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((NOTE: Yes, we rolled a 92. But we've gotten everything established that we want to establish in safety, and would be happy to suffer a zombie attack, if any are so bold. So ignore the roll. Pretend it's a 2. biggrin JOIN USSSSS))


"Meet you guys at the gym...." What a ******** idiot.

Team Columbus had made it to the gym without any further zombie attacks, but where were Andeon and Mackenzie? Still slouching behind somewhere? Pah! For as long as they were taking (or seemed to be taking - Sue didn't exactly have a watch to time them by), they might well be zombie chow by now!

Sue couldn't let that distract him, though. They weren't here to stand around and look lost.

"We're splitting up a second, guys," Sue ordered. "Piper and Yahya, hit the locker rooms - break into the lockers. Grab jackets, water bottles, snack bars, and anything else you see that might be useful, and stuff them into gym bags. Go through quick and pack up everything you can carry. Stick together, and if you run into trouble, lead them out here and we can get 'em all at once. Zeke, you and me are raiding the gym equipment. There's some golf clubs around that I want."

That was it, orders issued. The one thing that Sue found he liked about this group was that, even if he wouldn't trust them to go off on their own and come back alive, they listened to him, damn it. And as long as they all kept their heads, well - they might just come out of this thing alive.

"Golf clubs, huh?" Zeke put his hands together like he was clutching one and swung. In his head, he saw Jude as a zombie. Before he could stop himself, his mental golf club hit him in the face, a sickening crunch echoing in Zeke's ears.

The boy gasped and shook his head. He hated his imagination then for what it made him think.

"I think you can have the golf club, Sue, if there is one. I'd rather stick with something that puts me at a distance from the gore," Zeke shook his head, finally realizing that he might have to actually kill one of his friends. It should've hit him when he had to hit Elke, but... that had hardly hurt her. The thought of causing her to fall to the ground with a thump, he couldn't bear it.

Still, he did need a better weapon. So, he walked over to the equipment room and quickly opened the door, his hammer raised in case a zombie jumped out. He was so grateful that none did.

"Hey, Sue, I think the equipment room is clear!" he yelled.

Mack probably could have caught up with the members of Team Columbus without running at full speed down the hall, but with the way she was feeling at the moment, she really really needed to. There was a feeling of sick, twisted emotion knotting in her stomach, flip-flopping over and over itself like she was on some sort of carnival ride. Running with that intensity seemed to ease the pain, the guilt <********> that was eating at her. Run, don't think. Don't think about what you just did, (how could you?) how easily you did it, (any feeling person would have hesitated,) how hard you slammed that bat into that delicate neck (you broke it in half.) It needed to be done (did it? She didn't attack you) she was going to try to kill them, (she just said your name) she would be utterly useless to the team if she couldn't kill a ******** zombie (said your name like she loved you.)

'Stop it, stop it, STOP IT'

Skidding to a halt before she hit the padded walls of the gym, Micky leaned her forearm against it, panting heavily, swallowing back the urge to cry again. She did not have time for this. It was just a zombie. Just. A ********. Zombie. That was all.

"W-what do you need... me to do?"

Lifting her head, she looked around at the members of Team Columbus, drifting from one to the other, settling on Piper. A tiny, suppressed part of her told her she should probably ask if her she was alright, but for some reason Mack couldn't bring herself to. Instead, she just stared at her, giving her a hollow smile of what was suppose to be encouragement.

In a way, Sue was comfortable with this. He never could have imagined he would be - usually, people were too stupid to be around him. Always questioning what he said, drawing attention away from what was important. Whether it was the group or the situation, though, he was being listened to for once - and he wasn't going to let that go so easily.

So when Andeon was the one that started talking, Sue let it flow past him. There was only one sign that Sue gave that even suggested he'd heard anything of what Andeon had just said - just one, and that was a quick bat of his eyes. "Andeon with us," he judged curtly, "Mackenzie, go for the lockers with Piper and Yahya. We're moving, folks, not standing around!" Seeing as Zeke already had the equipment room open, Sue took his own advice moved right in.

In a school with students of a million different gifts, you could find at least two of any sort of sports equipment you could possibly need, Sue imagined, but what he was looking for was something he'd noticed before, something that had left an immediate imprint on his memory circuits - and there, in the back corner, it was. Black handle, gleaming metal. Just one gleaming steel rod, more than three feet in length.

Sue tossed the chair leg aside with a grunt, took up his new calling in his right fist. The tug it took to free it from a mess of volleyball nets was like Arthur freeing Excalibur from the stone - the golf club. Truly, the weapon of kings!

"That's it," he determined, wheeling around with his prize resting on his shoulder. "Get yourselves armed proper, find good weapons for the rest of ours, and then we're packing up whatever's worth carrying for yours." He nodded to Andeon. "For now, it's a trade for the antibiotics. We're not joining anybody until we see if your setup's bound to get us killed."

Sue turned then to start through the rest of the equipment heap, rather pleased with himself. He thought he'd been very politic.

He stared in brief horror at her blood-stained hand, and then down to Columbus. On hindsight, he really didn't want to let Columbus get so tainted. It'd take forever to get the blood off of him, and so instead he gently cradled the kitten against his chest, an almost protective gesture, even. "Maybe when we get you cleaned up? He does like attention." He tried to soften whatever blow he had dealt Piper by retracting his offer. Really, he didn't mean to insult her, he just didn't want the kitten Sue had trusted to his care getting hurt.

