"Teenagers scare the living shit out of me

They could care less, as long as someone will bleed

So tuck in your clothes or strike a violin pose

Maybe they'll leave you alone, but not me!"

-"Teenagers", My Chemical Romance

. . . . . . . . . . .

The moon shone cold and pale on the floor in slits like razor blades, some of the light caught in the half-open blinds. Di lay in her bed, waiting. She lay perfectly still, waiting until she heard the car motor. When the low rumbling caught her ear she leapt out of bed, running to the window and watching as her best friend slid into the car before it even came to a complete stop. Actually, the car never came to a complete stop – the moment the blue-haired girl was in the car it took off again, the car door being shut by a peach-colored hand (the color of peach ice cream under the light of the moon) before it rounded the bend.

Di tip-toed out of her room and across the landing to the boys' room. Before she could knock on the door, however, Donnie opened quickly but silently. Di took a step back to give the boy room to get out into the hallway, which he did, turning to shut the door behind him with only the slightest sound of the bottom of the door catching on the carpet.

Once it was shut, he whispered in her ear, "Ready?" Di nodded, giving him a one fingered gesture for 'one moment' and crept back into her room, grabbing a purse that her mom had brought back from Italy (it was a peach/vanilla colored shoulder bag, with a Vespa and the logo on it) and hurrying into the bathroom to gather up the contents from her makeup kit. She dumped it all in and grabbed a heather black pull-over sweater from draped over the top of the staircase and hurried down the steps.

Donnie was waiting out in front of the house in the truck. The moment Di closed the door behind her and strapped on her seatbelt, Donnie turned the ignition and backed out of the driveway. While he drove towards the very ominous smoking city, Di opened the visor in front of her and the mirror, the lights flickering on as she opened it.

"You're going to wear makeup? In the middle of the night?" Donnie inquired, glancing over to see the stuff she had grabbed from her room spread out on her lap like a toddler's art studio.

"You're not dressed in your pajamas." Di pointed out, her lips slightly ajar as she applied mascara to her blonde eyelashes. "I'm not dressed without this."

"I think that stuff is stupid." Donnie said bluntly, getting onto the left side of the road to avoid a pileup of cars. The pile had been moved off of most of the lane, but not all the way. They were still far away enough from the city that either everyone else had fled or the community service workers had neglected to attend to the cleanup over there, instead focusing on the problems within the buildings (the group actually lived within city limits, but not within the biggest part of the city).

"Besides, Quinn hardly ever wears that stuff."

"Okay, I'm not Q. Also, why do you care? You know why she doesn't wear it – if she did, she'd spend almost an hour doing it because she would want it to be really dramatic and something that normal people just don't wear."

"Yeah…." Donnie sighed, slumping back against the back of his chair before sitting forward quickly to put his hands back on the wheel. "She wants people to know that she's wearing makeup and notice it if she's going to wear it at all." He conceded.

"Exactly." Di made a noise of frustration as a bump in the road left a strange 'w' shape in her eyeliner. Taking out a q-tip, she fixed it quickly and steadied her hand on an armrest before finishing the eyeliner with a swipe and continuing on to her eye shadow.

"But why do you wear it?" Donnie queried.

"Because I feel pretty when I wear it. How many girls have to deal with this many freckles? Or blonde eyelashes?"

Donnie took his eyes off the road for a second to peer closely at Di. After he had satisfied himself, he looked forward again, mumbling, "I never noticed you had blonde lashes."

"Well, now you do." Di gathered up all her supplies and put them back in her bag. "Take a left up here and park behind that building." She ordered.

It was so quiet, beyond the shrieks echoing through the empty streets. It reminded her of the first day that she had been attacked.

. . . . . . . . . . .

It was four in the afternoon during the winter and the sun had almost set. Not that Di would know. She was sitting in the gym on the bleachers waiting for some sort of announcement…thing. The principal had made it mandatory, and she was too chicken to try and wriggle out of it. In fact, most of the other students had shown up, too. Even the ones that were normally not even in class.

They chatted loudly and yelled at each other, throwing spitballs and generally being immature. Not that she wasn't immature, but really? Spitballs? Di opened her awesome skull backpack and pulled out her copy of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. A chapter later the noise quieted (slightly) as the principal stepped up onto the stage. He opened his mouth to speak, but suddenly a loud scream split the air like a knife.

