Run!

Sen was already moving before the word even echoed off the walls. He burst through the classroom door and into the hall, his phone’s light flashing across the darkness. Em was right in front of him. She dashed towards the stairs, bounding forward with every step and turning right into a vampire darting down the adjacent corridor.

Em screamed as the vampire smashed into her.

They fell to the floor in a tangle of limbs and wild thrashing. Em scrambled away, panicking, as the vampire snarled and leapt over her, ready to strike with its claws. Sen tackled it out of the way and then the world was spinning, turning in a flurry of colors and light, before—

Bang!

The two of them slammed into a locker by the wall and it fell, crushing him and the vampire underneath. Then the monster was right next to him; snarling, raking at the ground to get closer and Sen was kicking, trying to keep it away. He felt hands on his arms, hauling him up, pulling him away from a jaw that snapped inches away from his calf. Crunch! His foot crashed into the vampire’s nose as Em dragged him back into the hall, and they sprinted for the stairs even as the monster screeched.

“Up!” she shouted, as they reached for the stairs. Em made for the fourth floor when Sen jerked her back, pulling her down after him as he dashed down the opposite way. He was panting, his eyes frantic, but his grip was firm.

“No!” Sen said, leaping down the last five steps as Em stumbled after him. “They’re all climbing the walls! We’ll just corner ourselves if we—”

The stairs turned around a corner and the window overhead shattered. A shape leapt through and crashed into Sen, tipping him forward and down, down the stairs in a blur of claws and teeth and panic. The steps thumped against his back, but he saw only the snarling face in front of his, trying to tear at his neck with a collection of massive teeth. They hit the floor rolling and Sen threw a wild punch. It missed. He kicked—connected, then flailed an elbow that hammered into the side of the monster’s skull.

Its head whirled to the side with a dry snap, the neck twisting farther than it could handle. It flopped and he heaved it to the side, scrambling up to his feet, running forward even as Em reached the bottom of the stairs.

The howling was getting louder, now. The swarm drew closer with every second they wasted.

They kept running, farther, deeper into the school’s curling hallways.

It stopped at a dead end—a room full of tables and chairs, facing a glass wall with a view of a withered field outside.

“Where do we go!?” he asked, turning suddenly, and Em collided with him, sending the two of them stumbling back. In his panic, Sen barely noted that they were in one of the school’s cafeterias, the rows of food trays still warm underneath the glass. He saw Em’s eyes dart across the room. They widened.

“There!”

She pointed, and Sen turned his head to find the kitchen door, over the counter and past the shelves, into the jungle of pans and spices and stoves deep within. Em ran for it and Sen vaulted over the tables, following her. They wove around the countertops inside and Em pulled a butcher’s knife from a nearby rack. Sen grabbed himself a—he looked around, desperate, and his hand shot out to grab the nearest metal object he could find:

A giant wok, twice the size of his torso. He ran up to Em at the end of the kitchen, fumbling with a ring of keys as she tried to open the metal backdoor. She glanced at him and froze, staring at the thing in his hands.

“…A frying pan? Really?”

He kicked at the door and it hardly budged, unaffected. Sen backed off, letting her fiddle with the keys again. “It’s a wok,” he said.

“A wok. I don’t—what? What’re you even gonna do with it?” she asked, shaking the knob with each desperate slide of a key. She rattled off, her mouth spouting nonsense in a panic. “Make fried rice for the vampire zombies!? Chinese? Those things don’t look like they enjoy chao fucking fan!”

“It was all I could find!”

“There’s a kitchen full of things in it and all you could find was a—”

The snarling reached them. Their heads snapped up towards the cafeteria, just as a massive horde of Desiccated Vampires flooded into the room. They scrambled over each other, easily over twenty of them, bounding over the tables and chairs and heading for the kitchen where they were. And at the lead was one vampire, bigger than the rest, with spurs of bone exploding out from his back and lancing out from its elbows.

Sen shook the frozen Em’s shoulder.

“Open the fucking door!” he screamed, and her eyes widened. She turned to the door and fumbled with the keys, but there were too many, each one almost identical to the last.

“Shit,” she said, her voice trembling. “Shit, shit! I’m trying!”

Sen whirled away from her and turned towards the cafeteria. The vampires were climbing over the rows of food served now, trying to jump into the kitchen. Sen rushed forward and looked around, his eyes darting around until—

He grabbed a bottle of oil. Threw.

It shattered along the floors and counters, spraying glass and slippery grease all over. Sen grabbed more of them, weaving around the counters at the back, throwing them forward even as the monsters rushed towards him and Em. The first of them came and he hit it in the head, rocking it back as the glass shattered and it slipped. It crashed to the ground snarling and the others followed, tumbling down as soon as their claws touched the oily tiles beneath.

