text: You hold your hand out to him.
  
  "What are you doing?" James asks. "Get out of here. Save yourself." He looks over his shoulder to see the zombies are nearly upon him. He looks back to you pleadingly. "Just go, man."
  
  You shake your head. "You came back for us," you say. "I'm not leaving you here."
  
  James lets out a frustrated laugh and reaches out to take your hand. You help him up onto his good leg and lend yourself to him as a crutch. Fingers brush and scrape at your backs. You and James share a momentary look of shared terror as you can feel them moving more quickly than the two of you are able.
  
  Then you navigate through the toppled line of trash cans and gain some breathing room as the obstacles prove effective against the unthinking dead. They stumble and fall over trash bins and one another as you pass room 407.
  
  409. Some of them are starting to get to their feet.
  
  411. They are moving again, gaining on you.
  
  413. You open the door and James hops inside, leaning on the wall as he moves to the board. You start to push the door closed but a hand reaches in and stops it from shutting.
  
  "Shit!" You cry as a few more hands dart into the door. They are snarling and growling on the other side. "I can't hold them much longer," you tell James as the pressure from the other side becomes more and more intense.
  
  "Come on then," James says, sliding a chair before him like a walker as he makes his way over to the chalkboard portal. Above the portal were two hastily drawn ugly little circles.
  
  "You first," you tell him. "I'll hold the door as long as I can."
  
  James grimaces and nods. "You're still an idiot," he tells you. "I'll see you on the other side." He hops over, knocking over the chair he'd been leaning on; and disappears into a safer place.
  
  Your feet slide back a little more with each push at the door. You look at the last sloppy circle above the portal and take a deep breath.
  
  It's time.
  
  You give the door one fine shove and push off of it, using their weight to help propel yourself to the board. You charge forward as the zombies spilled into the room behind you, the first wave of them falling face first to the ground. Your adrenaline spikes. Things appear to be moving in slow motion with absolute clarity. Your heart pounds in your chest like your feet pound the ground as you surge toward the portal.
  
  The zombies behind you are starting to get to their feet as more spill in through the door. You jump into the board and smack against the slate, your shoulder jarring with the impact. The old board falls from crooked from the wall. Why didn't that work? You rub your shoulder and look at the crooked board. The zombies are moving closer, the first of them already halfway across the room. They make sad hungry sounds as they close in. You look at ugly circle, the imperfection of the symbol. It is an open circle.
  
  You spot the chalk on the ground, having rolled from the tray on the board. It's just a few feet from the zombies. You need to close that circle to get through the portal. Time is of the essence, but can you get there and back to the portal quick enough?
  
  > shove some zombies around first.
  You rush at the front running zombies, shoving them back with all of your might. Your hunch that you could move faster than they can react was a good one. You send them stumbling back into the others, falling over each other and spilling into a writhing mass on the floor.
  
  Hopefully it will buy you enough time.
  
  You run back to the board and finish the circle. You glance back at the writhing mass of the undead behind you. If they weren't so terrifying they'd almost be humorous, you think. You shake your head and lift your leg to step into the crooked portal. Your foot feels solid slate.
  
  "Shit," you swear. You search the portal frantically as the mass of corpses begin rising to their feet behind you. Then you spot it. The left side of the portal has a smudge mark, likely from your back after your rolled off of your collision with the chalkboard.
  
  You scribble the portal shut as quickly as you can while the undead close in behind you. You feel the scrapings of zombie fingertips as you step through the portal to safety on the other side.
  
  Stepping out of the chalkboard 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 checking on James, who is sitting on the ground with his leg stretched out.
  
  "There he is," James says with a smirk.
  
  "Fine work getting back, Joseph," Dr. Verrukt says.
  
  "My name is Charles," you tell him.
  
  Christie looks up at the sound of your voice and runs over to you, wrapping her arms around your neck and kisses you deeply. After a moment she pulls back. "You're still not kissing back."
  
  "I wasn't ready," you stammer; "I had no idea you were going to..."
  
  "That's been your excuse twice now," she says. "This time I want you to be ready." She grabs at the front of your shirt and pulls you close. "Are you ready?" she asks quietly.
  
  You nod stupidly.
  
  "Good," she says. This time you kiss back.
  
  Someone clears their throat behind you. "Hey I broke my leg ASSHOLES," James says. "Maybe you can stop making out long enough to help me get to the hospital?"
  
  > On to the Epilogue
  Dr. Verrukt disappears a few days after the incident, his office and home emptied entirely. You never hear from him again.
  
  James wears a cast for a few weeks after that and you spend some time hanging out with him. You become good friends. "You're an idiot," he confides in you one day. "You'll always be an idiot. But I think you're a pretty alright dude otherwise. Mostly," he says. "Sometimes."
  
  After James recounts tales of your heroism to the others, Destiny takes an interest in you. She is still the most beautiful girl in school, but somehow her attention does nothing for you.
  
  Instead you find yourself spending most of your time with Christie. The two of you grow close. You'd been friends for as long as you can remember but now there was something more. Something incredible.
  
  You find that you lose yourself in her eyes and you can't see a future without her.
  
  One day, you decide; you are going to marry her.