Young Writers Society

Amoku harrumphed, glaring at Deadness and Darkness.

"I don't care if it's boring for you, but it's certainly not boring for me, so why don't you poof me out?" Amoku growls, crossing his arms.

Ace, suddenly seeming to realize that a very good point had just been made, frowned in agreement. "I also want to be sent out of this."

Now it was Rose's turn to give her classmate and friend a look.

"Ace," she pointed out, "if we go home now, we'll still look like zombies. You know Grim would try setting us on fire. Deuce would drop a cauldron on you. And if Jack walked in..."

Ace shuddered.

"On second thought," he relented, "I agree with the Prefect and the other two. We should find who brought us here."

Sugar shrugged. It was hard to understand why everyone wanted to go home so badly. There was nothing more fascinating than this place!

"Can we explore now please?" Sugar asked, remembering only briefly the manners Moss had taught them.

The group did as Sugar requested. One short walk later, they had arrived at the unlocked doors of New York City's public library. They had passed a few zombies on the other side of the street, but none of the zombies had reacted to them.

Rose wasn't sure if she was supposed to take comfort in that or not.

But now they were in a library, and even though Rose had never been to this one before, it felt like home. When she opened the door and saw the mostly untouched bookshelves, she felt a wave of relief wash over her. Even in a zombie apocalypse, there were some places people didn't go.

Two very short green men rolled violently down the library stairs together, pulling hair, and kicking blindly. They both sported wings, because they were fairies, and suspect tastes in fashion, for reasons that cannot be explained by nature as easily.

"GET IN THE JUSTICEMOBILE, FELICI!" shouted the fairy in the hot pink arcade-carpet shirt.

"GET A JOB!" retorted the fairy with the crop top and glitter crocs.

CRAK. They smacked loudly into the bottom of the stairs, home to a plywood statue of Clifford the Big Red Dog. It appeared they had found the children's section.

Brian darted, seized a statue of Paddington Bear, and proceeded to beat his nemesis with it.

"My job, is catching you, doofus- ow!"

Felici stomped on Brian's foot, and countered by swinging a beanbag into his midsection. The beanbag was bigger than both of them.

"Then get better at it, coconut!"

They were both very much in the spirit of this juvenile battle, but strangely enough only Brian seemed to be mad. Felici grinned like a hyena on helium. He had done that since the day he was born, of course, but this really was a fun morning.

It was not long before both of them lay buried in a pile of beanbags, wheezing.


"I'm going to give you the butt-kicking of several lifetimes when I get out of this, you know," whined Brian, too tired to get up.

"Back at you, ugly," yawned Felici, too lazy.

Eventually, Felici's scandalous eyes wandered upon a group of zombies who had just came in, helmed by a brunette in a school uniform.

"Oh hi, I was just thinking about you," he said to the stranger girl.

Rose opened her mouth to speak, but Ace beat her to it.

"She's gay," Ace said out-of-habit. Deuce and him had been doing that a lot lately—not everyone at NRC had figured out Rose was a girl, but some of the ones who had unsurprisingly tried flirting with the only girl on campus.

Sugar skipped in after the hoard, as cheerful as Raziel had ever seen anyone with half their ribcage exposed. She suspected that, of the assembled group, Sugar was the least likely to have ever been anything even approximately human.

The scene they entered into was not what Raziel had expected. She listened to the exchange, keeping an eye on Sugar as they wandered off into the library, hardly even glancing at the unusual scene as they marveled at the books as though they were the most fascinating things they'd ever seen.

Harry and Jason were among the last to enter the library.

Harry took a look around at the shelves, carefully glancing around for a section that could be of some use. It did look rather underwhelming for a library, but then it was an Earth, and an Earth in the middle of an apocalypse no less so that was probably to be expected.

Jason meanwhile, was busy looking at two others that had been rolling down the stairs as they'd made their way in. They didn't look to be humans at first glance, but not necessarily anything special either. After a quick mental debate, he decided that it would be less headache inducing to focus on the books inside the library first. He joined Harry in scanning the shelves for something helpful.