Still Breathing

[Zulma san]

Guillaume was still under shock. A week, it had been a week and yet, he was still sure that he was going to wake up. Sadly he knew that there was not awakening possible.

When he had come back from two days of hiking and hunting, he had noticed that something was wrong. The silence. Everywhere. The trail was arriving directly through his neighborhood and he did not need to take his car. As he reached the middle class suburban area with little houses surrounded by a couple yards of grass, he had been greeted by the silence. No kid playing, no grandparents chatting, nothing. He was surprised and slowly became worried.
As he proceeded in the direction of his house, he discovered a car in the middle of the street. Broken glass all over...and blood. The man had stared horrified before starting running. Guillaume was no coward but he was sure that in the middle of the blood puddles he had seen hair and bones pieces. The image of Helene came to his mind. As the man rushed to the safety of his home, he met more cars in the same condition. His steps slowed down at the side of a baby carriage on its side...His eyes had widened and the 250 pound man had found himself on his knees, throwing up his previous meal. He had managed to stand back up on his shaky legs and he had finished to his front door in a sprint, refusing to look around him.

Once safe in his house, he had turned on the TV without removing his clothes or even his backpack. The bitter taste of vomit was still in his mouth but he did not care. He stared at the screen. The same information flashes on all channels. The tall man believed it was a joke, a prank...a nightmare. He stayed on his sofa immobile for several hours. The shock faded away and he felt helpless.
Like when Helene had fallen. Helpless he had stared at her from above, she was a little dot, she was...moving, moaning, calling his name. Then came the longest 10 minutes of his life. Going down as fast as possible without tripping, without making a mistake. When he had reached down, she was lifeless. Her body twisted in a grotesque way. She had hit the cliff several times before hitting the ground. Some of her nails were missing from her trying to grab the rocks as she fell. He had wondered how she could have been still alive when she reached down, but he new what he had heard: his name. He had not dreamed it.

The tall man had stood at once from his sofa, trying to chase away the memories which had haunted him for almost a year. He tried to breath deeply, the concentrate on a task in order to not lose it. He needed to put the meat in the cellar. Now that was a domain on which he could rule.
The man had spent hours preparing the animals he just killed to be smoked and good for consumption.

The following two days had been spent in front of the TV. The man had closed the curtains and the blinds and was staring at the screen. But one by one the channels had stopped broadcasting, until his screen was nothing more than snow. Guillaume had frowned. He could not stay there. He would have to find a safer place. He spent a full day preparing his bag. The truth was that his backpack already was ready, but he was scared to get out of there. He checked everything several times, especially the itinerary he was going to follow in order to reach the closest police station.

It had been almost a week when the man had left his house. His backpack was ready as if he were going camping for a week. It was raining when he left his house. He cursed. He had hesitated for the longest time between taking his car or his motorbike. But they were both noisy and seeing the state of the vehicles he had seen, he had opted out of the option. Plus he trusted his size and fitness to be amongst his best assets.

It took Guillaume about two days to reach the police station. He had barely slept. He had met a group of 'those' as he called them. Luckily for him, they were too busy feeding on a couple to notice him and he had ran away. The idea that he was just in a bad horror movie had brought a smile to his lips and he had clenched to the idea, in order to keep his head cool. The only flawed in his reasoning was that he needed to have a shotgun in order to survive. Because in horror movies, the survivors are the ones with shotgun and for the moment, outside of a couple of his favorites kitchen knifes, he had no weapon.

A week, barely 48 hours without sleep, and here Guillaume was, entering the police station. He had to admit that he had hesitated before entering the building judging by the shattered windows and blood surrounded the place, it had already been visited. But he was not going to stay there in the middle of the road either. Taking a deep breath, both for courage and oxygen, he entered the station.  

[Tonash Drahow]

It was cold, dark and quiet.

The Morrisville High school had been a place of great memories for Hunter in years past. It had been where he attended, as well as his younger siblings. The thought of them pained the former mill worker. He blamed himself that he couldn't have been there to escort them to safety when the outbreak started the week prior.

Hunter had been fortunate enough to avoid the main groupings of infected individuals in his quick journey from his home to the school. He had come here in sincere hopes that he had been wrong and that his younger brother and sister had not gotten on that school bus which was destroyed just outside their street. Sadly, however his wish went unfulfilled.

