The End is Near

Chapter Two

     I don't think anymore. I grab Keith's bat from him and run across the hall to Julia's room.
     I swing the door open and run in. They aren't in the kitchen, so they must be in one of the rooms.
     "Julia?!" I yell, trying to find her. I hear something from one of the rooms, so I cautiously walk towards it. 
     "Cassie, help!" I hear from inside the room.  I wrench the door open, raising the bat. I see Julia, pushed up against a bed, a monster trying to get to her. 
     I spring into action, prying the monster away from her and throwing it onto the floor.  I start beating it's head with the bat, not stopping until it's head is smashed in and it's not making a sound. I stand up and look at Julia. She's sitting on the bed, staring at the creature on the floor. 
     "Are you alright? Did it bite or scratch you?" She shakes her head and I breathe a sigh of relief.
     "Good.  Come on, you're coming to my place."  She nods and we walk to the door. We walk over to my room and immediately I close and lock my door.
     I take a deep breath and turn around.  Keith and Julia are looking at each other curiously.
     "Jules, this is Keith, we met earlier in the commons room." Recognition dawns on her face as she smirks at me. I smile and roll my eyes.
     "Keith, this is Jules, my best friend."  Keith nods and he smiles at her politely. then he looks at me.
     "Can I get my friend too? I wouldn't feel right leaving him alone in this."  I nod.
     "Of course, I wouldn't feel right, either."  He smiles gratefully. I hand him his bat.
     "And here's this back.  Sorry for taking it, I just couldn't let her get attacked."  He smiles understandingly.
     "It's fine. I would do the same if I were you." I smile back and he walks to the door, opening it slowly and quietly, sticking his head out and looking both ways multiple times. I walk over and stand behind him.
     "Go, I'll watch your back." He looks back gratefully and runs out the door and to his room.
     His room is only a few doors down from mine. He opens his door and yells for his friend, who immediately shows up, and they run back to my room. As soon as they are in, I close and lock my door again. 
     I turn around to see Keith's friend eyeing me, smiling.
     "So this is the girl you were telling me about? The gorgeous redhead? You were right man, she's a good one." I flush red while Keith's friend laughs. I look at Keith and see that he is as red as I am. Jules is chucking, smiling.  I start laughing too, although I'm still embarrassed.
     After a couple minutes, his friend calms down and smiles at me.
     "I'm Karson, Keith's best friend, I live to embarrass him, if you haven't noticed." I laugh.
     "I'm Cassandra, nice to meet you." I say, quietly. My shy side comes out whenever I meet someone new. Meeting new people was never an easy thing for me.
      "I'm Julia, Cassie's best friend."  Julia steps up, introducing herself. She was always the outgoing one in our friendship. Karson nods and smiles politely.
     "Nice to meet you."  He says.  He looks at Keith, who has returned back to him normal color.  "What do you say, should we keep these two with us? It seems safer to have a group." Keith looks at me and nods immediately.
     "We'll keep them with us." He decides. Relief floods through me as I realize we won't be alone.
     "Thank you for letting us stay with you. I don't know what we'd do on our own." I tell them. They smile, kindly.
     "So what should we do? I don't think we can stay here forever." Keith and Karson look at each other, then at us.
     "Do you have weapons you can use to fight with?"  Keith asks. I look over at Julia, raising an eyebrow, she smiles, knowing what I'm thinking. I stand up.
     "Follow me, boys, I'll show you what weapons we have." I say, walking passed them, smirking. They follow me down the halls, I make sure to look away when we pass Sarah's room, then we make it to my room. I open the door and walk in, letting everyone enter before closing and locking the door.
I turn and walk to my closet, opening it. I open a secret compartment and turn back to the boys.
"Ready to have your minds blown?" I joke, looking at the two boys. They look curious and Julia looks excited. It's been a while since we've gotten these out.
I reach my hands into the drawer and pull out my baby, a beautiful, black compound bow. As it comes into view, the boys gasp in appreciation. It's a beautiful bow. I run my hand over it, remembering every detail, every curve. I place it on my bed and reach back into my closet, pulling out the matching set of purple-tipped arrows. I set them on my bed next to my bow and go back into the closet, this time pulling out a set of katana's, I turn and hand one to Julia, who takes the sword eagerly, running her hands down the sheathed blade. I put the other one on my bed with my bow and arrows. Then I pull out two hunting knives and give one to Julia and put the other one with my pile of weapons. Then I put my katana's on my back, forming an 'x', put my quiver of arrows on top of that, and finally put my bow on top of everything, making sure everything is easily accessible. After I have everything situated the way I want, I turn to look at the boys. They are staring at me, mouths gaping open, in amazement.
