text: Christie smiles as you walk over. Frank rolls his eyes.
  
  "I'm with you two," you tell them.
  
  After a few moments, Destiny reaches for the door handle. "Right this way then," she says. Destiny says. James is just a few steps behind her as they walk out the door. He looks back at you and sneers a little but you're not watching him, your eyes are focused on the gently seductive sway of Destiny's hips as she steps out of the room.
  
  When she's out of sight you find yourself meeting Christie's eyes. She glares at you as Dr. Verrukt and Mike walk out of the room next. Busted. Haha.
  
  "Come on," Frank says; heading out the door. He takes you down a long corridor. Every room you check is the same, empty and covered in dust. It gets so monotonous that at some point you guys just quit checking.
  
  "Hello?!" Frank calls.
  
  "What are you doing?" Christie whispers to him.
  
  Frank looks perplexed. He does not whisper. "If someone's out there, I figured they'd answer or something."
  
  "You just gave our position away!" Christie says in a more harsh whisper.
  
  "I gave our position away to nobody!" he returns. "The school is empty."
  
  You spot movement further on ahead. "Yeah?" you ask, pointing into the distance. "Then who's that?"
  
  The others turn their heads to follow where you've pointed. Ahead is a small crowd shambling down the hall toward you. They walk awkwardly, as though putting one foot in front of the other is a challenge that they are barely able to perform. There is a low guttural hum coming from the crowd, like a medley of growls and moans and snarling. You feel a chill go down your spine and the hairs on the back of your neck stand on end.
  
  "Jesus," Frank whispers in awe; "How many of them are there?" You start instinctively counting but lose track somewhere around thirty, they're moving around too much to get a proper count.
  
  "I don't like this you guys," Christie says; "Let's get back to the portal."
  
  "Yeah," Frank nods. "You're probably right." The three of you turn around and start heading back up the hall, thankful that the crowd behind you is moving so slowly.
  
  Your hopes are quickly dashed when a group of roughly ten enters the hall ahead of you, rounding the bend and making their way to you with the same slow and deliberate pace as the others. The tension intensifies.
  
  "Fuck," Frank curses.
  
  Christie screams.
  
  "What do we do now?" you ask.
  
  "We need to hide," Christie says in a state of panic, her eyes are looking frantically around. "Maybe in one of these classrooms."
  
  "No, fuck that," Frank counters. "We need to kill these fucking zombie looking fucks and get back to the portal."
  
  That sounds dangerous. But what choice do you have, really?
  
  > fight your way out of there.
  "I don't have a weapon," you say; "But I still think our best chance of getting out of here is to fight our way out."
  
  Frank nods. Christie shakes her head.
  
  "It's better than being trapped in a classroom," you say.
  
  Frank pulls a pair of knives out of his pockets, handing one to each of you. "Here you go," he says. "Now lets kick some zombie ass." He starts moving toward the smaller group, the one blocking the path back to the portal in room 413. He is raises his blade up preparing to strike when he notices something in the distance. "Look," he says to you and Christie, bringing his knife down into the skull of the nearest zombie.
  
  A lone figure appears around the bend behind them. He is tall and muscled and carries a baseball bat over one shoulder. It's James. He moves with a silence that belies his size. He moves in and swings his bat hard, the bat whistling through the air. It strikes hard, smacking off the skull of a zombie and knocking it to the ground.
  
  "Nice one!" Frank says, dropping to the ground and stabbing the fallen zombie in the head. You and Christie wok together to puncture eye sockets and temples with the blades of your knives while James swings again and again, knocking the zombies aside and freeing one of its jaw.
  
  Eventually the last of the zombies falls dead. James is breathing heavy, his bat covered with gore. All of you, you realize, are covered with blood. You are tired and sore and miserable. Everyone is breathing heavy.
  
  The hoard behind you is getting closer. "Let's move," Christie says.
  
  James nods. "Go. I'll bring up the rear."
  
  The others nod and start moving down the hall, Christie taking your hand and pulling you along while Frank runs along beside you. As you make the turn on the hall toward the hall you hear Christie swear.
  
  "There's more up ahead," she says. "If we hurry we can make the hall and move to room 413."
  
  "Lets do it then," you say.
  
  "We need to move," James says. "No more jogging. Run!" He breaks into a run to the abandoned hall. You and Christie try to keep up, keeping a wary eye ahead and praying that you are able to beat the zombies to your destination.
  
  As you reach the toppled trash cans, the zombie hoard is closing in. You try to make the turn hard and end up slamming your shoulder painfully into the wall. James trips over one of the trash cans and you hear a terrible snap as he goes down.
  
  "FUCK!" he screams, clutching at his leg. You can see the bone of his shin pressing awkwardly against the skin.
  
  "Go!" he tells you. "There's no time. Save yourselves."
  
  Frank and Christie nod. "We'll leave a circle on the board for you," Frank says. The two of them rush to room 413.
  
  You take a moment to stare down at James, then to the closing hoard of zombies. They're just outside of spitting distance, growling and moaning in their approach.
  
  "What are you doing?" James asks, trying to prop himself up against the wall. "Go."
  
  > leave him.
  You follow the others back down the hall to room 413 where the chalk drawing of a rune framed portal remains on the black board. Christie draws four circles over the arc with her chalk. She takes a quick glance over her shoulder at you and Frank and steps through. You watch as her circle disappears.
  
  "Come on," Frank says. "I don't like this any more than you do, but we have to go to stay alive." He steps through, his circle disappears. Taking a deep breath you step through as well.
  
  Stepping out of the board on the other side you find everyone waiting for you. Mike is chewing his fingernails nervously. Dr. Verrukt is pacing. Destiny is sitting on the floor with her head in her hands. Christie and Frank are explaining what happened to the others.
  
  "Now what do we do?" you ask.
  
  "First we wait," Dr. Verrukt. "If James steps through the portal in the next ten minutes, then good. If not, then we do our best to go back to our normal lives."
  
  "I don't know how that's possible," Christie says in a quiet voice.
  
  "Let's just wait," Verrukt says evenly.
  
  You wait in silence. The seconds stretch into long minutes. Five minutes go by. Ten. At twenty minutes Dr. Verrukt says what no one wants to say.
  
  "At this point," he tells you; "it would be foolish to assume James will be returning. He was a good kid and he will be missed." You feel numb. Mike, Christie, and Destiny sob. Frank swears and pushes over a stack of chairs, sending them crashing to the ground on the far side of the room.
  
  Dr. Verrukt slips quietly away while the rest of you are preoccupied with your grief; the door makes only a subtle click as it closes. He is gone the next day, his office and house emptied of content and cleaned spotless.
  
  James never returns. He is assumed to be a runaway, another teenage statistic, but you know better. He's back in that other world, walking around with dead eyes and eating the flesh of the living. You left him there to die.
  
  The guilt weighs on you for the rest of your life.