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Chapter 2:

Anyone who’s lived in Sunnydale for any serious amount of time knows to take things like news reports about staying inside seriously. As Buffy looks around from the parked position of Xander’s car she can see that the people of Sunnydale took this warning into account as the only people she sees are the strange assailants. One thing that’s for certain is that Buffy isn’t going to take any chances, these things seem to be slow moving and there aren’t too be too many of them in sight, but Buffy goes and pulls out an ax from Xander’s trunk just incase.

“Buffy I don’t like the look of this,” Willow says.

“Neither do I… stay close and just try not to draw any attention to yourself,” Buffy says as she starts to walk in the direction of the front doors.

Fear soaks into their skin like water in a sponge making it craw and bump up. They make their way to the front doors of Fischer Hall walking swiftly and with caution in every step. Anya clings tightly to Xander’s arm. She lets him lead her as she glances back toward the car. The assailants, or demons, or whatever they are start to follow them and Anya notices that their speed is picking up. Suddenly there seems to be more of them then before as if the very presence of the scoobies is attracting them. The rest of the gang notices this as well, baffled and frightened looks cross all of their faces.

“Buffy, I think we should get inside… now,” Willow says, and instantly their speed picks up.

The front doors are now only a few feet away but the creatures are close behind them and there are a few before them closing in as well. Still, getting inside safely shouldn’t be a problem, except that one of the creatures is standing right in front of the door. The creature leers in at the group with its hands outstretched and blood dripping from its lips. This is the closest that Buffy’s been to any of these strange beings. She can see wounds all over its body, wounds that resemble teeth marks and deep fingernail scratches. Buffy decides not to take any chances fighting with the being and with one swift swoop she swings the ax and decapitates the frightful thing. She opens the door and hurries everyone inside where at first glance there are no more creatures to be found.

--

Buffy slams the door shut and twists the small lock on the knob as quickly as she can. She turns back around and looks at her friends and Spike who’re standing in her and Willow’s dorm room. Willow is sitting on the edge of her bed and looks like she collapsed into her hunched position, Anya is still clinging to Xander’s arm and Spike is running a hand through his hair. Everyone, even the slayer, is obviously shaken up.

“Those weren’t demons,” Willow says in a state of shell shock. “Buffy, those were people… I recognized some of them.”

“Those weren’t people,” Spike says with certainty, “They’re dead whatever they are, no heartbeats… I’ve never seen anything like that.”

“Oh God… they’re zombies,” Xander says.

“No… no, no, no, Giles said that zombies don’t eat people,” Buffy says wishing for it not to be true. “Those things had… bite marks, and… and…”

“Buffy, I’ve seen every zombie movie ever made… this is Night of the Living Dead, and we’re being chased by the Army of Darkness.”

“It was just like when we threw you that party… after you ran away to L.A… you know to raise your spirits… but that wasn’t all that we raised,” Willow says.

“I knew I should’ve stayed home today,” Anya mumbles.

“Yeah, except there’s no African mask or whatever bringing things back to life this time… this is the real undead deal here,” Xander says.

“So… what do we do now?” Willow asks and all faces turn to Xander.

“Well in the movies they’re pretty unstoppable, unless you shoot them in the head or decapitate them.”

“Ok, good… so I can fight them, they move pretty slowly, I can take them.”

“In the movies the good guys win right, with happy endings where the world is saved?” Willow asks hopefully.

“Um, yeah… sometimes,” Xander responds causing Buffy to sigh and Spike to raise an eyebrow. “It’s just that in the movies… they just keep coming.”

There’s a knock at the door and Buffy turns around shocked by the sound. Everyone just stares unsure what to do. Then they hear it again, three loud thumps. Zombies don’t knock Buffy thinks to herself and cautiously unlocks then opens the door ever so slightly. The door is pushed open and Riley steps into the room. He slams the door behind him and locks it then with heavy tired breathing he turns around to look over the group of people before him. They stand staring at him surprised by his arrival.

