I was dying.
Dead Man Walking as a trope was starting to look like a real bust. I lay there on the ground barely able to move. My statuses were flaring constantly, including the one labeled, “Dead.”
And yet I did not die. My sudden boost of grit prevented from blacking out. My adrenaline was still pumping so I did everything I could to try to get back to the action even though it was hopeless.
My legs weren't doing what I was telling them to do. My arms though, were at least operational. It hurt to move them but I had to try.
I pushed and I crawled for what felt like an eternity but I might have been able to move 5 yards. Just far enough to see the other side of the bed and breakfast. Useless.
As I watched the zombies surrounding the house, sothing caught my eye. Laying on the ground next to the busted window where the sheriff had presumably been dragged away from, was Antoine's baseball bat.
I couldn't do anything with it but I still tried to crawl toward it.
I failed. I just didn't have it in .
Sothing was happening inside of the house that I couldn't see. An argunt or a fight. I heard a loud crack and then less than a minute later, Tim, the quiet young grave robber was being drug out of the house kicking and screaming. He was terrified out of his mind.
And then, to my surprise, even though I had literally predicted it On-Screen with Cinema Seer, the dead started to walk away.
They had claid their last guilty soul.
I couldn't believe what I was seeing. My mind was so belabored that I could barely hear when Dina finally made her appearance.
“Riley?” She asked quietly. “What happened here? This was supposed to be a straight-up ho invasion or sothing I thought.”
I couldn't speak. I turned to look at her, hoping that I might be able to summon so information for her that would help us. The Finale wasn't over.
We still had a fight. I could hear sothing going on in the house. There was one last enemy to be defeated.
With my last bit of strength, I pointed over toward Antoine’s baseball bat. That would have to be my contribution. Dina seed to understand. She quickly walked over, grabbed the bat, and then took a deep breath before walking around to the other side of the bed and breakfast.
The entire encounter was off-screen. To the audience, I was likely dead.
Soon after that, I died for real.
I woke in a theater watching the remainder of the story.
rritt stord out of the bed and breakfast like he was going to chase after the zombie horde. He looked angry in a way I had not yet seen him. All of his tropes were designed to maximize how dangerous he was the more desperate he was. They also made him stronger if his brother was killed. He was probably a real threat in that mont.
He scread back in the house, “Why didn't they take ? They took my brother; why didn't they take ?”
Samantha walked out of the house with a limp. She had been struck in the face. After a mont it beca clear that she was probably hit with the sa hamr that rritt had in his hand.
“You didn’t hurt them,” Samantha said. “They only wanted to get revenge on those who disturbed their peace.”
rritt didn’t take that well. Unfortunately, he was beyond reason.
“You did this!” he scread. “You… invited them, didn’t you?”
“No, I swear,” Samantha cried out.
rritt grabbed her and lifted the hamr over his head. Before he could bring the hamr down on Samantha, sothing struck him.
He jumped out of the way, reeling in pain from the hit.
Standing behind him, holding Antoine's baseball bat, was Dina.
rrick didn't hesitate to attack her. She swung at him, but he was stronger and completely unafraid of being hit.
He managed to strike her in the arm with the hamr. She had high grit, so it looked like she would recover.
Then he tackled her. He pinned her against the ground with one hand and raised the hamr. He struck her three tis, though I couldn't actually see the blows.
In an instant, one of the dogs that had been in the house ran outside and latched on to rritt, but he easily threw the dog aside.
It was enough of a distraction for Dina to take the baseball bat and hit rritt in the face with it. It wasn't a hard swing and she didn't have much leverage, but it was enough to get him to fall off of her so that she could get up.
She then went for another blow onto his back.
She was causing damage, but not enough.
Just as he was about to attack her again, he was struck by a flying coffee table. An entire coffee table.
The cara cut to Antoine standing in the doorway. It looked like he had been badly beaten. Still, he limped out the door, and with each step, he seed to get stronger and bolder.
rritt lay on the ground trying to scramble to his feet.
Antoine stopped next to Dina and held out his hand. Dina handed over the baseball bat.
He laid into rritt screaming and raging. He struck him over and over and over.
Eventually, the muted thumps of the baseball bat gave way to crunchy wet sounds of the baseball bat having destroyed rritt’s skull.
After that, the cara panned around to the results of the carnage. It showed undead Kimberly lumbering to the graveyard and finding a hole that had been dug. She lowered herself down into the hole, giving one look back toward the bed and breakfast.
It showed Bobby lying on the floor of the upstairs landing. He was dead. I couldn't see his head but from the amount of blood, it looked like that hamr had been involved. rritt must have killed him while I was lying around useless.