Luck was partially on his side, however, as he entered the building it was completely abandoned and the emergency lights were still on inside. There were few bodies on the school steps and fewer still inside the complex.

He began to search for any signs of usable materials or possibly a working phoneline.  

[Ale Posselna]

She had reached the restaurant unharmed. Thank God for that. She had remained unnoticed by the mutants. Thank God for that, also. She was still alone. No thanks for that.

As silently as possible, Donata opened what was left of the glass door, and took a step inside. It was dark and quiet, tables and chairs reduced to shreds on the floor, a few bodies with missing limbs laying in puddles of dry blood. She took a hand to her mouth, both to suppress a scream and something else she wanted to keep inside her, for food hadn't been that easy to find lately.

That was why she had chosen the restaurant, to find supplies, since raiding the University's caffeteria proved to be impossible. After the slaughter she had witnessed, a slaughter she had survived only because she resisted the urge to storm out the door as soon as she heard the first screams, and remained hidden inside the lab until the screaming ceased. Luck had helped her again, as Donata relyed on the shadows to keep herself hidden from the mutants. Also, the little explosion she had concocted at the lab diverted their attentions, allowing her to leave the premisses unnoticed.

At least, she hoped so. Staying still in the same place for much time, would not help her in any way. And it didn't help her discovering any other survivors, Donata was certain she couldn't have been the only one.

Still, finding supplies was easier that finding people, Donata concluded, as she glanced around the room a second time and found something among the rubble.  

[Zulma san]

Guillaume was walking cautiously, trying to remain silent, however each step was meeting with broken wood, glass or half dried blood.
The man entered a dark hallway which made him shiver but he headed ahead anyway. An open door on his right was leading to a devastated office. On the desk he noticed a small gun. Guillaume hesitated, he did not like fire weapon, they reminded him too much of his years in the darkness.

Dark times, dark methods... he decided and took the weapon. It looked tiny in his paw. He smirked the weapon was out of bullet. He took it anyway for now.

As he looked further he noticed a phone, he almost screamed of happiness. A short duration happiness, no dial tone. He checked the plug. He sighed.
"That would have been too easy..." he sighed. It was a bare murmur and yet he felt like his voice had echoed all over the building. He remained silent and immobile, listening, tensed. Nothing was moving.

With more caution he left the office. Back in the hallway, he went on his discovery. Offices emptied and destroyed here, cells in the same state there. He was closed to giving up on finding anything more than bullet-less tiny guns when he discovered the treasury room.

In the middle of the room, laying on the floor under a table, he found a bulletproof vest. He took it cautiously and raised it to his eyes.
Guillaume slowly put his backpack on the table, removed his fleece jacket and tried the vest on. Luck was with him, it fitted him! Which was a miracle knowing the size of the beast. Guillaume smiled as he closed the vest, put back his jacket on and quickly secured his backpack on his back. He did not want to lose it. He continued his search. It was obvious that the room had been emptied. The shelves were bare, no weapon in sight, no munition.

He found one other thing in that room: a damaged helmet. The damaged part was not a problem to him, but the size was. There was no way he could wear it. He hesitated. He could always use that as a mass to crush some skulls if need be. The tall man closed his fist around the strap and headed for the hallway again.  

[Ale Posselna]

After reassuring that she was the only thing moving in the place, Donata carefully aproached one of the decaying bodies. She had noticed something long near it. As she kneeled down she picked up the object and recognised it as a shotgun. It looked brand new, as if it never had been fired before...Then she wondered how it got there. Could it be that its owner was one of the first to react to the Outbreak? Could it be that he raided the weapon store and found his way to this restaurant, for the same reason Donata had? Could it be that his luck had finally ran out and the mutants had caught him? In a wicked way, it made sense...

The gun had been fired, she realised, as she opened the cartridge compartment. "So, your owner did try to defend himself... but you weren't that much of a use to him." Donata thought, looking again at the corpse. She wasn't very sure if this gun could also be useful to her, she wasn't exactly skilled on the issue and without ammunition... she shrugged her shoulders and decided to keep it anyway. Donata wasn't that fond of fire weapons, but when survival was the issue one didn't have the right to be picky.

