Seven Un-Dead

Chapter 21

Hundreds of hands jumped from the ceiling and begun to quickly crawl along the floor towards Aiden, each leaving a trail of gooey crimson blood. He stomped at each hand that was within the range of his leg, but he kept on screaming for help. The others immediately rushed to help. Aiden was doing his best to stomp the hands to death, but one spin was enough to take him down. He landed on his back, the hands crawling on top of him. There was a stinging sensation in the spots that the hands covered, and Aiden was trashing around and doing his best to throw the hands off his body. Borys, Louis and Ziggy all burst into the corridor with their weapons ready, but the second they stepped inside all the hands seemed to disappear. Only the blood trails were left.

"What happened here?" Borys asked, pointing his gun to all the corners of the corridor in case there was any danger there.

"T-there were-" Aiden begun speaking, but the terror of what happened held back his speech. He stuttered every time he tried speaking and the other boys were getting impatient. 

"-Hands," Aiden pointed to the room that the hands came from. "Hands from the ceiling. They crawled. T-terrible." 

"Why were you here alone anyways?" Ziggy asked as he was pulling Aiden back to his feet. The terrified teenager brushed off some of the dust from his back and scrunched his nose when he saw all the blood over his clothes.

"Checking connection," He explained. "I was going to call the seven, but the connection was lost. Came here to check. Everything is in place, but I think the problem is solved now."

"Well at least your weapon came in handy." Borys started to laugh out loud but quickly earned a slap from Louis, which definitely stung. It managed to shut him up. Borys walked over to the room, his weapon ready in his arms. The second his foot took the first step inside the room was the second his gun dropped to the floor. A sound of metal and concrete hitting together rang around the corridor as everyone stood in complete silence. Peter and Olivia ran in, both looking surprised.

"What's-"

"Guys, look." Borys gulped, clearing the way to the room. Peter confidently marched up to the door frame, then froze in his tracks once he saw what Borys was talking about. The floor of the control room was always tidy up until this point. Photographs scattered everywhere, and writing in giant clear letters. It was obvious that the writing wasn't made out of red ink but blood. 

"One missing." Peter read the writing off the floor and stepped in to look at the photographs. In the middle was a picture of Alex, sitting in the main room. It was clear that it was taken at the time they were making the earlier call to the seven, but it was from the angle that nobody could have been in.

Next photograph he picked up was of Olivia. Her eyes were closed, her hair was scattered on the pillow under her head, and it was clear that somebody must have taken it whilst she was sleeping. 

Peter picked up another photo after another, and ten photographs later he found pictures of everyone in the crew, including one other member. He didn't know what to say, his hands shook as he looked at the picture. His eyes started to hurt, and tears welled in them. One singular tear fell from his eye, landing right in the middle of the photograph.

"Seweryn." Peter whispered, dropping the photo to the floor. He walked out of the room and disappeared out of the corridor.

"This is all too confusing." Exclaimed Borys, but his call of frustration was completely ignored by Louis.

"It all makes sense," Louis said and looked around everyone. "It says 'One Missing'. Alex is the one missing."

"Well, duh-"

"Or," Ziggy quickly interrupted before everyone agreed with Louis's easy assumption. "It's referring to his arm. One missing arm."

"Let's just calm down for some time, shall we? These photographs are creeping me out, let's get out of this corridor before anything else happens..." Olivia commented, leading the way out of the corridor for everyone. Borys quickly shut the door to the control room and everybody walked out. The door received one last glance from Borys, and a smirk appeared on his face. 

Meanwhile with the seven...

"They haven't called in, like, a whole hour." Maya complained, leaning her head back. The seven were sat in the middle of the abandoned street. They decided to stay in the place they had signal in, because the abandoned cinema didn't seem like somewhere they'd receive much of it. Borys' crew haven't sent them any signal in the past hour, and it was getting darker and darker by each minute. Soon they'd have to find some shelter for the night, because there were way too much zombies out and about during the midnight hours to carry on walking. 

"We need to wait," Nat replied. She was sitting with her arm around Holly, who had her forehead resting on her knees. "We need to know what happened."

"What if nothing happened? What if we just took it as a bad thing but actually Louis started to tickle Alex or something?" Nicole was suggesting different scenarios for Holly, mainly to calm her down and take her mind of things.

"Shut up, they wouldn't do that," Holly sniffled, raising her head up to speak more clearly. "They're not that gay." 

"Holly, come on!"Jan complained. He was walking in circles for the past ten minutes and if the road was hot then there would clearly be a dented circle in it. 

"Let her have her moment to calm down." Suzzette complained back. She was also clearly getting bored of this whole waiting situation, and was glancing everywhere in order to find some suitable place to stay the night in. Every building in sight had a potential danger, which meant they would most likely either have to have night shifts or carry on walking. 

Nicole had her head on Eugenio's shoulder, who was also the source of her calmness. She wouldn't have been saying encouraging scenarios to Holly if Eugenio wasn't there to calm her down as well. They both started to rely on each other, both for physical and emotional support. It was a nice feeling to have somebody they could rely on, and it was even better that they were both mutually relying on each other. Their trust had built up tremendously during their short stay together, but it was enough to give them a sense of security, although it could potentially be false. 

The moment of affection and calmness was broken when a screech came out from one of the cinema windows. The only thing that surprised somebody was that there were no zombie noises, no noises of zombie toxins melting anything, but a distant cry of help. A human. The seven all picked up their belongings, Nat was making sure to guide Holly along with her, and they ran to the source of the scream.