Outnumbered (Vol. 1)

Act 3: Impending Discovery

Day 2 - 07:36; Northern CA United States:

This new, unique zombie, which Ty eventually calls, Brute, eats a huge chunk out of it, then throws the corpse of Austin off to the side, then reaches its sickeningly large arms down for a boulder that was near the edge of the waterfall. It easily rips the giant stone out of the ground and raises it above its head, as if it is going to attack my friends and I with it. In this position, the Brute is identified much easier. The Brute has a bald and greatly wounded head, glowing red eyes, like any other zombie, excessive facial hair, and a strange, reddish shine to its skin, caused by the virus infecting it. The particular zombie is also bare-naked, revealing the Brute to be a male. His body is enormous and muscular, almost like an infected bodybuilder on powerful steroids.

My friends and I dodge the boulder thrown by the Brute quickly. Now, we are cornered; in front of us is the Brute, and behind us is the waterfall. With seemingly nowhere to escape to, Ty turns to look around. He halts in his search when he seems to notice something inside the crater of which the waterfall dropped into. He peers harder into the blackness of the hole.

"There's no telling how deep this hole is, Ty. There's no point trying to make the jump," David doubts the idea before Ty even comes up with it.

"Well, we don't have time to find a way to climb down, and it's gotta be a hell of a lot better there than here with this guy!" Ty argues as he immediately jumps off the ledge, down the waterfall.

"Ty, no!" we all yell after him. After his jump, we never hear anything hit bottom. The Brute begins to creep in on us, closer and closer.

"Guys, it's okay! Just jump, you'll make it!" Ty suddenly calls out to us in an echo from the bottom of the pit. The Brute lunges at us, as we hesitate for a minute, in fear. Just before the Brute is ready to strike us down, we all jump off the ledge swiftly. Eventually, we all hit the earth at the bottom of the crater, and none of us are injured very badly.

"...Now what?" I shake off the pain and get to my feet. I peer up and can barely see the sky; the crater is obviously, incredibly cavernous. As I wonder how we even survived the jump, the ground beneath my feet begins to move. Within seconds, before we even have any chances to react, the earth under us crumbles completely, and we all fall even deeper into the crater.

"...What the junk?" I awake from passing out while falling and am now on a concrete floor.

"Where are we now?" Dwayne wonders as he examines the very new surroundings. We appear to be in the room of a building of some sort. Above us is a destroyed ceiling, from which we fell.

"Looks like we're in some kind of control room," David concludes, based on the technology and other objects in the chamber.

"Shit! Guys, the door's stuck!" Ty informs us while struggling to open the only door he can find in the room.

"So, we're stuck in here?" Kassandra becomes scared for her life, it seems.

"There has to be some way out of here, and we need to find it before that monster finds us," Kipp states the obvious.

"You're right about that. Let's all look around and try to find another way out of here," I agree and command. We all begin to search different areas of the room, even though we are not having any luck, at all. Just as we are starting to give up our hunt, Ty halts our search with a sudden discovery of his own.

"Guys, come here! Look what I found!"

"What is it? A way out?" Lou wonders with excitement.

"No, it's a camera."