On Death's Doorstep

[bloodsrain]

Mason looked at the others, they didn't have much time. Whoever this J.P guy was, he barely knew him, but he had his doubts on the man's survival. He just ran into the night alone, and the man's chances of survival had just dropped considerably. But at least he had the girl with him, better two together in a pair than solo. Mason turned to Lewis and Davey, they didn't have much time. He didn't know exactly where to go, any building nearby would be easily destroyed by the monstrosity approaching. He looked up to the Secronom building, and nodded. "We have to get inside!" he shouted, moving past the broken gates.

"It's our best hope of survival, if we run away, there's no guarantee we will live, but I can get inside the building hopefully." he said, staring at Davey and Lewis. He didn't really know what to do, if they went inside he wasn't sure how long they could hold out in there, but in his opinion, it was better than outside. "What do you think we should do? Best bet is inside I think, we are sure to die if we don't do anything."

[ballerscuba]

Davey reached the door, focusing on his only objective before noticing what anyone else was doing. He turned around to see J.P. and Ichiru run off. Harrison began to chase out after them. "Harrison, they're gone!" he shouted. "Don't go killing yourself trying to get them. We need to get inside, now."

Davey turned back to the building and reached out for the door. He grabbed the handle and, to his surprise, it opened right up. As it slowed down, the already shattered pieces of glass inside the door shattered even more and fell to the ground. That's when Davey realized that the glass of the doors was so shattered that he could have easily walked through it. "Damn Fallout force of habit," Davey mumbled under his breath. "Even with a nearly destroyed door, I still want to open it and pick its lock." He stepped through the door that he did not open, crushing a few shards of glass beneath his feet, then turned around. "Everyone inside now!" He then turned around and looked for a place to hide from the thing.

[sleix]

"The restaurant it is then." Phil was content with his lesser role in the group, as long as he was being kept alive he was indifferent to the group decisions, what concerned him currently was his wounds. Phil wasn't exactly sure what prompted the transformation into one of those things, but he had to be deathly careful about the open wound on his cheek lest it be his end, god knows what sort of excruciating pain the victims went through before they turned, and it was starting to seem like a bullet through the skull was the only inoculation to such a fate, but the thought didn't disturb Phil, he was starting to see the infected as just another obstacle in the ever threatening "New World" he had been plunged into, which in itself was disturbing.

"Just another obstacle in the ever threatening "New World" he had been plunged into" It was almost ironic, after saying such things about the infected he still held feelings for his soul starved dad, bound and gagged in the futile hope to eventually find a cure and go back to his old life, but something told Phil nothing would ever be the same again, not after this hell. What's the best thing to do for dad? The question weighed heavily on his mind, this path would eventually lead him back to that godforsaken motel, and then he'd have to decide, or another member of the group will put him down without a second thought.

The scene was nothing out of the ordinary, excusing the mutilated corpses strewn across the streets. The restaurant looked no more ramshackle than every other building on the street, it was no impregnable fortress but it would do for the night, assuming there aren't any lurking infected in there.

[lukuz13]

July 7th, 2022 Thursday. Huntington, West Virginia

-Harrison was jerked to the side as Lewis suddenly pulled on his arm. His train of thought, flimsy as it was, was interrupted with the very same jolt, as he turned to stare the man in the eye. Lewis could see it. Terror in his eyes, not simply at the monster that was bearing down on them now, but at the prospect of losing Ichiru and J.P. Especially after the promise he had made to reunite them. Yet he had never gotten to explain much of any of this to the man, sad as it was.
"I...I can't I..." He tried to word, but Lewis' strength was plenty to force the man to follow. His legs wanted to run, truly they did. All they needed was the nudge Lewis gave. He bolted, along with the man at his side, into the destroyed gates. The rampaging gorilla of an infected came barreling past, slamming a car into one of the nearby buildings. The loud crash, crunching cement and broken glass filled the air, as the brutish creature roared out that it's targets had vanished from it's view. The horde was coming, the sound of footsteps cracking through the empty streets, muffled by the powerful beast as it charged after Lewis, Harrison and Mason as the three disappeared behind the broken gate.