Slowed down, Sen scrambled for more things to throw—more things to buy time for Em to open the back door. He lobbed knives and pans at the intruders, beating them back, making them slip and slide across the greasy countertops and sending them crashing down towards the floor below.

A blur of movement slipped through his barrage and rushed him, crashing through a curtain of hanging tongs that sent the implements clattering all over the floor. Sen raised his wok just as a massive vampire slammed into him. The impact sent him back, pressing him against a stove near the wall, and Sen desperately kept the steel between him and its knifelike claws.

It scraped against the wok, tearing white scratches down the length of the thin steel. Sen’s mind rushed for an answer. A way to escape.

He found it.

He reached back and felt around the stove until—click.

The fire roared and Sen slipped out to the side and the oil-soaked vampire fell face-first into the flames. Fwoom! The oil soaking its paper-dry skin lit up. Fire swallowed it whole. The vampire reeled back with a piercing screech but Sen was there, pushing, shoving it toward the horde of monsters with his wok. He bashed it once, twice, screaming, feeling the heat of the fire nip at his skin.

And then it crashed into the other vampires, gathered and trying to sprint across the oil-soaked floors, and the fire bloomed.

A chorus of screams filled the air. Sen backed away as the smoke rose, expecting victory, but… one of the monsters stayed standing. It was the biggest of the vampires, standing at over six feet tall. Barbs of bone stabbed out from its papery skin, adorning its body like armor. It stood in the flames even as the others burned, and when the flashes of fire died down into embers on its smoldering flesh, it stepped out of the flames, faced Sen, and glared.

[Elite] Desiccated Bloodfiend – Tier 0

“Oh,” he said.

The massive, flaming vampire took a step forward, looking at him with its dark, sunken eyes. Sen took one step back, raised his wok—and then it rushed at him, frenzied, and he ran towards Em just as the door unlocked with a click.

She threw the door open and the two of them leapt through, out into the back alley behind the school, as the flaming bloodfiend chased them through the door.

“You set it on fire!?” she screamed, glancing back. “And it didn’t work? Why!? It’s a vampire! A vampire zombie! It should be doubly effective!”

Sen sprinted past a massive dumpster and swiveled, grunting with effort as he tipped it over. Trash sprayed across the path, slowing their pursuer further. Sen chased after Em who was farther along ahead.

“This whole apocalypse is rigged against us! Just run!”

“Fuck, fuck! I am!”

The flaming vampire sprinted after them, running on all fours like a predator out to hunt its prey. The bloodfiend was slower than they were, but—Sen sucked in a breath, feeling his chest burn and his legs flare up in pain. He stumbled, almost tripping, and barely kept himself in form as he followed Em. He glanced back at the vampire as it gained ground.

Humans got tired.

Flaming zombie vampires didn’t.

Thankfully, the fire had already done its work. The vampire bounded forward, but when it moved to take another leap, Sen heard something in its body tear. Sen watched it stumble, stagger, and fall. It crashed and rolled to a stop on the ground behind him, barely an outline of smoldering embers in the shadows, and Sen stopped. He and Em turned to face it.

It was already half dead.

It had caught fire when almost all the water in its body had gone. It was stronger than the other vampires, yes. It seemed like it had denser muscles and stronger bones, but…

Flames ate at its muscles like firewood, running them thin and ragged.

The chase had done the rest.

Now it crawled towards them, snarling. Its tongue lashed out at the air, and its empty eye sockets burned its cruel gaze into the air. But it was weak. It could hardly move with the torn muscles all over its limbs. Sen panted and watched it crawl to them, staring at the agonizing hunger reflected in its eyes.

If he hadn’t had any water to drink after the sun flashed…

Would he have turned into this too?

He fell back on his ass, gulping in the breaths. It was already dying. He had no intention of walking up to it and giving it a chance to turn things around.

Em had other plans.

She stomped past him, breathing heavily, and she stood over the massive, burned vampire. She raised the cleaver over her head. Her hands trembled, but her grip was tight, and the look in her eyes told him that she had already decided what to do.

Her butcher’s cleaver fell.

Crack.

It split the monster’s skull in two with the sound of splitting wood. Small drops of black blood burst from the wound, drying as soon as they hit her cheek. The vampire fell limp, dead, and black smoke leaked out from its flesh, filling the air and flowing into Em. Half of it branched away and came to him instead.

Absorbing Essence [14/238] – [Elite] Desiccated Bloodfiend [Tier 0] x1

Em staggered off to the side, falling on her ass beside him. He watched her heave for breath, her entire face covered in sweat, grime, and flecks of dried blood. She leaned against the wall and stared up at the dark sky. Starless, with only a single, embered moon staring down from above. It looked like a molten core, with veins of golden magma snaking along its scorched surface. It bled faint light into the earth and colored everything in muted shades of red and orange.