Di whipped her head up, her book still open in her lap. On the other side of the gym, one of the 'emo' kids (technically, the music she liked was emo, but she wasn't. The style was cool, though) was biting a jock on the neck. For a second she thought, "Get a room, why don't you?" When she suddenly realized it wasn't in the least bit sexual; it in fact looked like something was very, very wrong. The blonde boy wearing a letter jacket that did nothing to hide his bulging muscles wasn't struggling in the slightest to try and get away from the skinny and pale emo boy. The jock could have easily thrown the boy off of him if he wanted to, but he just kind of sagged to the floor.

The girl two rows in front of her suddenly attacked the boy she had been making out with just a second ago, which made another chorus of shrieks echo 'round the filled auditorium. Now people were panicking and running out of the stands and towards the exits. Di threw her book back into her bag without even glancing at the page number (which any book lover will tell you is a shocking thing to do) and stood up herself.

She got down onto the floor without being trampled when the crowd of teenagers surged back into the middle – men and women that sent chills down her spine were standing by the doors, blocking the exits. They stalked into the middle of the room and rounded up the kids simply with their presence. Then another one of the jocks tried to make a run for it and a woman with a Mohawk struck so fast that nobody had time to scream.

The woman grabbed him and was biting the brunette jock and the gym fell silent, the jock's face getting paler and paler as she continued to bite his neck. It was dead quiet except for the boy's gasps until he stopped moving and slumped to the floor, eyes staring cold and dead.

Then all hell broke loose. The kids were shoving each other to get away from the monsters and trying to get to the doors. Di fought her way through the crowds and pushed against the door. Locked. Whirling around, Di stared in shock at the scene in front of her. Two more students were attacking the rest of the kids, and, oh, God, Principal Stone was sucking at the wrist of one of the hipster girls who was unconscious and splayed across the bench above him.

Her cell phone buzzed and Di shrieked instinctively, but the noise was lost in the crowd. Lifting it to her ear, she yelled in a shaking voice, "Hello?"

"Heeeyyyy." Quinn's voice took on a valley girl accent before laughing and saying in a voice that clearly spoke of her smile. "Di! How are you?"

"Not very good right now, Q! There are people in my school! They're biting people and some of the students and teachers are doing it too!"

"What? Biting them?" Q's smile now was even more pronounced. "They're zombies?"

"I don't know what they are, Q!" Her fearful tone was hissed into the earpiece and Di could almost hear Quinn's jocular attitude fading away. "You gotta help me!"

"Okay, okay." She could hear Q pacing around her house – the front door opened and she could hear the police sirens that were almost always within hearing distance from their neighborhood. As Di waited for Quinn's advice, she dodged between the people, her pulse thundering in her head louder than any of the screams.

"Who are they leaving alone?" The younger girl finally asked. Di looked around – a girl in her Geometry class named Victoria was cornering Ryland from P.E. in the bleachers and Ms. Darkholme was sucking on Alex Suarez, who was in her English class underneath the basketball hoops.

"Nobody… Except for the dead ones!" Di hissed. Some of the students had banded together in a corner and were helping each other fend off the people attacking them – a group of rock 'n' roll rebels, by the look of them.

"Perfect! Lay down and pretend to be dead!" Quinn exclaimed. Di got the impression that below the anxiety coating her voice, Q was secretly enjoying it. Holding her phone in one hand, she lowered herself to the ground and stretched out. The floor was gritty and in patches she knew she was lying in blood. But she stayed still.

"I'll be there as soon as I can, Di! Just stay still!" Q hung up and Di stretched out her hand holding the phone and closed her eyes, though she sincerely wanted to watch out for the group of people after them. She knew from experience that anybody looking for someone still alive eyes open and looking around were a dead giveaway, so she stayed still, even when somebody stepped on her wrist and another person tripped over her.

After a long time, the sound quieted and she heard the doors being opened and several people leaving the gym. The moment the doors closed again (she hoped they weren't locked) Di sat up, grimacing at the blood in her hair.

But suddenly, the body next to her twitched and started to scream in pain. Di screamed herself and scrambled backwards as fast as possible, slipping on a patch of blood and going down hard. The body (she could tell now it was a boy – a freshman) began to jerk and scream even more. As if woken up by his pain, a few more of the bodies laying around in the gym began to do the same.

"What's wrong with him?" Di looked up to see the pervert senior who always made an effort to hit on every girl he saw… even some of the boys. Gabe Saporta was kneeling over the freshman with concern and despite her revulsion for seeing someone in that much pain, Di leaned closer too.

There were two little marks on his neck that looked oddly familiar (Di discarded that possibility. It couldn't be true) but she was more concerned with the fact that about fifteen students out of the five hundred or so in the gym were the ones that were screeching and the other fifteen or so that had escaped injury were unsure of what to do to help them.