Davey was greeted with the sight of his friends joining him at the lobby of the building, an elevator clear from what daylight remained, but the rest of the room dark. They were sure to get far from the door however as the monster slammed into the shattered doorway. It was just small enough to not allow the thing to fit. As a result, it's head and a good portion of it's arm was left exposed, as it clawed angrily at them all, the creak and groan of rebar and cement obvious as it strained part of the building's supports, crashing against the door and snapping it's hellish maw at them, pounding at the floor angrily.
"Holy fuck! I can...we just left them! Why did you bring me!" Harrison shouted, holding his head to drown out the shouts from outside. Now wasn't the time. The men had to decide fast where to go. The few windows made other features of the lobby obvious-a set of stairs going up and down, several over turned potted plants, a smear of blood that covered the entire floor, a desk with a blackened computer. The stench of death was about the entire place, especially near the counter, though the strongest source was from the creature belching pure death from the door way as he desperately tried to figure out how to fit his bulk into the small space.

[bloodsrain]

Mason was more shocked about how badly the lobby looked, he was hoping at least most of the others in the building got out, but the stench of the dead and blood smeared on every wall soon confirmed his thoughts of him being one of the few, if any, to survive the building shutdown. Mason laid besides Davey, staring at the elevator adjacent to them. He attempted to stay calm in the ever increasing threat of the monstrosity at the entrance, but even now there was a hint of hysteria in his voice. "Harris! It's not worth arguing about. I don't know you very well, but I guarantee you, if you headed out with them you were going to die as well. Chances are, they might already be dead." he said with certainty. Mason was pretty sure J.P and Ichiru were dead. He couldn't think of any way how they were going to survive a full horde , especially at night.

Mason turned to Davey, his mind turning to the elevator. "Davey, I don't think we can hold out on this floor, we should get in the elevator. At least then we can have some breathing room then." Mason honestly wasn't sure what was above, he only went through a few floors of this place in his time here, no real reason to go to some of the higher levels in his line of work. Even more of something to worry about, he wasn't sure how many of the infected were in this building. But it has to be better than facing this thing, right?

[graybeardhalt]

It took Jake a little while to finally respond to the cascade of conversation the two young men were creating. "Seriously guys, try to be a little more quiet. I can barely hear myself think over here," he said, bouncing the unconscious body on his shoulder up in order to adjust it. "As far as decisions go, it ain't the worst, so I guess I'm sticking with y'all for at least a little while longer. Just try not to talk so much." Mumbling something under his breath, Jake turned back towards the restaurant and began to head inside, his eyes darting back and forth to make sure nothing was trying to sneak up on them. He paused by the doorway, letting the others go in before him while he kept an eye on the street, his right hand loosely gripping the pistol at his side. When no screams or bloody squelches echoed out of the door, he followed them in and began taking note of anything and everything he saw.

[thatfallout3guy]

Lewis breathed a sigh of relief as he saw the monster was too small to fit inside the building, allowing him a moment to take in his surroundings. His eyes caught a glimpse of the desk, and he couldn't help but wonder if any documents of what happened here remained in the drawers. Before he could investigate, though, he heard Harrison's displeasure at the J.P. and Ichiru situation, "So you'd rather be stuck outside with him?" He asked, pointing to the hulking pile of flesh that blocked the doorway.

It was then he heard Mason's claims of the others death, causing Lewis to glare at the man, "Fuck you. They're smart, quick, and we're gonna find them after we get out of here."

'If we get out of here,' Lewis couldn't help but think. He'd been in plenty of dire situations before, but none that required hiding from an elephant sized rage monster.

He opted to ignore Mason for now, wanting to see if anything of worth was on the desk. He made his way over to it, and began checking each of the drawers for any sort of information. As he searched, however, he heard Mason's moronic suggestion of taking the elevator, "So, you want us to hop in the electrically powered machine that makes a lot of noise, and will keep us packed in tightly with little to no room to move, and only one possible exit? Yeah, I think I'll take the stairs."

After getting the snark out of his system, Lewis went back to checking for anything useful. Looking into one drawer, he finally found something of worth. A piece of paper, with what looked to be several usernames, and possibly passwords written on it, "Hey!" He exclaimed, getting everyone else's attention, "I got something, passwords by the looks of it. If we can find a working computer in this place, we might be able to figure out something about what happened he-" Lewis stopped as he was interrupted by a deafening roar from the behemoth that was still trying to tear into the building, "... but I think getting out of the lobby should take priority."

[ballerscuba]

"There's really no point in arguing over whether someone is alive or not. There's nothing we can do about that now. Let's just hope they are so we can go back and find them when we're done here." Davey rubbed his chin, which was just now starting to grow a noticeable amount of facial hair, despite not having shaved since a week before this had all started. He sincerely hoped they were still alive, but he didn't know how much hope he could afford.