"I can always turn it around and smash heads with the cable as a last resourse. But not as effective..." she said to herself, getting up and glancing around the room again, before venturing into the kitchen. From the main room, it looked even darker in there. Too bad she hadn't been able to find a flashlight.  

[Alus Shar Plynnil]

Everybody was Kung Fu Fighting
Those cats were fast as lightning

XXX Pansy shoved the door open a bit further, just far enough that she could squeeze inside. Once inside the badly battered, heavily barricaded church, she paused. The smell of decaying bodies was over powering in the enclosed space. Looking down she noticed the squelch of her boots as they moved about in the congealed blood of corpses. They seemed to have all died trying to fight their way to clear the exit. Though they had built the barricade to well, for not a single one escaped it seemed. Pansy worried that their might be some of those, for lack of a better word, zombies still around, but the bodies had been dead for awhile and she thought they might have moved on.

XXXAs she looked around, Pansy noted how dark it was in there and searched the bodies hopefully. After a minute or two, she stood up and sighed, there was not a single flashlight to be found. She hesitated at the door for a moment, not wanting to forget it's position, but not wanting to open it a crack, for fear it may draw more of those creatures to her position. She finally made up her mind and slowly made her way around the edge of the open room. She paused about half way through, spotting the stained glass opposite her. Pansy thought she recognized the design, though she figured all churches may have something similar. Then it clicked, she used to attend this church as a child. Her father had been tight with the minister. A thought hit her and she made her way sure-footed between the piers and to one of the back rooms.

XXXShe didn't know if the man her father knew was still minister or not, but Darrin had actually been the one that took her out and taught her how to shoot. In fact, it had been Darrin that had convinced her father to let him teach her. She knew that he used to store a Glock 27 in his desk. After all, this could not really the safest part of town, and Darrin had grown up in a big city, he never would say which, and was quite over protective. Along the way, she passed a few doors, all of them wide open the contents of said room spread far and wide. As she passed, she slowed to a walk, unsure if she would find the gun. When she got to his office though, she found the door locked and said a prayer to whatever god was listening.

XXXShe knew she could not pick the lock, that had been her oldest brother, and he had never seen fit to teach her. Instead, she took a couple steps back and kicked the door in. It was a simple lock and broke as soon as her foot made contact. She paused in the doorway, letting her eyes adjust to the even less light that was present in the windowless room. After she was certain that there was nothing moving within the room, she moved forward to the desk, searching each and every drawer. In the last drawer she looked in, there was the gun, the barely used Glock 27, looking brand new. Checking the mag, she shook her head, he'd never fired it. She checked the rest of the drawers but found nothing useful.

In fact it was a little bit frightening,
But the fought with expert timing.

 

[cutullus]

"Wasn't this just her luck?" thought Sharon as she crouched between a pickup truck and a tow truck that were parked up next to the side of the auto repair shop on the corner of the street near her parents' house. "Nothing like having liberal pacifist parents. I mean you might not believe in keeping firearms around the house, but not being prepared for a zombie outbreak? Outrageous." Sharon's parents didn't believe in owning guns, and they wouldn't let her keep her paintball gear at the house either. Not that paintballs would do her much good in this situation, but still. What she wouldn't give for one of the guns out of her computer games. "A portal gun would be amazing . . . you could make the zombies go through the portal . . ." With some effort she snapped herself out of that thought. She needed to focus on this little bit of breaking and entering that she was about to do.

Mom and Dad might not have any guns, but she was pretty sure the old guys who ran the auto shop kept a few pistols around. After all, they did run a towing business on the side, and thats one business where you can be sure to have irate "customers". That was the purpose of her little excursion. Ever since her parents had failed to return from a church meeting she had been watching the auto shop on the corner from her bedroom window. Everyone in suburbia had buttoned up tight on the night that the network news channels had finally realized that the "cranks" that had been calling in these "crazy" reports about "zombies" weren't so crazy after all. Of course that was the same night that her parents had decided to walk the two miles to the sunset service.

Sharon surveyed the glass door of the auto shop. There were three locks on the front, so she doubted she could kick it in. On the other hand, maybe there was some benefit to being smaller than average. The door was composed of two glass panels. Although there might be an alarm, Sharon doubted if anyone would care, or even come check. The weight of the rock in her hand, a rock taken from her mother's front garden landscaping, made her grin. She raised from her crouch, carrying the rock with both hands, took a step, and flung the rock with all her strength against the glass.

