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Post by dray on Nov 19, 2009 18:34:52 GMT -5
Given previous years, Agate had expected it to be frigid around now, but though steam rose up in gentle curtains across the neighborhood -- testimony that at least some of Wyke Hills was alive -- the biting wind was in hiding, and letting the generator idle out or stepping up onto the roof didn't mean an instant head-cold.
...Or maybe it had something to do with Kin's miracle treatment.
Despite himself, the blonde shivered. He was glad of the after effects of the scientist's gruelling operation, but the memory of the operation itself was something that he tried hard to suppress.
Whatever the case, up here on the Cosway's roof, he cupped his hands to his mouth to keep the heat of his breath from escaping. The sun would be setting soon, and it would be time to tuck in for the night, but he needed this brief time alone. Clear his head.
The pathways across the roof were sparser this year than last. The blond had to wonder about that. North West in the Grayside area, the neighborhood that everyone had worked so hard to put together was crumbling as shamblers stumbled between ramshackle buildings, ripping things apart in their hunt for the usual on their menu... Agate had only really gotten to know a handful of the residents up that way, but he hoped that they'd keep safe tonight. And he hoped that they wouldn't have to pack up and move, though the weather was being surprisingly accommodating.
To the South, the wall was a rigid line cut through the parks and warehouses. Agate couldn't see the soldiers clearly from here, but he imagined them sitting high up on their turrets, taking potshots at anything moving beneath them. Earlier this year he had managed to catch the curiosity of those guards, flashing messages to them, getting some back. Nothing important. 'How's the weather up there?' and 'What's the situation?' and 'How's the rest of the world?' That hadn't lasted long. Agate suspected that whomever had slipped up and answered some questions had gotten fired... or more likely, he'd been tossed overboard. God knew how many idiots in Malton started out wanting to help and realized that that meant a lifetime(s) commitment.
The ratty blond turned on his heel, looking to the new door that now kept some of the freezing cold out of the stairwell, this time of year. Another night and another meal to make. Something comforting in that routine. Even if he was only making food for Kay and the kid. Agate mused that it'd be nice to have a few other voices around, though it was hard to find good company in Malton. Casting one last look over his shoulder, he made for the door that would take him home.
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Post by Sarah the Bullet on Nov 20, 2009 9:25:20 GMT -5
Turn left at step 1296, continue on 4 steps, leap over barrel here, trudge through the second snowdrift to the right...
It was almost memory to Sarah how to travel around the place. Not even a 'light' snowstorm was gonna stop her. Carpetbag full to bursting of supplies, her eyes still showed what was possibly a sombre, dark, mature look to them that seemed to be cemented there shortly after the events with Eddie and Jayce. Her winter clothing didn't help much, as somehow, to some odd luck, she had managed to get black winter clothing under her trenchcoat- except for earmuffs, which were a violently bright, fluffy pink. She swore she could hear the zeds laughing even...
In subtle contrast, Sandy, the stray Sarah had picked up somewhere, could almost be a polar opposite. With her own winter gear- complete with a headband with felt antlers- it was hard to tell if she thought they were just at another field trip. She was even humming cristmas carols.
Getting to the usual side-window entry, Sandy slung off her sack as she waited on Sarah to push the cabinet out of the way. "Shame this place doesn't have a chimney..." she said a tad wistfully as she looked around the snow. "A good old-fashioned cristmas is what this place could use, specially Cassie..."
"When ya can get a turkey that won't reach for the butcher knife after we cook it, lemme know," Sarah said dryly, and with a dull heave, the cabinet gave several feet of groaning movement, enough room for the pair of them to slide into. "Come on, time to see who hasn't froze to death allready..."
Quietly to herself though, Sarah was having some very, well, un-Sarah like thoughts. Well, for her new outlook at least. It had seemed like forever since they had been together, but still, as the 'odd one out' of the group, what with her constant drama she dragged in, it WOULD be a nice surprise to find a way to give back...
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Post by dray on Nov 20, 2009 11:41:27 GMT -5
Quiet up on the rooftops, at least from where he was standing. Agate pulled the door open and slipped inside, resolutely marching down the worn steps to the lobby. It was warmer inside, given the initiative set up over the fall to ration out fuel. Always a balance, he figured: comfort or safety? The Cosway hadn't been hit for some time... and who knew when the next cold-snap would hit.