I woke up quickly. I was lying on the ground fifteen feet or so from where I had died. Zombie Riley had been trying to crawl to the cetery. All healed up, I stood and ran around the bed and breakfast to find Antoine and Dina standing almost in the sa place as they had been in the movie.
They had been healed, as had Samantha. It only took another minute for Bobby to make his way down.
“Kimberly's in a grave at the cetery,” I said.
Antoine looked in that direction and soon we were all walking there, the five of us.
With every step, I started to wonder what the point of all this was. Why had we been summoned to this place?
Wasn't this supposed to be the special storyline that would sohow reveal everything to us? It wasn't so long ago that we were contemplating whether or not we would get rescue tropes as a reward for this storyline but once we got here everything that I had been predicting had been thrown asunder.
This storyline wasn't easy, but Samantha's intervention had probably made things more better, not worse. Those zombies definitely helped us take out the bad guys.
That wasn't supposed to be what happened. This was supposed to be an overwhelming challenge and we were supposed to rise to the occasion and prove ourselves. Wasn't that how this part of the story was supposed to go?
Where was all the information about how we had ended up in Carousel? This was the storyline from our world; it was supposed to tell us things that we didn't know, but aside from getting my theories confird we hadn't learned anything new. I started to fear in my heart that this whole quest was just a trick. That this was part of the hellish torture that Carousel had prepared for us. That it gave us hope just take it away.
The cetery was old and it didn't look like anyone had been buried there in over a decade. It was clear to see the destruction that the grave robbers had made on the cetery. Corpses were littered about. Many had been strung up in trees and used as target practice. Those in the trees were still alive. Those who had returned to the earth appeared to be dead once again.
The ones hanging from the trees would growl and try to shake down from where they were trapped. It was a disturbing sight to see.
We quickly found the hole that Kimberly had lowered herself down into. She was standing next to it brushing graveyard dirt off of herself.
She wasn't ready to talk when we arrived. I couldn't bla her. That was her first death and though it had been instant I knew that dying took a toll regardless.
Predictably, once we were all gathered together after the storyline, Silas the chanical Showman made his appearance.
“Congratulations, you won a ticket!” He said in that tired old tone.
If we were going to get answers, this might be the point where it happened.
We walked closer and as Antoine was about to press the red button, Silas disappeared.
He reappeared 30 yards away eastward.
We looked at each other in confusion. Then we walked toward him.
Before we could get close enough to push his button, he disappeared again and reappeared 30 yards further in that sa direction.
And so we followed, our paths lit by the moon and Silas' yellow lights.
As we went I noticed there was sothing very strange about this cetery. At first, it appeared to be a regular lot with 100 or so graves out in the backwoods like I had been expecting. But the further we walked, the further the cetery went.
Soon we had left the cetery proper and yet we still saw graves in the forest. We even saw bodies strung up in the trees the sa as we had around the cetery. They moved and growled but they didn't seem too harmful.
And it just kept going like that for hundreds of yards.
We walked for 10 minutes. 20 minutes. Half an hour.
More graves and more bodies strung up in trees.
“Is this a glitch?” Antoine asked.
I wasn't sure.
“Maybe,” I said. “Might just be how Carousel manages to get an unlimited amount of zombies. In zombie movies, there are always tons of them and they seem to co out of nowhere. Maybe this is just how Carousel pulls off that trick.”
I wasn't sure though. If it was a glitch, what would it an?
“I'm so sorry,” Samantha said.
I turned to look at her. My heart raced just from the possible implications of what she had just said. What was she sorry about?
“I told you I would do anything to save you,” she said. She was crying. She looked terrified. “This was the only way.”
“What are you talking about?” Antoine asked.
But before she could answer I realized that sothing was different. I heard sothing in the distance and right behind at the sa ti. Breathing.
It was the axe murderer. I could hear him back in the direction that we had co from. That was the gift of having been in his presence before. I could detect him.
“Go,” she said. “Go!”
“Let’s move,” I said. I needed to be careful because one wrong word and I would be cut in half.
I ushered the others to move quickly.
“What's going on?” Dina asked.
I didn't have ti to think about an answer.
“We need to follow Silas,” I said.
Maybe it was sothing in the tone of my voice but they stopped questioning for at least that mont.
Samantha stayed behind. She turned and started walking, then running back in the direction we had co from.
Ten minutes later, the sound of the breathing had faded. I could only guess what had happened.
How many rules had she broken to help us?
User Comments
0 comments from readers