The glass gave way with a loud crash, and Sharon followed her momentum past the door and crouched down by another car in the parking lot. No sounds followed the tinkling of glass. No alarm, no yelling, no footsteps. Good.

Sharon edged back to the now broken door, and kicked the last bits of glass out of the frame. She scooted through the gaping hole, and in to the auto shop.  

[Tonash Drahow]

Hunter rummaged through the nurses' office, unable to find any sterile medical supplies useful for first aid. With a sigh of resignation, he returned to the hallways covered with lockers.

Beginning a routine search of each one, it was not until he reached a middle locker, revealing a Smith & Wesson 500 pistol.

"Christ.. kids these days. I'd say damn the rap music, but I'm fairly certain we're all damned at this point."

He quickly holstered the gun into his belt loop on the side. He was far better at swinging the crowbar he had taken from home than aiming a gun, but it was better safe than sorry with these abominations.  

[Ale Posselna]

"Good, I can make something with this." Donata thought, as she opened the cabinet under the sink and rummaged through the bottles of detergents. She smiled as she found a bottle of pipe cleaner. The concentration was lower that she wanted, but no surprise, it was a comercial package. Still, she could do funny things with it, and decided to put it in her bag. Donata felt more at ease around chemicals that around guns, surely there was something in there that would react very well with the sodium hidroxide.

"Now, where do they keep the food?" she asked herself, as she looked into the pantry, and then it hit her. Her chances of finding something were very low. After all, the place had been raided before, judging from the corpses in the main room. And it hit her again, why hadn't she search in those before? The guy who owned the shotgun, he was sure to have more ammunition with him. Yes, that she would to next, as she found a box of baking powder and put it next to the pipe cleaner. And Donata wanted to return to the main room anyway, this kitchen was very small and hard to move in.  

[cutullus]

The front room of the auto shop was dirty and scattered with papers. Grease smudges darkened the countertop and the paint on the wall. Sharon saw a mostly empty rack where the old guys who owned this shop kept the keys for the cars that were being worked on. There were still a couple of sets of keys, with their cardboard tags matching them to owners who would probably never come to get them.

Sharon cautiously moved around behind the counter and started opening up the drawers that were built in to the counter. She was certain that Frank or Ned or whatever his name was kept a pistol around for when he went on calls to tow cars. Not that people in this part of town were likely to have weapons on them, but people don't generally like it when you're towing their car.

The first cabinet was a bust, full of dust, dirt, a grimy computer keyboard, and papers. But in the shallow drawer just below that . . . paydirt. Inside of a battered leather holster, with an equally battered leather belt, was a carefully oiled 1911 government issue handgun. Sharon eagerly removed the pistol from the holster and admired the weight of the gun in her hand. Pressing the stud on the left side of the weapon she ejected the magazine and checked that it was full before placing it on the counter. She pulled back on the slide, ejected the round out of the chamber, and locked the slide in place. Sharon replaced the loose round in the magazine, slapped the magazine back into the butt of the gun, and gave a happy chuckle as the slide clicked forward, chambering the round. Condition one, perfect. Now this was more like it. Leaving the safety off, she re-holstered the pistol and wrapped the strap snugly around her hips.

Feeling much more secure with a weapon close to hand, Sharon began searching the rest of the auto shop, keeping her eyes open for anything that could be useful. In the garage itself was a battery charging station with at least one fully charged battery still resting in the charge cradle. "Are infected people conductive?" she mused. Jumper cables were coiled on a shelf next to the batteries.

Passing back through the front office, Sharon noted the door to the back room. It wasn't locked. She pushed through the filthy portal into the musty room. Filled with the scent of stale smoke and sparsely illuminated by the light filtering through the blinds in the single window, the back room turned out to be a mix between a records room and a employee lounge. Several hunting trophies were mounted on the walls, and on the top of one of the filing cabinets against the back wall . . . interesting. Why would there be a case of 30-30 Winchester rifle ammunition when they kept a 45 caliber pistol in the front desk?

