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Post by kinrrataiyath on May 18, 2007 22:22:07 GMT -5
"I wasn't planning on standing around and admiring the scenery for Christ's sake!" she snapped over her shoulder. Another three shots clapped loudly over the continuous moaning and groaning of their adversaries. Even as she dropped the empty mag and slammed home a new one, she jogged a few steps backwards. The scientist had long ago disappeared inside.
"Sure! Great! One person can hold off this horde as good as two, right?" Six more shots, three more downed zombies. Yet for every one she put down, another one seemed to spring out of nowhere. Cass was quickly running out of ammo too. "Oh f*ck it. Just run in and throw anything you can against the doors. Ready?"
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Post by dray on May 18, 2007 23:15:26 GMT -5
Agate was already hustling it in the direction that Cass was planning on moving!
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Post by mock on May 19, 2007 12:20:30 GMT -5
((Yikes, I hope you guys don't mind if I backtrack a bit! I don't have time to do much right now, but when I can I'm gonna go back and account for what Eddie's been up to till now. I wanna give him a little Z-time after all!))
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Post by kinrrataiyath on May 19, 2007 14:13:42 GMT -5
((Sure thing. ![:D](//storage.proboards.com/forum/images/smiley/grin.png) I wanted to wait here for you to catch up anyway.))
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Post by mock on May 30, 2007 17:53:07 GMT -5
About a block and a half from the place where he had lost his bid for a jacket, the scavenger rose, wet and bloody but indifferent, from the gutter where he had been left behind, once the memory that he was being dragged had crumbled away from Eddie's conciousness, causing him to slacken his grip and walk on alone. The scavenger's disconnected, sock-monkey arm provided little support in his slow scramble to his feet, but before too long he rose, and wandered off in search of a different prize. A moment or two sooner and he may have sensed what Eddie had sensed, and headed his way. But the trail of a wounded man taking refuge in an abandoned building had only hung in the stormy air for a moment, and then vanished. ___
David (schoolteacher, 36) was wrapping his scratched and bleeding arm in a spare shirt. His ammo run had come to a dead end at the locked-down police station, and no sooner was he turned away than he found himself surrounded by the wrong kind of company.
"It looks like they're all going to the station..." Henry (file clerk, 30) speculated as he peered through the broken and mended window, from their hideout on the second floor of the small, abandoned building. Black shuffling forms emptied out of the alleys and gutters in thin trickles, gravitating to a gunfight in the street below. "Is that why they didn't let you in?"
"They didn't say why, they just didn't let me in!" David spat back. A departure from his normally measured demeanor. But these cuts hurt. "Wouldn't even throw a gun over the barricade. And we may as well be throwing ours if we can't get our hands on some clips."
"Jesus, what if they turn around and get in here?" Henry peered nervously out the window.
"Tend to your friend's arm," a smirking, steely voice said from behind the cherry of a cigarette in the dark corner. The soldier (name, age and rank classified) leaned coolly into the moonlight, duale pistols on his hips, polishing the katana in his lap. "If they're stupid enough to come in here... you had best leave it to a professional," he smirked. They didn't know who he was. But he smoked a lot and he'd eaten some of their food. ___
The storage bins blocking the way freshly tipped over and scattered, Eddie stepped clumsily around the loose barricade he'd just destroyed and pressed the side of his face to the metal of the scrolling loading-dock door. He stood there a moment, eyes moving up and down the slotted steel, trying to recapture the thought that had brought him here. Blood, move, here, door, in. He pushed himself unevenly off the door, then pulled his fists back and drove them into the metal with a loud clang.
If his living self was capable of inhuman feats in combat, he was certainly not solely to credit. A heightened fight-or-flight response, a genuine fear of dismemberment and the hands of the undead, a seemingly limitless well of unresolvable agression and hate, a lifetime of resentment and abuse, and a need for the comfort and control that violence seemed to provide, all conspired to harden his fists and propel his arms. Without these in death, Eddie's strength came from where it came to all undead: His complete ignorance to exhaustion, or pain. Not knowing that this hurt his shoulder, or his hands. Robbed of the idea that getting through this door was impossible, Eddie continued until he had done it. ___
The loud clanging of metal rang through the hall and up the stairs, muted at first against the rain in the broken window, but the sounds soon grew louder. And then closer together. And as the David and Henry eyed the stairwell, the clanging gave way to a high metallic shriek.
"Oh, sh!t. The service door. Sh!t!" David struggled to get to his feet, stricken with a mild dizziness. "I thought there was only the one way in! I thought the door was covered up when we got here!" Henry checked his pistol in a panic, yes, it was still empty.
The soldier flicked the cigarette to the ground and gave the men a smirk. "You boys stay here," he sniffed, "I've been hoping for a little playtime..."
