Finally coming out of shock from inflicting bodily harm on human-like creatures, Joel pulled Thomas and Jarod inside with their cargo, closing the door after. There were still more than a few zombies out there, being drawn by the alarm that was still going off.

"First things first." Nodding to Mauve, "Yes, you did have the only key, but the automatic locks on the doors have been disarmed, somehow. It is odd, that shouldn't even be reasonably possible. But there will be time for that later. Or, more exactly, if we don't hurry then there definitely won't be a later."

Most zombies were congregating around the alarm, but those that Thomas had bashed up earlier were beginning to rise where able, crawl when possible, and in general moved towards McCrae Hall in whatever manner was possible. A few unharmed zombies noticed and fell upon the injured with a ravenous fury. Even at that, others were still coming towards the building.

"We've got to get supplies. The cafeteria is in the back," he pointed beyond a mass of round tables and serving counters. "But what ever you do, don't eat or take anything made within the last 24 hours. We don't know what did this to everyone and I'd rather not find out later that we've been eating a zombie pie or the likes."

"But, we'll need something to carry the food in. The rooms above us are probably empty of zombies, just as the other dorm was, but we might find survivors. More importantly, however, are backpacks. We'll need those to carry the food and water in. I suggest we split up. Some of us gather the food and any bottled water in the kitchen, some of us to gather backpacks, and some of us to guard against surprise zombie attacks."

Feeling a twinge of guilt for ignoring Jarod's question, Joel forced his mind to consider what seemed to be a hopeless case. "And who was the last person to see Krylo?"

Frank came flying through the door so fast he almost couldn't stop soon enough before hitting a wall. It looked as if he made a 20 on his run the f*ck away check if this was D&D. "God damnit did you guys forget about me?" Frank said angrily to the rest of the group. He sat down taking a breather where he stopped. "Well whatever."

Jogging towards the entrance, Jack watched the others pile through the doors ahead of him. Only a few yards from the doorway, he threw his cigarette out and prepared to make the final sprint to the portal. Suddenly, there was a jerk on his right leg, throwing him off balance and nearly to the ground. "What the..."

Attached to his right leg was the zombified corpse of a 10 year old boy. The kid was naked and smeared in blood. The ghastly thing looked up at him with its dead eyes and hissed. "Jesus Christ! Get it off!" Jack shouted, the writhing zombie child clearly disturbing him. He flailed his leg violently, trying to shake the thing loose. Finally the ungodly creature came free, and Jack pulled back and punted the thing like a football. Its head crushed by the impact, the child flew about 5 yards and landed on its neck with a sickening thud. Jack raised his arms vertically above his head "GOOOAAALLL!! Hah ha!"

He turned around and saw the doors to McCrae slam shut. He stopped laughing. Seizing his bat, he rushed the door.

"Guys let me in!" He pounded on the thick steel surface. "Come on, let me in! You forgot Jack!"

A moan behind him sent his blood running both hot and cold. Slowly, he turned about. The surviving horde of zombies had surronded him in a rough semi-circle. They started moving in.

Jack hit the first one with his bat. Its head caved in and the creature collapsed to the ground. Jack pulled back to hit the next, but by now, the crowd had moved so close there was no room to move. The zombies quickly mobbed him. Jack realized that if those doors didnt open right now, he was going to be torn apart.

"Open the door! FOR THE LOVE OF GOD OPEN THE DOOR!!!"

Ben looked at Frank. "What? It's not like that was the most organized retreat in history. We're lucky any of us got here."

Ben turned to Joel and Jarod, his face suddenly looking pained. "Last I saw Krylo, he was still back in the dorm, digging through his bad and freakin' out because we were killing the zombies that broke in. I...I thought everyone was behind me when we made the run for it. I...I didn't look..."

Pounding on the door broke Ben out of his train of thought. Jack's shouting, followed the increased moaning of the zombies, made his blood run cold.

"CRAP!" he yelled, and ran over to the door. "I'm going to open it. Someone get ready to grab him, and as soon as he's in, I'll slam the door and hold it closed until we can lock it again!"

Joel got ready and as soon as Ben opened the door, he grabbed Jack and heaved backward, throwing all his weight into it. Both of them fell backwards and well away from the door, which was soon shut again.

