Annette makes her move

Quick and quiet - there was no room for error here.

Annette grimaced as her bare feet made unavoidable contact with the blood-covered stonework beneath her. Crouched low to avoid being spotted through the windows, she began to creep through the narrow alleyway. As much as she didn't want to look down at the dead bodies of what could be her friends beneath her, it was a requirement, lest she trip over one of them and drawing in the nearby creatures. Planting her feet in the limited space between the corpses, she noticed that a fair few of the bodies were actually of the dead. They sported graphic head wounds that despite everything, hit Annette with a strong nausea. Some had obviously been caved in with blunt objects and others had clear puncture wounds clean through the skull, leaking a dark fluid out the back that mixed with the dark red blood over the floor. Annette could practically taste the iron in the air, accented with that all-too-familiar rot.

Flies scattered each time Annette quietly hopped over a dead zombie. She'd made it about halfway through when one of the creatures, fallen onto its side under a window near where the female zombie was drawn from, tightly grabbed Annette's ankle with its remaining three fingers.

The Priestess' heart raced even faster than it already was as her eyes shot over to the undead. It stared back with one barely open eye. Jutting out of its hairless, decayed scalp was the handle of a butter knife. Despite the weakened strength of the creature, it caught her just after she had jumped over a couple of stacked bodies. Her leg wobbled and gave way as she began to fall on her side. Luckily, her panicked attempt to reach out and save herself on the opposite wall stopped her from colliding with the ground. Steadying herself with her unhindered leg, she desperately kicked out at the creature, trying to connect her heel with the end of the knife handle.

On her third attempt, she found purchase as her foot stomped it in deeper, cracking the back of its skull, splatting the wall and began filling the gutter with the jet black fluid. Although much quieter than the altercation could have been, Annette knew she had to get out of there immediately. She had no doubt that their keen sense of hearing would have caught the deathblow.

Pivoting to speed over stealth, Annette bolted through the latter half of the path, splashing through the viscera underfoot and sometimes stepping atop the bodies of fellow villagers, an act of desecration she had to stomach if she was going to avoid getting caught. She neared the end when she began to hear the zombies behind her, increasingly loud footsteps on hardwood floors carrying through the open doorways.

Turning the corner, the sounds were quickly masked by the horde of countless groaning zombies in front of her, heading away and towards the base of the torchlit statue of Erena, surrounded by crude wooden barricades. A group of yelling figures at the base of the statue swung assorted weapons down at the undead attempting to scale the makeshift fortifications.

Annette had to think quickly. The couple of zombies behind her would surely find her here, and while she was lucky to be at the backs of the zombie horde, one wayward glace from one of them would seal her fate...