Katie and Sarah led Michael through the locker rooms. It felt eerie to him, the tiled room devoid of the shouts of kids, and the smell of chlorine and body odour that had been so prevalent in the pool next to it.

It wasn't just the empty school that felt strange though, everything about this was surreal.

Katie had changed since the display of his magical arm, seeming a little less skittish than she'd been. And she had definitely taken the lead over Sarah, which Michael had to admit was strange. It seemed that Katie had taken control, which was good. It was better to deal with someone that wanted to talk rather than hit him.

"So," he asked as he followed them through a set of fire doors, which lead into a long hallway that had once held trophies in glass cabinets. Michael had a flash back to years ago when he was a child, given the tour by his new school mates on the first day he'd come to the school, how proud they were of their swimming and athletics records, of how many regional awards their teams had won. They were smashed now. It looked like a lifetime of victories was now nothing but shattered dreams and broken hopes.

"I've already worked out that you're Sarah," he said, gesturing to the still-unimpressed and cold blonde, "And you're Katie." This time, he gestured to the curvaceous brunette, who flashed him an anxious, and awkward, but still quite friendly, smile.

"I don't suppose either of you are going to tell me who we're going to meet next?" He said, trying to pry information from them. He wondered why he hadn't thought to do this earlier.

"She's the third person in our group. She's called Lucy." said Sarah.

"And?" he replied. He waited, but it didn't look like there would be more information coming his way.

Sarah shrugged at him. "What? It's not like I have her fucking CV printed off for you to read."

They walked on in silence after that. The hall was quite a long stretch of concrete with windows looking over a playing field. The place had that sort of dusty and derelict quality to it that many places had in the post-apocalyptic landscape he'd found himself in.

As they walked through the door at the other end, they turned into another long hall with a staircase at the end and a sign reading, "LIBRARY." Michael figured this was probably the best place to hole up if you were using the school as a home; it would be well out of the way and if they kept the door at the other end shut then they could have barricaded themselves into it and made a pretty good stronghold.

As he came up the stairs behind Katie and Sarah, he felt his heartbeat pick up. On the one hand, he found himself both terrified at the new world he found himself in and these girls, in turn, terrifying as well. Sarah had already tried to rearrange his skull with a bat once, and while Katie seemed nicer, he knew he shouldn't trust her either. Meeting their other friend, or acquaintance, or whatever you'd call her probably wasn't going to go any better than this.

On the other hand, watching as the two girls walked in front of him, he found himself a bit less concerned with that. Despite both the girls wearing baggy, black clothes that looked like they should be doing some special ops mission, he had to stop staring at the pair of them every time he caught himself doing so.

They had different body types entirely; Katie was the shorter of the two and she had quite a nice behind that seemed to strain her baggy pants, her curvy figure filling her clothes quite nicely, with large, soft breasts and wide hips, the kind that Michael imagined she probably spent most of her life being uncomfortable with because they always seemed to draw too much attention.

Sarah, by contrast, was taller than the two of them. She looked athletic and her ass wasn't quite as impressive, though still looked fantastic, her athletic frame fitting the pants much more, as well as her top. But what really stood out to him were her eyes and face. The sharp, angry eyes seemed to suit her somehow and she had the type of expression that, even though it looked a bit harsh and grumpy, he could still see her smiling at some joke. It seemed to fit her personality well, though he could have just been reading her wrong.

It wasn't that Katie's face and Sarah's didn't look nice. It was more that the girls seemed like polar opposites, both of whom he found quite attractive. If only they didn't seem like they wanted to kill him, maybe they would have been even nicer to look at.

The girls reached the library doors before Michael had a chance to think of what to do next. He scolded himself for daydreaming about the beauties in front of him instead of thinking about what to say or how to escape.

There was another set of double doors at the entrance to the library and Sarah, looking back to Michael as if to check that he hadn't tried anything funny, knocked three times.

They waited. After a moment, they heard a muffled voice call out, "Who's that?".

"It's us." called out Sarah.

There was a slight pause. The library was lit by two fluorescent bulbs in the ceiling and they cast a faint, green glow. The bulbs made the light look a sickly pale, and he found himself looking at his hand to make sure that he wasn't turning some strange, neon-green colour.

The doors opened a moment later and another woman appeared. Michael looked at her in awe, unable to take his eyes from her. Fiery red hair, cut to her shoulder, deep, dark green eyes and freckles across her cheeks that gave her an adorable look, especially with the smile that was creeping onto her lips, showing the merest hint of perfect, pearly teeth. He tried not to look at her like a complete weirdo but found it almost impossible not to.

