "Besides, I can't stop until I know everything that's going on, Matt."

After Craig had disappeared around the corner, Matt threw up his arms in defeat. "Well, he never was able to control that curiosity of his."

Kevin, mimicking Matt's actions said, "That always was his bad point."

Matt walked off in another direction as well, checking over the layout of the room, the progress of the construction, and how gaudy and unfinished the floor looked. He knocked his knuckles against a plywood wall, knowing that if he were to try, he could punch straight through the wall. Then an idea occurred to him. Why not try it? The construction workers would be pissed to find this, but he'd find some way to not get caught. Right now it looked like they were on a lunch break or something.

He breathed in deeply, placing his palm against the thin wood. He tried to focus his internal energies, to concentrate his mind one task at hand. His one mission in life became to break the wood, without so much as feeling a little hint of pain. He breathed in again and—

"Guys! He—auuuggghhh—!"

That voice...Craig! Matt spun on his heel and, along with Peter and Kevin, followed the cries of their friend. When they reached him, they were horrified. Craig's face was...bitten into, torn away almost, his collarbone a bloody mess, and his neck wide open, so that his spine could be seen. His mouth and eyes were frozen in a death scream.

Then, they saw the thing that was lying on top of him…eating him: it was a human, no doubt, he was a muscular construction worker, with dirty overalls and dirty clothing underneath, but his skin was brownish-gray and rotting, giving off a foul smell. From what he could see, his eyes were cataracted, with the pupil and iris blotched out as if he were blind.

Matt then snapped out of the daze that still held effect over his friends. He needed to find a way to save him. Looking around quickly for a weapon, he found a steel pipe. Brandishing it as if it were a sword, he swung it at the construction worker in a sideways stroke, hitting him squarely in the temple with a sickening crunch. The construction worker fell over; giving out one last hoarse moan before it fell silent, save for the death throes that it spasmed though.

He immediately went over to his friend, and bent down to him. He didn't need to be a doctor to know that his wounds were far beyond fatal. Their friend, Craig Miller, was dead. After a long silence, Kevin spoke.

"Is...is he...really...?"

"Yeah," Matt said, looking away, fighting back tears. "He's dead."

Kevin hid his face with his hand, and gave a single pitiful sob. Peter, looked at the dead form of their friend, and clenched his knuckles.

"You dumb, fat, son of a bitch," Peter rasped, his voice full of vehemence. "If only you weren't so goddamn stupid..."

The friends could only cry in silence, regretting not being able to do something about their friend. It was a few minutes later, when they heard the sound of shuffling feet, and they looked up as a whole. In the far back of the floor was a group of construction workers, but something about them was wrong. They were exactly like the construction worker that Matt had just killed, only some of them looked as if they were bleeding, as if parts of them had been torn away. One of them was even missing an arm past his elbow. What could they be? Matt didn't want to know. He grabbed his pipe and started to back up.

"It's like they're...zombies or something!" Kevin stammered in a panic as the young men started to back up toward the staircase.

They then turned and ran down the stairs, jumping down from the last few steps to the first floor. They could hear the moans of the hungry things upstairs, and they knew that they would be following them down the staircase.

"I'm telling you," Kevin said. "They're zombies!"

"We get the point, dammit!" Peter rasped.

Usually, Peter or Matt would have argued with Kevin about something obviously so unreal. Now though, fact stared them in the face and hit them with a hammer in the head, so they accepted it as it was; they were the walking dead. Even as Matt thought about it, he couldn't help but to think how ridiculous and simply unreal that sounded. They started to run for the exit, but stopped upon seeing the windows and doors to the new Youth Services department. Standing there, howling, moaning and clawing and pounding at the glass were countless zombies. So many, in fact, that Matt could have sworn that they seemed to go all the way back to the other end of the library—a good forty feet or so. The three teens stood and gaped in utter disbelief at the sight before them, almost completely paralyzed with fear.

"Never thought I'd hear myself say this," Matt said, backing up for the doors. "But let's head back to the school! Now!"

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Ji Hae's study hall was only slightly livelier than the others throughout the school were and that was mostly due to the music that some students had taken to playing. Even Ji Hae was playing on her flute. Meticulously going through her music with the precision and dedication of a practiced musician, she played Pachelbel's Cannon in D Major. After going through half the score of Guys and Dolls—which was the upcoming play that her whole orchestra was rehearsing for—she had grown tied of the fast paced and upbeat notes of Frank Loesser and was now settling down into something more slow and soothing…even if it was mostly to quell her own rising anxiety.

It was no secret to the student body that there was something strange afoot. Ji Hae herself had been wondering why the principal had ordered the lock down…if there was such a big danger, then why not just send them home? That is, unless the danger was from the outside. But what could it be? Skokie was a relatively safe place; most of the crime came from drug dealers and even then only in very small areas of the township (or so her father told her). Could it be that the murders that everyone was talking about were getting that bad? No matter what she did, Ji Hae couldn't wrap her head around it.

Just as she had finished off her last note, there was a slamming at the door, jolting her from her trance. Looking up to the source of the noise, she became dead silent along with the rest of the room. Looking through the door's glass, she could see the school's principal standing there. But…something seemed strange. It was the way that she was carrying herself: her movements seemed slowed, the way she kept pounding against the glass (why was she even doing that?) her clothing ruffled and torn at the right sleeve and—

The blood. She was bleeding from her arm.

Ji Hae jumped out of her seat and gasped and was about to say something, but her orchestra teacher, Mr. Koch, stepped to the door. "Oh quiet already you old hag," he muttered under his breath. He reached for the knob, but then realizing that it was locked he went fishing in his pockets for the key. The principal was still banging against the glass… "I got you, Mrs. Singer! I'm opening the door. Sheesh."

