Aaren's POV
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Everything's always got to be so damn complicated nowadays.

I release Jane, gripping my crowbar with both hands as I prepare myself to throw down.

"Time to beat some undead ass," I say to myself before walking over to them, a cold gleam in my eyes.

Jane attempts to protest, but sighs and follows my route anyway.

This gets the attention of one of them, and it staggers to me, skin in its teeth and blood dripping past its lips. It's a male.

I draw my arms back and swing at his face with all of my force. The impact makes the beast stumble, multiple bones broken in his face. He bleeds profusely from the wound, but doesn't react to it.

Huffing at it, I kick it down and pin him to the ground with my foot. Before he could do anything to me, I launch my crowbar at its head repeatedly, grunting with effort for each swing.

It finally stays down after two or three more hits, and Jane knocks down the one next to me a bit over. I go assist her with the final one, which we take down together.

This whole incident is over within a matter of minutes, and we both collapse into our car as more of those things gather around us.

She pushes the keys into the ignition and I exclaim as those things pound on the car, "Go! Go!"

She proclaims back, "I'm trying! I'm- Got it!"

Jane flings her foot onto the pedal and we're both jolted back into our seats briefly as the car speeds off, running over some of those creatures in our way. She holds onto the wheel, the fingers of her right hand turning white from how tight she's holding onto it.

"Are you insane?" Jane yells at me, and I laugh. "You just went right at them without any planning!"

"Hey, it got us out, didn't it?" I retort with a roll of my eyes, cocky smirk still present. "Besides, there was no planning to do. There was a problem and we needed a fast solution. So I provided."

She sighs, "I guess so."

"You guess so? C'mon Jane, sometimes you just have to wing it," I reply, my breath finally caught and my pulse slowly dying down.

"Okay, okay. You're right," she jokingly sticks her tongue out at me, "for once."

"Oi!" I shout, and we laugh.

Our laughter dies down after a minute or so, and we drive in the direction of Éloïse's house to see if she's there. If she isn't, then I don't know what we'll do.

She's usually holed up in her house drawing, so it's a pretty good bet to make that she's there.

Jane and I discuss our plans and about this whole apocalypse thing happening.

So basically, this is the gist: These things reanimate themselves once the disease has spread and taken them over, and then they go to infect other healthy humans with said disease.

It's obvious, especially with all of the movies based on these events happening.

It's vastly different in the real world, though. That's just a given.

I watch the world go by out the passenger side window, losing myself in my thoughts. I didn't even realize we had made it to our friend's house until Jane started to shake my shoulder to snap me out of it.

"Bro, are you okay?" she asks me.

"Yeah, yeah, I'm fine. Let's go see if Éloïse is here," I dismiss and step out of the car, still holding onto my weapon.

Jane follows me after a moment, and I don't bother with knocking on the door. I just open it and walk in as if I own the place.

We start searching the bottom floor first. My eyes trail across the pearly white countertops in the kitchen, past the photo-covered fridge and right to the oven. A note is attached to the handle, and I head over to it.

I carefully take the sticky note off with my left hand, some of the blood not dried on my fingers now getting onto the paper.

I read it over swiftly and find out that this is not from Éloïse. It's from her parents.

They're out on another business trip. Her mother works as a traveling nurse while her father is a flight attendant.

Humming to myself, I keep hold of the note and continue the search.

Meeting back up with Jane a few minutes later, I hand her the note before I go up the stairs that creak with every step I take.

I'm immediately drawn to Éloïse's room, and without thinking much of it, I move to open the door. I stop with my hand on the doorknob, suspense of what could potentially be behind this door lurking.

I force myself to open the door with my crowbar raised, in case an undead thing comes my way. Jane stands behind me, and apparently I had almost whacked her in the face since she backed up a bit and yelped quietly.

She punches my shoulder and I give her an apologetic look before facing forward again, weapon still up in the air.

Éloïse sits at her desk with headphones on, drawing in her sketchbook without a care in the world. Her eyes lift up to meet ours and she shrieks, nearly falling out of her rolling chair.

She plants a hand to her chest as I lower my crowbar, her face pale from the jump scare.

"Guys! Don't do that!" Éloïse yells, removing her headset and setting it down on her desk. "You're going to give me a heart atta—"

She does a double take of us as we enter her room, me shutting the door once Jane walks past me.

"-ck... What in the blazes happen to you two?"

Jane and I stare at Éloïse, dumbfounded.

"You don't know what's going on?" my sister inquires, incredulous.

Éloïse shakes her head at a snail-like pace.

"You've just been drawing this whole time?" I add on, wiping the blood on my hand onto my ripped jeans.

Once more, she shakes her head.

"Well, we've got a lot to catch you up on," Jane says, handing her the note from her parents first.

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-CastrarWolf & Taegikook224