Safe Haven Content Sneak Peek

Here's an encounter from Part 4 while scavenging a college hall.

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As you step out from the sprawling lobby of the Hawkins Science Pavilion, the ambiance of the hallway ahead sends a ripple of unease through you. It's a long, wide corridor, its other end seemingly touching the horizon of your vision. The walls are pristine, yet eerily quiet.

The soft thud of your footsteps on the tile resonates through the eerie silence, bouncing off the walls adorned with accolades and memories of a thriving past. The faint smell of formaldehyde wafts through the air, mingling with the mustiness of undisturbed halls.

The hallway seems to stretch with every step, a seemingly endless passage to the biology floor that awaits at the back stairwell.  A haziness of dust hangs in the air, making you wave your hand in front of you every once in a while to try to disperse it.

Breaking glass rips apart the silence. Doors crush open from both flanks of the corridor. The initial bursts are from nearby lecture rooms, as if an unseen force had thrown the doors open. Your eyes dart to the left just in time to see a shambling male zombie, garbed in what used to be a custodian's uniform, now smeared with grime and blood, lumbering out with a guttural snarl. The name tag "Earl" is still attached to his disheveled uniform.

Almost simultaneously, to the right, the double doors of a large lecture hall fly open, the glass windows embedded in them shattering upon impact, raining down shards that glitter menacingly. A group of zombies stagger out, some clad in tattered academic robes, their faces a grotesque mask of decay. Among them, a female zombie with the remnants of spectacles hanging off her disfigured face, leads the charge with a haunting, raspy growl.

As more doors yield to the relentless push from the undead, the hallway becomes a funnel of death. A group of younger zombies, probably students once, join the horde. Some wear torn university sweatshirts and blood-stained jeans. Others where sundresses no hanging limply off their twisted frames. One wears an ROTC uniform and drags his school bag hooked around his left ankle. They move with a terrifying eagerness, their contorted faces bearing the scars of the outbreak's ruthlessness.

Your gaze darts around. To your left, an ajar door beckons—a chemistry lab, untouched by the hands of the dead. None of the infected came from there, so it might be a haven. To your right, a maintenance door stands—its cold metal surface a harbinger of the unknown. It could be a passage to safety, or it might lead to a deeper abyss teeming with more of the undead.