Welcome to Gaia! ::

((s**t hits the fan now. Because y'all are taking forever.))

Downstairs, during the whole adventure of stair climbing, the sound of slamming against the building would get louder, and louder. The gradual increase in volume that wouldn't bring any noticable, immediate change, and keep the occupants inside unaware.

Until the sound stopped. Completely.

Several minutes of silence...

A door breaking. Wood splinering. Glass crashing.

Many, many footsteps and stamping feet in uneven patterns of the living dead. Scraping of claws and bone on wood, bodies falling down as they clambered over one another.

Coming around a corner in the streets, still wondering where the gunfire had come from, Brody slams on the breaks as he see's a mass of zombie flooding through a door frame, the very burnt looking door in the street. "Well ********," looking at the building, and deciding that it must have a backdoor, he does his best to turn around quickly and leave. A moment later, he found what he was looking for, an alley.

Jumping out of the Hummer, Brody ran between the buildings, counting until he was pretty sure it was the right one. And just his luck, the door was wide open. Or maybe it wasn't. All along the ceiling, and now that he looked, the walls outside, were holes and scratch marks, as if some spider like creature had come through this way.

Drawing his pistol, and wishing he had grabbed a shot gun, Brody stepped cautiously into the building. Hearing the commotion in the front room, he looks for doors leading that direction, and see's there is only one, the other leading to a set of stairs. "Well, atleast I got the right building."

Gabe silently cursed to himself at the sound of the crashing. He looked up to the stairs, where Owle had gone. He hoped she was a lot safer than they were right then, becuase they'd be hauling a** to get up there if the situation didn't get any better.

Instead of freaking out like Tweak did, Gabriel looked to Saul, nodded his head towards the stairwell, and then moved towards it himself. He knelt down, rose his rifle, and sighted down the stairs. Since he didn't have any gum at his disposal, Gabe resorted to pushing out his cheek with his tongue and squinting his left eye.

"This just gets better and better."

He commented to himself as the first clawed hand made its presence known on the landing.

"We're going to have to make a break for it sooner or later. Hey, kid."

He cast a sidelong glance over his shoulder to Tweak.

"Head up the stairs, but be careful. Figure out if there are any traps or anything, then come back down here. We'll hold this line until then. Hopefully the guy holed up here had some sort of escape route planned."

Putting his faith in the one person who was probably the least trustworthy didn't seem to make much sense, but out of the group assembled, Tweak was going to be the least useful in their defense of the stairs.

She'd be able to see him if only she would turn around. Fuller had moved through a series of rooms and was along a back wall towards the corner; he could just make her out through the door frame.

With a softness of step he moved foward, slowly, cautiously, defensively; but ever alert for anything that could go wrong.

Such as a bunch of those monsters seeming to break in downstairs. He didn't need to see it and distance may seperate him; but the cursing and screaming on on coupled with the sound of movement downstairs ment nothing good to him.

"Ahh bugger."

Coming out of the room he grabbed Owle and moved in front of her, pushing her back to the stair wells.

"You best get your friends up here if you want to live."

It seemed he didn't have any options left to him. The noise was too much, there were far too many of the beasts down stairs and these fools had more or less breached his little impromptu fortress to that horde.

Checking his weapon he sighed.

"Well? Hurry it up!"

"s**t." Surrounded by the unexpected horde, Brody makes a run for the stairs, shooting at any of them that are likely to get in his. He gets 5 of them down, consequently the majority in this small room, and has to reload, but is too busy trying to avoid the last zombie between him and delayed death. Tossing the gun to his right hand, he draws his rapier in one clean motion, decapitating the zombie in the process, and up the first set of stairs.

Tweak took all of three seconds to debate what Gabe said before making a break for it. There was not even a good luck involved. Instead he made his way to the stairs then scrambled up them. He luckily stopped like a step up and started peering where he was walking very intently. They had found several traps at this point, running straight into death would be lame.

"Oi', Radar, traps on these stairs or not?!" Voice would hopefully carry up to where Owle and Fuller were. From there he continued creeping forward and keeping an eye out for traps, stepping only to a step after confirming it's safety.

But if Owle and Fuller called down a warning he would totally go about making a break for it. A very quick, snappy, 'Why am I bothering' call of warning about where the trap was, if he was informed or just found the thing, would be practically all the others got. And from that point he was going up the stairs.

He hesitated for a moment, then looked towards Saul and Drake. Blowing the stairs seemed like a good idea. From what he had seen the things downstairs weren't incredibly coordinated, and very few people could jump up even a small gap. The claws on their hands probably wouldn't help, either.

Traps were nice, but impassable gaps were better.

He nodded his head, and, as if to give him further motivation to act, Gabe heard Owle's voice in his head.

"s**t." He muttered beneath his breath. "Saul." He pointed to the stairs.

"Work your magic, I'll cover you. You." He looked towards Drake. "Go ahead and make sure that she's alright. We'll join you upstairs shortly."

And then he turned back to the stairs, rifle coming up once more. Hopefully he wouldn't need to fire at all. But if there was one thing about St. Agrippina that Gabe could be sure of, it was that hope alone hadn't saved all the 'people' down below.