IZZY
1:32 P.M.
SECOND BASEMENT SAVE ROOM
-X-
"Temper, temper, Noah. Quite a mouth on someone who just lost someone... important to him?"
"YOU MOTHERFUCKER!!!"
"CHEF!! SHOOT 'IM!!"
What?! No one's shooting Noah on E-SCOPE'S watch!
I try to take the shotgun away from Chef. He's persistent, but I manage to get the upperhand, and in my defense (yeah, that's my excuse) I shoot him in the head.
I turn to Noah and beckon him. "COME ON!!" And he runs with me to the ladder.
"GO-GO-GO-GO-GOOO!!"
He doesn't have to tell me twice. We're up to the next floor in no time.
(Clink, clank, clink, clank, up the ladder we go...)
Gggggrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrroooooooooorrrrrrrrrrssssssssshhhhhhhhh...
"...What...the...fucking...hell...was...that?" Noah manages to ask.
"Whoever it is, I hope it's friendly," I reply.
"Sounds friendly," he says sarcastically.
Gggggrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrroooooooooorrrrrrrrrrssssssssshhhhhhhhh...
"Okay, seriously, this is bad." I can hear Noah gulp behind me.
"It'll be fine, Noah," I try to reassure him. "I mean, it's not the first time we've dealt with some sort of tragic disaster. Like, remember when Co--"
"That was ten minutes ago."
"Oh, yeah."
"I hope your words of encouragement improve, Izzy."
"E-Scope."
"Does it matter at this point?"
I scoff, rolling my eyes. "Noah, in this kind of situation, you can't be bitter! I mean, sure, it's hard. I understand that. But when you're bitter, you lose track of the situation, and you know what happens? You... watch this... you watching? ...DIE! That's right, DIE. So don't give me any of this emo bullshit, because it's only going to hinder the both of us. This is a life-or-death situation, and face it, E-Scope has some experience in field of life-or-death situations."
"Why am I not surprised?"
"Dammit, Noah, quit being such a--"
Gggggrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrroooooooooorrrrrrrrrrssssssssshhhhhhhhh...
"...Yeah, that," I finish. "Thank you, mysterious, creepy--"
"Izzy, maybe we should go while we're still ALIVE."
"Alright, alright, fine."
We hadn't even made it to the other side of the machine...
Gggggrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrroooooooooorrrrrrrrrrssssssssshhhhhhhhh...
"Okay, seriously! Let's get out of--!"
We heard something smash through a nearby door.
"Oh, shit..."
"Um... wasn't that the door Harold went through?" Noah asks, and I nod.
Whatever had caused that door to break into several pieces has finally emerged from the door. It is horrifyingly grotesque! A large, rotting zombie with half of its skin torn to shreds, that looks like it was all hopped up on steroids and other enhancement drugs, with a bad haircut and dorky glasses... wait a minute...
"No... fucking... way..."
"Noah?"
"...Yeah...?"
"RUN, BITCH!! RUUUUN!!!"
Panicking, we both bolt through the main door, and up the stairs.
(...Still got nothing...)
Noah stops to take a breath, and I am forced to wait for him. I don't want him to die down here, not after all he's gone through already. Cody would want him to live. Even if he was mad at him at the end there, he wouldn't wish death on his best friend.
"Come on, Noah, we have to get out of here!"
"I'm... not used... to running... this much..."
We hear the door smash behind us.
"But I'll be willing to make an exception here!"
We start running again. Oh, God... I begin to panic again. What would Owen do at a time like this? ...Oh right, he'd probably push me into that Super-Mega-Harold.
"He's gaining on us!"
We turn around the corner, and Noah quickly whips me around and takes us through a side door. Super-Mega-Harold must not have seen it, because he didn't try to break down the door afterward. We seem to have lost him.
I look around the room. "Hey, this is that one office we were in earlier."
"Yeah, it pays to remember this shit," he replies, panting like crazy.
"Yo! Didn't your mama ever teach y'all some manners or somethin'?"
Wait... Was that...?
We turn toward the office desk. Leshawna is kneeling behind it, looking up at us with concern.
"Leshawna!" I cry happily, and out of the corner of my eye I think I see Noah almost faint. "You're alive!"
"Yeah, I'm alright..." She frowns. "We're the only ones left, aren't we?"
"Not including the guys still at the switch area, possibly, if any of them stayed behind, that is," Noah says, his palms making their way up to his forehead. "And Chris, the bastard..." He kneels down, and begins to breath heavily. I can almost hear his silent sobs.
Leshawna nods. "I've been through a lot, too. I got drugged, thrown into a little jail cell, and... well..." She stands up, revealing a fourth person in the room.
"...Lindsay?!" I ask in shock. But... but...
The blonde slowly stands up from her lying position, steadily using the desk to prop herself up. She's about to speak, but Leshawna stops her.
"Girl, you need to rest. Here, sit down." She gestures toward the chair, and Lindsay, without saying a word, obeys. Leshawna looks back up at us. "Here's what happened. I stumbled across this room with security monitors. They recorded all the stuff that's been happening here at the facility: Courtney's death, Cody shooting Trent, Geoff and Bridgette's last make-out session. And they had all been watched recently."