Such mundane thoughts were the meat of Agate's thoughts as he went about getting something to eat together. The last of the vegetables he'd managed to harvest (at great risk!) from the burgeoning roof-boxes and park plot over the summer were going into the pot. After that... well, there was enough to get them by if they kept their belts in tight. He could hear Kay and his daughter upstairs, the later occasionally belting something out with noisy exuberance. Casey was smart enough to keep quiet when she needed to, but it was hard to keep her from being a loud and demanding child the rest of the time! Shushing the child only seemed to stoke the fire.
Agate wasn't aware of any other guests in the hotel right now... so when he heard some creaking and shuffling down the hall from the hidey-hole that had since fallen into disuse, he paused in his supper-making clangor. That particular entrance had been put together in years past so that those who knew about it could dart into the building relatively quickly, though it wasn't well known to the general populace. It looked solid, was the point. Even the two kids though, Simplish and Hypno for example, could push the barricades up enough to squeeze in if need be. Agate had to wonder, then, who was using it now.
Just in case, he drew the beaten up pistol kept eternally at his hip. He knew by heart that the magazine wasn't full. Three bullets left, last count, but he had gotten better with his aim. Besides, one shot was all that was needed to get Kay's attention, and the two of them together could deal with most threats.
Agate inched down the hall, listening, careful. Gun pointed at the ground, he waited to see who'd present themselves.
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Post by Sarah the Bullet on Nov 20, 2009 16:13:55 GMT -5
About the time Agate heard them, Sarah heard him, and made sure to call out, "Just us! No zeds peeps!" before helping Sandy through the window, taking the god-awful earmuffs off as she grabbed up her carpet bag and moved into the other room, a still-wistling Sandy behind her.
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Post by dray on Nov 20, 2009 19:49:21 GMT -5
That voice was familiar. Agate, coming around the corner to the back-room, leaned against the empty doorframe without quite reholstering that gun yet. "Look what the cat dragged in," he drawled, brows raised and mouth quirked in a grin. "You back from a stint of shambling?" he asked Sarah, well aware of the irony -- he'd seen her move and speak just like the living after eating lead... she hardly shambled!
More seriously, he looked over her friend and warranted that the two of them probably weren't a threat. "Good to see a familiar face after so long, Sarah. Who's your friend?"
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Post by Sarah the Bullet on Nov 22, 2009 11:07:37 GMT -5
Sarah gave a smile at seeing Agate. It was always nice at seeing another friendly face. "Actually, just from a supply run from the mall, then stopped at the Needs to see Kin. She seems to be doing allright," she comments as she works her way to the kitchen. "As for my friend, that's Sandy. She said she met Theo somewhere west of us, so I let her stay here for a bit."
"Heya!" the blue-haired girl piped up. One could note that the large bag she had slung over her back seemed considerably stuffed, even for a mall trip.
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Post by dray on Nov 22, 2009 13:23:36 GMT -5
Not liked a well packed travel sack was anomalous in Malton. Before Agate and Kay had settled into the Cosway for good, he remembered having to hoist a d*mn lot of junk. 'Course Kay was the one doing most of the active work, but Agate hadn't minded being the pack mule, given he'd been a poor shot at the time. Couldn't help but wonder how the girl had gotten her hair blue though. Maybe she'd dunked her head into one of those portable loos, though he had no idea where in Malton you'd find one of those. Hmm, maybe the fort? Would sync together with the mass of supplies...
Thoughts chugging away behind blue eyes aside, Agate's face lit up a spot or two more. "Theo and Kin, huh? You know, there are two faces that I haven't seen since last winter. Thought Kin had gone... you know," he twisted his finger in a circle, pointing at his head. The scientist had been so jumpy from the start, and Agate had noticed that she'd started up a tenuous relationship with Red (the man, not Kay)... but when Red went missing, Agate always assumed that the other blonde had snapped and just disappeared for a while. He owed the woman a debt of gratitude; if it weren't for Kin he'd probably be one of the few piles of bones littering Malton -- the permanently dead. It was good to hear that she was still around. Theo, though a quiet man, had always seemed like the kind of guy you could keep at your back. Those were few and far between in Malton. Agate wondered if he was faring well out west, in the direction that most of the attacks were coming from these days.
"Pleasure to meet you, Sandy. Uh, Sarah," he brought a gnarly hand up to scratch at the back of his scalp, a gesture of mild embarrassment. "You two have your own grub, at least for tonight, right? It's kind of been a long time since we've had company. Don't really have enough for the usual potluck tonight." He was definitely feeling a twinge of shame. One thing that Agate had felt proud about in the past, when they'd catered to a full hotel, was that he could keep the pot boiling so that food and water, while sparse and rationed, got evenly doled out. Hopefully something in those stuffed carry-sacks was edible, though he knew that a lot of people would favor bullets and heavy weapons to food.
