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He had rescued Sue, and for a moment he felt elated that he had actually managed to do something for his friend. Unlike Sue, he wasn't qick on the uptake to attacking another zombie. No... he was suddenly hit with the realization that he had HURT something. Yahya stared down at Calintha with muted horror. The criss-cross marks of his tennis racket were still imprinted upon her face. He had hit her hard enough to knock her out, and that was quite a bit of force, which Yahya suspected he did not have under normal circumstances.

In any case, he had HURT a poor, misunderstood creature. "Are you okay?" of course Calintha wasn't, but he had to ask! And now that other poor zombie was out for the count. What were they doing? They were attacking things like soldiers. They were behaving like killers, and Yahya was NOT a killer. He wanted to save things, all the plant life and animal life so that the world would be a happy place.

This was not very happy.

"I'm sorry..." he mumbled, and resolved to suck it up, because he could reflect on his actions later when there wasn't the threat of zombies hanging around every corner. He took a few cautious steps back from Calintha, and then turned around completely to return to his backpack, shouldering it and scooping up Columbus. It was time to go back to where Sue was, just in case something else came at them. There was safety in numbers, and so Yahya did his best to stand inbetween Piper and Sue.

He'd survive this, for his friends, and for Columbus!

Piper only got partly back to her friends (there always seemed to be something in the way, didn't there?) before she felt something very heavy jump on her back. It wasn't until she felt a piercing, burning sensation in her shoulder that she realized that Sue was probably right. Zombies had totally evolved and could now speak.

"Owww!" she half screamed, half shrieked, both hands reaching up to try and shove at the head of the zombie that was now trying to suck her dry. Her eyes were squeezed shut, pinpricks of tears from the pain forming in the corners as she wiggled and jerked in vain, and then - it stopped? There was still a throbbing pain in her shoulder, but the weight of the zombie was just gone all of a sudden. Her eyes flew open to see Zeke standing close to her, hammer gripped in hand. She didn't have much time to look before she heard a familiar yell from somewhere ahead of her and beyond Zeke.

"Duck?" she questioned in a split second before hearing that commanding tone. She had absolutely no idea why Sue was babbling about a duck right now, but she completely understood the second part. With little thought to it, she dropped down to the ground, flat on her belly, and covered her eyes with her hands just for good measure. She felt a small breeze as something zoomed over her head, but she didn't move a muscle. She just lay there, pretending that she was completely safe there. They would save her, right? Like always?

Then someone else yelled. What in the world was with all this yelling? Cautiously, she spread the fingers of one hand and opened an eyelid, peeking around her. Oh, she knew this person too, and he looked amazingly not dead, and completely not undead. "Andeon!" she said excitedly, as if she hadn't just been bitten by a zombie and now lay on the ground covered in dirt with a bleeding wound on her shoulder. Friends were always a cause for excitement.

Andeon sighed, obviously irritated by this lack of a steed.

“Hey, look, don't be PMSing all over the place just because you lost rock, paper, scissors for who got to announ-”

And then Mackenzie was saying GO.

Andeon, being a impulsive individual, raced forward. In one hand he held the a broken vodka bottle by the neck. There was a great deal of prancing involved in the roundabout way in which he crossed the area to reach Elke's prone zombie body. There were some turns, some spins, and even a very, very, very terrible attempt at a one-handed cartwheel that resulted in Andeon damn near stabbing himself in the chest with the ring of broken glass. It was clear that Andeon was quite sure that all of this spinning and twirling actually looked like the badass, back handspring-style entrances of the Power Rangers.

Hint: He's Tommy.

Really, it just looked like a poorly trained male ballerina, drunk on a tonic of rubbing alcohol and cocaine.

The end result, however, was full of enough badassery to more than make up for his brief moment of foofy prancing. He brought the bottle, jagged edge first, down right into the unconscious zombie's face. It landed in the soft tissue and crunched against the bone with a sickening squelch.

"Never, ever forget to Double Tap."

Andeon stood, dusting his hands off before regarding the group, some of who he barely knew, some of whom he knew all too well. As soon as he saw Piper upon the ground, the humor drained from his face, the cocky grin wiped right off by the sight of her bleeding shoulder.

“Oh, Pippy,” he frowned, kneeling down next to her to help her up.

It was a good thing Micky didn't witness Andeon's... display. It is unclear what she would have done. Perhaps beat him. If she wasn't too busy laughing.

Lifting the bat over her head, Mack brought the bat down hard on the back of the other zombie's head, that extremely gross, slightly exhilarating, oddly satisfying squish resonating in the gym. The redheaded girl let out a heavy sigh, relaxing marginally. Hopefully that would be enough to keep them down -- it looked like these four had had it under control though. Eying the zombies curiously, (now that they were quite a bit less dangerous,) she made a face at the wounds they had inflicted, murmuring 'ouch' a little to herself. Wow. Nice job. And it didn't look like there had been any casualties.

Lifting her eyes to a certain purple-haired boy, Micky rested her weight on the end of the bat. "Double-tap. Just in case," She replied to Sue, grinning, still a little high from the zombie-smashing. That felt pretty good.

It was only after that that she began looking a little closer at the members of the other 'team,' eyes going a little wider when she realized, hey, she knew a few of them. "Zeke!" She piped up happily, grinning at her long-time friend, wrapping a free arm around his neck and squeezing before turning her attentions to the teal-haired boy, "And... Yahya? Puppy training, I remember that."

