4 Years Later...
She looked at what used to be her secret entrance to the museum. "How did this ever happen? What happened to this place?" Rachel thought to herself. Ever since the outbreak occurred nearly all of the museums had been abandoned and left by themselves except for the ones the military occupied. Who knows what they were using them for though. Looters have gone through a long while back but not all of the things were taken, Rachel had a stash of her favorite books in one of the bookshelves on the second floor as well as an extra gun if she ever needed it, and she definitely needed it today. Anything out of the norm that was found on you or in your room, the school took away and was never to be seen again.
It was the day before their escape. Rachel and her best friend have been working on this plan of theirs for literally months. All of the careful watching of the guards swapping, what comes into the school and at what time, and even if anyone on their floor would get up and walk to the bathroom regularly. Everything had been precisely documented in their heads about when to leave this forsaken school and avoid being drafted into the military like all the other 18 year olds after they graduated.
The more carefully she looked into the hole in the wall of the museum the more she noticed something was coming out of it. It wasn't normal dust, dust just doesn't float around and stay in the air that long.
"Crap. Spores!" Rachel exclaimed and quickly pulled off her backpack. She started rummaging through her backpack until she found one of the gas masks she managed to steal from a guard last week while snooping around the school at night. The filter wasn't in the best shape but this had to do.
Rachel ducked and entered through the hole in the wall and into the museum. There was no other choice, she needed that gun in case anything went south that night, this was the only way.
The whole museum was mostly quiet. Here and there the sounds of water could be dripping into the little puddles that had collected where the roof had collapsed and let in the rain. Ceiling tiles caked the bottom floor of the museum and graffiti from a couple years ago still on the walls. Rare artifacts were missing, the only thing left were the massive scrapes through the floor after they were dragged away, probably to be sold on the black market at some other huge city. Who knows. The only remaining things were a couple of books lying around here and there, broken glass and the not so useful artifacts that Rachel didn't even know why they would even be there in the first place.
Rachel turned on her flashlight and began walking towards the steps slowly. Each step seemed to take an eternity but she wanted to make sure whatever was in here didn't hear her. Every moment made the boards underneath her squeak just a wee bit more than she would like but eventually she made it up the stairs.
Something moved.
"It had to have been the boards." She thought to herself.
The sound got more and more distinctive the closer she made her way to the room where she normally kept her books. She couldn't tell what it was though. Some sort of groaning sound.
Rachel reached for her side and pulled out a hatchet from her make-do holster she managed to sew on to her pair of jeans so it was easy to access. Although keeping this hidden back at the school was very difficult so she had to bury it. Wasn't the best for it but having a weapon of any weapon available at the moment was very helpful.
Rachel crept over to where the room was and put her back to the wall and poked her head in between the door frame.
Right in front of her stood a man. Not an ordinary man. He was making very rigid moments and seemed to twitch around back and forth and his eyes were bloodshot and swollen. The man seemed to stumble around in circles acting as if he was being tormented by something.
The man didn't seem to notice her surprisingly enough but she wasn't going to take her chances. Rachel had to strike, it was either him or her and she didn't know how much longer she could remain unnoticed.
Rachel took her chances and charged him with the hatchet.
"YAHHH!" Rachel yelled at the top of her lungs and swung the hatchet at the infected man, hitting him clear in the neck and sending blood gushing out of his neck and making a horrid, horrid sound as he gasped for air and tried to reach for his attacker until he finally collapsed onto the hardwood floor of the upstairs.
Maybe it wasn't an idea to be so loud. Rachel's eyes became huge. Down the hall outside the room more noises started getting louder and louder. Sounds of tormented men and women just like the one who Rachel killed but something was different. Not only did she hear those sounds but also a clicking sound, terrifying enough to send a chill down the spine of the toughest guy in the entire city and it was getting closer to her by the second.
Rachel quickly grabbed for her favorite books and put them in her backpack and grabbed the gun. It was a basic 12-gauge shotgun, it definitely showed its age with scrapes and gashes in the stock and was relatively dirty all over. Thankfully there was a couple of shots in it.
There was no time for figuring out a plan or strategy, it was plain "Get the heck out of here" time. Rachel swung around and ran to the doorway and quickly looked out to see if she could see what was around her at what her best options were. Across the hall on the opposite side of the stairs she could barely pick out what the infected were doing.
"They're searching the rooms for me." Rachel said to herself with amazement as her pursuers went from room to room. Although this was a terrifying situation she still somehow seemed to find it very interesting.
