Resident Festival (4)

--- Maya ---

“We need to get to the stage area,” Vi told her as she warily looked around to make sure none of the monsters were following them. Though given the screaming, and the few people she could see still fleeing, she was personally sure they’d gone after other prey. “Tommy ‘s already there, so hopefully everyone else will be heading that way too.”

She nodded in understanding, since Vi seemed to be keeping an eye on her so they wouldn’t be separated.

(Pfft, as we’d ever leave her alone in this kind of situation.)

(You can’t blame her for worrying all things considered.) Her inner logic reminded.

(Anyone touches our sister and we’ll blast them into the pavement.) Her inner madness growled.

(Right, and-) Her eyes went wide as something occurred to her. “Vi, Izzy!”

“What?” Vi asked, stopping between two stalls.

“Izzy ‘s out here on her own!”

“Shit!” Vi cursed. “Do you have any idea where she might be?”

“Last I saw her she was by all of the games, but that was a few minutes before I ran into you.”

“Damn it, that’s back the way we came…” Vi seemed to look around as if measuring something in her head.

(Izzy ‘s in danger what could she possibly need to thing about!)

“Vi!” She scowled.

“Just give me a second to think!” Vi hissed, her stress apparent as her face scrunched up. “Fuck! It’s too far to the stage for you to go by yourself… Gah, come on.”

Vi motioned for her to start backing up the way they’d came, only to grab her shoulder before she could step out from between the stands. “Wait, listen. Something ‘s there!”

Freezing she finally noticed a shuffling sound coming from just to the left of the exit, one that was steadily drawing closer, until one of the creatures shambled in front of their path.

From so close it almost looked human in shape, (if you removed the skin from an emaciated corpse anyway.) Despite this underwhelming appearance however, something inside of her told her this thing was dangerous in a way she couldn’t quite comprehend, that this (monster) was (wrong) in a way she just couldn’t figure out.

(Does it honestly matter?) Her inner emotion asked, a faint tinge of underlying panic to its tone.

(Well, that doesn’t bode well…)

The monster continued to stumble forward, its gaze, vacant and empty as if it was merely existing rather than anything else.

(On the plus side this means they’re lacking in intelligence or at the very least their perceptiveness is below human.) Her inner logic pointed out helpfully.

(Doesn’t change the fact that there’s something wrong with them!)

(Right…) She shook her head clear as she tried to push away the instinctive fear clawing at her mind. Once she could think straight, she gestured for Vi to back up until they’d built up enough space between them and the creature that Maya was just this side of okay whispering.

“Alright, so given how close it got and the way it was moving… these things aren’t really all that… aware?” She tried explaining, before shaking her head again, as the fear continued to claw at the back of her head. “I think, as long as we keep quiet they won’t actually notice us.”

“Maya, that’s,” Vi bit down whatever she was going to say before sighing. “Maya, we’ve got zero experience with these things. A-and given how dangerous they are we can’t risk making assumptions about them.”

“I know but…” She ran a hand down her face. “Look we need to find Izzy, and just running around, yelling her name is going to attract these thing’s attention one way or the other. If I’m right, and we’re lucky, we can just sneak past them without having them follow us around or tiring ourselves out before we can find Izzy.”

Vi’s face scrunched up, before she eventually nodded. “Alright, fine. If worse comes to worst, we can just start running I guess…”

“Right…” She nodded back.

Fortunately, as luck would have it, they found that traveling quickly and quietly did in fact seem to draw less attention from the wandering husks than running around had. Of course, this could’ve had something to do with the fact that there were still one or two people screaming as they fled from the monsters.

(Survival horror 101, keep quiet and keep calm.) She thought, wishing there was something she could do to help them, while also knowing her sound and lightning would probably draw an entire horde to her location.

(At the very least, these creatures aren’t particularly fast, so they should be able to outrun them given the fair ground’s layout.) Her inner logic tried to comfort her.

“Right, yeah…” She let out a shaky breath before looking around them. “Okay, it looks like we’re in the right area, but… how are we going to find her? If she’s smart she’ll be hiding somewhere.” The fact she was her sister and therefor of course that smart went unsaid.

Vi bit her lip as she looked around herself, her gaze lingering on the five or six monsters shambling nearby. “How bad of an idea do you think it’d be to try and call her cell?”

“Mm, depends on how loud her ringtone is…” She hedged, looking around. “Though if we make a big enough distraction to gather them, that could let us look around without any worry.” (Or that’s how it works in my games anyway…)

(You know, now really isn’t the time to be confusing reality and our games…)

(What are you talking about, we’re in a survival game right now.) Her inner madness argued with a hint of growing hysteria.

“But how’re we going to do that?” Vi asked with a worried look. “I mean, if we do that we might get swarmed, and even if we set something up there’s no guarantee she’s here in the first place. Which means we’d be putting ourselves in danger, and possibly attracting them to wherever she is.”

“Well, then we’ll have to search without calling her. It’ll take us longer, but at the very least it won’t put any of us at a bigger risk.”

Vi didn’t look entirely happy with that plan, but at the very least she wasn’t arguing against it. “I don’t like suggesting it, but do you think this would be easier if we split up? I mean we can meet back up here when we’re done.”

She considered it for a moment, before disagreeing. “No, we need to stick together until we get out of this mess.”