"You know," Joel commented to Jack as he got up, "it wasn't locked."

Looking through the glass, thick as it was it was quite transparent transparent, at the coming zombies he continued, "Which is a bit of a problem, really."

Jack scrambled away from the door he had just been pulled through. The blood had drained out of his face leaving him paler than Michael Jackson. His jacket was completely shredded and his tie had been eaten. He sat there shaking and watching the door for a moment.

He knew someone was talking to him, but he couldnt hear them over the pounding of his heart. The voice continued in the background, an incoherant stream of background noise. All he could do is watch the door, which had begun rattling from the efforts of the zombies.

Jack threw off his now-ruined jacket and ran towards the vending machine to the left of the door. His body still surging with adrenaline, he hit the machine like a football player, pushing the machine with uncanny strength towards the doorway.

The rattling turned into a shaking, and now the door was starting to come open. A decaying arm stuck itself through. Jack pushed even harder, and with one mighty shove, knocked the steel vending machine over behind the door. The crash of metal on tile was deafening. The heavy block of steel slammed the door shut violently, severing the unlucky zombies arm, and blocking the door from any future entrance.

His strength exhausted, Jack stumbled then sat down in the middle of the floor. He opened his mouth to say thanks, but he was too out of breath, so he just gave a weak thumbs up to the rest of the group.

Just for good measure, Ben sat on the vending machine, and threw the remains of his weapon to the side.

"You know," Ben said, "I find this entire 'not being able to lock doors' thing mighty frustrating."

Ben scanned the room. "Well," he said as lightly as he could, "We made it." He scanned the faces once more, then his expression grew dark. "Most of us, at least." he added in a whisper.

Mauve's head was spining.

"What are we going to do about Krylo?" She asked weakly. "He could be--" Suddenly she had to sit down. The constant moaning of the creatures outside and the repetative banging on the door were begginning to shred her nerves.

Despite all of this, she suddenly felt her face erupt into a macabre grin.

"Krylo's gonna ban us all into next week if we don't let him in," she snickered. It usually happened like this. Someone would tell her some horrible news, and suddenly she would start laughing. When her doctor told her she was going to need surgery, for example, the only image that would come to mind was Red Mage in his Deborah drag. (True story, people.)

She sobered quickly.

"We're trapped in here," she said quietly, "And Krylo's probably trapped out there. There's nobody else around, and we have no idea where these things came from. We've been able to destroy a few, but we have no idea how many more are out there." She finished her analysis by looking at the vending machine laying in front of the door. "We've got some food, but like Joel said we have no idea if the food is poisoned. Things don't look so good."

Suddenly she got an idea.

"Hey Joel," she asked, "Does this building have stairs to the roof or something? We might be able to get a better look at the situation from up on the roof. Plus, I doubt the zombies will be able to get up there from outside. And maybe we'll be able to see Krylo, or at least we can yell for him."

"There are stairs leading to the roof, but it depends on the door to the roof is locked or not. Free roof access is a bit of a liability for the school, after all. Of course, those doors," he motioned to the soda machine blocked entrance, "are supposed to be locked as well."

Joel shifted to a conspiratorial tone, "It wouldn't surprise me to find that whoever disarmed the automatic locks on that door made sure the other doors were shut fast." Looking towards the cafeteria, he continued. "There is also a loading dock in back. It should be locked as well... but someone might want to check just to be sure."

He started to move towards the cafeteria to follow his own advice when he stopped. "Oh, and as for the food. As I said, as long as it is more than 24 hours old it should be zombie-free. I usually eat here when I can't get away from research, which is always. However if you remember, yesterday we went out to eat for lunch and ordered pizza for dinner. Thus if it was in the food, it has to be from one of those two meals or else I'd be a zombie right now as well." He stood on one foot, touched his finger to his nose, and performed other feats quite similar to police alcohol tests. "As you can see, I'm not."

He made as if to go back into the cafeteria again when he stopped. "Of course, if it is a virus then it could be in the water. None of us drank from the tap yesterday, did we? ... Speaking of zombies among us, we might want to do an injury check. If this is like the movies, it can spread through a bite and the person who gets bit never tells anyone until it is too late."