Em watched it for a few seconds, before she opened her mouth to speak, “How much essence are you getting?” she asked.

“It says I’m still absorbing it, but… a two thirty-eight.”

She closed her eyes. A long moment passed. Then she opened her hand, hesitated for only a second, and held it out towards him.

On her palm was a small yellow bead, shining faintly in the darkness.

“Looks like essence is split equally between us, “ she said. “I’m gonna get the same amount, but… you did most of the work. So, take this. I don’t know what it is, or what the hell it does, but if the big bad elite monster drops something when it dies, it’s usually a good thing.”

She dropped it in his hand, and the golden text flared again.

Yellow Skill Orb [Tier 0] – Bone Armor

Sen blinked at her, “So you’re giving me the boss drop?”

“Yes.”

“That’s really sweet of you.”

“It really is.”

Sen nodded slowly, his eyes never leaving the orb. He glanced at her, “So, put more honestly, you’re giving this to me because you want me to be the guy taking all the hits, right?”

“If that’s how you see it, sure,” she said, huffing out a dry laugh. “I’d rather be the girl with the keys than the guy with the wok, anyway.”

“So now you approve of my choice of weapon?”

“Sure. S’long as you keep it between us and the vampire zombies.”

Sen laughed and shook his head. He laid back, facing up at the sky. It was dark up, and in the corner of his vision, he saw Em slump against a dumpster to her right. Her eyes closed as the exhaustion pulled her away. He raised his hand up over his face, the little marble pinched between his fingers.

Yellow Skill Orb [Tier 0] – Bone Armor

Assimilate? Y/N

For a moment, he hesitated. If he did this, he would be accepting this thing. He would make it a part of him. At least, if it did what he assumed it did. Sen didn’t know what it would change in him, just like how the essence had altered him to move and react faster than before.

But then he saw the smoking corpse of the bloodfiend in the corner of his vision, and the choice became clear. Right now, it was eat or be eaten. Survive, or die, never knowing what happened to his aunt. Not being able to give her a call.

And if being eaten was the only alternative to surviving, then he was going to be one hard bone to chew.

“Yes,” he muttered, and the orb shattered into nothing. The particles drifted into him and the golden text in the corner of his awareness swirled, gathering, turning into shapes and ideas that planted themselves in his mind. Sen tensed as he felt it change him. As it funneled instructions into his brain over the span of only a few seconds.

Then it was gone, and the interface appeared once again.

Status

Name: Sen Salazar – Tier 0 Human [9/15]

Ability: Locked – Essence Required [0/1,000]

Attributes

Tier 0 Mind – Rank III [0/250] (+)

Tier 0 Body – Rank IV [0/500] (+)

Tier 0 Spirit – Rank II [0/100] (+)

Essence: 179

Skill Orbs [1/5]

Bone Armor (Tier 0 – Yellow)

Skill Orb assimilated.

Bone Armor (Tier 0 – Yellow) [Body]

Small Flow cost, ongoing. For a total number of minutes equal to the user’s Body (4), the user grows an exoskeleton of considerable durability. Bone Armor may be molded according to the user's will. Strength, area of effect, and control scales with Body. Active duration and cost refreshed automatically until turned off.

Sen stared at it, stunned. It was a part of him now. In the corner of his mind, it was an ability that he instinctively knew how to use. He felt the little channels in his flesh—like little blood vessels, branching out from the heat inside his heart and flowing into his arms and legs.

Slowly, he stood. Sen looked down at his hands as he wetted his dry lips. Flow. That’s what it used. The same thing he needed to keep the maddening thirst from before away.

It would have been wise to save it for later.

Still, curiosity won out. Sen took off his blazer and looked down at his bare arms. Waiting to change.

“[Bone Armor],” he said, and his arms shifted. Protrusions of bone climbed out of his skin, merged perfectly into his flesh. They curled forward and around, forming thick, white plates than ran down from his shoulders to the tips of his fingers, then from his waist, down to his calves, to the ends of his toes. The pale material was coarse and covered every inch of his limbs with only a few gaps in between.

Sen gulped as he knocked a knuckle against his bone-plated arm.

Tak, tak.

The low sound bounced against the walls, much like the vampires’ own claws against the school’s tiled floors. Sen moved his fingers, transfixed by the interlocking bone plates, until a light lit up the alleyway to his right. He turned towards it, staring in shock at a group of three young men in freshmen uniforms, holding an arsenal of baseball bats, metal pipes, and… a table leg.

Their two groups stared at each other. Him, at the first three survivors he’d found since Em, and them: at the shirtless man in the alley, standing with his arms covered with monstrous plates of bone. Their eyes moved to the passed-out Em against the wall, then back to him.

“Don’t do anything we’ll all regret,” he told them.

And then they raised their weapons.