They won't want memories leaving this place.

@pixel_princess's words resonated in my head and made my terror counter speed up. If the Introverts had cleared out this facility, why hadn't they blown it up? Would they blow it up? Did they want us to be here? Were we part of some experiment?

None of the answers to those questions made me feel good.

We had to get out of here. I now figured it was just a matter of time before either the facility exploded or the overtaken overtook us.

I left the groaning piles of zombies behind me and made for the stairs, @auroraloon close behind. We had to step over body parts strewn about the stairwell and try not to slip on the bloodstained metal stairs as we made our ascent. Poor design, if you ask me, but I suppose it would be easy to clean.

We didn't care about stealth now, with zombies on our tail. I was grateful to be plugged in, able to see and hear properly, but I kind of wished for blissful ignorance. The zombies were close enough now that they were always in view, pressing our urgency us further.

I motioned for @auroraloon to take the lead, while I did what I could to keep zombies off of us. A few dead overtaken on the stairs? Not a problem. Just the opposite in fact. I piled them up so that the animated ones behind us would either trip or at least have to navigate around them. I took whatever debris or dead zombies I could gather and continued making an obstacle course behind us. Every so often I would have to fire a round as they gained on us, but with my obstacles and the moderate speed of our pursuers, we were getting along fine.

Then we arrived at the panel.

And because I'm the luckiest #aiways alive, it wouldn't open.

I'm actually extremely lucky, just so you know. But I make my own luck with my futurecasting and decision-making. I know that other people don't feel that way. They see me as silly and chaotic, absurd and aloof, but that's just my projection into the world. I know my shit.

@auroraloon tried the panel. She motioned to me, so I handed her my glen10 and took a stab at it myself. I kicked. I clawed. I pulled. Nothing.

@auroraloon shot out the corners, denting them nicely. The bang bang resonated through the stairwell with resounding echoes. But still the panel wouldn't budge.

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kittyboy: "We're at the panel, but it's stuck."

pixel_princess: "Fuck."

kittyboy: "Well put, and a nice rhyme."

I gave one more kick to the panel.

kittyboy: "This design is stupid. So much for an escape hatch."

pixel_princess: "Maybe they sealed it after they left."

kittyboy: "Yeah, it's looking more and more like they wanted us here. More test subjects for their little zombie_os virus."

astrowave: "Combat test. See how they do in battle against a small group."

@auroraloon tapped me on the shoulder and pointed down the stairwell.

auroraloon: "They're going to catch up. We have to scramble."

And we did.

I ran. @auroraloon spobbled (speed hobbled). We went up a half flight to the next level and took off down the hall, right into more carnage.

This level was a mess of servers, a primary data and power supply chamber. There was one thick gate that walled off the area, but it had been blown open. Beyond were server racks, extending from the floor all the way to the ceiling, like pillars, making the dark room resemble an old Earth mausoleum or tomb. So fitting. Why does everything here seem to want me to be dead?

More overtaken were scattered around the area, their crumpled zombie bodies leaning against the powerless servers, blood splashed across circuitry in a way that would make janitorial services nauseous. Just how many of these overtaken were there? I wondered.

And I could hear movement.

We just really couldn't catch a break. @auroraloon knew it too.

auroraloon: "We're going to be surrounded."

pixel_princess: "We have your location. We'll come to you."

kittyboy: "You sure? Last I remember, you were stuck too."

pixel_princess: "One final push."

kittyboy: "Copy that. One last stand."

"Get ready," I said aloud to @auroraloon, but she was already ahead of me, arranging bodies as best she could to plug the opening where the gate had been blown open. I joined in to help. She handed me my gun back, and I holstered it to grab more corpses for the barricade.

"Good idea," I said, tossing another body on the pile and checking our surroundings. "If we can keep them on the other side, we'll just need to clear out however many are in here."

"I don't think there's many," @auroraloon said optimistically, catching her breath for a moment as she dragged a skinny man's body, one of his arms connected only by tendrils, over to the growing mound. "This looks like it was quite the battle."

"I can lift the bodies, you know," I said, watching @auroraloon struggle to hoist the skinny man higher onto the top.

"So can I," she said. For the love of @3Beak was she stubborn.

"You haul. I stack. Deal?"

And so it was that when the overtaken came at us, we had our own little fortress of the dead to keep them at bay.

I felt like we needed a catch phrase to commemorate the moment. My mind was blank, so I unholstered my gun, raised it high in our mausoleum of servers, and shouted the first thing that came to mind.

"Bananas!"