(ooc: So hard to keep up, and everytime I feel up to posting something I find that the situation has changed. I'm not sure how much longer I'll be in this... but most of the things that were making me feel like I should quit have been corrected/gone away to some extent...)

Ironically enough, Krylo was safer than everyone else at this point. All the zombies were swarming McCrae hall, while he was still in the dorm. So, despite all their worrying, he was in a relatively zombie free zone, while they were being mobbed.

Had he known they were worrying, and had the situation been a bit less severe, he probably would have chuckled. However, the situation WAS severe, and he didn't know that they were worrying about him, so instead he just watched McCrae hall for a few minutes, through a crack in the door, trying to decide what to do.

If he went out there, they would most likely all come after him, well, once they noticed him anyway. There was no way he could make it through that Zombie horde equipped as he was now, and he still wasn't certain that they weren't just sick with some horrible leprosy/ebola/kuru/whatever else kind of disease, so, even though their brains were obviously destroyed, he didn't feel like he had the stomach to actually kill any of them.

Of course, that thought wasn't even a problem until he noticed the semi-truck with the dead driver in the parking lot.

There was a chance, slight though it may be, that he could get that thing running and, maybe, get the zombies away from McCrae hall. It would be like driving in a tank... the problems included the dead driver--which wasn't really a problem, as that our illustrious hero (anti-hero? non-hero?) had dissected human corpses in the past--and the fact that the 'legions of undead' or 'legions of the horribly sick' would undoubtably suffer some casualities as they seemed too stupid to avoid the truck... or at least too slow.

On the other, not being afraid of killing people, hand, Mauve, Mammoth, Jack, Thomas, Ecurt, Jarod with an 'o', Ben, Thought, Phoenix, etc. were all trapped in there, and the half-decayed...whatever they were... didn't seem to be giving up on getting in.

And, on the third hand, if he stayed out here, seperated from the others, he would almost certainly wind up dead.

Well, that was the kicker.

If he didn't go, the others might be able to fend for themselves, but how would HE survive?

The realization that he might die there, and there was nothing he could do about it, made him sick. His stomach churned with fear in a way that it hadn't ever done before and something inside of him snapped slightly.

[i]'Me or them... and I still plan on living forever,'[i] he thought jokingly--one of his natural defense mechanisms, and a small smirk played across his face, even as his stomach did somersaults inside of him, the back of his brain thinking of all the things that could go wrong.

He opened the door a bit wider and ran, crouching, toward the parking lot, watching the zombies out of the corner of his eye, watching for any sign that they may have noticed him, and, luckily for him, the sound and the fury of the alarm, along with the knowledge of ever so tasty morsels inside the building, kept them occupied enough for him to get to the truck which had ruined Jack's car.

The door was opened, and Krylo pulled the body out, trying not to gag at the smell of the driver's death-emptied bowels. He eyed up the seat and almost vomited, but he knew what he had to do, so instead of giving up, he pulled off the extra, long sleeved, shirt he had put on in order to help him avoid contamination, and laid it on the seat, over the mess of what had been left of the driver's vacated bowels through his pants. He then climbed in and sat down, closing the door behind him.

By this time, a few zombies had noticed the movement and were staggering toward the truck, but they were moving at Zombie pace, and, thus, Krylo wasn't too terrified of them making it before he started the truck, what with the keys still being in the ignition.

A quick glance showed him that the gas tank was empty, however, and so he closed his eyes as he turned the key, praying to several dieties that he never believed existed, that there were enough fumes to let this thing run at least that far.

The engine sputtered for a few moments, causing Jared's knuckles to whiten as he gripped the steering wheel, and then, finally, it turned over.

He put his foot on the gas, and the cab backed up, smashing into someone else's vehicle, so he reached over and quickly began fiddling with the shifts, grinding a few gears, but finally making the truck move forward.

From that point, he turned hard to the left, plowed directly through what was left of Jack's car, and then came back around toward the front of McCrae Hall, planning on chasing the zombies away from the door, or running them over, and then getting in before they could regroup.

Another few minutes and the semi was driving along the wall where the front door was, sending the zombies staggering away as quickly as they could, and causing Krylo to close his eyes and force down bile as he could hear, see, and feel the human bodies being crushed under his wheels when they couldn't get away.