A pounding at the door made Di look up. Quinn was standing at the door next to another boy with long black hair. Her short dirty blonde hair looked greasy and tangled, as if she hadn't taken a shower that day and the blonde streaks were dull and lifeless. They were talking for a few seconds, both gesturing into the gym. Quinn stepped back from the small window and the boy gestured for Di to step back too, then raised a foot and broke the lock and struck the door in with one kick.

He rushed into the room, yelling at the top of his lungs, "Mikey? Mikey! Where are you?"

Quinn opened her arms and Di basically fell into them. She let her body sag into her best friend's for a few, just letting her emotions make her feel safe. But only for a second, because then the boy who had kicked the door in yelled, "Help! Please!"

The two girls rushed to his side next to the little freshman, who apparently was a friend, because the black-haired boy smoothed his hair and was muttering to him, "Mikey, you gotta tell me what's wrong!"

But the skinny boy didn't respond, save for a gasped breath that sounded like, "Gee…" he convulsed again.

"He's gonna hurt himself if we don't pin him down!" Gabe stood up and strode over to the body of the hipster girl the principal had been snacking on. She was wearing about three super long scarves and Gabe unwound them all from around her neck, seemingly without registering the fact he was touching a dead body. Maybe it didn't bother him, but Di almost couldn't make herself catch the scarves when Gabe threw them to her.

Nevertheless, Di helped the dark-haired boy and Quinn strap Mikey's hands and legs to some of the support beam of the bleachers. It was hard, since Mikey wasn't letting them just tie him up – he thrashed and made the choking noises again. But they managed it. After they finished, the black-haired boy sat down next to Mikey and smoothed his hair back, murmuring to him in a way that spoke of a close connection.

"I hate to interrupt your lovey dovey time." Gabe pulled the guy upright, though not without protest from the boy, who made a distressed noise and tried to kneel down again next to his friend. "But there are more people here that need help."

Di had almost forgotten about the other kids who were screaming and writhing themselves. It was downright creepy, but there was nothing she could do about it except follow Gabe and pick up more scarves and long necklaces, belts, whatever they could find to keep the kids from hurting themselves. Quinn and the dark-haired boy were working on the other side of the gym, near where Mikey lay. The other boy was constantly glancing over to the freshman as he and Q strapped one of the cheerleaders (she wasn't wearing her uniform, but Di recognized her from practices out on the track while she was running laps) to the bleacher benches.

Soon enough, all the kids were tied down, though their collective screaming was getting louder as each one was restrained. Mikey was screaming loudest of all, a hoarse and exhausted yell that sounded like it was ripping his voice from his vocal chords. His friend who had come to see him was trying to calm him down, but nothing seemed to be working. Quinn was standing next to the dark-haired boy and trying to assist, but again, nothing seemed to help.

"I'm Quinn. You can call me Q." Quinn offered a hand to him.

"Gerard." The boy shook it distractedly, totally absorbed in his friend's care.

"Look, we'll take care of your friend. The others need help." Di spoke up.

Gerard looked up with a confused expression. "Friend? He's my brother."

Quinn suddenly sat up as straight as a poker stick. Her face was contorted into some kind of hybrid of shock and fear.

"Q?" Di asked tentatively.

"Di, Eliza was at the skate park." Quinn took out her flip phone and walked away from them to dial up Eliza.

"Eliza?" Gerard asked abstractedly – it seemed as if the only thing keeping him going completely crazy was the talk, though he wasn't really even listening.

"Quinn's sister." Di supplied. She glanced at Q, who was standing outside the gym talking frantically into the phone and striding back and forth. Even though Quinn had supposedly come in a hurry, she was wearing concealer (Di knew Q's skin wasn't that clear) and mascara and a maroon t-shirt with a high v-neck that had 'GEEK' printed across the chest in white university letters. She was wearing black corduroy jeans that were cuffed at her ankles and blue checked low-tops with red piping around the rim. She was wearing a silk/tulle scarf with the silk and tulle woven together in vertical strips. Printed across it in horizontal lines were the keys on a piano or keyboard, with music in between every keyboard. It was knotted around her neck like a tie, and swung back and forth as she talked frantically to Eliza, possibly telling her to hide or play dead as the case may be.

Suddenly, Mikey gave a shudder and lay still. Gerard shook his shoulder, but the boy's eyes were wide open, seeing nothing.

"Mikey?" No reply. Gerard shook his shoulder more urgently. "Mikey? MIKEY!"