Davey sighed a bit as Lewis sounded so excited about getting the list of passwords. "Let's head up the stairs. I doubt the elevator is working at this point. And I wouldn't get your hopes up too high about that list of passwords, Lewis. I seriously doubt any corporation would have anything but the lowest level of passwords lying around, especially printed out on paper in the lobby." Davey walked up to a door with a sign that showed a picture of stairs. He pulled his pistol out. "It's over here," he said. Davey turned the handle and yanked the door open, unsure what would be on the other side.

[lukuz13]

July 7th, 2022 Thursday. Huntington, West Virginia

-Every moment the trio of men spent together in the lobby gave them longer to look upon the monstrous form at the gate. It's blackened flesh had hints of bone throughout, all along it's sides thick plates of hardened bone, and anywhere else layer upon layer of skin, hardened and twisted in a horrific manner.
Harrison backed against the counter as he tried to look away from the creature, the stench growing far far worse. He could barely see because of it. When Mason shouted that all of a sudden, he grit his teeth angrily, and grabbed the man by the lapel.
"Listen here asshole, you're not gonna talk about my friends that way. They're not dead god damn it!" He shouted over the growl. Howling growls overtook the conversation as Harrison glared at the man, as if about to deck him. Lewis' words distracted him, and made him look back to the monster, finally releasing Mason from his grasp.
"Yeah. They're smart, and quick." He stated softly.
As Lewis went around the counter and opened up the desk, he was treated to a disturbingly decayed corpse at his feet. Skeletal features obvious, it looked as if rats had had a feast with the poor woman's form. If it was indeed a woman. It was hard to tell.
Harrison turned back to Davey finally, as he pointed all that out. How strange he was suddenly the voice of reason here.
"Yeah...yeah, no time to argue, right." He brought the back of his hand to his forehead. The sound of snapping rebar hit them all as the monster by the gate suddenly lurched 3 more feet into the lobby, making their current position a lot less comfortable. "Fuck, let's go, go now." He urged, watching Lewis hop over the counter to follow as Davey tore open the stairwell door. As he did, Harrison turned to Mason right as they entered.
"My name's HarriSON by the way asshole."

The stair platform thankfully smelled dusk and age instead of blood and death. There wasn't much of note, beyond a stairwell leading up and down. A sign on the wall with an arrow pointing up stated 'Offices'. While the sign pointing down stated 'Patient Testing'.

-As Jake and his gang got closer to the restaurant, he took note of how old the place looked. It wasn't even THAT long ago that everything went to hell, and yet without human care, the place looked far older. The scent of dust and the reflection of a setting sun off the light of nearby glass warned the men of the impending night. Stepping inside, there was sadly, no wafting scent of wonderfully cooked food that they may have from visiting the place from back in the days of the living. The creak of broken glass caught Jake's attention as he stepped through the door, not to mention the shadowed figure that flickered in and out from the kitchen, making it harder to see due to the distance to any nearby windows.

[ballerscuba]

Davey looked up and down the stairwell, searching for any movement. But, it was just too dark. He pulled out an emergency flashlight. He put it between his legs and began to shake it violently. After a few seconds of jerking, he pulled it out ahead of him and turned it on. It was then that he realized it probably would have been better to face towards the others when he did that, but it was too late now.

"It seems like we have a couple options here," he said as he pointed the flashlight at the sign. "We can go up to the comfort of the executive washroom and couches in the waiting room." He pointed the flashlight up the stairwell, still not seeing much of anything. "Or, we could go down to where you would keep the big bad things." He pointed the flashlight down the other stairwell, still not seeing any movement. "Underground, where you can bury things if they get out of hand. Of course," he hesitated, "they didn't, but you know what I mean. I think the choice is pretty clear here." He started heading down. "Office jobs have never really been my thing."

[bloodsrain]

Mason nodded at Davey's suggestion. "It is probably best to head down with Davey." he said turning to Lewis. "I believe the walls of this building are strong, but I don't know how strong they can be. That thing in the other room might try to get us from up there. We should check it out when it's gone or at least until things have quite down a little." he said, following after Davey.

