Escape From Jacksonville

4

Early the next morning, all of the eleven teenagers woke up to the sound of pounding on all their doors. "Go away!" they all yelled from inside the safety of their hotel rooms. Finally, Dylan heard the pounding on his door. "Leave me alone!" he shouted from inside his room, the covers still pulled up to his chin. "I need help, please! They're after me." a woman's voice begged from the other side of the door.
He groaned as he slipped out of the bed, and made his way to the door. "Are you hurt?" Dylan asked, reaching for the doorknob. "No." the woman's voice answered. He turned the doorknob and opened the door. As he swung the door open, he could see the others stepping out into the hall. They were staring past the woman, and down the hall. Dylan turned his head to see what they were looking at and what he saw made him frozen with fear.
Standing on the other end of the hallway, were three blood-thirsty vampires. Their fangs were long and sharp. Their glowing red eyes stared at the eleven teenagers and the woman who was begging for help. Suddenly, all the lights in the hall went out, leaving them in complete darkness. They all heard a scream that made their blood run cold. As soon as the lights came back on, Annie let out a gasp and pointed at Dylan's feet. He looked down at his feet and knew that he regretted doing so.
The woman who was begging for help was now dead. Her lifeless body was in a pool of her own blood. Her throat was ripped out, blood gushing out onto the carpet. The woman's cold, dead eyes stared up at the ceiling. Dylan jumped back so he wouldn't step in the blood. The eleven teenagers all went back into their rooms and got their stuff. While in his room, he found a sledgehammer lying next to the door. He grabbed the sledgehammer by the handle and headed out into the hallway. They met at the elevator then suddenly, they all heard another pounding sound. They turned around and stared down the hallway, past the woman's dead body.
Something was pounding on the door at the end of the hallway. Suddenly, the door burst open and a horde of zombies flooded into the hall. Peter, Frank, Henry, and the others were all frozen with fear as the zombies stared at them. The horde of the undead started to rush down the hall towards the teens. They had their backs pressed up against the elevator doors, and Dylan rapidly kept on pressing the down button. The elevator doors wouldn't open, and the zombies were getting closer and closer.
The doors finally opened, so all of them and Shadow piled into the elevator. The doors were halfway closed when a zombie threw itself into the elevator. It looked around at the eleven teens and its bright red eyes landed on Eric. The zombie yanked Eric's left arm towards it and the zombie sunk its rotten teeth into his arm. Eric let out a gasp as the zombie sunk its teeth deeper into his arm. Finally, Peter yanked the zombie off of him and he pushed the zombie down to the ground. Dylan went over to where the zombie was, dragging his sledgehammer along the floor. He looked down at the zombie and he raised the sledgehammer above his head. He brought the sledgehammer down hard, slamming it into the zombie's head.
The other survivors looked away as Dylan raised the sledgehammer above his head and slammed it into the zombie's head, again and again. When he was finished, the zombie's head was bashed in, chunks of its rotten brain lay surrounding the head. Dylan looked at Eric, who held his left arm against his chest. Blood was oozing out of the wound and onto the floor. The elevators doors finally opened on the first floor, and the eleven teenagers rushed out of the lobby, and into the empty parking-lot.
Dylan and Peter both looked around the parking-lot then Dylan saw it. The only vehicle in the parking-lot was a red van. "Come on, let's go!" he said, running towards the van with the others behind him. He yanked open the door on the driver's side, while Peter got in on the passenger side. The rest of the teenagers piled in the back of the car. He checked everywhere for the car keys but he couldn't find them. "Oh, come on." he said, pounding on the steering wheel. Suddenly, he had an idea, so he started to pull out the red and blue wires. He tried to make sparks, but he couldn't get anything.
"What are you doing?" Peter asked, looking at Dylan from the front passenger seat. "What do you think? I'm trying to start it." he said, turning his head to Peter. Both of them heard a scream coming from the back seat. "Guys, look!" Jane yelled, pointing through the window, towards the hotel doors. All of them looked towards the hotel doors, and as they watched, zombies were flooding out into the parking-lot. "Hurry up, Dylan!" Peter told him, looking out the windshield. Finally, there was a spark and the car roared to life. "Look out!" Annie yelled, pointing out Dylan's window. Before he could shift the gears, some of the zombies started to pile themselves onto the windshield.
The other zombies quickly surrounded the red van, and started to pound on the glass windows. Dylan shifted the gears into drive, and he slammed his foot on the gas pedal. The van shot forward, making the zombies fly off the car. The van shot out of the parking-lot and onto the street. He sharply turned the steering wheel to the right, then he kept the car steady as the red van quickly zoomed down the street. In the back-seat, Eric moaned and groaned as he held his left arm against his chest. Jane looked at him, and she could see the blood dripping onto the floor. "Are you okay?" she asked him, putting her hand on his shoulder. "No, it hurts." Eric told her, looking at her.
"Dylan, where are we going?" Annie asked Dylan, leaning forward in her seat. "Someplace safe," he said, keeping his eyes on the road in front of him. "But there is nowhere else we can go." Peter told him, turning in his seat to face Dylan. "There is a place that we haven't gone to." Dylan told him, trying to keep his eyes on the road. "Dylan, we need to stop." Jane told him, looking into the rear-view mirror. He looked up into the mirror then their eyes met. "There is an abandoned hospital up ahead, that we could go to," he said, turning the steering wheel to the right.
As the van got closer and closer to the hospital, the abandoned hospital slowly came into view. When the car stopped in the hospital's parking lot, Dylan put the van in park. The eleven teenagers piled out of the car. Dylan and Peter looked for a sign then they found one. "Jacksonville State Insane Asylum," Dylan read the sign out loud. Everybody looked up at the hospital, that rose into the afternoon sky. The building was at least six stories tall, half of the windows were broken. The eleven of them walked to the main doors, and they saw that the doors were hanging off their hinges.
They walked through the doors and went into the lobby. Just like the lobby of the hotel, the hospital's lobby also had lifeless bodies scattered all over the floor. Dylan, Peter, and the others decided to look around the hospital. "Ok, Peter and I are going to take you on a tour. In each room we stop in, we'll tell you the history about the room." Dylan said, nodding his head at Peter. Both of the boys took the rest of the group on the tour through the hospital. First, they stopped in the gym. "The story about this room is kind of a long story. So get comfortable." Peter said, as the eleven teenagers sat in a circle in the middle of the room. "So I can begin the story?" Peter asked, looking around the circle of teenagers. "Yes, you can start the story." Annie told him, sitting right across from him. "Then, I'll start the story."