The moment that he slid the key into the lock the glass shattered inward and the principal grabbed Mr. Koch by the shoulders. He, along with everyone let out a startled gasp, which quickly turned into a scream of terror once they saw what transpired next. Pulling Mr. Koch halfway through the door, the hapless teacher struggled to fend her off, but she was impossibly strong for a woman of her size and stature. He could do little to stop the principal from pulling him closer and lowering her head to his neck, where she bit into him. Mr Koch let out a startled scream which was quickly turned into a gurgle as the principal continued biting deeper and deeper into the man's throat. Panic began to spread throughout the room as people rushed to find an escape. But Ji Hae could only stare in mute, dumbstruck shock.

The principal was eating her teacher.

Only now it was not just the principal. No, there were two others who came up from behind the principal and latched on to the now dead body of Mr Koch and began to feast on whatever they could grab, rabidly tearing away at his flesh like a pack of mad, rabid dogs. Ji Hae, for the life of her, could not grasp the situation. It defied all logic. Why was this happening? Her hand twitched, most likely not from her cerebral palsy, causing her flute to fall to the floor. This just was not possible.

Now the principal seemed done with her "meal"—or maybe she found a better one. The look that she gave Ji Hae with those lifeless, milky eyes, was enough to convince her of that. Ji Hae was suddenly thrown back into reality and she did the only thing that she could bring herself to do.

She screamed.

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Beta-readers: F. Buckley, K. O'Laughlin

Editors: MayumiH, F. Buckley

Draft: 12/1/02 (1:09 PM)

Final: 5/2/03 (11:41 PM)

Final ver.2: 9/3/05 (5:22 AM)

Author's notes: This one—while not one of the better written—was still one of my favorites. Personally, telling the story from the zombie's point of view…while not revolutionary (it was, after all, inspired by that one diary in the original Resident Evil where the scientist slowly turns into a zombie), it was still fun to do. I went crazy mad on the italicizing to show what the zombie was really thinking: how you see it is in the words that I put down. But being that his brain is quite degenerated, the italicized words are the only ones he can remember/articulate and thus I empathized them. And yeah, I also admit that I had a blast killing off Craig. XD

In case you guys were wondering, I managed to find a map of Skokie and edited it a little bit to help show the locations that are in this story. Before anyone goes looking, Old Orchard is at the very top, while the corner of Cicero (also known as Skokie Blvd.) and Touhy is not shown—I couldn't have enough room for it. But it's not that much further south. red star is Niles West high school. The red circle is the approximate location of the Skokie Public Library, while the blue dot is the approximate location of the Searle Labs (which, if I remember correctly, is now a property owned by Phizer) and the black circle is the Skokie Police Station HQ. The blue box is Ji Hae's condo, the red box is Kevin's house, the violet box is Peter's house and the yellow box is Matt's house. If new locations arise that I don't make up, then I'll be sure to mark them down.

http / photo bucket . com / albums/v234/ RasputinMan?actionview& current mq-mapgend.gif

(Just be sure to remove all the spaces, put in the colon and the extra forwardslash, and you should be fine. Is this even allowed? Seems like FF .net doesn't want me putting URLs in my stories...)

I'm taking a page out of Peptuck's book…author responses (all three of them!)!

AnimaSola: Yes, this is indeed a repost of a previous story of the same name (note the long distance of time between the first and second final versions?). Frankly, I wasn't too happy with what I had put up before. And as every author knows, it's almost impossible to go back to his/her previous works and completely rewrite them. So mainly what you'll be seeing for the first six or seven chapters is what I had up before, but edited (grammar/spelling corrections, better word choices, etc.). I might even throw in an extra scene or two. For instance, the scene where Ji Hae and her class comes under attack by the zombies was one of those new scenes. If you have a good enough memory, you'll also notice that I cut off the chapter there, before adding in the parts where the teens get back to school. That begins in the next chapter.

I have a better idea of where the story is going and how to get there, unlike last time where I wrote it from the top of my head pretty much. What I can promise you is this: the last three chapters or so WILL be completely different from what I had previously imagined…though since I didn't post them I don't know how much of a difference that would make to you guys. ;; The main thing that I want to work out is proper character development—I already have some more ideas on how to do that.

I should have the next chapter up by the middle of next week or so. I want to keep a weekly or biweekly schedule if possible. Hope you can keep interest long enough.

SilverSpoons: Heh. Thanks. As you'll notice (even by looking at my previous works) I do my best when I'm writing action scenes. And yeah, those high school experiences were based off of my own as well as what I had heard from other people. At least, with the morning routine and the PE crap. God, I still have some of those tracks stuck in my head and no amount of Rammstein or The Black Mages will clear it from my memory. Woe is me.

Tinkies: Enthusiastic now, aren't we?

The reason that I made that disclaimer about not being a self-insert was because of the comments that I got from other test readers from my school (back then, high school. College now). What they failed to realize was that I took some of the personality traits and experiences from various friends and acquaintances and molded them together under characters with completely different names. Some characters even have personality traits from multiple people in them. While you COULD call it a self insert, it wasn't truly one. Besides, every writer puts at least a bit of him/herself in his/her characters, no?

I forget who said it…but whoever was the guy that said that an author writes best on what he knows about, well, knows what he was talking about.

Keep reviewing and I'll keep writing dudes/dudets! Suggestions are also greatly appreciated as well.

(Author comments completed: 9/5/05, 4:43 AM)