The House at the End of the Street

Chapter Eleven: Biloxi, Mississippi

Death is something that can not be outrun, it's inevitable. Death is always looming over you, whether it's a disease, a killer, or a murderous demon out to kill humanity. Death is always there, watching you every second... until it ultimately kills you.
Fear is one of those things that you'll experience more than once. It's something that'll happen, whether you like it or not. Fear is something that causes death, a brutal, painful death that only you can experience.
I surfaced above the water, gasping for air. The monster was underneath me, waiting for me to make a move. It was trying to trap me.
"Come here, monster," I said.
The monster was still waiting for me under the water. It started moving, creating a current pulling me behind it. As soon as it was in front of me, I started swimming to the bridge, now sinking under the water.
The monster's attention was now fully on me, swimming at me at crazy fast speeds. I jumped onto the bridge, the monster jumping on it too. The bridge started flipping, the part of the bridge that was cracking, broke, sending the back of it splashing into the water.
The part of the bridge that I was on was now almost vertical in the air. I grabbed onto the same metal pole I did earlier and was now hanging over the monster's mouth.
"You need a hand?" Jhett asked, grabbing my hand and helping pull me up.
"Thanks," I replied.
"We need to jump," Jhett said back, pushing me off the edge.
Jhett and I fell into the water, the water feeling like concrete as I hit it. I surfaced and climbed onto the sinking bridge, pulling up Jhett, and running to land.
The other bridge fell back into the water and sunk to the bottom of the water. Jhett and I didn't stop running or look behind us. We didn't encounter the monster the entire time we ran to land.
We made it to Biloxi and sat down in the grass.
"That was too much. At least the zombies won't be able to cross over," Jhett said, optimistic.
"Now, we're stuck in Biloxi," I replied.
"Let's go find the others," Jhett said back, standing up and walking into the casino.
"Damn it! I dropped my machete in the water," I said, still sitting on the grass.
"I'll help you find something else," Jhett replied.
"Where are they?" I asked, standing up.
"They went into the casino. Room 413. They made up that fast, so I'm hoping they aren't lying," Jhett replied, walking back to the casino. I followed soon after.

