You might be reverting back to old habits, but if there is some hectic bullshit going on out there, then you want to avoid it. They can handle it and you decide to be extra cautious and block the door with a chair.

You hear the sounds of gunfire above you. That isn't what bothers you so much as it's the growling and yelling that sounds like it's coming from nearby. You remember that there are other "patients" on this same floor.

More time passes and you still hear gunshots and the inhuman noises. You are starting to worry that it's quite possible this house is going to be overrun by these things, and you haven't even seen one. This fear becomes even more intense when you stop hearing the gunshots and only hear the guttural noises nearby. You start to feel like you've made another bad choice.

Suddenly there's an attempt to open the door only to be stopped by the chair you've propped against it. This is followed by a loud bang on the door, which scares the hell out of you.

"Suzy! What the hell? Is this door barricaded?" you hear Lilith's voice shout.
"Yeah…is it safe?" you ask.
"It's safe in that we're not in any immediate danger, but we gotta start getting the hell outta here. Open up!"

Wasting no time you move the chair and the door opens up. Lilith throws your clothes at you and you can hear those awful noises in the corridor. Yelling and banging.

"Here. Get dressed and don't worry about the noises, the other subjects aren't getting out of those rooms anytime soon." Lilith says.

You're not as sure as Lilith is about that, so you just get dressed as fast as you can and exit the room with her.

"So what's going on?" you ask as you follow her.
"What's going on is Leslie and I are heading to that GZ Shelter after he and I gather a few things. The crazies from town are spilling out from it and we don't want to be here in case another wave comes. I was hoping to have more time to pack, but I guess we can't have everything."

You and Lilith get to the ground floor and finally see the house proper. It's a bit of a mess now probably due to all the running around and shooting, but obviously was nice at one time. Then you enter the front room and see several broken windows, and couple of dead bodies. One of them is a uniformed man with his throat ripped out and several slashes across his face.

Nearby him is a body of a disheveled looking woman with several bullet holes in her body and head. She still has a chunk of flesh in her teeth and even in death her eyes display a crazed look. It sort of freaks you out.

"Um, that guy in the uniform, shouldn't someone shoot him in the head?"
"What? No. These aren't zombies. They're just well…rabid." Lilith chuckles. "Headshots aren't even necessary to kill them, though it sure as hell helps."

A couple more uniformed men with the Ground Zero insignia on them walk into the room holding rifles.

"Place seems to be all secure Dr. Morningstar. No other hostiles in the house or around the house." One of them says.
"Good. Glad not all of you were incompetent. Wait, are you two the only ones left?"
"Afraid so doctor." One of them remarks.
"Oh well. Okay, I want you two to stand guard out front. Make sure there isn't another horde or whatever coming our way and if there is, run back in here and tell me immediately."

The two uniformed men nod and leave out the front door which is now half hanging off the hinges. You and Lilith both take a quick look outside and see the bodies of several crazies as well as GZ security. In the driveway you see that Lilith's truck is heavily shot up and a couple bodies of crazed townies lie next to it.

"Great, these assholes never learned the concept of one shot one kill. (Sigh) Guess we're all just piling into the Ground Zero van." Lilith says shaking her head.

Lilith continues looks around a bit more at her partially destroyed house.

"Well at least nobody has to clean this up this time. I remember the many many times I'd come home from work and I'd find Leslie had left a damn mess all over the house, much worse than this sometimes even. A lot more bodies too. Still remember the disorder he left when he was trying to write a poem for me on one of our past anniversaries. But it was such a lovely and thoughtful sentiment so I wasn't too mad…anyway have you made your decision of what you're going to do yet?" Lilith asks.

You still really aren't sure and lacking an answer, you ask a question.

"What would I do at the shelter again?
"Well I told you, I'm not in charge of assignments, but I'm sure there would be some sort of position there for you. Ground Zero doesn't waste resources."
"I see."

Lilith looks at you with a squint.

