Your story

Taking a deep breath, you decide that telling them the truth cant really hurt anything.

"I'd heard the rumors like everyone else, but I really didn't think it would ever affect me," You start, "My boyfriend and a group of my friends decided to spend the weekend up in the mountains," Your memory goes back to what happened, a sense of sadness coming over you, "One of the Infected came out of nowhere, tackling my friend Jenny. My boyfriend and Mike pulled it off, but it just grabbed hold of Mike and dragged him down instead."

You look up, meeting the gaze of these two strangers who helped you, "My boyfriend yelled for the rest of us to run. Somehow, we lost Emily on the way back to the cabin, we never saw her again." You find yourself fighting back tears, "There were nine of us, huddled in that cabin, trying to figure out what to do. We were terrified, and the longer that we waited for the rest of our group to come back to the cabin, the more tense things seemed to become."

You take a long sip of the hot chocolate, trying to gather your thoughts. When you set it back down, you can feel a tear trace down the side of your nose, "The next morning, when we looked outside, we saw three of them around the cabin." You take another sip of hot chocolate, "We didn't know what to do," Your blurt the next words as you break down and start to cry, "One of them was Jenny."

"Its ok," Lance says softly, "In your own time," As he speaks, Rei gets up from her chair, stepping to your side and putting her arms around you.

Slowly, you get your tears back under control, "Most of Jenny's facial features were the same, and she was wearing the dangly heart earrings she loved so much, if it wasn't for that, we'd have never known it was her."

Your eyes well with tears again, "They hadn't seen us at that point, and we just didn't know any better," You fight down the urge to break down again, taking a deep, calming breath, "We wanted to help, so we tried to lure her into the house so we could lock her in a room or something until someone could find a cure. But she was so fucking fast, and the other ones saw us too."

The words start coming on their own now, "They were on us before we even knew our plan had gone all to shit. Brandi and Kevin went down first, the third one was in the midst of us, and everyone was running and screaming. Somehow Brandon and me locked ourselves into the bathroom."

"Someone tried knocking on the bathroom door, trying to get in, but we were too scared to open it." Your eyes take on an even more haunted look than they had before, "We listened to her get **** by one of those things just outside the bathroom door." You shudder visibly.

I dont know how long we huddled in that bathroom, but it was at least a full day before we were brave enough to open the door. The place was trashed, so we gathered anything we thought would be useful and left."

You take another long drink of the hot chocolate, realizing that the cup is almost empty now, "Brandon did almost all of the scavenging while I stayed in the new cabin we had found. He always came back within a day, two at most, but this time, he said he would be back within a few hours since he was just heading to a nearby cabin. I was nearly out of food. So I left." You look down at the cup in your hands, as if the dregs of the hot chocolate might hold the answers you seek, "We had been talking about heading up the mountain to the Lodge. So I decided to head that way, hoping to find Brandon there."

Rei and Lance exchange a look, Lance finally speaks up, "The Lodge is dangerous, we've looted it as best we could, but the place is infested with those things. So we mostly stear clear of the area."