If the two survivor teams thought that they were finished with youma, oh no. For coming towards the building trundled Elle (or what was left of her). Elle had not been dead for a day or so, oh no, not like those precious fire victims, some of them appearing nearly unscathed by their ordeal. Although it was apparent by the bullet wound in her chest that bacterial meningitis did not lay at the root of her c.o.d. either. She had tried to cover it, those first few confused, terrifying moments when her humanity, or at least a semblance of it, returned to her. Even now she held her arm up to cover some of the gaping hole where the bullet had entered at point-blank range and ended her life. She'd fled the unfortunate science club meeting as a youma, and the return of a more sentient consciousness was a recent and fleeting thing. "Green around the gills" would better describe one of the recently dead. The pallor of death had fully sunken in to the once amiable stoner.

Amiable no longer described her: now she was plagued by a terrible hunger, a horrible, endless repeat of the dream that had woken many students from peaceful slumber before the s**t had really hit the fan. In her fumbling, desperate fingers, she was trying to roll a J, half tobacco to ease her mind and assuage some the hunger eating her from the inside. The magic of the ganja tended to make everything seem all right.

Sheer force of demonic instinct had brought the youma back to the school, and even now, consciously, Elle knew the only thing that would satisfy her hunger was blood, the persistent, throbbing thought that plagued her every waking moment. The dream was crossing over into real life, and God, no, not that, she couldn't eat her...

Slightly clouded yellow eyes lifted to the scene before her as voices became audible, and Elle stopped dead in her tracks, seeing first the ruined dorms, the seemingly dead ex-students on the ground, the rest standing around chatting, looking relieved to be alive.

She took a step back, startled, and dropped the half-finished J. The very sight and smell of the living students made a pang of hunger rush through her, and she groaned, a very zombie-ish groan that horrified her even as she felt her mind slipping into yet another hazy oblivion, but she held back. The odds weren't good for her, six zombie-killin' kids versus one week-old zombie. And she stared. Because there among them stood Micky. "O... O'Connell..."

You know those reservations Sue had had before? The questioning of the newcomers, with their goofy entrance and youma pets? Yeah. Forget about that. If Mack could damn near decapitate one of her zombie-fied buddies on sight, then Sue wanted her on his side.

With a heaving gasp (all this action was starting to get to him - he was ready for a breather now, already), Sue roared as he leaped into the fray, "Get ready to move!" He brought his club down on the nearly-incapacitated Elle. Without checking to see if it were enough, he continued his momentum forward, waving his peers off and away from the burned dorms. "Head for the gym, we'll stock up! And you two," he jabbed the chair leg at them, "keep with us. We can talk where it's safer, right?"

They'd better be coming along, because Sue sure as hell wasn't going to let his group sit around here and yap about the merits of headshots versus double-taps, or whatever the hell they were going on about.

Just one thing he had to do before moving out....

Whistling between his fingers, he called the cats out of their hiding places, back into the group. Nibs shied far away from the people, but Mackie and Stripers were right at his heels. Now they were ready to move on.

Zeke was rooted to the ground, he could only watch as Mack, one of his best friends, faced her girlfriend.

Of course, her girlfriend happened to be a zombie.

He finally willed his lead feet to pick up when she started hobbling towards Elle, but he stopped again when she smashed her bat into the side of the zombie's head. How could she do that? Zeke didn't have a girlfriend (and he doubted he ever would at this rate, not that it mattered. He was quite content with just having a bunch of friends.), but if he did he doubted that he could so easily take her down, even if she was a zombie.

He was glad that, so far, none of his close friends had appeared as a zombie.

"Mack!" he called out to her, a worried expression on his face. But orders were orders, and when Sue told them to move out, he nodded. He looked to see where Piper was, and when he saw her leaning into Andeon... well, he didn't know that much about Andeon (except his drinking habits and the like), but he knew that Piper was safe. That guy apparantly knew his zombie films and the rules of surviving an apocalypse.

"Okay, guys!" he said as he raised his hammer, "Be sure to keep a good eye out when we're running, okay?"

And he started to make his way towards the gym.

Mack didn't hear Sue approach, driven most likely by her own attack. In fact, after that initial blow to the neck, the tip of the bat fell to the floor again with a loud 'clunk,' the handle hanging even looser against her palm. Green eyes, usually so bright, had completely glazed over, expression surprisingly blank. The redheaded girl merely watched as Sue, then Yahya landed a blow onto Elle... no... the zombie's body, seemingly unaffected.

It was only after Zeke called her name that Micky was stirred into movement. Dropping to her knees, she hovered over the well-beaten body, lifting her hands, hesitating. "I'm so sorry..." she murmured, barely loud enough for herself to hear. And s**t, was she. The pair of twin keys jingled around her neck as she leaned down, brushing her fingertips over tangled, matted black hair, combing through it with no regard for the sludge that coated her fingers from the head wounds. It use to be so soft... now look at it. Coated in dirt and blood, her own or others she didn't know, would never know.

But the way that bone stuck out of Elle's neck? Yeah. That was her. She had did that.

...s**t.

Like she did in most situations, Micky laughed. She laughed as she stroked Elle's head, picking it up and placing it in her lap, curling over it a little, the sound choked and almost indistinguishable from sobs. Close your eyes, it'll be ok. I promise. She ignored the sound of the others leaving the gym, focused a little too closely on the body in her arms.

"I'm sorry, you stupid... stupid stoner... I'm sorry... I'm so sorry..."