Dead Rising© - Case Not Closed. By Stanley Newcombe [6:12PM] “This can not be happening!” I cried out as I wrestled with my undead attacker, fiercely determined to keep its toxic maw from my flesh. Four hours since the zombie siege had enveloped our school, they were already pouring out of the gym and into the hall next to the cafeteria. Well, there go the snack machines. Why were they attacking? Wait, right, zombies. Did I even need to ask? They want food, why else would they be swarming a school of 700 or more kids? Not to mention how many of those kids were ‘big boned,’ it was a zombie buffet, plain and simple. But the question still remained, HOW had they gotten there? That we still had to figure out. Yeah, ‘we.’ There are other survivors; all held up in the cafeteria, well, at least the ones we know about. There are probably other kids around the school, which is why I volunteered to go searching, along with a few others. My best friends: Don, Genie, and Trent, one of our teachers, also known as “Mr. T.” among a small part of the student body. Oh, right, back to the action. I finally managed to force the animated corpse off me, kicking it in the face while it was down and driving my heel into its forehead with a satisfying ‘squelch.’ “Ya’Know, I really, REALLY can’t express how much I hate these undead buggers….” I said aloud to Don, who had just finished another off with a blow to the head with a snow shovel. “You’re not the only one. How’re ya’ doin’ Mr. T?” He nodded to me, calling to our teacher who had managed to slice one of the beast’s heads of with a large cleaver found in the kitchen. “I’ve been better.” He grunted, yanking the large knife from the forehead of another undead assailant. “How bout you Genie?” He called over to the blond girl, watching her roll a folded table into a large crowd of them blocking our path, it falling over and crushing them nicely into paste. “We’re up to our necks in dead people that want to eat our faces, do you really need to ask?” She muttered sarcastically, just loud enough for us all to hear before pulling a yard stick from her back like a sword and snapping it across the face of the lone zombie she had missed, just like those annoying 7 and 10 pins in bowling that never seem to want to fall down. And down it went, like a ton of fleshy bricks. The yardstick snapped in two, leaving two pointed, more sword like pieces of wood, perfect for stabbing. “Alright boys, path’s open!” She called, running around the corner into the school’s student lounge, which was, of course, filled with a gracious amount of zombies. “Looks like I spoke too soon….” She muttered to herself, her jaw dropping open before she placed her hand over her nose. “Etch! It reeks in here!” At first, I chuckled a bit at what she said, but it was the truth. It was surprising the stench hadn’t met us in the small hallway we had been in, not seven feet away. The aroma of rotting human flesh, mixed with the metallic tang in the air from all the exposed blood would even curl a skunk’s nose. It was Trent who spoke up next. “Hey, is it just me, or are they crowding around the detention room door?” he muttered, drawing a second cleaver. “Survivors?” Don muttered, running his fingers through the dark red hair on his scalp with one hand while holding the bloodied snow shovel with the other. If it is…I thought to myself Then they’re gonna’ need a lot of help… We rushed the crowd of zombies, weapons in hand, or rather, as hands in my case, determined to save whoever it turned out was in that small room. As far as we knew, the detention rooms didn’t have any food supplies, and the locks weren’t working properly. If those zombies figured out the action of ‘pull,’ whoever WAS in there was screwed. “Stewie, we’ll clear out the zombies, you get in there and see who needs help!” Trent said, swinging the silver-with-red blade cleanly through the throat of one of our undead barricades before moving with the grace of a samurai to behead yet another. Don however had broken the head off his snow shovel and was using it as a makeshift javelin, spearing the zombies before him from a safe distance, while Genie used her new ‘swords’ to keep them from biting her, mainly by losing one to a zombie by plunging the piece of wood into the back of its mouth. If we don’t make it…. I don’t know what would happen.