Sharon scanned the room and realized that not all of the cabinets were filing cabinets after all . . . or at least not for filing paperwork. She walked over to the cabinet next to the window. Less deep than the other cabinets, it had a single door that opened on hinges along its side. A key was already in the lock, as if the owner had closed the door in a hurry. Sharon turned the key and opened the door, and in the dim recess of the gun cabinet she saw a rifle. She reached in to the cabinet, grasped the rifle, and then turned as she heard a sudden noise from the front of the shop. Someone was rattling the exterior door in its frame and she heard a wet thumping sound on the glass of the door. The rifle still in her hand, she crept up behind the door to the back room and listened. The wet, thumping sound grew louder, and she began to hear a crunching sound, as if someone - or something - was trying to crawl through the hole she had made in the front door.  

[Zulma san]

Guillaume searched the rest of the police station without much luck. The bear was getting irritated of finding empty rooms or locking doors. Despite his size, there was no way he could try to force them. He sighed as he exited one last room without anymore luck.

Nothing of interest and he was starting to get tired of the horrible smell surrounding him. His years as a cook had trained his olfactory sense beyond average and the smell of blood and decay was close to overwhelming for the tall man.

Once outside Guillaume felt better. The 'fresh' air was much nicer than the confined air. However he did not linger in open space and quickly found cover behind a destroyed car. The man scowled himself for being stupid and having left cover without even thinking about what was his next destination. Taking the decision in the middle of the road was not a smart move either. He needed to take cover, which was always an issue for someone as big as he was.

As he scanned the area and pushed aside the idea of going back in the police station, he noticed that the door of the building next to the police station was opened. With caution he trotted to it, a quick look inside, it was clear. He stepped in the hallway. The massive wood door leading to the inside of the building was still closed.

This was safe enough for now. He took his map and looked at it for a while. Where should he go? The police station had been his best bet but it had revealed itself totally worthless...outside for that vest, he reminded himself with a smile.
He looked at the map again, scratching his head. He needed a vehicle to get out of there. Cars did not seem strong enough. Maybe something bigger: a bus for example!
The bus depot was right behind the school. If he could make it to the school and then from there he could have a look on the depot.

Guillaume was glad to be in shape. The school was not that far, but still further than he really wanted knowing what danger could be lurking at any step. So far he had been lucky...
A quick look right and left out of the front door to be sure that no one was in sight and he left his shelter.

Any sound, noise was bringing him to the closest hidden place, might it be a car, a corner, a...lamp post! The streets were deserted to his relief.

The real relief came when he spotted the school. His last steps were closer to the final rush of a sprint than a slow hike. Trying to catch his breath, he leaned against the wall, right after closing the front door. He waited, anxious. No one seemed to have followed him and more important, no one seemed to be inside.
The giant wiped out his sweating forehead with his hand.  

[cutullus]

Sharon crouched behind the door, listening to the crunches of glass and wet thumping sounds coming from the front door of the auto shop. Some small part of her mind wondered if she should be scared by this, but her overwhelming emotion was one of excitement! Video games were great because of the guns and scenarios. Paintball was better because it was real. This on the other hand . . . this was video games plus paintball plus awesome sauce.

Gently lowering the unloaded rifle to the floor with her left hand, Sharon unholstered the pistol from the leather holster. As she squeezed the butt of the pistol into her hand, she felt the grip safety disengage, and her heart started pounding with excitement. She reached out with her left hand and jiggled the door handle to open the door just a crack, then reached back and cradled the underside of her weapon hand, just like they do in the movies.

BANG! Sharon kicked open the door to the back office and saw the pair of infected for the first time. She didn't have time to process what she was seeing - her honed reflexes squeezed the trigger for her. Three loud retorts echoed in the small space, leaving her ears ringing. The zombie that had been standing up, pounding its decaying, bloody hands against the glass seemed to gaze at her from the eye that had not been destroyed by one of her bullets. For a moment that seemed eternal it regarded her, then crumpled on top of the zombie that was on its belly, crawling through the hole in the glass door that Sharon herself had used to enter the auto shop.

The remaining zombie was still flailing on its belly, with its legs partially obstructed by the fallen corpse of the first zombie. It looked pathetic, flopping there on the floor, leaking blood and puss onto the floor and leaving scraps of clothing and flesh caught in the glass that was broken on the floor. A piece of ceiling tile in front of the zombie caught Sharon's attention and she glanced at the ceiling. She hadn't been prepared for the recoil of the 45, and only her first two shots had hit the first zombie. The other had obviously hit the ceiling. She would have to watch that in the future.