"Who is this?" the redhead, Lucy, Michael presumed, asked in a somewhat guarded tone.

Sarah shrugged.

"I think he has a clue to what's going on here," said Katie, giving her a serious look and motioning to her. Lucy raised an eyebrow at Katie as she moved to her friend's ear and started whispering. Michael tried to listen in, but their hushed voices didn't travel well.

He watched Lucy's face as they spoke. He figured that Lucy must be the de-facto leader, and he thought to himself that he should find out why. As the brunette and the redhead talked in hushed tones, Sarah turned around and leaned on a nearby bookshelf, her back turned away from Michael as though she was making sure he wasn't going to escape. She kept looking over to him, though. Michael was certain that he wasn't getting out of here any time soon. Sarah wouldn't have that.

He tried to gauge how much danger he was in.

Michael hadn't been around them very long but the first two girls had already made quite an impression on him. The three women seemed very different from each other.

Sarah, for her part, had tried to rearrange his face with a bat when they met and had a temper like nothing Michael had seen in his life.

Katie seemed nicer than the other two girls and had tried to calm down her friend. He figured that maybe she would be the most reasonable out of the group to speak to, and would be more receptive to anything he had to say.

This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

The third, who he presumed to be Lucy, had just looked him up and down with those beautiful green eyes, which made it very difficult for Michael to look back into.

She had a more intelligent look in her eye, one that made her look a little more distant and contemplative than Katie. Sarah had looked him over in an entirely different way to either Katie or Lucy.

Michael sighed. For now, he'd have to roll with the punches, he guessed. Part of him hoped that they'd say it was dangerous to have a guy with them and then they'd just let him go. But he doubted it; they seemed very curious, especially Katie, and it was clear to Michael that the girls were looking for answers. Answers which Michael hoped he might be able to provide, so maybe he wasn't getting beaten up or worst, just yet. Hopefully. If he could just stay alive and make them trust him enough not to try and hit him again...

His thoughts were broken up when the conversation finished. He turned back to Lucy, trying to figure out how much of what the brunette said to Lucy had to do with him.

"Hey there." Lucy said to Michael, extending a hand.

He took it. "Hi."

"Sarah, Katie and I were looking around for some more survivors. I guess we found you."

Michael smiled a little, though his cheeks hurt as the cut that had been healing broke again. Lucy didn't smile. Her hand was very firm and she gave him a shake, as though she was appraising him.

"Come in," the red head said, her tone was pleasant but it had an undertone that made him worry that something wasn't right, something she had noticed about him or had heard about him from Sarah. "Make yourself comfortable." Lucy turned to Sarah, who looked at him for a moment longer before going over and sitting in a chair in the far corner, away from the rest of the group.

The library was different to how it'd been when he was a student, and he saw immediately why the girls had chosen it; it now had comfortable sofas, chairs, and beanbags everywhere. There were still lots of shelves full of books. Michael knew from the years he had spent coming in and out of here when he had attended that they had spent some money recently and it looked a lot more homely and less clinical.

Katie went over and sat next to her on a chair opposite, not taking her eyes from him either. Michael was struck with the sudden, almost absurd, image of three lionesses stalking a deer. The thought of him being some sort of helpless deer made him feel silly and stupid. But, he realised with a shock, he probably was.

He sat down on one of the sofas. Lucy sat on the edge of another sofa nearby. He watched her carefully, seeing that there was something going on in the back of her mind.

Lucy, Sarah and Katie. Michael felt a little bit uncomfortable now that they were all looking at him like he was something strange that had washed up on shore, like they didn't trust him.

"So..." she began.

Michael thought for a second that she looked familiar somehow but he didn't quite place her, like someone he'd once known. That was unlikely the case; he was nearing thirty, and these girls looked in all likelihood to be in their early twenties. And, Michael thought suspiciously, all conspicuously attractive. Not wanting to give in to base urges, he pushed the thought out of his mind. But it was something suspicious.

The redhead continued, "How do you feel, after all this madness? What do you remember of the last few days?" Her voice had the edge of concern that you would have when talking to a family friend that you knew was suffering, but not from someone you didn't know. She was clearly curious, though. The three girls seemed to have this unspoken rule that Lucy would ask questions, and she'd do it with the tact and subtlety that Katie had been unable to.

Michael cleared his throat, then said, "Well, it's been pretty rough."

"Yeah?" asked the red-haired woman.

"I've had my head beat in with a bat, for one."

He shot a look to Sarah who glowered back.

The red head's lips pulled up slightly, almost into a smile, but it quickly disappeared, her expression hardening. She leaned in closer to him.

"You saw it all, then?"

"What do you mean?"

"The... everything." she gestured in front of her with both hands.

