Tony kept his eyes on Donna: she was trying to stand up, but it looked like she was re-learning to use her muscles. With much difficulty, she managed to get on all fours.

He moved closer to Betty, glancing at the door: "Betty, do you have the door keys?"

"What is going on?" the blonde demanded almost rhetorically, snatching up her bag at the dumbfounding sight of the woman who only moments before had been declared dead.  Her pretty face creased in a grimace of a wariness as she searched for the key in her bag, glancing from it to the scene before her and back again.

OOC I will have her expend a luck point.

Anton smiled as Betty fished the keys out of her bag. "Great! Then all we have to do is..." He looked at Donna, who was now standing up and apparently had remembered how her body worked: "Get past her."

The-thing-that-used-to-be-Donna moved a first- staggering step toward them.

Betty slung her bag over her shoulder regarding Donna with wariness.  Then glancing about in thought she took a step back to the corner where some of the karate class's weapons leaned.  "Here, take one of these," she offered tossing one of the staves in the doctor's direction before taking one herself...

Anton grabbed the staff Betty had tossed to him. Though not exceedingly skilled at it as he was in general martial arts, he still felt he was much better off keeping the-thing-that-used-to-be-Donna at bay with a long piece of wood rather than his own hands.

"Thanks! Go for the door, I'll keep it busy. It should be slow but you never know... Be ready to lock the door it when I get there."

Gripping the staff with one hand Betty gripped the keys with the other before making a dash towards the door, wary of what Donna had become and the danger she posed.

Donna turned to look at Betty, and for a moment seemed to lunge at her... But she got hit in the head by Anton's staff: "Focus, will you? You are supposed to be attacking me..."

It worked. Perhaps even a bit too well: the creature stepped forward, cutting Tony's escape route, and tried to grab him.

Betty dashed for the door, holding it open and shouting for Tony to hit her and run.  Her green eyes watched in a mixture of desperation and fear at what was impossible but happening anyway.
This message was last edited by the player at 00:55, Wed 15 Apr 2009.

Tony followed Betty's suggestion, hitting Zombie!Donna with the staff straight in the solar plexus.

Unfortunately, zombies do not need to breathe, don't feel plain, and have no automatic reflexes. When a 140-pound guy tries to push a 200-something-pound walking corpse out of the way with a stick, the results are... Shall we say suboptimal?

As Tony stared at it in a perfect "oh crap!" moment, Zombie!Donna lashed out at his face, missing it, but managed to grab hold of his arm.

"Tony!"  Betty cried out in alarm as she saw her friend seized in the raptor-like grip of her former student!  "Let him go!" she cried, seeing the back of Donna's head perfectly vulnerable and as big as a basket ball to hit.  She swung at her target with the length of staff.

OOC:
15:48, Today: Betty Pemberton rolled 20 using 4d8. damage.
15:46, Today: Betty Pemberton rolled 9 using the Unisystem system (1d10+2) with rolls of 7. hit her in the head with the stick

Despite a loud CRACK, the blow didn't seem to have much of an effect on the creature.

It wasn't very strong, but it was pretty much unrelenting; at that range, and with only one free arm, Tony's staff wasn't that useful either. "The back, hit it in the back."

Betty felt the force of the blow through the shaft of the staff and hesitated only a moment before changing her strategy, if she couldn't stop her with such a hard blow to the head, then she would stop her from being able to move.  Swingign the staff around in a technique she had practiced many tiems before she swung for the side of Donna's knee, it would not take much to break it and that woudl send her ot the floor...

16:44, Today: Betty Pemberton rolled 16 using the Unisystem system (1d10+5) with rolls of 10, 6. hitting her in the side of the knee .
This message was last edited by the player at 21:02, Sat 18 Apr 2009.

Betty delivered a very precise and effective blow to the creature's knee. The result was, in some way, magnificent, like seeing an ancient tree topple.

However, the zombie's grip didn't loosen: when its knee gave, the creature fell sideways, dragging Tony down.

He landed on top of the dead body, and the staff slipped from his grasp. He quickly recovered from the fall, narrowly avoiding another bite, but then the creature grabbed him by the neck with the other hand and started to choke him.