A momentary lapse was all it took, but it was enough. The zombie thrashing around on the floor had just wriggled its feet free of the corpse of the first zombie when it caught the door frame, crouched, and spring forward at Sharon's throat!

Sharon screamed as the zombie, which fell short of its objective, fell heavily on her arms and began raking her with its filthy, bleeding hands with weathered, splintered nails. The flash of motion had caused her to tense, bringing up her hands that were still on the but of the pistol. The zombie's chest was pressed against the pistol, and that was all that was keeping it from coming closer to her. Still screaming, her hands spasmed on the trigger, and she emptied the rest of the magazine into the attacking zombie! The zombie jerked as each round penetrated its chest, the force from the 45 ammunition pushing it back off of Sharon's badly scraped arms, and back into the closed door of the auto shop. Propped up on the door, it twitched in place, coagulated blood running down what remained of the clothing it had been wearing. The zombie's two hands were curled up in claws before its face. But it clearly wasn't dead.

Sobbing from the pain of the scratches on her arms, Sharon placed a single extra round into the open chamber of the 45, and thumbed the slide release. She took a single step forward and lined up the zombie's head with the iron sights. "DIE!" she screamed, and pulled the trigger.  

[Alus Shar Plynnil]

Everybody was Kung Fu Fighting
Those cats were fast as lightning

XXX Pansy, the gun in hand, made her way to where the makeshift nurses office had been. It was really just an unused bathroom, with a cot in a corner and an old cabinet that used to have first aid implements in it. Band-aids, alcohol, etc. She pushed the door open slowly, the rusted hinges squeaking ominously in the quiet church. The sound echoed oddly, but the silence just assured her even more that she was alone. She pushed aside the door, it falling half of the frame. She propped it up against the wall, so that it wasn't blocking her only exit.

XXXShe rifled through the cabinet for a minute before coming upon a small first aide kit. She opened it, taking store of all the contents. A pack of bandages, slightly used. A large piece of gauze. That could come in handy later. A small bottle of hydrogen peroxide, half empty, and medical tape. She nodded, zipping the small bag back up and placed it in the bag she had slung across her shoulder. Right now, she had nothing in it but a few articles of clothing, her cell phone, useless now, and ten to twelve bottles of her favorite energy drink. She sighed quietly, almost dying for human companionship, someone to talk to, to puzzle this situation out.

XXXPansy placed the kit in one of the outer pockets and placed the gun back in her waistband, sure that there was no other creature but her around. She rested on the dirty, grime covered cot for a moment, popping open a bottle from her bag, taking a swig to chase away the sleep that she could feel creeping up on her. She replaced the bottle back in her bag as she stood. She made her way back to the aisle between the piers, pulling her gun back out, confident with it near and ready to fire. She skirted around the pile of bodies, careful to not look too closely, lest she recognize a face. Once outside the church, she was on high alert, the empty streets giving her the chills.

XXXShe heard an animal move to the side and she flashed in that direction, only to see a cat dart away in the opposite direction. She began to move, standing still would not do anything except make her a bigger target. Pansy headed towards where she knew the police station sat, a few streets over from where she was now. Her gun was held at the ready in front of her, eyes and ears strained for the slightest movement. She finally reached the police station and kicked in the door, none to gently. She spoke as she did so, in case anything human still remained. "I'm human! Try to shoot me and I'll kick your a**."Her gun was still in front of her as she entered the front room, glancing around, taking in the contents of the room.

In fact it was a little bit frightening,
But the fought with expert timing.

 

[Tonash Drahow]

Hunter was now headed towards the gym area, just in the event that there might be someone hiding, or the possibility of a hidden cache of food supplies or otherwise stored away.

To his dismay, nothing awaited within the hollowed out and deserted gymnasium other than the scent of rotting corpses and the rank stench of aged blood. Stepping away from the door to avoid the pungent odor, Hunter slumped down in the hallway.

He pulled out the pistol just in the off-chance that it wasn't loaded. He checked, pulling the chamber out and subconsciously nodded as he noted it was indeed filled with casings.

He sighed and pondered what the best course of action was. Fight and attempt to survive this hell on earth, or just end it all right here and now...