"You…still don't trust me do you? Don't answer. I know you don't. (Sigh) I suppose I don't blame you. Look, if you don't want to go with us you don't have to, I meant that. Still, I think it would be foolish if you didn't."
"It might be equally foolish if I went with you. Who knows what the hell is in store for me in an underground shelter." You say.
"True, but think on this. If I really had anything bad in store for you there, don't you think I would've just had security and my brother restrain you and take you there against your will anyway? I'm giving you a choice. You can go with us, or not. One of your problems Suzy is you don't take chances, you stick with what you think is safe and look where that has gotten you. But if safety is your main concern, I'm just going to say that staying here isn't exactly the safe option. This house isn't secure, you'll have a few days of food and water at best and if the crazed townsfolk don't come ripping this place apart again, there are always just the plain opportunists that are no doubt lurking about as well. You don't even have a vehicle to leave this place. Mine got all shot up and we're taking the other one. Do you even have a plan if you stay here?"

You don't…as usual.

"No." you reply.
"Well I'd think your choice would be simple then. Anyway, I have to bags to pack and when I'm done, I'm going to need to know what your answer is Suzy." Lilith remarks and leaves you by yourself.

You walk around the ground floor of the house a bit, just looking around. You start to form various thoughts in your head about how this place could be made more defensible. You just aren't sure if you're up to the task though.

You briefly consider the idea of somehow overpowering one of those GZ security guys outside and driving off with the truck yourself, but you aren't confident that you'd be successful. You then wonder if you could successfully flirt with one of them…

You head outside and speak with both of the guards while attempting to be as charming as you can. You even manage to muster up the fortitude to blatantly make sexual innuendo and such.

It doesn't work. One of them is gay and the other is happily married and even if that wasn't the case, they get irritated at the fact that you're distracting them from their duty and start telling you to go away. You realize your plan isn't going to work and you give up.

"Christ Suzy, some seductress you are." You mutter to yourself.

This brings you back to your original two choices and both of those have the potential to go to shit for various reasons, but it's all you got.

You stay at the house

Lilith's right. Your choice is simple.

And that's the one that doesn't involve going somewhere with a pair of sociopaths and a shady corporation.

"Safest choice my firm ass it is." You say to yourself.

Lilith's psychobabble about you might've been a bit spot on in places, but it made you realize that not only is it not completely true, but that this past week you HAVE been making a concentrated effort to adapt to your surroundings.

True, you haven't been successful at it for the most part, but you've survived this long in this fucked up week, so you must not be too terrible at it either. Having to fend for yourself isn't fun, but then being alone isn't exactly new to you.

In any case, you still don't trust Lilith and begin looking around the house and there in the kitchen, you pick up a fairly large butcher knife. Actually it isn't a knife so much as it's a machete. One can only imagine what the hell it's doing in their kitchen, but you can take a guess.

You at first wonder if you should go try to kill Lilith or something, but then you think that probably isn't the best plan. It's likely to just end in your demise at the hands of her guards or her brother. You're not some close combat expert and despite what Lilith said about you possibly "exploding into a ball of violent rage" you actually don't have so much hate for her that you want to kill her without provocation. She actually might be telling the truth about the shelter as well rather than have any sinister intent.

Still, you aren't ready to take that chance either. While she has said she'll just leave you in peace if decline the offer, you still have images of someone grabbing you, drugging you and taking you to the shelter against your will.

So that leaves one option. You're going to go hide. The question is where though. Lilith's upstairs, he brother is in the basement. You imagine if you hid somewhere on the ground floor, you'd get discovered pretty quickly…

It occurs to you, that you could just go out the backdoor and leave the premises for a while. You know they're still in a hurry to get the hell out of here, chances are, they are not going to spend a whole lot of time looking for you, let alone looking for you off the grounds of the house.

So that's what you do. You leave out the backdoor. Unfortunately the backyard has a high wooden fence so climbing it wouldn't be the easiest thing to do (And chopping it with the machete, would just cause noise) and the gate leading to the side of the house is locked.

You see a shed, but you imagine that's locked as well and it doesn't seem like it would be a good place to hide. There are a couple trees in the yard and that's when you notice that one of them has a few branches hanging over the fence.

The tree in question looks a lot easier to climb than the fence so you go up the tree which is slightly tricky with the machete still in your hand, but you soon make it to the branch you need to get to, drop the machete on the ground first and then drop down.

And promptly land wrong and twist the hell out of your ankle as you crumple to the ground.