And this is when everything went downhill. A couple of the infected noticed her and began running towards her position and even some to flank her exit.
"Crap! This isn't good! I gotta get out of here!" Rachel began to move towards the exit. "Maybe she could just blast them all out of her way." She thought.
She ran down the hall and realized there was too many of them to simply go through them. There was no way she had enough ammo for all these guys. She turned and realized that she had another group behind her. These things were trying to corner here and have no way of escape.
"No! No way are you doing this to me you freaks!" Rachel yelled and ran over to the railing and looked down. It was kind of a far fall. She noticed a big pile of ceiling tiles and insulation that she could use as landing spot. "Crap. I've never jumped this high... Just like the asian movies, right? Yeah... Ninjas or whatever do this all the time!" Rachel jumped off the wooden railings and went for it.
Rachel landed, but not with difficulty of course. A huge cloud of smoke came out of the insulation as she fell into the big pile. She brushed off her pants and triumphantly smiled thinking she was perfectly fine.
Once again, this was not Rachel's day. The infected soon realized what was going on and quickly rushed down the stairs to catch her. The terrifying and gruesome sounds were getting closer and closer until they sounded like these things were breathing down her back. Moans, screams and clicking was the only thing that Rachel could hear and were so loud she couldn't even think as she ran like a bat out of hell for the exit.
"Almost there. Almost there." Rachel said, her heart felt like it was beating out of her chest almost.
Rachel rounded the corner and made it back to the place where she originally had come in. The exit was so close. The infected were about a little more than an arms length by now.
Rachel made it to the wall with the hole in it. She ducked down and began to crawl through the hole to the other side. She could see the light from the outside not to far away. The nightmare was almost over! She reached for the pile of wood scraps for something to pull herself up out of the hole and out of this death trap of a museum.
She reached for a huge plank...
"Freaking Crap!" Rachel felt something grab her leg her leg and started flailing. One leg then two, Rachel had to hold onto the huge piece of wood with both hands to keep herself from being dragged back into what could have been the place of her death.
"Get off of me!" Rachel screamed. She couldn't use her shotgun because of the possibility of the blast taking her legs off. "No! No! No!" She screamed as she kicked her shoe into the face of her attacker, hisses and shrieks rang through Rachel's ears, it was unbearable. She spotted a huge nail that kind of resembled a railroad nail.
Rachel reached back and slammed the nail into the infected's head as it nearly broke Rachel's eardrums with the ungodly shriek it produced. It retaliated and bit directly into Rachel's leg.
"Arghhh! Son of a biscuit!" Rachel yelled out and reached for her leg. She was desperate now. Blood started to run down her leg. In a desperate attempt, she pulled herself out of the crevice in the wall and walked over to the massive metal desk that was to the side of the hole in the wall and began to push it over to cover the entrance.
Everything started to darken. Rachel's vision became blurry and the ground began to move and liquify. It's like Rachel was on a drug trip. Everything began changing colors and distorting before her very eyes. Just then Rachel turned around.
Everything around it was moving but the creature itself. The ground looked like it oozed and bubbled but the creature moved closer and closer. The sky had changed to dark red while it continued to walk slowly over to her. Each and every step it seemed to produce an obscene clicking sound. She finally saw what had been producing such a horrid sound.
The man... or what this thing had used to have been was covered in a fungus all over his face making him completely blind and it's teeth looked mangled and jagged all over the place. It stumbled towards Rachel and every second got closer and closer.
"Clicker..." Rachel couldn't move. Her entire body had froze up. She wanted to move but it seemed like heavy weights were holding her down and not letting her move. This felt like the end. She felt hopeless.
Finally the Clicker reached the top of the stairs and then rushed at her. Rachel still couldn't move even though she tried with all her might. The almost demonic creature went for her neck.
"AHHHH! GET AWAY FROM ME Y-" Rachel screamed bloody murder as it was about to rip her throat out.
Everything went black.
"NO!" Rachel screamed and jumped up out of her bed with her knife in her hand with the facial expression to kill whatever she was yelling at.
Rachel sighed and sat back down on the edge of her bed and looked at the knife in her hand. It was the knife from her dad, she kept it with her all the time to remind her of him.
She rubbed her tired eyes and realized it was light out. "It's just a nightmare Rachel, calm down..." She said to herself and lifted up her pant leg to look at her leg, revealing an old bite mark that was 3 weeks old.
Well... Almost a nightmare...