He wasn't one for going down into those labs, he always hated being enclosed in such a small space underground. Mason had no idea just how much they were doing down here even with the time he had worked in this place. Secronom wasn't one to go ahead and trust people out right, especially when you were new. "Davey, what do you think the plan of action should be? The patient room shouldn't be too much of a problem, but it would be good if we had a plan if something goes wrong."

[lukuz13]

July 7th, 2022 Thursday. Huntington, West Virginia

-"You make a pretty good point by me." Harrison agreed rather quickly with Davey, nodding with a snort. "Never had a thing for office stuff either myself. I remember giving it a shot once. Nearly tore my own skull open with boredom." He shook his head as the men went down and rounded one end of the stairwell, leading them down to the dark depths of the building. Creaking concrete and metal could still be heard above, as Harrison turned his head to face Mason and nodded with a sigh. "The plan is to shoot if anything moves towards us, as far as I can tell." He cleared. "If you have a different one I'd love to hear it."
As the men passed by several sets of barred doors and continued the trip down for a ways further, they made their way finally to a set of open doors. Creaking open the door, Harrison poked his head inside. The scent of death was a common one these days, but this place was some other horrible combination of stenches. There were hundreds of them, though. Hundreds of patient beds with old medical machines that long since died along with whoever they supported. The only signs of movement were down the hall, a creak coming from above reminding them of what was behind them. Occasionally the soft squeak of a bed came from the very end of the hall as well.


-As Jake and the men at his side made their way into the quiet place, the shadow moved past yet again. It was moving fast, and it was thin and gangly looking. A guttural growl cut through the small place, and before any of them could react further, a vicious looking infected, flesh barely flinging to it's body, skin long since worn away, leaving sharpened teeth and pointed claws on it's four pointed arms outstretched, ready to tear into the men if they didn't react.

[graybeardhalt]

Jake just barely got a glimpse of the familiar surroundings before the shadow caught his attention. He froze in the doorway, staring at the spot he swore he had seen movement. After a second, the shadow flickered again. He opened his mouth to warn the others, but before any sound escaped, the beast suddenly appeared in front of them. Instead of a fully formed word, Jake let out a sort of guttural cry and dove to the right, falling behind a table. His instincts had kicked in and midway through the fall, he remembered he was still holding onto a body. His body twisted in a direction that it probably wasn’t meant to and any breath that was left in his lungs was forcefully expelled as his shoulder slammed into the ground. There was nothing for a split second, then pain. Thankfully he didn’t have enough air to make a cry of pain, but it did take him a crucial second in order to drop the dead weight, quite unceremoniously, to the side and look back to where he had just been. He tried to raise his pistol, but his shoulder screamed in protest, forcing him to toss the gun into his other hand. Even though he had trained to shoot with both hands, his left was always a little more wobbly. He opened fire, the bullets mostly going where he meant them to.

[ballerscuba]

Davey looked around this new floor. There was a first aid kit on the wall. He was reminded of the games he had played where there were kits like this hanging on the walls. He had not actually seen one in real life before. He longed for the days when he could just press a button on his keyboard and increase his health bar. Things weren't that simple anymore. Maybe they never really were. It was only now, down in the depths of the dank and dark Secronom building, that he fully realized the extent of how far he had come since he emerged in the basement. Although, he did still miss his kilt. It did give him freedom of movement that nothing he has found since has given. But now was not the time for that. He pulled the gauze and a couple bottles that he did not bother checking out of the box and shoved them in his pockets. He roamed around the hall, finally deciding on a room and pried open a couple drawers, but there was nothing but office supplies in there. He moved on in hopes of finding something worthwhile, possibly a way to go deeper. He still needed to go deeper.

[sleix]

Phil froze, if only for a second, before darting to the left almost impulsively. He inhaled sharply as his leg contorted while turning, stumbling onto a nearby coffee table before regaining his balance, only to feel a terrible pain pierce his leg. What felt like a muscle laceration passed to a mild uncomfort in the next few seconds, he had almost certainly sprained a muscle with the movement, but it seemed minor comparative to the infected. The beast had a distinct look about it, like the one before, it was definitely more dangerous than the common shambler, and wasn't something that Phil wanted to get within clawing distance of to use his knife. He thought about using the rifle, but without having fired a weapon before, the recoil would most certainly knock him on his feet, or in the worst case scenario break a bone, which would, without a doubt, lead to his demise. He staggered behind an overturned table as Jake opened fire, with an entirely false sense of protection, though it was mostly an instinctual reaction.