"Fuck. Shit…" you start to curse until you stop yourself, when you hear a voice yelling on the other side of the fence.

"I dunno where your blonde lab rat is, go get your guards to look. I'm trying to look for my favorite machete! I thought I had it in the kitchen, but it's not there. I'm going to check the shed."

From your low angle and through the slats of the fence you can see Leslie walking towards his shed. Definitely turning back now as you're most likely in possession of Leslie's favorite machete and you really hope that this isn't going to inspire a "hunt."

You crawl away from the fence and the house as fast as you can. The pain in your ankle makes standing to "limp away" a bit more painful, but your desire to not get caught allows you to fight through it.

The high grass and the occasional bush or tree makes your escape into the "wilderness" slightly less nerve wracking since at least you aren't in a completely open field where if they were looking for you, you would be an easy find.

Just as you think you're getting far enough away, you hear a voice call out your name in the distance. You freeze and turn your head to look behind you, but you don't see anyone. You still hear Lilith's voice shouting for you from far away, but you guess that she's just doing it from near the house rather than actively searching for you.

Eventually you cease hearing her call for you and you take a breather within a cluster of trees. Actually you think if you went any further, you'd probably start going into a forest which you're prepared to do if you think anyone is actually going to come looking for you. For now though, you need to rest your ankle a bit.

A few moments pass and you don't hear anything other than the occasional bird. A rabbit bounding nearby makes you jump a bit, but so far you don't think anyone is coming out this way to look for you.

Still, you can't tell if they've all left yet. You decide to be on the safe side, you'll wait a little longer. No more than that though since you really don't want to get caught out here in the dark.

So you wait, keeping your eyes and ears open. Really before now, you didn't realize how rural of an area you lived in. You don't think you've ever appreciated the outdoors before…and you still don't now.

Time passes and still no sign of anyone heading your way. You decide they've probably left by now and it's probably safe.

You ankle feels slightly better, but it still aches. As you try to keep your weight off of it and make your way back to the house, you suddenly hear rustling noise in the trees and bushes nearby. At first you think it's another rabbit, but then you see exactly what it is

"Shit!" you exclaim when you see a wild looking man with an equally wild look in his eyes. He sees you and makes that awful animalistic noise you heard while you were locked away in the basement and then sprints straight for you.

Fear grips you, but you know you can't outrun it with your ankle not being a hundred percent. Your only saving grace is you aren't completely defenseless.

You barely have time to react by the time it lunges upon you. You manage to swing your blade and as luck would have it you sink the blade across the thing's face while its mouth was wide open.

You weren't strong enough to cleave its head off, but it can't really bite you with a machete blade in the way either. Still, that doesn't stop it from tackling you to the ground, not to mention the blade is now stuck half way through its head and you couldn't really pull it out if you wanted to what with it being on top of you now.

With blood spray all over you and this thing still trying to kill you, you do the only thing you can think of: You push the flat edge of the blade on your side and the handle so the machete cuts deeper into the thing's head. It makes horrible squeals and shrieks, and keeps attempting to claw at your face, blood, teeth, bits of flesh are spraying/falling on you, but you keep the pressure on until at last you successfully shove the blade all the way through and the top of it's head come off.

After a bit more struggling, you get the thing completely off of you as it still attempts to kill you in its death throes. The thing continues to twitch and you're busily looking around to make sure more of them aren't coming or if the Morningstars are still around and heard all the noise. There doesn't seem to be anyone else around though. By the way this thing was dressed he even looked like he might be a camper so hopefully it was just him in the woods.

You just realize you killed someone…well someTHING at any rate. You don't feel bad, since it was more out of necessity. You get the impression you might be killing more of these things in the near future, so better you get used to it now.

You quicken your pace to the house though still proceeding cautiously as possible. You hug the back fence and slowly edge your way around to the front of the house and you see that the Ground Zero vehicle is gone, along with the two guards that were out front.

At least that's one thing you don't need to worry about.

You enter the house through the still open front door and check the ground floor and find nobody around. The place is still a mess though. You're about to check the upstairs when you see a piece of paper attached to the refrigerator with your name written in big black marker. You take it and read.

