Lying on the floor in the middle of the hallway was a severed arm and a trail of blood leading down the hallway all the way back to the next corner. James shivered. The blood trail was from the opposite direction to where Jack and Mindy had gone, so that meant this was the arm of another.

Fewer people were spared.

James scanned his eyes left and right, and seeing no source of danger, glanced back at the group.

"Which way do we want to go? We can go left and leave through the main entrance or right and take the back door." Writing guy, still clutching his notepad, looked at it and made a decision.

"Let’s go right. If we want to get out faster, its closer, and we can stop at the workshops and science labs to make some better weapons."

Frustrated that he hadn’t thought of that, James led the group, stepping softly and cautiously down the hall, away from the arm and the blood trail. When he reached the next classroom, James hesitated. While there might be something in the room, waiting for someone to pass, he might see something unsavoury if he looked in the window.

Deciding the potential for danger was more important than his lunch, he peered through the small window in the door. The room was darker, all the blinds were down. It was still light enough though, that James could still see vague shapes of chairs. Something moved near the back of the room, and James locked on to it. The movement was too low to the ground and too slow and lazy for the situation.

Feeling a pit of fear open in his gut, James looked back at the line of people behind him, and made a motion across his throat with his free hand, indicating death. Half of the group nodded, but everyone seemed to understand and crouched under the window while passing, making as little noise as possible.

They followed this method past the next two classrooms, James cursing at the college building for being so large. Most of the classes were empty, with a few bags left behind. Some were dark and had shifting movement in. The last classroom though. The door was barely in one piece, with most of it hanging from the top hinge. The room inside was a slaughterhouse. James did his best not to react badly, so he bit his tongue and turned to the others. Thankfully, they had not seen into the room, but his reaction had unnerved them enough that they were morbidly curious. Callum moved to go past him, but James held him back and solemnly shook his head. This seemed enough.

"Is it really that bad?" Callum whispered. James nodded again and motioned that they should all shut their eyes and grab the person in front of them. Shuffling along so they wouldn't walk into anything, what they were doing might have seemed comical at any other time, if they were not walking past a literal room of horror.

What James had seen was his first real shock since the world changed. The inside of what he would later refer to as the Blood Room was filled with corpses. The first sign of teachers he saw was in this room, as it seemed every one of them was gored and torn apart before being haphazardly piled in the centre of the class.

Whatever they were dealing with, it had the common sense to target the older, more experienced, and potentially stronger people before they got their bearings in the game.

The warm, coppery scent of blood seemed to stalk them past the broken doorway, and Dana was unable to bear it after a time. She opened her eyes, deliberately averting them away from the scene, and lunged forwards, grabbing James around the waist with both arms. James was just about to berate her for almost hitting him with her club before he noticed she was sobbing silently into his back. Really, he had to admire her for staying strong so far.

Dana was far from an outdoors person, in the way that she had lived a rather pampered life. James supposed he was one of the few things that she could count on to stay solid, so he resolved himself to be there for her more.

The others all looked mildly concerned with Dana’s reaction to the room, with the exception of Annie of course. James had to take a more affirmative action, so he turned and put his hands on Dana’s shoulders. She looked up, but he had to take care of something first. Looking at their scribe, James gave an order.

"You need to lead for a while. We're almost at the workshops anyway, so you should be fine. Just watch out for..."

James nodded behind him, referring back to the blood room. The Scribe nodded, and walked in front of James, taking the lead. James looked down at Dana and whispered to her.

"I’ll carry you the rest of the way. It'll be fun. Besides, you don’t look completely used to your new body and it must have been tiring." Dana sniffed once and nodded with tear-filled eyes, her makeup slightly smudged.

James took her club out of her hand and put both it and his on the ground. He kissed her lightly on the forehead, the turned and lifted her onto his back. Luckily; he had a shoulder bag, else this would have been much more awkward and far less pleasant. As he crouched to pick up both their clubs in one hand, the other holding Dana up, he marvelled at how light she was, and how soft her thigh felt. He once again felt a shiver of excitement as her large chest pushed against his back, but had to remind himself once again; this was hardly the time or place.

They continued on for another 10 minutes. Progress was slower, as Scribe was much less confident in checking the classrooms. Eerily, they never saw any sign of another living person. There were two more classrooms filled with similar remains. The first was filled with a great number of second years. James steered well clear of this room, as he knew he would have been able to identify almost every person in there. He could handle the sight of a great many dead teachers, barely, but he certainly couldn’t see all of his friends, dead. The second was filled with first years. James remained nonchalant about this room. Though it was, of course, awful that so many teenagers had died, and young ones at that, James would have barely recognized any of them, if he had stopped to look for more than a second.

What really puzzled him, though, was how this had all happened in the last 30 minutes, and they hadn’t heard a thing.

"We're here." Relief was obvious in the Scribe's voice. The trek had honestly been stressful for all of them, but to lead it - even for a while - was a step beyond.

The chemistry labs looked no different to usual. The door was locked, and the lights were off.

"Callum.", motioned the Scribe, and after a moment of hesitation, Callum caught on, and after taking a few steps back, forced the lock with surprising ease. Callum himself was left unprepared for the ease of entry, as the momentum he had just built up had nowhere to go, leaving him to promptly acquaint the ground with his face.

The rest of the group stepped over or around the lightly groaning Callum to get into the room. Unsure of what they were even here for, James stayed silent, and lowered the still morose Dana off his back... instantly missing a certain pair of pressures. May, surprisingly, spoke first.

"Well, I wanted to come here first. I think I can make us something deadlier and much fiercer than these pieces of scrap."

James' knowledge of chemistry was almost completely theoretical and had little experience with actual chemicals. He was still dubious though.

"Really? I mean, this is an educational lab, can you actually make something more dangerous than acid?"

May stepped forwards, cracking her fingers, and standing with a confidence quite unlike her usual self.

"No problem.”