10-31-08 6 AM

Small creaks and groans could still be heard from the tunnels underneath the remains of H. F. Melctoste Hall as Reggie regained consciousness. He was laying face down on a concrete floor. A few feet ahead of him, he could make out a beam of white light. He tried to get up and stand, but found it difficult as his legs were buried under a pile of dirt, concrete chunks, and debris from the collapse of the tunnel. The wet blanket that was protecting him from the heat and flames of the tunnel had started to constrict him with the weight of the debris. With some difficulty he was able to extract himself from the pile and get to his feet.

He looked at the beam of light ahead and saw that it was his flashlight. After securing the light he looked at the passage and thought that it was very similar to the previous one he was in, but much older. Beyond the smell of smoke that was leftover from the previous tunnel, this one smelled of earth and mildew. The pipes ran in a similar fashion along the ceiling like the previous tunnel and once again prevented him from standing up fully. Along the wall to the right was a map.

After studying the map he discovered that this was part of a system of maintenance support tunnels that were located under almost all of the university buildings. Judging by the map the passage he was in was only a short distance from the library. He sat against the wall and drank some water while considering how he was going to get out of these passages. He had no assurances that the library was still standing, so he couldn’t count on being able to get out there. He supposed that eventually if he followed the passages far enough, he would find an exit; he would just have to be patient and try not to get lost.

He estimated that it was almost 500 yards until he got underneath the library and judging from the map there were several intersecting passages leading to other areas of the campus. As he was ready to leave he realized that he didn’t have the baseball bat anymore. The bat had saved his life more than once already and he felt naked and very vulnerable without it. He spent almost twenty minutes searching through the rubble for his baseball bat before he found it. Being metal it was able to survive the collapse of his dorm intact. Bat in one hand, and flashlight in the other, he proceeded down the passage.

Several hours had passed since he had hidden in the tunnels and fallen asleep and Reggie began to wonder about the state of the world above. If his insignificant college was being attacked, he could only guess at the damage to everything else.

After only a few hundred yards he came upon the first intersection. As he slowly approached, he thought he heard something. It sounded like a small scratching sound coming from the left opening and he moved cautiously forward, leading with his flashlight. As the beam of light rounded the corner, he caught the briefest of movements as he froze the light on the spot and sent a rat scurrying further down the passage.

“Thank God!” Reggie exclaimed as he let out his breath, “That could have been much worse.”

Those words were hanging in the air when he heard a hiss come from the other direction. He had just enough time to turn when another creature came out of the right passage. Reggie quickly dropped his flashlight and tried to get his bat up in front of him with both hands. He failed.

The creature quickly reached past the bat that as it was too slow to block its attack. He couldn’t tell where his flashlight had fallen, but its light cast a strange angle that gave him some visibility and deep shadows to fight in. Both of the creature’s hands closed around Reggie’s throat as it opened its mouth and revealed rows of black teeth and fangs. This creature was furry like an ape, with a wide blunt nose, huge brow over its deep-set yellow and green eyes, and two tusks that protruded from its bottom jaw. The fur looked to be dark green and grey and it was more heavily muscled than the other creature he had killed.

Reggie tried to push it away, but wasn’t able to force the monster back. He could feel its grip tightening around his neck and it was beginning to get more and more difficult to breathe. His strength was beginning to fail him as the rows of sharp teeth began to inch closer and closer to his face. The creature’s breath came in short snorts and was warm and stale and reminded Reggie of old moldy cheese. With his heart pounding and the edges of his vision starting to fail, he knew that he wasn’t going to last long. As a last resort, he brought his knee into the creature’s midsection and was met with a successful grunt of discomfort that momentarily halted the attack.

With an influx of hope, air, and adrenaline, Reggie unleashed a quick series of three more kicks to the midsection and then brought his foot into its groin region. This caused the creature to back up and gave Reggie just enough room and surprise to grab a hold of the bat with both hands and press it against its torso. As he pushed the creature backwards a few feet he began to angle the pressure downward and move the bat lower towards his midsection. After the bat was almost in the middle of its stomach, he stopped his forward momentum just a bit and then raised the bat up fast and hard underneath its jaw, knocking it further back.

The creature appeared surprised to have found someone that would offer resistance. This second of shock and confusion allowed Reggie to bring his bat up to swing against the monster. His first swing caught it on its arm with a heavy thud and crack which caused the creature to holler in pain. Taking advantage of his offensive, he aimed his next swing at its head and connected with a loud thwack that sent painful vibrations along the bat and down into his arms. The force of the blow was so strong that the vibrations almost caused him to drop the bat, but he knew that would likely lead to his death and he was able to barely hang on.