Suzy,

Assuming you came back here, I just want to say I understand why you ran off like you did and I probably wouldn't have completely trusted you if the roles were reversed. Still, it is a shame we didn't get to say a proper goodbye to each other. Leslie was quite angry with your theft of his favorite machete, but I talked him out of attempting to hunt you down for it. Not like we even need it where we're going.

Anyway, I imagine you should have power in this house for a couple days at least. There is food and drink in the fridge and in the cupboards. You'll probably want to eat the stuff in the fridge first before the power goes out and spoilage occurs though.
Not sure if you'll like some of it, but considering you liked the meatloaf, maybe you'll like what's in there.

Good luck Suzy, I certainly hope your foray into being a survivalist is successful. I mean that. You're going to have to really push yourself and prepare for what is coming, but I think you've got a shot.

Lilith Morningstar

P.S.

The other patients are still locked in the rooms in the basement. There are four of them in total and have already very likely broken their restraints by now. As I have said before, the doors should be more than enough to contain them and you should be safe from them as long as you don't open the rooms.

Well that was certainly a thoughtful note to you.

You sit down for a second thinking of what to do next. You thought that maybe you'd try to barricade this house up and stay here, but now you're wondering if you shouldn't just leave considering you've got four of those things clawing to get out of the basement. You to come to the conclusion that you might stay here another day tops and that's only to just search this place of anything useful and then you're heading out to well, you don't know where exactly, but you're going to continue to play this by ear.

For right now though, you really need to wash up. You're covered in blood, gore, dirt and generally feel really gross. You really don't want to use the shower in that room you were in during your time in the basement of this place though. You head upstairs in the hopes of finding another bathroom and sure enough you find one.

Lilith's clothes are a slightly bigger size, but you can't afford to be choosey since your own clothes are a bloody mess and it doesn't make much sense changing back into them.

During all this, you continue to keep your wits about you. Still afraid that something may pop up to attack at any time. By the time you're out of the shower, night is beginning to fall.

While you would've liked to have gotten started on searching the house you're a little wary of turning on the lights in this house since it might very well attract more attention than you want. You do gather up a duffle bag that Lilith apparently decided not to use and plan to use that as your container for your search tomorrow.

Given that you're staying here the night, you need to secure this house as much as you can. You lock the back door and the basement door. (And trying to ignore the noises you hear coming from down there) You then shove a sofa in front of the ruined front door. It's not much, but if those things try to come in, you'll most likely hear it at least.

You also realize you haven't eaten all day, so you look in the fridge and grab something that looks similar to the meatloaf you ate yesterday since you don't feel like making a decision.

"Hm, Lil and Les really liked their meatloaf I guess." You say and eat the stuff in the dark. (At least you don't need to look at it this time) Tastes okay.

You're up for quite awhile paranoid about every noise you hear. However, you know you can't stay awake all night despite your paranoia.

You head back upstairs to one of the bedrooms and close the door. You then shove a dresser in front of it. Best you can do.

You then flop down on the bed and reluctantly let sleep take you.

Next day…

FRIDAY


You wake up to the sound of a noisy vehicle outside. You waste no time in springing to your feet.

You cautiously peek out the window and see a beat up pick up truck pulling up behind Lilith's shot up vehicle. You then see two familiar figures get out of the truck with one of them speaking loud enough for you to hear even from your position.

"Woowee! Looks like we missed some shit going down around here! Make sure you keep yer eyes peeled! Thinkin' Doc might not even be alive anymore!" Jed exclaims.

"Shit. What the fuck are those two assholes doing here?" you say to yourself.

You see Hugo and Jed both carrying shotguns and going to the back of the pick up, which from your vantage point you can see a pile of blankets in the bed of the truck. Jed uncovers the blanket and reveals a naked woman tied up with ropes. She looks dirty, beaten and bloody. You can't quite tell if she's dead, but she's definitely unconscious.

You then see Jed say something to his brother and points to the house. Hugo nods and you see him walk out of your view. You temporarily freeze up when you hear a knock from downstairs. You hear it several times until you hear Jed shouting at his dim-witted brother.

