Biiiiiiig thanks to Sockmonkeyhere for being my beta. Love ya!
Blah blah, I don't own any of the characters. ('Cept for Simon, Karen, Shannon, and Rob.)
-Clocky
Zombies are, thankfully, notoriously sluggish creatures. While their strength often depends on the strength of whoever is animating them, once death occurs, cells cease regeneration. Much like the more geriatric aged citizens of Florida, they tend to shuffle about almost wearily, but with the added bonus of not complaining about their children never calling them.
To make up for this severe lacking in movement, they are gifted with no real physical or emotional feeling, extraordinary endurance, tenacity, and more often than not: strength.
Thankfully, while they are difficult to kill, it is not impossible. Usually, a good solid head-bashing will successfully destroy any zombie one might come face-to-face with. Due to decomposition, this can be a fairly simple task that relies more on aim than anything else.
Spike was glad he had the aim he did.
He'd knocked back a few of them, then tore off the railing of the stairs, rewarding him with a good four-foot long pipe.
Spike made a dash for one of the zombies, who made a gurgling sound behind its mask, and then swung his new weapon.
The head went flying off the monster's shoulders, and the body crumpled to the floor.
Spike sniffed, and grinned. "Batter up."
Fred peered around the corner, and nodded, all clear. The building seemed abandoned, there wasn't a worker to be seen, for which she was actually glad. Unless the bad guys were invisible, or perhaps they were releasing a deadly toxin into the air as she ran through the hallways. Fred tried to limit her breathing.
She made her way down the hall and, on a whim, entered one of the offices. It was spotless, except the room reeked, and Fred had been hanging around vampires enough to recognize the smell as rot. She walked over and peered under the desk. Nothing. Nothing dead or decaying.
Shhff-tmp.
Fred dropped beneath the desk, and peered out through the hole which computer wires were fed were six - no, seven - men mere feet away from her. All of them smelling terrible and shuffling about, looking intently at the desk.
She took several seconds to assess the situation, find the most probable solution, and make the decision to roll with it. Her escape route was blocked, and no doubt there were more of them in the hallway, so for a small woman of her build, her reaction was extraordinarily justified.
Fred pulled the shotgun from her hip and jumped up from behind the desk, letting off a shot in the direction of one of the zombies. The shot hit one, but she failed to make a killshot and the creature merely looked somewhat annoyed, if even that. Winifred had, alas, failed to factor in that the noise from the gun might attract more of these fellows looking for a meal, and more were popping their heads into the office to locate their dinner-on-legs.
She grabbed the edges of the desk and pulled herself against the bookcase behind her, and knew the barricade wouldn't last. She needed a plan, she needed a process, a theorem- No, no time. No time to think.
She pumped the shotgun and blew a hole in the wall, then pulled the shortsword, and began hacking away, widening the hole. She'd learned how to be resourceful in Pylea, and if there had ever been a time she was grateful for that, it was now. The desk was getting nudged away, pulled away from her, then...
Made it; she squeezed through the hole as black-clad hands, groping and unnaturally strong, reached for her.
The next room was clear, and she bolted for the door, halted, and pressed her ear against it.
Silence outside, but the scrabbling to get at her from the other end of the room was certainly growing louder. Out the door, into the hall, down three flights of stairs until she had entered what had once been her laboratory.
And Fred let out a panicked shriek at the person she saw standing in her ex-office.
"Fred? What are you doing here?"
"Wesley."
While Fred nearly fainted and Spike was playing baseball with heads, Angel was mentally kicking himself for having grown complacent.
"I should have-grunt-seen this coming!"
The zombies weren't so much of a problem, they went down easily enough with a well-placed stab, but he really didn't like that things had unraveled so much, so fast. But dammit-all, he'd let them get separated.
When the last of the horde had crumpled into twitching corpses rather than walking ones, Angel stalked his way through the lobby and slammed open the door to what had once been his office.
"Angel, so glad you could come in! I was worried you weren't going to show."
"Silas Vail, is it?"
"Mmhm."
"Good, didn't want to go stabbing the wrong person." Angel hefted up his shortsword and went to move towards the oddly complacent CEO, when the demon pulled out a stack of files.
"I wouldn't, actually, if I were you. See these little papers here?" Silas thumbed through them. "These are your contracts, and so long as they are in my possession... I own you and your little pals."
"Yeah, I really don't care. I don't feel like putting up with any lawyers today; so why don't you quit hiding behind your paperwork?"
Silas snickered. "You really think all my father left me was paperwork? He taught me just about everything he knew."
Angel considered himself a patient man, he tried to be, anyway. This day, however, really had not panned out how he had liked it, and while he should have seen it coming, he would put up with that mental baggage later.
Right now, he was very frustrated, and there was a perfectly good, smug little punching bag right in front of him.
He'd really thought she was going to pass out, but his heart had broken when instead of understanding, she had tried to hug him.
Fred passed right through him, and he looked at her tiredly. "Fred... we have to talk."
"I signed my soul away in that contract, and now I'm trapped here until the contract is destroyed. We really do not have as much time as I would like to talk, because there are so many things I want to say to you..." Wesley looked at the clock.
"Time? Wesley what's going on? How can I... Maybe I can do what I did with Pavayne, the machine- I still have my notes, we can find another power source..."
If he could have, Wesley would have taken hold of her shoulders. "Winifred, Fred. I'm not supposed to be here. I'm dead. Please."
Fred looked him over; he was haggard, worn, and truly looked out of place. His face was full of conflict, and she wished that what he was saying wasn't true, because there were so many things they hadn't said and done and laughed about. But he was right; he didn't belong on the earth anymore.
"Tell me what we have to do."
"The contracts we all signed; it's why your soul stayed on earth after Illyria took your body, it's why I'm still here. We signed our souls over to Wolfram and Hart, and if you're here now, that means Angel is confronting Silas right now, and Illyria is in the building somewhere, picking you all off one-by-one." Wesley lifted his glasses from his face and stuffed them in his coat pocket, lines creasing his face.
"As the CEO, Silas is the only one who can change the contracts, but if he is down there facing Angel right now as I suspect he is, then he'll do everything possible to make you all suffer, even if he dies. We have to tell Angel not to kill him; if he does, then it's very possible Wolfram and Hart will own your souls and mine forever."
Fred gaped. "Ultimate revenge... Wesley, you go find Angel and warn him, I'll find Spike, Charles, and Lorne and meet you wherever they are."
"I'm not leaving you alone."
"Wesley, you're very gallant, and it means a lot that you want to protect me, but you're currently incapable of touching anything. With or without you, I'm in danger." Fred reached out and fit her fingers through his hand, looking pained as he had never seen her.
"Fine... Meet me in the main lobby, and be careful."
"I will, I promise."
He took off through the floor, disappearing beneath her feet, and Fred dashed to the laboratory doors. Before she could open them, however, they burst open, and Fred ran full-pelt into someone's chest. She looked up into eyes that were clear as water and blue like day.
"Fancy seeing you here, pigeon. You alright?"