We walked into the casino and saw that it looked like it hadn't been touched by Salvullaz. The casino had an elevator and stairs, but the elevator was broken, so we had to take the stairs.
"What floor are they on?" I asked, sitting down on the third flight of stairs.
"One more flight of stairs, then we'll be there," Jhett replied, walking behind me.
We started up the stairs and got to the fourth-floor entrance door. The door swung open and it was a dark hallway with candles lining the sides.
"What?" Jhett said, walking forwards into the dark hallway.
"Where are they?" I asked, coming up to him.
Jhett didn't reply as he kept walking forwards to the door which number said: 413. He knocked on the door and the door swung open, revealing a huge suite. Jack was at the door.
"Inside, now!" Jack whisper-yelled.
We walked into the doorway and we immediately saw the Crimson Wolves sitting on four couches. It was a huge suite, with multiple bedrooms.
"We found another two suites across the hall. A third of us can stay in each. There are sixteen of us, so six of us can stay in one, four in one, and six in the last one," Thomas suggested.
"Yeah, that would work. We probably need to sort the people, just so we know who is missing when they disappear," Jhett said back.
The first room(the one which we were in) had six people, Jack, Jhett, Kaycie, Mae, Conner, and I was in there. The second room had Thomas, Jarrett, Jace, Jacob, Ethan, and Adam. The final room had David Evan, Gracie, and Ethan.
We decided to head to the roof of the casino to see if we could find anything that could help us survive. Nothing. We all decided to head back downstairs to find food and water.
"The Crimson Wolves look for food, the rest of us will find water outside the casino," Thomas said.
"Alright," I replied, the seven of us that weren't Crimson Wolves(Jack, Jhett, Kaycie, Mae, Gracie, Conner, and I) went outside to look for water.
We went walking a little way and saw old restaurants, the sign had been pulled down, showing no indication of what it used to be. We walked into the parking lot and looked around at the abandoned buildings. Nothing was said that humans once were here.
"Do we dare go inside?" Mae asked.
"If we don't, we might die of dehydration. We need to go inside," I said, walking up to the stairs to the entrance.
"Okay. If you say so," Mae said back.
We started walking up the stairs to the entrance.
"Conner and I are going to stay back," Mae said, sitting on the bench in the front of the restaurant.
"Let's go," I said, taking a breath and opening the door.
The first thing that hit me was the stench of death. It hit me like a brick wall. I almost fell backwards because the smell was so bad.
"That hurts to smell," Jhett said, holding his nose while we searched for water.
We looked around for about twenty minutes, and found nothing. One thing we did find was a hoard of zombies under the floor that we had somehow had not heard them under there.
We left the first place and started looking for new places. We walked into an abandoned building(it wasn't that old) and started looking for water.
The first thing I noticed about the building was that it was relatively new. It had little to no graffiti on it, the glass in the windows were clean, the front door's doorknob was shiny gold, and there was no rotting smell of death.
"You think it's safe?" Jhett asked.
"Possibly. It looks new, so it wouldn't hurt for us to take a look inside," Conner said, starting for the door.
"If we do go inside, we'll need to cover as much ground as possible. We will accomplish that if we split up," I said.
"That's how everyone in a horror movie dies," Jack replied.
"Point made. We need another plan," I said back.
The door to the building swung open, revealing a huge, but an empty room. We all snapped our heads to look at the now-open room.
"Perfect. We're all gonna die," Jack said.
I cautiously walked up the steps to the building.
"Zack... this might not be a good idea," Jhett whispered, not trying to forcibly stop me.
"It'll be fine," I whispered.
I stuck my head into the building and immediately remembered what had happened on Halloween, with Carter saying to not go in, but I had gone in anyway, Charlie trying to stop me, but I didn't listen.
I pulled my head back out of the building and backed up a little, just before the steps.
"Are you going inside?" Conner asked.
I didn't say anything, but before I could react, the floorboards of the building started to collapse into itself, creating a hole with a dark red mist coming from within it.
"Is this another entrance?" Conner asked, walking up next to me.
"I'm not sure," I replied.
Jhett, Jack, Gracie, Mae, and Kayice stood behind us as we entered the building. We walked forwards towards the newly opened 'portal' and stood around it. It was about six feet wide, six feet long, and the floorboards were smashed.
"Woah. This looks crazy," Jack said, backing away.
I got down on a knee and looked down inside the hole. It was deep, maybe 1,000 meters deep. All I could see was darkness about twenty meters from where I was.
"We might want to get outta here before something bad happens," Mae said, turning around to walk out the door.
Then, the ground started shaking, violently. It was like an earthquake, but that didn't make any sense since we lived in Southern Mississippi, where earthquakes rarely, if not ever, happened. The wood around the hole started to break.
"Go!" I yelled, pushing everyone out of the building as the hole started to become bigger.
We all ran out of the building and looked behind us, it looked like nothing had touched it. I left the group and ran back up the steps and in the doorway of the building.
At the back end of the room, were five silhouettes, each in the shape of a person standing upright. I walked into the room and started towards the figures/silhouettes. This was a very stupid move.
As I got closer and closer to the figures, I could make out about two of the faces... it was Carter and Charlie's cold, grey, dead faces. Their eyes were still open and they had the same expression on their faces when they died.
"Oh no..." I said, backing up a bit.
I turned around and at full sprint, ran to the door, Mae was standing in the doorway. The door slammed shut right before I got there.
"Mae! Open the door!" I yelled.
"It's locked! I can't open it!" She said back.
I turned around to see that the figures had moved five feet from their original spot next to the wall. I turned back around to face the door and started banging on it, but to no avail.
The figures had moved closer to me and I could finally see all the faces that were there. On the left were Carter and Charlie, the right was Philip and Tristan, and in the middle... was Dade's cold face, with his face still in the same expression that he had died with.
I was now almost pinned up against the steel door, then the door swung open. I fell forwards onto my face as the rest of the group came running in, running into the figures. The figures disappeared when the group ran into them.
"You good?" Jack asked, helping me to my feet.
"Yeah, I'm fine," I replied, walking out the door.
We started walking back towards our new place, but the entire walk there, I felt as if something was watching me. I would find myself turning around to see nobody. We walked back and never saw that building again.