"Jesus fuckin' Christ Hugo, are ya stupider than usual today? Can't ya see that door is already hangin' off the fuckin' hinges? Just go in, and fuckin' check the place out, then let me know if Doc's even around or not. I'll be out here keepin' this fierce one entertained." Jed shouts and you see him patting the leg of the girl a couple times.

The knocking becomes a crashing sound as you hear Hugo bashing the door in and probably moving the sofa in the process. You turn your attention away from what's going on outside and how you're going to handle this situation.

You think about climbing out the window and on to the roof, but that's a risky proposition. Not really so much of the risk of falling (Though your ankle still hurts a bit) but more because Jed is practically in front of you and if he just bothers to till his head up or hears you, he's going to see you and probably open fire.

You look around the room and hoping maybe there is a firearm or something that Lilith didn't take, but you don't find anything. That dresser you put up against the door isn't going to last long if Hugo tries to come in here.

You suppose you could just try shoving move stuff against it, but considering he not only looks extremely strong, he's got a shotgun and could probably just blast his way through.

You hear Hugo stomping around downstairs.

If Hugo comes up here, and you hide in the closet, there's the possibility that you could get the drop on him as he walks in.

You wonder though if it might not be more advantageous to just head downstairs and try to sneak up on him now though. If he comes up and things go to shit, you aren't going to have any place to run to, especially if he traps you in this room.

You seek out Hugo

Either way you're going to have to get the drop on him, better you have more places to run to, rather than just being trapped in one room.

As quietly as you can you move the dresser out of the way of the door and exit the bedroom. You still hear Hugo clomping around downstairs and you actually wait around the corner of the stairs hoping that maybe if he is heading upstairs you can ambush him that way.

Waiting doesn't prove fruitful though and in fact you think Hugo's footsteps are actually getting fainter. It then occurs to you, he's probably looking for Leslie and Leslie would be down in the basement.

You cautiously head downstairs though you do it fairly quickly since the last thing you want is to be wrong and get caught going half way down the stairs while Hugo is going up them.

After a quick look around on the ground floor and keeping your ears open you're not hearing or seeing Hugo down here. You are starting to hear Jed shouting from outside though. When you peek out the window, you can't quite see everything, but you notice Jed is clearly doing something with the woman that was in the back of the truck. You can guess what that might be given his movements and vulgar shouting.

You head towards the stairs of the basement and you nearly fall down them when you're startled by a sudden gunshot coming from down there. Hugo must've just shot one of the four "patients" down there. Of course it's hard to know if he'd opened a door and killed one or perhaps it managed to get out on its own. Either way, you're going to have to be really careful.

You get to the basement floor and the noise of those things is much louder. You peek around the corner and down the corridor you see two doors to the rooms open. The closest one you know was yours, so nothing in there. The second one however looks like it also has a dead body lying partially in the entryway.

You see Hugo in the corridor opening up another door across the hall of the other two open ones. He isn't really paying much attention to your direction and when he steps into the other room, you make a dash for your old room and get inside.

Along with hearing the banging of the creatures still locked up, you hear another shotgun blast signifying Hugo's killed another one. You figure before he opens up the next door, you run up and chop him in the back of the head.

You peek out from behind the door and see Hugo exiting the room. He walks to the middle of the corridor and begins fiddling with his shotgun, as if he's having trouble with it.

Just then the door across from him bursts open and one of the patients attacks him. You see and hear them struggle, growling, yelling, and everything else that comes with a life or death situation.

It gets more interesting however when you see Hugo drop the shotgun as he's struggling with the patient.

You waste no time and rush from your position to nab it. Hugo meanwhile is still struggling with the patient who has now bitten into Hugo's hand. You're about to put a hole in the pair of them and that's when the door to the room containing the last patient bursts open.

The thing seeing that one of its "fellows" is already struggling with Hugo, it screams and lunges forward to attack you instead.

You instinctively turn the shotgun towards the patient and pull the trigger, unfortunately it doesn't work which is why Hugo was fiddling with it earlier. It was jammed.

Before you can pick your machete back up to defend yourself, the thing has already tackled you. You struggle for a moment, but this one is a lot stronger than the one you fought with yesterday. It soon overpowers you and its teeth are ripping your throat out and its fingers are clawing your eyes out.