For its part, the creature didn’t seem too phased by the shot, and looked to be ready to launch another attack. Reggie met this with a series of hard blows to the side of the head and neck, the last one knocking it into the side of the wall and then onto it’s back. Reggie then moved in and brought the creature to its end with a relentless pounding that severely coated the end of the bat in the creature’s blood. Breathing heavily and sore all over, he picked up his flashlight and hurried back along his original route towards the library. Now that he knew the tunnels were no longer safe, he felt an urgent need to get out.

Reggie traveled the rest of the distance without incident and found a small set of steps with a door at the top. He expected to find this door locked also, and he was correct, but the lock was different on this end. Apparently the university was concerned about someone getting locked inside down in an area that isn’t commonly visited, so all the access doors could be unlocked from inside the tunnels, Releasing the lock, he opened the door and found himself in another stairwell, but this one was bigger, and lit. Reggie took it as a good sign that the electric was still on.

Softly closing the door, he waited at the bottom of the stairs for more than twenty minutes just listening for any movements. He spent his time resting against one of the walls and eating his former roommate’s leftover hamburger, a breakfast bar, and a banana and the rest of his bottle of water. He looked at the meager supplies from his backpack and saw that he had three bottles of water left, two breakfast bars, a banana, two apples, and a box of pop tarts. It wasn’t ideal, but it was food, even if it was mostly carbs and sugar. Cleaning up, he readied himself and headed up the stairwell.

The library was the tallest building on campus. It was five stories tall and the top story contained classrooms and administrative offices. The basement used to house the mail room and other student amenities, but they had been recently moved to a more central location with an expansion of the campus. He wasn’t sure why, but this stairwell only went to the fourth floor, the basement, and first floor. Unfortunately for him, the doors of the two lowest floors were locked and chained shut. It left the top floor as his last option for finding a way in.

As he got to the top of the flight of stairs he saw a smeared streak of blood that led into the library from the landing. He looked closely at the scene and sure enough the door was slightly ajar. He didn’t feel he had much choice, so he moved as silently as he could and entered the library.

The trail of blood led into the main walkway and then proceeded down the stairs and out the doors to the campus. What ever happened, the victor seemed to have taken its prize with him outside.

This brought Reggie’s attention back to wondering about the outside and he made his way to the center of the library where a large 3 story window stood to let in light and offered a good view of the entrance to the campus and of Rt. 53 just beyond it. When he got in front of it he held his breath and dropped to his knees at the sights on the other side of the glass.

The entire front lawn of the campus was trodden over and contained many small fires and groups of creatures huddled around them, eating things Reggie didn’t want to think about. He could make out taller, slender figures in dark red robes moving amongst them. Many of the building, specifically the dorms, appeared to be smoking piles of rubble.

From what he could see of the perimeter, they had set up regular patrols of the creatures and some new kind of monster he hadn’t seen before. They looked like large muscled dogs, similar in appearance to a bull mastiff, but they had snow white hair, red eyes, and black and red tentacles the extended about three feet from the top of its back with large sharp stingers on each end. Green vapors seemed to come from their mouth when they breathed. Standing by the road in front of the university were a group of six giants posing as a formidable guard.

“Well, as bad as it looks, at least it’s not Zombies!” Reggie said with sarcasm to try and hide the overwhelming despair he now felt.

10-31-08 5 AM

Once inside the tunnel, Reggie retrieved his flashlight from his backpack before sliding his arms through it and setting it across his shoulders. He wanted to take the candle, but it was in a small glass bowl and the wax was hot and melted and wouldn’t travel well, so he regrettably needed to leave it behind. Speed was of the utmost in his mind because he knew that there would be no fire department response to this blaze. Eventually this building was going to come crashing down on itself. Throwing the wet blanket back over himself for protection, he began.

He stepped over the body of the creature and moved further down along the tunnel. Because of the pipes running overhead, he was forced to hunch down while he walked, making his ability to move less effective. Although his flashlight was bright and powerful for its size, the smoke was thick enough to make it very difficult to see. For the first few steps, he heard nothing except his own breath and the scrape of his shoes on the concrete, but as he moved further down the tunnel he could hear the building groaning in protest to the heat and flames that were eating at it.

