"I dunno, I'm pretty sure something ain't right with that one."
Carlos readjusted his grip on Nicholai. "Who? Rain?"
"Yeah!" L.J. confirmed, cringing and sparing a glance around when he realized how loud he was. "My bad."
"Well, Alice said she wasn't much of a talker."
"I know that, but I still think her vibe was all kinds of weird. I mean," L.J. attempted to imitate Rain's voice, but Carlos thought the impression ended up sounding more like a cartoon mobster, "'You don't want us riding with you, man. Trust me.' The hell was that supposed to mean?"
He could admit, that was slightly odd (and he was entirely unsure what she meant by that), but that was the only thing, wasn't it? He didn't notice anything else. He voiced that.
"Of course you didn't, all your attention was on that Alice," Nicholai teased half-heartedly.
"Look, you can keep your guard up if you want, but we're all here for the same reason and it wouldn't benefit anyone to start causing trouble. Not her, not Alice, not us. You might not trust her, but as it stands, she has no reason not to cooperate with us."
The hall they were passing through came to an end, leaving two new paths on either side to take.
"Which way do we want to go?" Carlos turned to the others. "Right or left?"
Peyton pushed open a classroom door on the left-hand side. He and Terri had worked through a decent number of rooms. No luck so far, though.
Keeping his pistol ready for any unexpected surprises, he stepped inside and swept over the space with his flashlight.
Finally, his eyes locked onto something. In the gap between two overturned desks, a small figure appeared to be hunched. All he could see was an arm clad in a blue blazer—which he knew to be part of the school uniform—and a dangling tie.
"Hello?" He began to approach. "Angela?"
The figure shifted.
"You can come out. It's alright," Peyton tried to assure.
After a moment, there was a dull, wet thud. The figure crawled into view and clumsily stood. It was not who they were searching for. He knew that because he recognized her.
"Lily...?"
It was his niece. The very same one he picked up from this school twice a week. Every Monday and Thursday. He immediately lowered his firearm and hurried over to her.
"Your auntie called way before things got too bad and said she was gonna evacuate you and your brother. What happened? You okay?"
Lily offered no response, only stared up at him. She was a bit disheveled. Peyton crouched down to her level and placed his hands on her shoulders.
"Hey. Talk to me, sweetheart."
Still nothing. She grabbed his arm, and he took notice of the fact that her hands were red. It should have begun to click there and then. He should have known what was wrong, but his brain refused even to entertain the possibility of it being true.
She bared her teeth and snarled.
With a single sharp movement, she bit down on Peyton's arm, managing to break the skin.
Peyton yelped and withdrew. Lily came away with a chunk. He landed on his behind and began to crawl backward. "Hey, hey, no. Lily... No... Oh my god."
His back bumped into something—someone. He looked over his shoulder and found another zombified student.
And another.
And another.
And another.
And another... An entire class worth was slowly flooding in, now privy to the fact that fresh human meat had entered the vicinity.
"Oh, god... Oh, shit!"
They all began to dogpile him, eager to feed. He screamed.
A few rooms down, Terri jumped at the sound. "Peyton?" she called nervously.
At the same time, somewhere on the floor beneath, Rain and Alice also heard the cry.
"I'll go check it out," Alice said. Rain gave a nod in response before Alice began to head back to the stairwell.
With the revolver at the ready, Terri went to investigate, following the pained cries. Sprinkled among them were the occasional growl, struggling, and noisy, vigorous chewing.
The entrance was slightly open. She took a deep breath as she pushed the door open a bit more, expecting to find maybe two or three of those bioweapon-things in there with Peyton, and him trying to fight them off.
The sight she found instead was enough to make her freeze in place. There must have been about twenty of them, and they were kids. Kids.
Peyton was barely visible beneath the ravenous horde. Terri could only make out his failing legs. She opened her mouth to shriek, but no sound came out. She aimed the gun Jill had given her. It shook in her grasp.
There were so many.
So,
Terri's finger fumbled to find the trigger.
So...
...many...
...
She couldn't move. Couldn't shoot. Couldn't move couldn't shoot couldn't couldn't couldn't she was stuck stuck—
Peyton stopped making noises. Stopped moving.
The zombies on the fringe of the feeding session took notice of her presence, slowly shambling their way toward her.
Finally, she snapped out of it. A blood-curdling scream tore its way from her throat and she threw her weapon.
BANG! A round was fired into the ceiling.
She turned.
And she ran.
As she grew close to the mouth of the corridor, she spared a glance over her shoulder to see if they were still following her. They were.
Then, she slammed into something. Something unbudging. She staggered back.
Cold hands grabbed her shoulders, steadying her.
