Run for the keys!

Not wasting any of her remaining time, once Annette decided to escape through the back door, she sprinted towards her kitchen cabinet. Her eyes darted around to look for the familiar shape before snatching it off the hook. In making more noise, the aggressor at the door violently struck at it, shaking the frame further and breaking a hole in the wood, exposing a grey, lifeless eye that fixated on the Priestess.

Horrified, Annette turned pale and froze briefly, but was shaken back into action after the creature's frenzy resumed. Not long after turning around out of the kitchen...

*BANG* ... *CRASH*

Fragments of wood shot across the room, tearing Annette's clothes in places and scratched at her exposed skin. Instinctively from a combination of the adrenaline, fear and pain, the redhead shrieked as the attacker gained entry. Not chancing another freeze-up, the healer didn't dare look back and solely focussed on getting that door open and closing it behind her.

Footsteps thudded behind her on the hardwood floors as her shaking hand tried to put the key into the lock, adrenaline causing her to overcorrect a couple times before slotting it in and turning it to the right with such ****, that she just about bent the key in the process.

Annette wrenched the door open just wide enough for her body to slip through. She was about to slam it shut to lock the thing inside but as she turned around, she saw the half-desiccated, slimy corpse that just broke into her house directly opposite her. It snarled furiously as its clammy hands formed a vice grip on her arms, seemingly trying to wrestle her to the ground.

It roared through its sparse, yellow teeth, staining the woman's pale skin with a sickly equally-yellow spittle, along with a strong stench of ****. An errant yellow droplet landed in her mouth and burned the putrid taste into her mind, causing her to gag and spit in response. Through the scar in its cheek, she could see insects infesting the body, as little white worms crawled along the grey muscles barely supporting the thing's jaw. **** to get this disgusting monster away from her, she pushed back with all her strength, but she found herself entirely overpowered by the zombie.

Annette's back arched as she found herself nearly falling onto her back - something she knew she had to avoid at all costs. If she found herself pinned down by this thing, it could tear her apart, eat her alive or worse...

More fear created even more adrenaline. In a moment of pure panic, Annette lifted her leg before bringing her foot down forcefully onto an exposed bone inside the zombie's shin. The impact let out a sickening wet crunch as the bone fractured and the rotten flesh connected with it came loose, prompting the undead to fall onto its knee with what could only be described as a guttural, sharp, intake of breath. While it seemed immune to pain, the falling motion did remove its grip from Annette's arms.

Capitalising on the lucky strike, Annette grabbed the end of the door with both hands and slammed it shut in front of her. The wooden door caught the kneeling creature's neck as it struck it against the house. Rotten fluids splattered out between the thing's ragged clothes as the attack caused vicious damage. While such pain would incapacitate a living person, if not outright kill them, the zombie merely growled loudly in response to the woman's defiance.

Seizing the momentum, Annette attacked with the door again, powerfully trapping the creature's neck in the entryway, causing more fluids to splash out, more rotting flesh to fall off, swarms of maggots to fly off and audibly cracking more of the bones underneath. It remained motionless, the only movement being that of it's jaw hanging on loosely from one side of its skull, dripping a rotten mixture onto the floor.

A few seconds passed as she waited for a response. Suddenly, the cold grey eyes darted up to meet her emerald ones as its arm feebly tried to pull down the collar of her shirt. Its lack of strength indicated its increasing lack of motor skills.

"AAAGHH!" .. *SMASH*

Annette attacked one final time. Letting out a furious yell, she slammed the door hard enough to both shatter the glass, sending shards into her house and even managing to break one of the hinges off. The door bounced back, barely staying attached to the building, but the strike was effective, sending the zombie's severed head into her chest. Shuddering, she fell back onto the ground and tossed the head away from her, before wiping the slimy residue on her hands against the grass...

After trying to spit the lingering taste of **** from the long-since-removed yellow bead of zombie saliva from her mouth, the Priestess returned to her feet, caught her breath and staggered towards the hill to approach the village...