     I smirk. "Not what you expected, huh?" They shake their heads, unable to speak. I look over at Julia, who starts laughing. I laugh with her for a while, then look back at the boys.
"Do you have any weapons?" They nod, still unable to speak.
"What kinds?" I ask, needing them to speak. Karson regains his senses first.
"We've got some guns." I immediately shake my head.
"That's no good. I'm pretty sure these things are attracted to noise." I think back to when I spoke to Sarah and she attacked me and shudder. "Loud weapons would cause more harm than good." I turn back to my closet and pull out extra knives and a bat for Karson.
"Geez, how many weapons do you have in there?" Keith says, still looking amazed. He's looking at me with a weird expression.
"Enough for situations like this." This makes them both smile and nod.
"You do know that weapons are prohibited on the college campus, right?" Karson asks, looking at me with a curious expression. I smirk.
"What the dean doesn't know, won't kill him. It's a good thing I never listened to rules." They laugh, shaking their heads. Karson looks amused as he looks at me.
"And here I thought you were some goody-two-shoes, but no, we have a rebel on our hands." He laughs and I join in.
"Well, you probably shouldn't judge a book by its cover, or in this case, her cover." He laughs, nodding his head.
"Yeah, definitely." He turns to Julia. "So, what about you? Are you some rebel like Cassie?" She laughs, shaking her head.
"No, I'm definitely the good one in our friendship. She's always the one breaking the rules, I always try to convince her not to." I laugh and nod in agreement.
"Yeah, you could definitely call me the bad girl in school." Keith laughs as he looks at me.
"So bad girls watch history documentaries?" I laugh, shaking my head.
"No, I hate those things. I saw that it was about the end of the world and thought it would be interesting." He nods in agreement and looks at my weapons once more.
"So are you any good with those things?" He asks. I scoff.
"You did not just ask me that." I turn and open my closet fully, displaying my collections of first place trophies for knife throwing, archery, and katana fighting. The boys whistle in appreciation as they take in my collection.
"Does that answer your question?" I ask, smugly. Keith nods, staring at my trophies. I smile, amused at his awed face.
"Now I'm really happy you're going to be with us." Keith says.
"What, you weren't happy before?" Keith starts sputtering, trying to cover up his mistake.
"I was...well-...that's-" I cut him off, laughing.
"I was just kidding, Keith." I say in between laughs. He turns red.
"Yeah, I knew that." Karson laughs at him.
"Sure you did, buddy, sure you did." We all laugh.
"Ok, we have weapons. Now we need food and water. And lots of it." We all nods get up off my bed and walk into the kitchen, looking through that cabinets and drawers, pulling out all the imperishable food. We have a couple cases of water that we can take. But not much food. I grab a backpack from a chair and take all the school supplies out and pack the food into it. Then I hand it to Keith, who puts it on.
"That's all the food we have." A thought hits me. "Actually, that might not be true, follow me." We walk down the hall to Cathleen's room. I take a deep breath before opening the door. I don't look at anything, not wanting memories to attack me. I walk over to her bed and kneel down, looking underneath it.
"I knew it!" I exclaim, proudly, getting up from the floor and pull out several plastic bags full of junk food. I smile at Keith, relieved, as he takes his backpack off and we poor the junk into the bag.
"How long do you think we can survive with all this?" I ask, desperation coating my voice, already thinking about what is going to happen when it runs out.
"Hey, look at me." I look at Keith, panicking. "Everything is going to be ok. I won't let anything happen to us. We are going to be fine. Ok?" He leans down, making eye contact. I take a deep breath.
"Ok." I nod. He nods too and we stand up, walking out of the room and back to the kitchen. Julia and Karson look up when we enter.
"Hey, where did you guys go?" Jules asks. I point to Keith's bag.
"I added Cathleen's candy stash to the food supply." Julia's eyes widen and I remember that I forgot to tell Julia what happened.
"Is Cathleen ok, did she make it?" Julia ask. I feel tears form in my eyes when I think about the pile of bones in her room.
"Cathleen is dead." I say, my voice cracking on the word 'dead'. Julia releases a shuddering breath, tears forming in her eyes.
"Sarah?" She asks, quietly. A few tears escape my eyes, trailing down my cheeks. I take a shuddering breath, shaking my head. I point to the dead heap on the ground as more tears escape.
A sob escapes Julia when she looks at what used to be Sarah and I can't hold it back anymore. A sob escapes me and Jules and I rush to each other, each trying to comfort each other.
Keith and Karson each walk up behind me and place a hand on each of my shoulders, trying too comfort me. It helps a bit and after a few minutes, we both try to stop crying.
After a little bit, I'm able to contain my tears, I calm down, wiping the tears from my face. I look at the boys behind me.
What I see behind them terrifies me.