Terri looked down, finding Alice standing in front of her. Their eyes briefly met before Alice's attention shifted to Terri's pursuers.
A janitor's closet a few feet away flew open. A zombie dressed in blue coveralls reached for her with outstretched arms.
Terri shrieked again.
Alice spun both of them around, shoving her into the area ahead with one arm and using the other to drive her elbow into the janitor's face. When he fell backward, she took the opportunity to slam the propped-open double doors shut. They didn't lock.
Numb with shock and disbelief, Terri watched as Alice approached a heavy wooden display case filled with trophies and awards. Using strength one wouldn't expect from the wiry frame beneath that big black overcoat, she quickly pushed it in front of the doors and toppled it, barring them. They were safe. For the time being, anyway.
Terri slumped bonelessly against the wall. She'd already seen a surplus of messed up things during this whole experience, but none had hit her as hard as all of that. Peyton's voice was continuing to ring in her ears. Her camcorder bumped against her side from where it was strapped to her wrist. She had forgotten it was there.
"You alright?"
"I don't know," she replied after a moment. Then, following a pause, "Thanks for lending me a hand. I thought I was done for."
Alice simply nodded. She started off toward the stairwell, leaving Terri to follow her. She did, not wanting to be left alone.
"Actually, I thought you were done for a while ago."
"Yeah, I've been finding that I'm quite difficult to kill lately."
Terri looked the other woman up and down. Despite the fall she took, she didn't appear injured at all. "...Are you even human?"
"Barely," Alice muttered darkly.
For once, Terri left it at that.
Below, not long after she was left on her own, Rain began to pick up on an unfamiliar scent. There was infection nearby, too. She unholstered one of her guns.
She let it lead her into one of the classrooms. The tingling was there. It was intense, but she found no zombies, only a small freckled girl peeking out from behind a book rack.
Rain got a sudden sinking feeling. She lowered her weapon. "You Angela?"
"Yes."
"You can come out. It's okay. I'm here to help you get back to your dad."
Angela got to her feet and walked over, tightly clutching the strap of her bag. The tingling grew even stronger. Rain kneeled down in front of her, trying to figure out how she was going to go about this gently.
"Are you hurt at all?"
The girl shook her head. Rain could smell blood, but it was difficult to discern between what might've been hers, and what was freshly smeared across the floors because she was unwilling to let herself fully take it in.
"Those... monsters out there, none of them have bitten you? Or scratched you?"
"No."
"I need you to tell me if they have."
"They haven't," Angela insisted.
"Listen. It's not easy to explain, but I can tell. Those monsters? They can make you pretty sick after they manage to get you, and I know you've got what they have."
"You can tell because you have it too, right?"
Rain blinked, taken aback. "Huh?"
"You're infected. I can feel it here." Angela placed a hand at the base of her skull, indicating that she was experiencing the same sensation Rain did around those afflicted by the virus. "I promise they haven't gotten me, though. I've been like this for a while."
"How long?"
"Since I was little. About three." Hesitantly, she pushed the sleeve of her blazer. Her inner forearm was covered with several ring-shaped scars comprised of small dots. They certainly weren't teeth marks. More like injection sites of some kind.
"What the...?" Rain took her wrist and gently turned her arm, confirming they were all over. "Did your dad do this to you?"
"It's not like that," Angela told her quickly. "My daddy's not a bad man. He made the virus for me. He's sick. And someday, I'll get sick too. He just wanted to stop that. I used to have to walk on crutches. They said I'd never get better... Just worse. But he found a way to make me stronger."
"But how did it get in the hands of the people he works for?"
"One day, a bunch of men showed up and took his invention away from him." Angela's eyes began to shine. "He didn't mean for any of this."
Rain placed a hand on her shoulder, giving it a comforting squeeze. "Hey, it's alright. Everything's gonna be fine." Though, she wasn't certain how much she believed that.
Without warning, Angela flung herself at her, hugging her tightly. Immediately, a voice in Rain's head demanded to maintain some distance, to keep away because she was a danger.
Instead, she lightly returned it because she could manage that briefly, and the kid needed comfort.
Then, a new sound reached her ears: Footsteps.
She promptly pulled away, finally allowing herself to properly inhale through her nose. Beneath the all-too-tempting gore around them, she could smell cardamom. Cardamom that was mostly overpowered by tobacco. Jill. Shit.
Harsh light flooded the room as the door swung open.
The aforementioned S.T.A.R.S. officer entered and aimed a gun straight at her. "I don't know what the fuck you are or how you survived, but you better step away from her."
Rain slowly raised her hands in a show of surrender as she rose to her feet, taking a few steps back.