SPECIAL! CORNISH COLLEGE OF THE ARTS

[◊◊BLOODBEASTER◊◊]

The runners clambered over and around the cars, listless zombies moving toward them jerkily. The feeling of many eyes looking at them from every direction painfully distracting. A few zombies were actually trapped in cars, or between them. Seth gasped loudly as he ran over a car, and a corroded arm reached out for his pant leg from between two smashed hoods. The skin was burned off in large chunks, and the rest of the zombie's body completely hidden, presumably smashed between.
Despite the rate at which this fast-paced tactic depleted their energy, it was amazing how much ground someone could make just running past zombies. They were gathering though, and followed them up the hill to the school.

Anna waited for the stragglers to catch up, into the small parking lot which was at the top of the short but quite steep hill. There were still a couple couple cars parked here in the lot, no one would ever come back to take them home.

Anna-
"Stairs gonna be pitch black. See this?"

She fiddled with the road flare until she brought it to life in a shower of fluorescent pink vapor. Then, she jerked the back door open, it was still unlocked. She went in first to the nearly black hall, and the others followed behind, not wanting anything to follow them in if they dawdled.

[◊◊BLOODBEASTER◊◊]

The hall was cast in dim pink light, thanks to the road flares, which everyone began lighting up. The walls were white, and the tiles were glossy, catching the light and reflecting it brilliantly. At the very end of the hall was a faint light coming through a window, otherwise the hall was windowless. Was there a subtle movement at the end of the hall? The bizarre flickering light made it very hard to tell. It was quiet, at least, as far as they could hear over the hissing road flares.
Anna gestured for everyone to follow her, and she quickly ducked through a push door, and into a narrow stairwell.

[◊◊BLOODBEASTER◊◊]

The runners moved their way up the cramped stairwell, which turned at right angles every ten steps or so. They turned two times per floor, trying to listen over the hissing road flares and the clack of their own feet on the steps.

[DKender]

Alex held his flare up and peered through the shadows as he cautiously followed the group. So this was what an art college stairwell looked like. He'd expected something more twisty turny, like the stairs in M.C. Escher's upside down and inside out drawing (Relativity).

[∆§Indea§∆]

Micah glanced around warily, his flare grasped in one shaking hand and the hatchet in the other. The sashimi knife was in his back pocket, where it wouldn't accidentally maim anything too vital. He didn't want to think about that kind of injury, especially in an apocalyptic world without a surgeon. The dark corridor smelt of paint and chalk and faintly of cigarettes. Micah wondered what a hipster zombie would be like or were they too cool to be zombies?

"So where are the so called monsters? Maybe it's a prank? Fucking hipsters.." Micah muttered to Alex.

[DKender]

"I hope they aren't," he whispered back, with a tense smile. "But I don't think it's a prank. Look at this junk on my weapon. There was something, uhm, something different in the car outside."

[◊◊BLOODBEASTER◊◊]

As the group ascended the stairs, the pink lights hissing and bobbling around, creating thick black shadows that stretched and loomed as they turned corners, the people in front stopped short, Micah and Alex nearly slammed into the back of Peg and Anna.

They heard it, a faint cry in the distance. A woman's voice.

Anna-
"Upstairs! The 5th!"

They hustled up the stairs, and Seth and Anna took up the front, slamming the push door open and stepping into the hall, quickly trying to get their bearings.
The walls were white here too, and overcast light filtered in from a window behind them, but the end of the hall was completely dark, hidden from their view. Large prints hung on the walls, human sized depictions of small objects in black charcoal. A giant corn kernel, a dried bit of thistle... There was a strange scent of a chemical, perhaps some kind of dye or paint.
Seth and Anna stepped forward, holding up the pink torches forward, but the darkness seemed impermeable, unnatural. Suddenly, there was the twisting shape of movement in the darkness and a small figure came running from it, like it had just been a black curtain the entire time. A girl with blonde hair and an ornate leather jacket looked at them with wide eyes. There was some kind of dark mark on her face, though she didn't appear injured.

