A/N: I had a lot of trouble with the combat scenes, if you have any advice on how to improve it; I would be very appreciative. Enjoy!
Chapter 3: Taking the Leap
(April 4th --- Day of Sorrows)
Dave turned left around a corner, momentarily leaving Jacen's line of sight. Increasing his speed, Jacen followed around the corner.
"Oooof!" Jacen groaned as he ran straight into…something and fell over. As Jacen pulled himself up he looked upon the large object he had run into, which turned out to be Dave. He was standing perfectly still; oblivious to the fact that Jacen had just run into him.
"What the Hell did you stop for?" Jacen asked angrily as he kneaded the back of his neck. "I thought you where going to show me something outs-" He stopped cold as he noticed the figure standing beyond Dave. It was the most horrifying thing Jacen had ever set eyes on. There in front of Dave stood Walter, a shopkeeper who owned a general store in town… except it wasn't. Yes it looked like him; maybe it even had been Walter at one point, but not anymore. Its eyes where totally wrong, his once vibrant blue eyes where now dulled, seemingly covered by a white mist. Gone was the spark of life Jacen had come to know him for, now replaced by a void, holding no sign of the soul that had once occupied it. But that wasn't what bothered Jacen the most. What really bothered him was that his throat was missing, seemingly ripped out.
Frozen by fear, Jacen just stood there as the creature unhinged its jaw and silently began to limp towards them. Then, as if a light had clicked on, Jacen's survival instincts kicked in. He grabbed Dave by the wrist and jerked him away from the advancing creature. Dragged back into reality, Dave began to move on his own, allowing them to run around the corner with sufficient time to spare. Not content to stop there they continued to dash into the boy's bathroom and brace themselves against the door. "What the Fuck was that?" Jacen asked, on the verge of panic.
Dave shook his head frantically. "I don't know! I had been looking out the window and saw Mr. Knight running towards the school. I figured he was late but then I saw Mrs. Hancock slowly following him. He got to the doors but they where locked, He frantically started trying to find a key but then heard Mrs. Hancock approaching. He turned and ran towards her holding his briefcase in the air and then he swung it at her, hitting her in the side. She should have had the wind knocked out of her but she looked unfazed, she grabbed him and… and…Jacen, she bit him… right on that fleshy part by his left collarbone… she….she tore a chunk off, Jacen!" As he spoke Dave's voice became more and more frantic. I have to get him to focus on something else or he's going to loose it, Jacen thought to himself.
Jacen grimaced, not liking the course of action he had decided on, and looked Dave in the eyes. "Dave, where do the teachers keep confiscated stuff?" He asked sternly.
"Why do y-"
"I need to get to my shark suit!" Jacen exclaimed, "Now tell me where it would be"
Gaining control over himself, Dave managed a brief, wry grin. "All that stuff is in a locker in the teachers lounge next to the library."
Jacen drew the route in his minds eye, that's not that far from here. We can do this! "You know we will have to take Walter to get there though, right?"
Dave gulped and nodded solemnly. "We should probably take a look out there first, before we go rushing out."
Jacen slid the door open, careful not to make any noise. "Shit!" he cursed moments later as he ducked back into the safety of the bathroom.
"What?"
"Its heading towards the teachers lounge," he said with a scowl
Dave cracked his knuckles. "Look, leave Walter to me," he said adamantly, "Once I have its attention I want you to make a run for the teachers lounge, got it?"
"But what about y…" Jacen stopped, seeing the conviction in his eyes.
"No offense Jacen but as you are now you would be near useless in a fight. You said it yourself, you need it," Dave said emphatically as he began to open the door. "Wait fifteen seconds and then run for it," and with that he was gone.
Jacen stood there counting to himself. When he finally reached fifteen he burst out of the door and dashed as fast as he could. He was surprised to find no sign of Dave or the creature, but pushed all speculation to the back of his mind and focused on the task at hand.
It took him all of ten seconds to make it to the room and, once there found the locker quite easily. It would be locked with my luck, wouldn't it? Jacen thought sourly as he tried to open it. He frantically looked around the room trying to find anything that he could use to pry the locker open; unfortunately he was in a school so such objects where hard to come by.