With one of the creature's hands around his wrist, and the other around his neck,  it was all Anton could do to use the free arm to avoid being pulled in for a quick snack.
This message was last edited by the player at 19:28, Mon 20 Apr 2009.

Betty watched her work send Donna to the floor but was stunned that she only snarled and began to chock Tony.  "I said let him go you bitch!" Betty screached swinging the staff again, this time on Donna's arm, with a viciousness that would have suprised her in any other circumstance.
This message was last edited by the GM at 07:49, Thu 23 Apr 2009.

The staff hit with excellent precision, and with a loud CRACK the arm gave way. On the flip side, Tony's neck was now sporting a brand new set of bruises and scratches.

Half-choked and battered, Tony still managed to pin the zombie's broken arm to the floor with his free hand. He tried to speak, but the effort only managed to make him cough.

Betty's face scrunched up in disgust at the sight but her moment of observation only lasted a split second before she swung at Donna's head again with the staff, hoping to end this quickly.

OOC15:31, Today: Betty Pemberton rolled 10 using the Unisystem system (1d10+5) with rolls of 5. attack 2.
15:31, Today: Betty Pemberton rolled 11 using the Unisystem system (1d10+5) with rolls of 6. attack.
This message was last edited by the player at 19:31, Sat 25 Apr 2009.

***CRACK!!!*** ***CRACK!!!*** The zombie was not looking any prettier in the aftermath of Betty's handiwork, and yet it didn't seem to matter: a broken arm, a cracked skull, a shattered jaw, none of those seemed to faze the creature in the least.

"Won't... Work!" Tony finally managed to croak. He cleared his throat with some more effort and continued: "You have to break its spine, or at least cripple all four limbs."

Growling in frustration and a sense of primal self preservation, Betty swung at the arm of the hand still gripping Tony, since Donna's spine was not available as a target...

OOC 18:25, Today: Betty Pemberton rolled 13 using the Unisystem system (1d10+5) with rolls of 8. attack 2.
18:25, Today: Betty Pemberton rolled 9 using the Unisystem system (1d10+5) with rolls of 4. attack one.
This message was last edited by the player at 22:26, Sat 25 Apr 2009.

The last blow weakened the zombie's grip for a few moments, just enough for Tony to escape. He stumbled back and almost fell down, while the creature flailed around looking for someone to grab.

Breathing heavily, he nodded to Betty: "Good job. Quick, the door!"

Anton and Betty ran for the door, closing and locking it in a hurry... And then waited, for a zombie with a broken leg is not going anywhere at speed.

Betty let out a long sigh, leaning against the heavy door she looked at the doctor.  "What just happened?  What is going on?"  She looked at him with a mixture of alarm and bewilderment.
This message was last edited by the GM at 09:34, Thu 30 Apr 2009.

Tony leaned against the wall, lost in thought: "This is insane... Those things should not be here!"

He shook his head to clear his thoughts and continued: "The thing in there, in Donna's body? It's a parasite. A colony of parasites, more accurately: they feed on decomposing bodies, and sometimes to replicate part of the functions of the original hosts cells. The result is a walking corpse. Worse, since the parasite needs to feed, the animated corpses attack anyone on sight. The parasites were first discovered back in the seventies, but the incident was kept quiet... You can imagine why."

"What?!" Betty responded in shock.  "Where did you learn about this? - I don't remember even hearing about anything like this, much less read about it in any of the texts.  So what do we do now?  Could she have caught it from that woman she said she was in a fight with?  Are there more cases in the public?" The thought blanched the young woman white for a moment in fear of the thought a epidemic might be lose in the streets of her city.
This message was last edited by the GM at 11:01, Mon 18 May 2009.

Tony grimaced: "Yeah, when I said 'kept quiet'? 'Classified as a national security risk' would've been more accurate. My father was on the original group of researchers. A couple of years ago, he managed to get me into a new team created to study-" He stopped abruptly as the realization hit him: "That must be where the parasite came from! If those things are loose in the city... We gotta talk to my dad."
This message was last edited by the player at 21:08, Thu 30 Apr 2009.

"Where is he?  How do we get to him?  Can you call him?" Betty asked in rapid succession, her eyelashes fluttering with urgency.