This is my addition to NPW’s  Create Your Own Blogventure Spooktacular. If you are coming to read my post for the day, and haven’t read any of the other segments, make sure you go back and start at the beginning. Choose wisely to create your own exciting story!

You can find the previous part of the story here:

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Dr. Ansel stared into the thrashing water reminiscent of Niagara Falls with horror, and did what any other person in his situation would do – he plunged his long arm into the whirlpool, trying desperately to grasp hold of the sparkling silver chain. To his dismay, the talisman was long gone. Defeated, Dr. Ansel removed his toilet water-soaked arm and trudged over to the sink. He stared at the grim face watching him from the mirror. What the hell am I supposed to do now?

He took a long time washing his hands, pondering the seriousness of the situation. Without the talisman, he wasn’t sure how long he could control the posse of flesh hungry zombies waiting on the other side of the old wooden door, sitting in the diner with Jenny and Annelise…oh my God! Annelise. His only child was sitting in a room with the living dead, completely unaware of the mishap that had just ensued. Finally, he snapped back into action and flung himself out of the men’s room.

As he stumbled out into the room, he realized that the zombies were getting restless. They stared aimlessly around the crowded diner, blood dripping from their undead lips, there teething gnashing at air. Jenny was busy piling platters with raw steaks while Annelise sat at the counter, poking her apple pie with a fork. Trying to draw as little attention to himself as possible, Dr. Ansel gently grabbed Annelise by the arm and pulled her behind the bar. He motioned ever so slightly to Jenny and told them of the bathroom mishap.

“We have to get out of here,” he muttered under his breath, cautiously eyeing the monsters, “I…I dropped the talisman into the toilet, and it’s gone. I don’t know how much longer I can control the zombies.”

Annelise’s brown eyes went wide with fear. Jenny clamped her hand over her mouth to stifle a scream, “They’re ZOMBIES!?!” she gasped. Dr. Ansel didn’t meet her eyes as he nodded ‘yes.’

Annelise knew what this meant – there was no time for playing around. “We have to get it back, and fast!”

Her mind started racing at warped speed. Luckily her friend Luke’s father was a plumber, and they had both spent the past summer “helping” his father with his work.

“We have to get into the septic tank and fish out the key,” she said breathlessly as she ushered Jenny and her father through the diner’s back door. “Where is the tank?”

Jenny pointed with a shaky finger toward the old, rusted behemoth barely sticking up out of the gully that ran beside the diner.

“At least it’s not completely underground,” Annelise exclaimed as the group marched toward the tank.

Luckily, there was an old clunker sitting in the parking lot with a tool box in the back. Dr. Ansel looked slightly uncomfortable as he hoisted his aging body into the truck to rummage through the kit. Eventually he emerged with some small saws. He passed the tools out to the girls, and they all began to saw at the tank with an urgency none of them had ever experienced because the zombies had begun stirring in the diner, hungry for more flesh.

Dr. Ansel was the first one to break through the decaying exterior. Once the hole began to form, they all began frantically kicking and pulling at the steel. Once it was big enough to look inside, they all eagerly peered in.

There, sitting in a pool of muck, sat the shiny talisman.

“Honey, I hate to do this to you, but you’re the smallest one here. We’re going to have to lower you in to grab the damn thing,” Dr. Ansel said.

Annelise nodded understandingly as she belly crawled toward the hole, leaving her legs free for her father and Jenny to hold, “You’re gonna owe me big time for this Dad!”

She reached down into the sludge and grabbed for the talisman just as the zombies burst through the diner’s back door.

* If you think Dr. Ansel and Jenny were able to hold on to Annelise and the talisman, go here.

* If you think the zombies made it to the tank before Annelise grabbed the talisman, go here.