Eventually he noticed an old paper cutter in the corner. He picked it up by the blade handle and started kicking at the plastic base it was attached to, succeeding to break it off with two swift kicks. Experimentally slicing it through the air, he was pleased to find that it had a satisfying weight to it. Holding the blade in his right hand he walked over to the locker and raised the makeshift sword over his head and then brought it down with all his might in a downward slash. The blade easily pierced the thin aluminum that the locker was made of, creating a three foot long gash in the door. He stuck the blade into the gash and used it to pry the hole wider, after repeating this process a couple of times he was able to reach it and pull out the suit.
Jacen began to dawn the gear as soon as it cleared the hole, hoping that he could get to Dave in time.
Around the corner from the teachers lounge, Dave was struggling for his life. Things had been going pretty well at the beginning. He had dashed down the hall barreling straight towards the creature and had ducked a shoulder forward and ended up checking the creature in the back. Unfortunately Dave had put too much momentum into the attack and lost balance, causing him to fall right next to the monster and hit his head on the floor. Disoriented by the fall he had taken, Dave had tried to get up, but couldn't, finding that he was having trouble thinking straight. The same did not apply to his opponent, it rolled over and began to claw its way towards him. Dave then tried to pull himself away from the creature in a frantic scramble that ended up only delaying the final struggle.
IT caught up to him, and Dave, still too dazed to co-ordinate well, could only manage to keep the thing at arms length as it tried to bite at him like a rabid dog. He couldn't hold it back forever either, while this thing seemed to not be tiring at all, Dave on the other hand was getting weaker by the second. Well I tried my best. All I can do is hope that I bought him enough time, He thought, at peace with his fate.
Just then, he saw a figure appear behind the creature and begin to reach out its dainty yet muscular hands. Is that an angle? Dave asked himself, on the verge of exhaustion. The hands got closer and closer, one arm on each side of the creatures, and then in a lightning fast movement the figure wrapped her arms around the monster and jerked its head around to the left farther than a neck should turn. The creature went limp, or at least most of it, the head was still biting, but that was all it could do.
The last thing Dave saw before he blacked out was the image of the unknown figure rolling IT off of him and kneeling by his side.
By his count it had taken Jacen seven minutes and twenty three seconds to fully equip his shark suit. Equipped from head to ankle, with only his face and feet not covered by the titanium links, Jacen felt like a tank about to go out and fight some Indians. He took an experimental first step and found that, although it was rather heavy compared to his experience with it in the water that it was tolerable and if his intuition on the situation was true, Jacen had the sinking feeling that he would have more than enough time to get used to it.
Jacen picked up his makeshift sword and charged out of the room weapon raised, only to find no one in sight. Suddenly he heard a thick snapping noise, and followed it to its source around the corner and found a girl with auburn hair kneeling next to Dave, who was laying on his back and five feet away, was the mostly still body of Walter. Wait… that hair… is that Melissa?
The clanking noise of his armor alerted the girl of his approach. She jumped up into a fighting position of some sort, but relaxed as soon as she recognized Jacen's face. Initially she looked relieved, but then glared at him accusingly. "Where were you while he was getting attacked?" Melissa asked harshly as she pointed at Dave, who seemed to Jacen to be relatively unharmed.
"I was doing what Dave told me to do," he replied defensively, "What are you doing here anyway?"
"Olivia called me, she asked me to make sure you where safe, don't know what you did, but she seems to have warmed up towards you," Melissa responded matter-of-factly, then seeing Jacen's confused look added, "She sent me because I have a brown belt in Krav Maga…"
Jacen rested the makeshift sword over his shoulder. "Did you see anymore of those things on your way here?"
Her features darkened considerably. "Yes, there are at least twenty that I saw," she said darkly then in a quieter, worried voice finished, "Jacen, they are all over. Why haven't they announced anything over the loudspeakers? Someone must have seen them by now!"
Finally beginning to fully understand the severity of the situation, Jacen swiftly pointed his sword at the girl's bathroom next to them. "Go in there with Dave and barricade the door. Don't open it for anyone unless they knock three times first," he said in an authoritative voice, "Im gonna head to the main office and see what's happening." As soon as he had finished speaking Jacen ran off at a slow, yet steady pace to avoid wasting time arguing.
When he finally reached the office, Jacen did not like what he saw. The room looked like a war zone, everything was knocked over and there was blood everywhere. The only thing that was missing where the corpses, which where standing over the pools of blood. There where three of them, all horribly disfigured and all with the same soul-less eyes as poor Walter.
