Now head down she sighed and decided to calm down as she usually did.
All will be made in due time.
Putting everything aside, her body, her whole skin had turned sickly pale with bruises here and there. Her legs were dirty, her trousers torn apart as her shirt but she still had her boots. She checked her heart and as she thought, it wasn't beating anymore.
-Sighs-
'Did I arrive here by myself? Seems like it.' She guessed as unlikely as it could be that: she joined a horde and started to wander around the city, then she walked at least 20 km to arrive at the Zola Station, wandered nicely into the building until she reached the elevator, activated it, walked another 10 km... and reached the last floor of the Pantheon Library...
"Impossible." With this chain of events, there was only one reason for it: people. As the good walker that she was, she must have chased one group or multiple groups of people in succession until she reached this place.
Finally, the last group must have set a trap here to get rid of her horde in one fell swoop with explosives. If she were to dig a little more, it was most likely that she'd find a bunch of smashed undead.
She hoped to not have done what walkers normally did but the weird taste in her mouth never stopped to bother her.
She did it.
But she didn't even remember to whom she did it. But albeit feeling guilty she could only throw it in the back of her head. It wasn't 'really' her who did it and she had no memory of it anyway.
In her walk around the floor, she saw the path of destruction made by the horde before their destruction. All these books had plenty of useful information yet no one but me can read them now... if I'm indeed alone. If some people destroyed such a big horde then it must be a well-coordinated group with experience to boot. If they happened to see her walking like that as if she owned the place they would dispatch her as easy as a pie.
Forget about negotiations, bullets didn't speak and the motto when seeing undeads was 'kill on sight'. Moreover, she was alone without a horde to hide inside and she didn't even know if she would still be considered part of them after her evolution to the boot.
'I can dupe real people ifI disguise well enough but...' She had an obvious bar impaling her. If it wasn't a give away then what was.
But blood wasn't what maintained her alive anymore it was her core therefore she could remove it without any worries.
With few worrisome noises, she gripped the bar and pulled it out of her. Covered with blood, the bar was finally out and she tried her best to not puke. The sensation was too foreign for her.
'Well at least, I have a weapon.'
Left and right, she looked around the floor if something worthy was there but it was nothing but spot clean. Too clean even. A group must already have swept this floor to the tiniest corner.
Another reason to quickly go out. Unfortunately, there were no windows here to inspect the situation. She looked at the exit with its doors destroyed and thought more of her situation while walking.
'I need to disguise myself but also mend my right arm.'
'It's better to follow this path than to continue elsewhere. People are more likely to attack me than undead as of now.' Moreover, she believed, wanted to believe, that she would still be considered normal for the deads.
By following the path let by them the risk of meeting people would be reduced. She had already spotted an exit cleaner than the others, seemingly often used and not meant for someone like 'her'.
Like this, she crossed the broken doors and went inside the corridor, weapon on the ready. Traces of dried blood painted the wall of the corridors. They only let cracked blood on her fingers.
She couldn't estimate how long she fainted in the wreckage but now she could guess that at least 24 hours have passed.
The fact that the further she went into the corridor the darker it became threw her off. Although she wanted to put on a big front she was scared deep inside. In her mind she was killed not even 20 minutes ago, then she woke up to realize that she turned into an undead.
It was at this moment when she was trying to bury her fear that noise reached her. A rattling noise. One akin to something trying to force its way. Stopping dead in her track she tried to look past the dark veil of the corridor. What if the zombies attacked her? She shouldn't have been afraid of them as she killed many of them before. But she wasn't in the right state of mind to understand it clearly. Her feet didn't want to move an inch more.
Undead were scared of undeads because they were the more numerous of the monster bunch.
Memories of how she ran for 1 hour straight in the school ground with no one to help was carved in her mind. How helpless she was. It was an unease seemingly carved into her soul. Maybe it was her newly awakened core warning her more than her instinct.
"I-I can't do this... I can't." Between the dark corridor with unknown danger and the light-filled library behind, the choice was clear as day. In less than a minute she was back in the hall but her feeling of distress took more time to settle down.
Maybe her core saved her but maybe her death had affected her more she thought. After that, she looked for one of the other exits although she wasn't sure at their end she'd bump into people.
There was one she saw behind fallen shelves. It seemed that people had tried to barricade it from her side, with no success. Another proof that people were here. But this exit was blocked because of the shelves as the five previous ones.
And as she was asking what her next would be a thunderous roar shook her to her core.
ROAAAAR!
In an instant, she turned into the direction of the zombie passageway and understood. A stronger beast had appeared. Most likely following the trail of the zombies. Of course, because where there are zombies there are human to eat.
'Fuck!' She turned back to the exit she just discarded and threw the pile of books and broken shelves in her way.
ROAAAAR!
'Faster! Faster!!' Not caring in the least about her broken arm she threw herself in the small opening she made and crawled through the wreckage. Through the shelves, through the books, through the gap doors. She didn't care about the state of her body and when the second her feet disappeared into the gap, a frightening boom made her shiver.
The beast had dashed through few shelves in its run and seemingly afterwards several bangs of destruction echoed in the library hall behind her.
She didn't dare look through the gap to inspect the situation. With their uncanny senses how many people died because of carelessness. Therefore she decided to stop her advance unless she wanted to reenact the cliché scene of "the idiot stepping on a branch".
Mayhem was happening behind, no, a nightmare. What she had heard in the corridor simply a rattling. Whatever it was, its incessant noise attracted unwanted attention.
Even from here shards successfully went past the door gap and landed on her back.
'Just continue on your way and let me go. Please!' How come that monster appeared the moment I woke up. Should I laugh or cry? Were it not for her proximity to the exit then one minute sooner or later then she would have been mauled to death.
Following one minute of pure hell, a deafening boom echoed. The beast had found the trail of human and bashed toward an exit. It didn't take long for it to destroy it and continue its hunt in the corridor. In the pile of remains, she wished good luck toward those poor souls that didn't know what was coming their way.
Now looking back to the hall only a faint light went through the door and the doors were now totally blocked.
'Aah... I can only go forward now.'