Two hundred feet from his cozy little cot, the tunnel turned to the left and looked to run the entire length of the building. The smoke was even thicker here and the heat from above was enough that sweat was beginning to bead around his forehead. His comfort level was getting worse and worse with each hunched over step that he took.

Reggie began to hear noises all around him now. He wasn’t sure if it was the cracking and groaning of the building, or the slow deliberate footsteps of someone else hunting for him in the smoky recesses of his dorm. Every suspicious noise gave him reason to stop and listen, to wait and make sure that he wasn’t being hunted or followed, yet the increasing heat, thickening smoke, and audible grunts from the building’s foundation made those stops far more brief than he was comfortable with.

Eventually he made it to the end of this tunnel and found another access panel similar in nature to the one from his room that was sure to open into some other student’s closet. He studied it for an instant and placed his hands against it to check it for heat. It felt slightly warm, but less so than the access panel to his room. With his options very limited, he opened the access panel and was met with a wall of shirts, jackets, and pants. A thicker, oilier smoke clung to the air and he could feel the heat on the other side of the closet doors even through the clothing. Feeling trapped and trying to hold down his stress, he pushed the doors open a crack with his bat to look for a possible way out.

The couple of inches he opened the door seemed to let in enough heat to feel like he was in a furnace. The room beyond was lit in yellows and oranges and flames were everywhere. He pushed the door open further so he could get a better look and saw that there was no way for him to escape here. The ceiling above was covered with rolling flames that sent licks of fire out towards him and the closet now that the access panel was open. He could see a body slowly cooking in a corner of the room. It was missing limbs and what did remain of it was beginning to char and sizzle.

The room was soon to be a coffin for the unfortunate victim in the corner, and Reggie thought that if he didn’t get out soon, it might also be his final resting place. He backed into the closet and took one of the t-shirts that was hanging up and tied it around his mouth so that it would offer some filtering of the smoke and then he went back into the tunnels, his blanket covering him.

Once he closed the door, he continued along the same route he was previously going and had only moved a few feet when he thought he saw someone up ahead. The density of the smoke made it impossible for him to tell anything more than ten feet ahead of him, so he proceeded slowly. Water was now beginning to drip into the tunnel from the buildings sprinkler system above and it made the air more humid and more difficult to breathe. He continued ahead without incident for another five minutes, slowly moving against the side of the tunnel wall, when he felt the entire foundation rumble.

The building above him began to shake and he could hear crashing all around him. His instinct for survival pushed him on faster than he wanted to go, hoping to find some exit or last second opening that would protect him. He could now see flames along some parts of the tunnel’s ceiling and he knew he didn’t have much time left.

While the flames did serve as a harbinger of the inevitable crush that was coming, it also provided some additional light. In the end, it was that light that showed him an actual door that he would have missed otherwise due to the smoke and his blanket.

It was a heavy metal door with a large white sign on it, that said ‘Building Maintenance Only.” He moved in front of it and tried the doorknob, praying that it would be open. The knob didn’t budge. As he stood there testing the knob, the building groaned again and the sounds of more crashing came to him as the building began to collapse in on itself.

Frantically Reggie began throwing his body against the door, trying to bust it open. His shoulder still sore, he soon switched to kicking it, but that too was to of avail. Panting and sweating, he tried to dislodge the knob with the butt end of his baseball bat. The cramped quarters prevented him from getting the room to effectively bring the bat down with all the force he could muster and after another ten minutes of this he gave up.

He was surprised that the building was still standing as he stood there before the door, hunched over and panting hard. He started to feel like giving up and had sat down in front of the door in the growing puddles of water when the foundation started to crack and the ceiling began to open up along other parts of the tunnel. From the floor above debris, flames, and even more smoke came rushing into the new openings, bringing heat and certain death with it. Reggie was focused on this when a heavy metal squeak in front of him caught his attention.

The door in front of him was now slightly bent and ajar, having become twisted with the weight of the building pressing down on it. This gave Reggie new hope and he began to kick and push at the door with both of his feet from a sitting position. His legs began to cramp up on him, but the door was beginning to move slowly. The more force he used and the longer he used it, the wider the opening became. When he had almost two feet of space between the door and the frame, he got on his feet and slammed into the door.

Reggie had to slam himself into the door two more times, but the door finally opened another foot or less, offering him just enough space to make it past. As he grabbed his bat from the ground, it felt like the entire world began to shake in a deafening roar. The dorm room fell in on itself and the floors began to crash downward on top of each other. Within a few seconds the tunnel Reggie had slept in was completely gone.