“Buffy, thank God you’re here,” Riley says. “Something big is going on.”

“Yeah, we noticed… Riley what are those things?”

Riley glances at everyone in the room, then his eyes stop on Spike for a moment, he remembers Xander introducing him as his friend the other night but there is an odd sense of familiarity about the bleached blonde man that Riley cant seem to shake. However, there are more pressing issues to deal with at the moment so Riley ignores his thoughts and turns to face everyone. They all deserve to know, they need to know. Riley needs their help.

“The Initiative has been…”

“The who?” Xander cuts in.

“The Initiative, we’re a Government agency with the purpose of capturing and studying hostile sub terrestrials…”

“Let me guess, one of your experiments got loose, big contagious creature on the rampage and infecting people as it goes?” Buffy says with an annoyed tone from the realization that the government has suddenly made her job a lot harder.

“That’s about the gist of it… we were looking at the regenerative properties of certain HST’s and how they made more of their kind through mixing their blood.”

“Huh?” Xander says.

“Vampires,” Willow explains.

“Oh.”

“We were hoping to develop a serum to make our soldier’s stronger more resilient… however, there were changes that needed to be made. The HST’s weakness to sunlight was something we needed to correct… what we ended up with was a virus.”

“So this virus, which you injected into a human, I assume,” Buffy says receiving a look of conformation from Riley, “spreads this infection to other humans when they get bitten, but you didn’t realize this until one of your buddies in a lab coat got bit and started this pandemic, how am I doing so far?”

“Pretty dead on.”

“Great, so what do we do now?”

“We need to get back down into the Initiative… any possible bio-hazardous experiments have a fail-all built in to their genetic code… if we set the fail-all into motion a chemical vapor will be released all over Sunnydale that will kill anything that has the fail-all gene… it’s like an anti-virus.”

“How dangerous are these things?” Anya asks.

“They seem like a minimal threat at first, I mean they are rather slow moving and they don’t seem very intelligent… but once they get the scent of a living human they all rush to it like bees to honey, and it doesn’t take much to infect you, one bite that’s it.”

“What about vampires? Can this virus infect a vampire?” Spike asks and watches as the knowledge of his true identity finally hits Riley.

“You, I know you… you’re hostile seventeen,” Riley says then turns to face Buffy, “What is he doing here?”

“Oh shut up you wanker… I think we have more important issues going on right now?”

“He’s right Riley, and can’t hurt us, besides we can always let the zombies eat him while we run for it,” Buffy says.

“So about this virus, what’s it’s affect on vampires?” Spike asks again watching closely at Riley’s discomfort.

“I don’t know… considering the gene was derived from vampire blood I don’t think it’s possible for you to be infected.” Spike lets out a sigh of relief.

“Well then, I’ll see you all later, you know… unless you’re all dead,” Spike says as he moves to the door to leave.

“Of course I could be wrong," Riley says as Spike's hand wraps around the door knob. "Either way though they’ll still try to eat you.” Spike's hand drops from around the knob and he turns back to face the scoobies.

“Right then… so what’s the plan, how do we get to this fail-all or whatever?” Spike says suddenly having a change of heart. Buffy rolls her eyes.

“Alright… Riley, Spike and I will go down into the Initiative, you guys stay here… I’ll call you when it’s safe,” Buffy says.

“Here, take this,” Riley says handing a hand gun to Xander, “If any of them get in…”

“Shoot them in the head, got it,” Xander replies.

Buffy goes to the weapons chest in her closet to pull out an ax and a sword. As she does Riley thinks about protesting about Spike tagging along, but Buffy’s argument about being resourceful could prove true. Riley just hopes that the vampire won’t betray them. Buffy hands a sword to Spike with a look that says ‘one wrong move and I’ll kill you’. Spike takes the sword with a nod and Riley eyes him up suspiciously.





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