"Chris," Noah concludes.
"Yes. And the bastard drugged me and put me in this little jail cell. And when I woke up, Lindsay here had let me out."
"I was... trying to find... alive people..." Lindsay whimpers.
"Hush, hon," Leshawna insists. "Let me tell the story, 'kay?" She turns her attention back to us. "Lindsay said her team had wandered into a locker room, and the door jammed. Apparently, the zombies were so busy eating the others that Lindsay managed to escape with one of her credit cards."
"If there's... one thing... I can thank Heather for... it's teaching me how... to do that..."
"Sug', just rest." Leshawna takes another deep breath, this time more forced, before continuing. "She started looking around the facility for survivors, and she managed to find a ladder up to a room on this floor. She used her credit card on that and another door in the hall and managed to find an elevator.
"She started using the elevator to search for the others, but she didn't have any luck. But finally, she managed to find me in the cell. She waited for me to wake up, and when I did, she helped me escape."
"So wait..." I interrupted. Sorrow began to engulf my entrails. "Owen's... dead?"
"And Beth... and T-T-Tyler..." Lindsay winces, and holds up her arm, revealing a gruesome amount of flesh torn off. "And me..."
"Lindsay, please rest," Leshawna says motherly, and the blonde goes silent again, sobbing. Leshawna continues, "We both decided it'd be easier to search for survivors together, so we went back to the elevator and went up a floor. And this time... we found someone..."
"Not..." Noah starts, but Leshawna nods. I'm not sure if she has ESP, or if she's just guessing, but right now I don't care. Owen... my poor Owen...
"We ended up in some sort of theatre. A pretty fancy one, too. But we hadn't walked three steps, and then... then..." She chokes back a few tears. "I've never cried like that in my whole life. But I saw her rise up... cold... dead... unfeeling. And Lindsay... she thought that was normal. Gwen always seemed cold and unfeeling to her. So she tried to rescue her, despite me telling her not to. I knew what happened to her, but Lindsay didn't..."
"And Gwen bit her."
Lindsay nods, her sobs slightly louder than before.
"We rushed back to the elevator," Leshawna says. "Gwenie wasn't very fast... it looked like she had a bum leg. But the damage had been done." She gestures toward Lindsay's bite. "Lindsay still wanted to look for survivors anyway. The girl's got heart." She chokes back some more tears. "But when we got up here, she collapsed. So I brought her in here."
"Is... is that a gun?" Lindsay suddenly blurts out, pointing toward the shotgun in my possession.
"Uh... yeah. Why?"
"When... When I turn into one of them..." She gulps. "I want you to do the hors d'oeuvre."
"Honor, hon," Leshawna corrects. Wow, that one was a little too ditzy, even for Lindsay. The virus must already be starting its thing or something.
Wait... she wants ME to shoot her?
I mean, don't get me wrong, it's not like I've never thought of shooting someone. I mean, hell, I just blew Chef's brains out!
But... can I shoot LINDSAY'S brains out?
Even if she is a monster, I'm not sure I can do that. She's too sweet!
...But... if she wants me to...
"I'll do it," I say, giving her a thumbs up. She weakly smiles at me before her eyes slowly begin to shut...
And they didn't open again.
Leshawna checks her pulse. She gasps, and her face falls. I think I see tears falling from her face.
"Izzy?"
I turn to my little snobby homo friend. "Yeah?"
"I'm sorry."
...Okay, when I get confused, THAT'S a bad sign.
"What are you talking about?"
"All those times I didn't want you around because you annoyed the hell out of me... and you still saved my life..." He pauses for a moment, and it seems like he's trying to think of what to say. But all he comes up with is, "Thank you."
And that's enough for me. "No problem, Noah, my man!" I give him a military-style salute, but he doesn't smile. I don't blame him. It's going to take a lot of my shenanigans to get him smiling again. ...Well, the shenanigans that he actually likes... which aren't very many.
Without another word, Noah takes a deep breath, and walks toward the typewriter. I figure he's going to rant again, and I peer over his shoulder to see what he types. It brings me to tears.
My name is Noah. And this may just be the last few minutes of my life...
-X-
I know, a little serious for an Izzy chapter, but you have to take in account all the crap that's been happening too. Think of it as character development: notice how Izzy seems to go from at least semi-Izzy-esque to a more serious Izzy (which, let's face it, Izzy can be serious when she wants to be. It's very rare, but it happens).
Also, this is why I love feedback. If it wasn't for Kobold mentioning the possibility that Lindsay and/or Beth could still be alive, I probably wouldn't have had this sad little chapter, and therefore nothing to truly explain why Gwen was scratching the elevator (the original idea was that she could "sense" Chris use the elevator, but I think this new idea makes more sense, as it would explain why she went to the elevator in the first place) or how Leshawna managed to escape her prison (which would've happened whether or not Lindsay was alive). Also, special thanks to cuttieartgirl for requesting another Izzy chapter, which I honestly wasn't planning on doing--I was planning on doing something with Leshawna, but I didn't have very many ideas for it, especially since, again, I wasn't planning on using Lindsay at all for this part at first. So thank you both. : D
I just hope that the lack of craziness in this chapter compared to the first Izzy chapter doesn't upset anyone. : P