Sixteen Ain't So Sweet

Chapter One - Unsuspecting Shit-show

"Thanks, Lia. I trust you." I felt my own lips tug into a smile and we stood, making our way to the door just as the last of our class pushed their way through. We hung back from the rush of the others as we walked down the halls and stairs until we reached the main entrance, the loud hustle of hundreds of students gathered, worrying and panicking, almost drowning out the words of the principal.

"-erupted in the city, and is spreading fast! Each class will be guided by their homeroom teacher to their homes in vehicles, for safety reasons! No questions, just get home safe!" Screaming suddenly came from the back of the crowd, the fear like a physical wave as it spread amongst everyone until they were running back towards the school, tripping and treading over one another. I quickly pulled Zoe off to the side, away from the stampede of students, my eyes searching everywhere for whatever caused them to be so terrified -and then I spotted it.

The fencing around campus had crashed down, blood coated people from the street scrambling up and latching onto the closest student and... tearing their teeth into them. What in the actual fuck?

"Are you shitting me right now -this isn't a video game, or a movie! What the fuck is going on?!" Zoe flinched next to me, her eyes wide and terrified, tears streaming down her paled cheeks but not once letting go of my hand or leaving my side. "We need to get out of here before they see us -I'm not letting that happen to either of us!" She nodded with a sniffle and I all but pulled her along with me around the side of the school building, tracing my usual route when I want to skip lessons or school itself. Though usually it's an escape from the window and down the gutter, not straight from the ground, but that's not the point and either way it still works.

We jogged until I found the small cut I'd made in the fence; hardly noticeable to anyone not knowing what they were looking for, but this was something I used often. I slipped my hand out of Zoe's to untangle the wire I used to keep the fence looking untouched and squeezed easily through the gap, checking the coast was clear before I motioned Zoe through.

"Just don't let go of my hand, okay? We're going to need to go to my place; my sister will know what to do. And she has a gun for... you know? She's a cop." She kept quiet at that, her shaking hand slipping back in mine and we trudged on, and I've never felt more thankful towards my sister for drilling survival methods into my head after she came back from that Mansion incident. I dread to think what horrors she'd seen; she'd been closed off for months and hadn't told me anything.

"Lia? I-I'm scared, what if... What if there's p-people like that all t-through the city when we get t-there?" Zoe's soft stuttered voice brought me out of my musings and I glanced back at her, trying to offer a reassuring smile. "We'll be okay. Once we get to my sister, we'll be fine, I promise."

"Yeah... Do you -Do you know w-what they are? Why this... is happening?" I kept myself alert to everything around me even as I mulled over her question. Being the sister of a police officer, let alone one from the S.T.A.R.S unit, Zoe probably thought I knew more than I actually did -which wasn't much, only useless snippets from old reports that were carelessly left out at home.

"In all honesty I'm not sure; something about that corporation called Umbrella and that my sister was investigating it. That's when Irons put her on house arrest." Now that I thought about it, why had Irons done that? Was he somehow involved with Umbrella? And if so, was he involved with what was happening now?

"Let's just keep moving, our apartment is still a long ways off."

x-ResidentEvil-x

The sky was bleeding into inky blue by the time we made it to my street, and the closer we got to the main city, more of those zombies seemed to be about. It was hard, I got to admit, to sneak around them with no weapons and Zoe stifling her whimpers, but we managed. The explosions and fire with sirens a little further away seemed to help keep them off our asses, I guess. As well as some barricades put in place, though they seemed easy enough to tear down. Probably not built for zombie-apocalypse trafficking.