He released Piper's hand to begin sifting through the lockers, and already it seemed like a hopeless venture. "Umm, anything interesting? Water bottles, snacks, clean clothes. Not... old gym shorts, no." He found a water bottle, which was a good enough start. He hoped that whomever the old owner was, they didn't have any diseases. He wasn't sure they had a way to purify these things.

Sue likely would've convulsed at Yahya's lack of... actually looking out for zombies. If one came up behind him, he wouldn't have a clue. He was doing what he was told, his mission! Sue hadn't reminded him clearly to watch every corner for green and hungry fiends. Woops?

Piper really wasn't all that concerned with the retraction of Yahya's offer, considering she'd been thinking the same thing. Instead, she left him to wander through the empty locker room with the kitten as she began to open the lockers on one side one by one. She found rather quickly that it was hard to see everything inside, however, and without a second thought she reached into the one she had open and drug everything out into a tumbling heap upon the floor. Using one foot, she pushed around the contents, head tilting to the side as she looked through them.

"You sure we don't need any gym shorts?" There were a lot of gym shorts. She shrugged her shoulders and moved onto the next locker, treating it in much the same way. She was completely oblivious to the new guest that had appeared out in the main part of the gym, especially since no one was really making a scene yet. She just content to go along her way, making a mess on the floor in the name of her 'search'. Deep down, she was just pleased to be making the mess.

"Oh!" she chirped suddenly, reaching down and grabbing a bag that had fallen out of the most recent locker. She scooped it up curiously and undid the zipper, taking a moment to sift through the contents before she upended it and dumped all of it onto the bench at her side with a dramatic shaking motion (which sent quite a bit of the contents flying off into the air instead). She poked around at a bottle of pills, then decided to scoop them up, giving them an experimental shake - it sounded like a maraca, which made her smile unexpectedly. She also scooped up what looked like a cereal bar or something. Sue had said something about food, right?

"Hey Yahya, look what I found!" She shook the bottle at him, even going so far as to do a little jiggle at the same time. At the moment, it simply amused her for it's potential as a musical instrument, she'd not even bothered to read the label and see it's potential as medicine.

Zeke was never out to impress anyone, he didn't have a reputation to keep. So when the zombie grasped at his hand and started to claw, he screamed. It wasn't a manly scream, but it wasn't particularly womanish either. It was childish, a howl that a little boy would give when he got a tetanus shot after playing on a rusty swing.

But Zeke had a good reason. Lucy's dirty nails were digging into his skin and starting to peel it away like a chef would peel a potato. When Lucy regained her foggy, infected thoughts, Zeke had more than one strip of flesh hanging helplessly off of his hand.

As Lucy leaned forward to smell and examine her meal, Zeke's cries had dulled to puppy-like whimpers. She could probably smell the sweat trickling down his neck from fear. Even though he was forced to make eye-contact with Lucy, his gaze was focused on that pus-filled space that had once been her eye. His whimpering ceased as fear settled around his lungs like a vice.

The feeling of moving air should've been refreshing as Lucy swung him. For a moment, Zeke's stomach dropped like it did when he was about to go over a hill on a tall roller-coaster. After all, they say that falling is fun until you reach the bottom. Zeke did reach the bottom all too soon, as he felt something give when he hit that wall. If only it had been his spine, he might not have felt Lucy pierce his skin with that javelin. Oh, but he could feel it. He could feel it move past his soft, boyish skin and further in. He could hear the javelin work through his muscle, and it almost sounded like tissue paper being ripped off of a present.

Zeke's voice returned to him when the javelin started to hit his insides, his stomach popping like a water balloon. He tried to sink to the floor as he howled, but as he did the javelin tore upwards into his body, and Zeke gagged as bile was forced upwards and oozed down his lips and chin.

He only laid there helplessly when he was embedded into the wall, his screams turning into moans.

Death wasn't kind to Zeke. His body twitched and he tried to pull away from Lucy's soft tongue. If it had been any other situation, his ears would've been bright red, but now he was sickeningly pale, like his body knew that he would soon become one of the undead and was already preparing his appearance. The pain was throbbing, and welling inside of him like some great heat. If only he could've escaped.

But then Lucy started to make her meal, and the screaming started again. Those nasty fingers of hers ripped into his flesh, deeper this time than his hand. He grabbed the javelin to try to dislodge it, to push her away, to do something, but soon his strength failed him, and all he could do was scream. He watched in terror as she pulled out red flesh that looked like it belonged in a supermarket butchery, and strings of sinew snapped one by one in her greedy, hungry hands. Zeke wished that he could've gone numb by then, but he could feel each nerve of his being ripped. He tried to have some semblance of last thoughts. What about his parents? It was all so foggy, almost like he had no past beyond Barren Pines. Why? Why could the only thing he focused on be the pain, and Lucy eating him? He wanted to be surrounded by friends, maybe even family. He wanted to feel the warmth of someone's hand around his as he slipped away. He wondered if he'd become a zombie, like them. Or would he find some sort of afterlife? Would an angel come down and take him someplace? Would he be able to look down at his mauled body and rejoice that he couldn't feel the pain anymore? If only that was the fate for the students of Barren Pines.

As Zeke continued to cry and watch Lucy tear his stomach apart, his vision started to blur and become tinged with black. Where was the glow that people were supposed to see as they died? Where was the peaceful smile? The sound of someone saying, "It's okay, Zeke. It's okay, you don't have to worry..."

No, the only sound that Ezekiel Martin heard as he died was Lucy grinding his flesh in-between her teeth.