"Yeah," said Michael. "The sky tearing and monsters pouring through, you mean?" He wasn't quite sure why she had asked that, since something had gone awry; if this was a global event, there must be millions, if not billions of people missing. It's not like he couldn't have noticed. But then, he thought to himself. "Well, actually... I'm not sure."

The blonde in the corner of the library rolled her eyes.

"I was approached by a woman who looked like some gothic death goddess. But then I lost consciousness. I woke up and the world was like this..." he gestured, mirroring the redheads movements from when she was speaking. He was trying to build rapport. "So, I think I missed a lot. Like, most of the world going missing. Do you guys know what happened?"

"I wish," muttered the blonde, still staring daggers.

Katie spoke, her face still with an air of disbelief on it. "The whole world fell apart in the blink of an eye."

"It's hard to describe. I've been thinking about what we saw, about how it all happened and, I just... I don't think I've been thinking about anything else since. The only reason any of us is here, and alive, is that Sarah got us out of our dorm when it started." The red haired woman nodded at Sarah, and the blonde's face broke into a smile that she shared with Lucy for a brief second. He thought it might be pride.

"The three of you are university students?" asked Michael. They looked to him like they could have been. All were about twenty years old and Lucy and Katie looked like the kind of people he would expect to find on campus. He wasn't too sure about Sarah, who didn't look the bookish type.

"Yup, we're flatmates. Waterside Campus, you know it?"

"I do," Michael said, "But that's twenty miles away... how did you get here and why?"

Sarah shot a look at Lucy as if to say, "Don't tell this guy anything."

"We had to walk, as you probably know the roads were blocked by all sorts of chaos." said the redhead, as if trying to talk through the answer without letting Michael in on too much information.

"What about your families?"

Sarah cut in. "Lucy, is this guy interrogating you? Or are you asking him the questions here?"

"Look, Sarah. You and I both know he has answers. Answers to what's happened and what's going on here," Lucy replied, staring the blonde down. Katie looked over with an expression on her face that seemed to say "Really? Are we having this conversation now?" before turning away.

"I'm sorry to disappoint," said Michael, "But I really don't have many answers." He tried not to show how anxious he felt as he looked between them all.

Sarah got up and stormed out. Michael thought he saw a flicker of rage cross the blond's features as she got up.

"Excuse her, Michael. Sarah is, well..." Katie started.

"She has some trust issues." finished Lucy, as they all looked after her as she stormed off into one of the other library rooms. The red head sighed and gave Katie an apologetic look, who simply shrugged.

Lucy continued, "I'm from up North and Katie's from near London. Sarah said we could come to this little town because it's where her Mom and her boyfriend live. She figured that a small town would be safer than the city filled with monsters, and, well, guys..."

"Uh, ok..." said Michael, reading the room and not really wanting to know Sarah's baggage anyway. "So you came to hers - but you're not staying there, you're staying here, at the school?"

"That's right. Bit of a long story, but after Sarah's Mom's house was less of an option than we thought," the redhead babbled, "we came here because we knew there'd probably be food and supplies."

"Smart," Michael said.

"And then," Katie piped in, her voice quiet but intense, "we went on a scouting mission for more supplies. Found a man that lived down the road and we took him in." Katie looked a bit distant at the mention of the man they'd rescued.

Lucy shot her an angry glance. She seemed pissed at Katie, and it was clear why; Katie had said too much, which seemed to be a recurring issue with her, if her earlier admission about Sarah's change was anything to go by. She'd let Michael know about their man in their midst and it seemed to bother her a lot more than Katie that Michael might be a threat.

"Let's go meet him then." he said. Lucy shot him a sharp look that made him realise he shouldn't have pushed his luck like that. But he couldn't take the words back now, they hung there, making him seem far too curious to know who else they were travelling with. But, after all, he'd already admitted to going around houses looting. And he was trapped in a room with them.

"No, that's not going to happen for, well, reasons. And let's just say that's why we're being very cautious with you too."

Michael didn't like the look on the girls' faces. Not one bit.

"What happened to the man you found?" Michael asked, not able to hide the worry that crept into his voice. His hand instinctively felt the back of his head, where he had taken Sarah's bat.

The two remaining girls in the room looked at each other, communicating silently.

Katie, eventually, answered the question, but looked like she was having difficulty with it.

"He..." Katie started. She looked at her feet, seeming a little sheepish, before realising she couldn't continue.

Lucy took over, saying, "He saw three young women and thought he could do whatever he wanted."

In the dramatic pause, Michael imagined what must have happened, but desperately wanted details.

The redhead finished her pause with, "He was very wrong about that."