Agate backed out into the hallway, starting towards the lobby. He assumed that Sarah and Sandy'd be in tow! "Hey, Kay!" he hollered, confident that the sound of his voice would carry over the balcony to the first floor. "Company's calling!" He cast a look over his shoulder, adding at normal conversation level, "your old room's the way you left it, Sarah, you want to drop off your load for a while."
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Post by Sarah the Bullet on Nov 22, 2009 15:51:26 GMT -5
"Nice to meet ya too!" Sandy called, going on into the kitchen with the buldging bag. "I'll see what of the supplies goes where!"
"Most of this is headed for the kitchen anyway," Sarah explained. "Surprised this place still has people to tell the truth... Figured everyone would find other places to hide... This mall trip's eaten up a heck of a lot of time for once, we checked all the storerooms in the back. After hitting the Needs, we came back here. Best place in town, I reasoned..."
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Post by Kat on Nov 22, 2009 16:17:42 GMT -5
Keeping a two and a half year old entertained and stimulated enough that she didn't cause havoc was a full-time job, and one that she was infinitely glad that she had Agate to tag-team with. Kay often thought wistfully of the early days of Casey's infancy, when there had been a whole hotel of people to pass her daughter off to for five minutes. Their presence would have been even more of a help now, when the little girl wanted nothing more than to run about and play endlessly, but now there was no one else, not even Fa, the woman having taken off 'just for a little while'.
Yeah, 'a little while'. Kay had heard that one before. She even half-suspected Fa of going off hunting for their very first 'just gone for a little while', Ben. It was hard not to resent the hell out of the Cosway crew's various reasons for taking off... hell, mostly Kay didn't even bother trying not to resent them. Sure, she missed having the hotel full of friendlies, she even missed the people, but it was a bitter kind of nostalgia rather than fond.
Then Simplish had shown up again. The boy had grown solid inches since she'd last seen him -- not much of a boy anymore, really, Simp was looking more like a grown man than most --- seventeen year olds? eighteen year olds? In any case, he looked like he'd become a proper roamer. And with his joined-at-the-hip buddy Hypno nowhere to be seen, Kay couldn't imagine Simp would be sticking around for long.
So Kay had mostly avoided the kid, and avoided the strong mixed feelings seeing one of the old crew had stirred up in her. She had enough reasons to stay busy and avoid being social anyways.
"Mama, look!" And there was her main reason now. It was surely a strange sight, the antisocial zombie-hunter of a woman sitting on the floor in a dump of a patched-up old building, playing with brightly colored blocks and a redheaded toddler. Said toddler had just made a tower of four carefully stacked blocks, too.
"Hey, that's pretty good," Kay praised, grinning at her daughter. Every day, the kid seemed to learn how to do something new. It was... neat.
Casey was just trying to add another block to that precarious stack when Agate's voice rang up from the first floor. Kay frowned, but her husband didn't sound agitated. It was probably just Simplish, back again in time for dinner.
"Hidey time?" That was Casey, looking excitedly at Kay, block forgotten in one small hand.
"No, sweetheart." Casey was a smart kid for her age, and understood urgency when it was in the air, but she still required a certain amount of trickery to get to stay quiet and still for any amount of time. "Wait here a second." Kay got up, trod on silent feet out into the hallway. Not that she expected trouble, exactly... Peeking over the balcony, she watched Agate's lanky figure stride back into the big lobby, tailed by...
For a moment her heart leapt, just a second, thinking the blonde following was Fa. But beyond that instant's impression of skinny blonde and female, she realized the woman who had come calling was nothing like her second partner. In fact, she looked familiar in a different way. Sarah?
She didn't have a moment to marvel at the teenager's growth since last they'd seen her before she caught sight of Sandy.
Blue hair. Jesus christ. Kay made a face. Maybe Sarah hadn't grown up as much as she looked like she had, if the company she was keeping was any indication. Only teenagers would spend time in a zombie apocalypse to find, and apply, brightly-colored hair dye. She pulled back from the balcony and rolled her eyes, her initial stab of resentment at seeing another wayward Cosway resident dispelled by the ridiculousness of her friend.
She beelined back for her daughter, hunkering down once she was in the room again. "Hey, kid, wanna meet someone who's going to blow your little mind?" she asked Casey, knowing she wouldn't quite understand the joke. "There are new people downstairs. Do you want to go meet them?"
That, the little girl understood. She wrinkled her nose and then said, "yeah!" Trained for caution or not, the little girl had the makings of a social creature. "Right," Kay replied, and went to sweep Casey up -- earning an angry wiggle and little hands that shoved her back. "No, I wanna walk by myself!"