Jacen's suit made a metallic clanking noise as he took a step forward, blade raised. Hearing the noise, one of them looked over at him and opened its jaw letting out a low primal moan that had the effect of alerting the others. All three of them began to advance towards him, moaning eerily. On a whim he flipped the weapon around so the heavy, blunt end was facing outwards, deciding that it suited the occasion better. Jacen approached the creatures slowly and cautiously, weapon held at the ready.
Setting his sights on the creature closest to him, Jacen rushed forward swinging the weapon like a baseball bat. It connected with the first one's neck, dropping it instantly. An unpleasant crunching feeling of the creature's spinal cord snapping shivered up the weapon and into Jacen's hand. The feeling shocked him, causing him to momentarily drop his guard. The second creature to Jacen's left latched onto him and tried to biting into the side of base of his neck, but due to the protection of the shark suit, all it succeeded in doing was cause Jacen to yell in pain and rage.
Jacen hooked his right foot around creature number two's legs and pulled, causing it to loose its grip and topple over. Without hesitation he lifted the makeshift weapon up in his right hand and brought it down through an ark which hit the creature right in the temple as it attempted to get up. It instantly went limp and fell back to the ground.
The third creature was already upon him as he looked up, breathing heavily from all the physical exertion. Taking advantage of the protection his gloves provided Jacen took hold of the blade end of the sword with his left hand and jamming the butt of the weapon into the creatures face. He then followed up by quickly bringing the weapon up with both hands and then slashing downwards, embedding into the creatures forehead.
Wearily Jacen removed the weapon and walked over to the first creature whose head was still alive and performed a finishing blow. He stumbled into the principal's office where the P.A. system is kept. Jacen found the microphone unplugged, lying on the floor. Inserting the plug into the power socket Jacen took the microphone over to the desk in the middle of the room and sank into the chair, I need to exercise more, he thought. Flipping the switch on the microphone to broadcast over the loudspeakers throughout the school, Jacen began to speak, not bothering to hide the sheer exhaustion in his voice.
Olivia sat hiding silently with her cell phone out, waiting anxiously for Melissa to respond to her message of warning. Ten minutes after Jacen had left with his roommate to combat some unknown force outside, a creature had passed by. She didn't see it herself but after hearing matching descriptions of the, what did they call it… oh yes a Zombie, descriptions of the Zombie, Olivia decided that she hoped she never saw one.
She looked down, feeling her phone vibrate in her hands. Olivia's arms shook as she flipped it open and read the message. (Thanks for the warning, but I already killed one saving Jacen's friend. Im hiding in the bathroom and should be safe for the moment.)
Olivia began to reply when the phone vibrated again, indicating another message.(Batteries low, turning phone off to conserve power) ,Wait! She thought mentally yelling at the phone, what about Jacen? But knowing that her friends phone was off, decided to do the same, noting how much power her phone had.
Time went by in silence for a while, save for the occasional moan of zombies sound as they passed by the door, and a few girls whispering excitedly to each other. Idiots! She thought angrily, they have no idea this serious this is. We could all die, and they act like we're in a haunted house. The semi-silence ended abruptly when the loudspeaker above the door came to life with an ear splitting screech
"Teachers and Students of Bestine Academy," a familiar, yet weary voice said, "demons of unimaginable horror have overrun Bestine and are now beginning to appear around and throughout the school in ever increasing numbers. These same creatures are apparently responsible for the so called riots erupting in major cities throughout the country, maybe even the world. If we are to survive the coming times, we will need to rally together and face this threat as a united force!" The voice paused, letting the words sink in.
"We need to secure the main building," the voice continued, "but I can not do it alone. So, in hopes of obtaining that goal I am asking all those willing to fight for our survival to meet me in the cafeteria. Bring anything you can find that can be used as a weapon, and travel in groups. Should you be forced to fight one of these creatures, I advise you to aim for the head or neck. Nothing else seems to work."
The voice paused yet again, as if trying to make a decision. "As for all those unwilling or unable to fight; Stay where you are and lock the doors. When the building is secured I will alert you, and give you directions. Until then it is important for all of you to remain calm. Panic will only cause disorder and destruction of property, property which will not be able to replace… That is all…Jacen Bennett, over and out!" the voice said as the speaker fell silent, seemingly finished.
"Jacen, Thank God you're alive!" Olivia said out loud before blushing furiously, noticing the whole class was staring at her.
Just then, much to Olivia's relief, the speakers screeched into life again. "I almost forgot," the voice started, with a hint of embarrassment, "if anyone passes by the girls bathroom next to the library, please knock three times and escort my friend and his savior to the nearest occupied classroom before continuing."