Neru Sune
Location: Sea of UNKNOWN – Warped Zeus (Distorted Hallways – ??? Floor)
Time: Day 1 – Afternoon
It was quite lucky everyone was busy stumbling around the classroom, some panicking, others getting ready to move in a hurry, so very few actually heard you recite your poem, or the words that followed.
Nico gave you a weird look, and so did Rosalin, although she only heard a phrase or two of your poem before she turned away to give orders. The tiny Asian girl also heard you as well. The others were too busy scrambling into action to pay much attention to you. Perhaps you weren’t the only one who had started to mumble weird things after seeing that fucked up sky.
“Liz!” Rosalin shouted.
“On it!” The boxer girl bounded her way through the door in a fraction of a second. She disappeared from sight, and you heard a loud smacking sound a moment afterwards.
“Boris! Go help her, you two are on rear guard duty. Stockley, Emir, you guys are the vanguard, get going now!” The redhead ordered.
“Yeah, yeah, ma’am.” Nico answered somewhat sarcastically, taking a moment to give her a mocking salute, take one last confused look at you, and then he got going along with the athlete.
Rosalin waited for a moment, then waved her hand. “We’re in the center. Get going now. Matilda, help me get Neru going, we don’t have time for yet another psychotic reaction. Shit, should’ve never let him look out the window.” The… well, team leader seemed like an appropriate term right now, got herself going even as yet another loud thud was heard coming from the same side as before.
You weren’t quite sure of how you got from the classroom to the hallway. You were just sort of half-dragged, half-guided there in the on-going shuffle. And you finally were able to see the source of the noise.
Encountered Decayed Being (Human Schoolboy) x2
Encountered Decayed Being (Human Schoolgirl)
Three… ‘zombies’ was the only way you could define the shambling, half-rotten corpses that were trying to fight it out with your group’s rear right now. All three of them presented a sundry variety of lethal wounds, all three of them were dead as a doornail, and all three of them didn’t seem to have considered that a particular impediment to keep on moving, except that they now had grown a hankering for the meat of the living, apparently.
You noticed a string on the floor, along with some glass pieces. Someone in your group had improvised some sort of early-warning system before resting up in the classroom, apparently.
But… so at the end the steps hadn’t been Ann, ultimately. How strange… no, perhaps it’d have been stranger if your nightmare had suddenly materialized in reality, but… those steps… a set of three, shuffling steps. Had it been a coincidence?
“Run!” Rosalin ordered, and then you didn’t have more time to think.
You saw that Lizbeth and Boris had knocked down a zombie each, although the undead girl at the back had gotten a good hit on the latter, judging from how you saw him stumble. But then the two living ones turned tail and started running, and the whole group started accelerating and running like hell itself was pursuing behind. Which, it probably was.
At first, the group made a good distance between themselves and the zombies, as they had to get back up to pursue. The hallway, however, was quite narrow (and you were sure such a hallway hadn’t existed within the building before), forcing your group to move two at a time. It was also quite dark, save for a lamp illuminating the way here and there. The footing was surprisingly treacherous, as the floor was full of rubble and god knows what else.
At least one time during the run, you were fairly sure you went over a corpse. At least it smelled like a corpse. You almost tripped and fell, but managed to regain equilibrium and keep going.
And then the undead started to gain on you. Their steps and movements were weird, strangely lacking in body coordination, so they seemed to have trouble with the ruble and obstacles in the way. But they were so goddamned fast, and the center of your group (that is, Rosalin, Hong, John and you) weren’t very athletic.
In front, Nico and Emir were clutching chair legs as improvised clubs, and so was everyone in the center with you. John pretty much shoved one of them on your hands, though you had a rather realistic assessment of how much good you could do with it. Only Lizbeth and Boris went barehanded.
Finally, the hallway opened up, and your group entered a big, rectangular room, well illuminated by myriad lamps unevenly distributed across the ceiling.
And there you met true terror.
It was tall. Taller than it had any right to be. Most of the clothing had worn away, revealing a mass of rotten flesh and skin that covered unnatural-looking muscles. Remnants of long hair still clung to the top of its head, but most had fallen away. The face, barely recognizable as human, turned towards you, and you felt a chill go down your spine as you watched this mutant, undead being take a step towards the group.
Encountered Ghoul
It chewed loudly, then spat. Something bloody hit the floor and bounced all the way towards you, stopping near your shoes. You looked down, with the same feeling of inevitability someone watching a trainwreck would have, and you saw it was a human finger.
Then, the three zombies from before arrived from behind, and pandemonium broke out as your group panicked and started to fall apart despite the desperate orders coming from Rosalin to keep calm and not disperse.
The room had four exits, the one you’d just come from, which could be considered the southern one for now, the north one past the Ghoul, and another two to the east and west. Your position at the center of the group wasn’t good to see the details of the room, although it looked mostly empty to you. The other members of the group were obstructing your sight.
You could however smell the death in the room.
Talk about rocks and hard places.