"Right." Kay stood, leaving the scattered blocks where they were for the time being. "C'mon, this way." She held out a hand, which Casey took as compromise.
Of course, walking a two year old requires patience at the best of times. Casey kept along at a good pace for her stubby toddler legs, but it was still a few minutes before the pair could be spotted carefully descending the stairs.
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Post by dray on Nov 22, 2009 16:32:00 GMT -5
"Yeah well," Agate watched a little nervously as Sandy ducked out of their company, wary of strangers and the pinching thought that that bag was full not because of the mall trip, but because of snips from this building and snatchets from that...
Attention back on Sarah, he added, "Cosway's where we've been hunkered in from the beginning. It just wouldn't feel right if we dug up our roots and moved on. Always somebody else's rules when you stumble into gang territory, and the ones that form up around here tend to leave us alone. Now that the troublemakers are out of here, it's been nice and quiet... sort of." He caught sight of the two coming down the stairs and gestured towards Kay and his daughter. "You haven't seen the kidlet for about a year, right? She's just about ready for her first axe, I think." He grinned. Something about being made to be responsible had had an anchoring effect on the blonde over the last couple of years. He'd started off not knowing who he was, once the outbreak had begun. Now he seemed to feel like he had a purpose. Whatever the case, he seemed cheerful and proud, which was far better than his usual snarky self.
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Post by Sarah the Bullet on Nov 22, 2009 16:37:44 GMT -5
"Casey Wacey grew?" Sarah said, growing wide-eyed enough to almost look like the kid self that's hidden under so much dirt and zombie gore all these years. "Awesome! So you two's been keeping well, that's good... So, any idea who else is around? Or is it like the mass exodus from last time?" she asked, remembering the time where only this one annoying geezer- called Fridges of all things- were around.
---
Meanwhile, still humming, Sandy started unloading hordes of food and other supplies into various cuboards.
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Post by Kat on Nov 22, 2009 17:24:56 GMT -5
Splitting her attention, Kay kept an eye on the group downstairs even while she guided Casey. Coming into earshot, she had to grin a little, but amusement at the mental image of 'baby's first axe' was short-lived. "Just us," Kay called out, unable to resist responding to that sore point. "And usually Fa, but she's on a walkabout. Simp's been in and out the last week or so. Everyone else's gone to the winds." Hers was not a cheerful tone of voice, and Casey glanced up at her mother as they descended the final stairs.
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Post by dray on Nov 22, 2009 17:33:05 GMT -5
"Yeah," Agate agreed, crouching down and extending his lanky arms in Casey's direction, encouragement for the child to come closer, "who would've thought that a team like Fa and Eddie was what was holding everyone together, huh?" He cast a glance in Kay's direction, something between curiosity and discouragement. Sarah might have been one of their odder hotel-mates, but Agate didn't want Kay's bitterness to scare the young woman away. The two newcomers sounded like they were hoping for some more permanent digs for a while, after all.
Still, he noted his wife's attitude, and made a resolution to himself to talk to her about it... in private.
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Post by Sarah the Bullet on Nov 22, 2009 19:01:00 GMT -5
"Ya, considering one of the last things I remember about Eddie was the refigerator door," she added dryly as Sandy walked in again. "Still, I'm sure it's not too much a problem. Got all the supplies stocked Sandy?"
"Yup! Put the food in the cuboards like ya said!" said the bubbly schoolgirl. "So, where's your room again?"
"Upstairs, second floor, third door fom the steps. Mind the booby trap," she pointed out. Watching Sandy go upstairs, she let out a sigh. 'Thank goodness I ran into her, surprisingly a naive little schoolgirl has actually kept me semisane..."
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Post by Kat on Nov 22, 2009 20:11:31 GMT -5
"Blue!"
The two-year-old had noticed Sandy when she and Kay were halfway across the lobby to Agate. Casey turned insistently and Kay let her, to watch Sandy ascend the staircase. "Her hair is blue, at that," the redhead corrected her daughter wryly, and Casey stared with wide, wide eyes at the schoolgirl, and Kay couldn't help a grin, her angry train of thought for the moment derailed. "Well if that ain't proof she's pretty much got her colors down I don't know what is," Kay commented to Agate as she finished leading Casey over to the stewpot.
As she hunkered down next to the coleman (and Casey took off for her father's arms, belatedly having noticed him), Kay looked sidelong at Sarah. "Stocking the cupboards?" she observed. "Staying a while?" she asked, keeping her tone neutral enough.
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