Young lady-
"Y-you're real?! Oh God!"

She spoke with a faint British accent, her voice dry and cracking.
"Upstairs now! They won't follow us there!!"

[∆§Indea§∆]

He wished his hoax theory had been correct but this was an art school not drama and the fear seemed pretty real. Micah looked around at the room, hoping that the odd movements were his imagination. He followed the others up, his nerves on high alert. He began to twitch at even the slightest movements.

" W-who won't follow us fucking w-where??

[◊◊BLOODBEASTER◊◊]

Seth-
"Upstairs? That's where the rest of you are?


Young lady-
"If you blokes stand around talking much more, you'll get to see yourself. Come on!"

She started to move for the stairs they'd just come from and stopped short. One of the huge paper prints seemed unreasonably dark, and looked for a moment like a giant Rorshach test, but the charcoal was spreading like ink. It became a huge black blot. Something within it glinted and the runners realized it was a dark face emerging from the surface. The smell of ammonia in the air shaded toward something more earthy...

It looked like a teenage Asian girl with long hair (remarkably neat), which swung in smooth curtains around her shoulders as she stepped out of the art. Her eyes glimmered in the pink light. From behind them, Anna suddenly barked

Anna-
"Oh shit!"

The ghost scent began to overpower and the road flares sparked in the fumes. From the formerly featureless darkness there was now the glimmer of multiple eyes. They seemed to float like in a Scooby Doo cartoon. A faint airy noise of their wordless voices and they moved towards the intruders.

That's you.

[∆§Indea§∆]

Micah starting running towards the stairs like the proverbial fucking dickens after the birth marked British chick, almost tripping over himself. He felt a sharp jab a couple of times from the knife in his back pocket.

"Let's get the fuck up those stairs Allex" he yelled somewhat high pitched.

[DKender]

"HYA! Micah! Wait ..!"

There were ghosts everywhere!

Alex squeezed his eyes shut and blindly waved his flare around! Unfortunately, he almost singed poor Peg.

Maybe he should rethink his tactics. What did Sarah tell everyone earlier? Oh, yeah. Look at their feet, not their eyes. She was so smart ...

With his eyes directed firmly downward, Alex hurried towards Micah, while jabbing at any nearby ghost with his flare.

[◊◊BLOODBEASTER◊◊]

In the cramped space of the concrete stairwell, the pink flares made the world look like a garish portal to hell. It was hard to stay coordinated at speed, and careening off the walls a bit was the fastest way to go.

Anna-
"Just this flight!"

She opened the door and held it, some daylight at each end of the floor making it a considerably less disturbing realm to enter. Everybody spilled out into that hall.

After a moment of getting a grip on their selves, everyone realized they were still alive, and the dark ghosts indeed had not followed them up.

Young lady-
"See? I have no bloody idea what stops them."


Anna-
"You realize we'll have to destroy them to make it out alive, right?"


Young lady-
"Destroy them? How the hell are you supposed to do that? I've seen them. They touch you and you become one of them. I know some of them. They were with us before."

[◊◊BLOODBEASTER◊◊]

Seth-
"We've killed them with fire. That's why we got these." He gestured with the flare. "If you knew they were down there, why were you there?"


Young Lady-
"Oh, you're the motorcycle guy, aren't you? I thought I'd try to find you. Didn't think you could make it through. No one else has."

[◊◊BLOODBEASTER◊◊]

The hall here was painfully white like all the others, but was covered in small pieces of art that made it seem more like the art academy that one might expect. The young lady plopped on the floor, too exhausted to stand.

There was a stainless steel elevator at the end of the hall that would be of no use to anyone. The window a the end of the hall looked out onto Denny and had a stereotypical Seattle view, with a bit of the Space Needle poking out from behind buildings.

[DKender]

Alex crouched next to the young woman, fished a protein bar from his pocket, and offered it to her. "You better eat this - probably not much food up here, right?"