Scanning the stairs with his catlike attentiveness, the soldier moved quickly, without hesitation. Heading to the service door, he saw his target, a black, dripping shadow silhouetted against the dim light of the night. He waited while the monster pushed the last obstacle out of it's way, and stepped into the building.
Eddie raised his head and eyed the soldier blankly. "Hruhh."
The soldier tilted hsi head down, peering up at Eddie with dark, cold eyes. He grinned an evil grin as he smoothly produced the glinting katana from it's sheath. "Come, now..let's dance," he sneered with a sadistic glee, charging toward Eddie with a cool, acrobatic grace.
Eddie shattered his collarbone, removed several things that you badly need to live, and left him emptied out and uneaten at the bottom of the stairs, as he headed upward to finish his original thought.
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Post by kinrrataiyath on May 31, 2007 1:42:25 GMT -5
Kin slammed into the barricades and began scrabbling at the splintered furniture piled in front of the window without a thought as to what it was doing to her hands. In a matter of seconds, her fingers were slippery with blood. They slid clumisly off the ramshackle barricades, bashing her bruised wrists and arms against other blockades. She let loose a despairing cry, thinking that she might never break through to safety.
Cass crashed into the barricades beside her, shotgun butt aimed for a disasterous blow to the weakly arranged furniture. She dashed Kin's thoughts of a terrible death and the obstacles in their path with a few quick, well-aimed blows. Broken chairs and tables toppled loudly to the ground. The frantic, nearly delirious soldier grabbed Kin by the scruff of her labcoat and dragged her towards the baseball sized opening.
"Go, go!" she roared in her ear over the drone of the approaching horde. The terrified scientist ducked her head down, curled her hands in towards her chest and practically threw herself through the far too small opening.
Wood splintered and cracked beneath her as she rolled over jagged table ends and metal filing cabinets. Sharp, searing pain flared up in her shoulder and around her ribs, but she was fortunate enough not to break anything important. Kin landed on the hard, cement floor and kept rolling for a few feet until she was clear of the debris.
Wet, disoriented, and high on adrenaline, she quickly scrambled to her feet and looked towards the broken barricades for her friends. Cass was waiting for Agate to get inside, but she didn't have time to wait anymore! They would both be zombie food if they didn't get inside soon.
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Post by dray on May 31, 2007 11:34:40 GMT -5
Not that Agate had been waiting around. Lord knew he'd been through enough piles of barricades to realize that, yeah, trying to duck through a setup that was meant to keep anything over the size of a rat out wasn't going to be easy, or particularly painless. He shucked his pack and backed in through the broken portion of the barricades, using his booted heels to kick the lighter obstructions out of his way. It was an old habit to drag his pack in after him. The first time he'd tried to toss the thing in first, he wound up losing all of his possessions to a quick-thinking thief. This way, at least, he could give somebody a boot to the head.
Luckily there was nobody waiting for him at the other end who wasn't on his side. He was through, plus a few bruises and scratches, and his pack was through too. Not good enough.
"Cass!" He shouted through the barricades, over the unholy racket of the undead and over the determined deluge of rain. "Get the f*ck in here! It's clear!"
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Post by kinrrataiyath on May 31, 2007 13:43:21 GMT -5
Cass didn't need any encouragement. As soon as Agate's scrawny butt had made it through the jagged-edged opening, Cass was hurtling herself through after him. She had the advantage of being a very small and lithe woman, which mean she could scurry into places with the contortionist skill of a mouse. Unfortunately, her guns were not so skilled.
Cassandra threw herself through the barricades, managed to get her front half inside the building, then found herself uncomfortably stuck when one of her shotguns snagged against the top of the window and refused to budge.
"Oh for crying the f*ck out loud! This just keeps getting better and better!" the dripping wet soldier snarled. She looked under her arm to see the slow, shuffling feet of the shamblers dragging across the street-turned-river and heard them rattle out a gurgling cry. The sound acted like a wolf howl calling the rest of the pack to dinner, and she was the unfortunate entree. She began to wriggle and squirm as much as she could in the restricted space, hoping that enough of it would dislodge her shotty and send her through the barricades to safety.
Meanwhile, Kin was looking on with a cold sense of rising dread settling in her gut. Agate was already close enough to Cass to help. If she tried rushing in now, she'd only get in the way. She was always getting in the way. The soaked scientist began to wring her hands anxiously as she took one step backwards after another. She wanted so much to be of use, but what help could she honestly offer?
Some of the zombies had reached the front door and began pounding on it relentlessly. The pile of debris pushed in front of it rattled under the assault, threatening to collapse if they continued.
The barricades! Kin thought with renewed vigor. She could at least find some more materials to add to their defenses. Quickly she cast about the room for excess furniture, but there was none to be had. The main entrance had been cleared out of heavy objects for the exact purpose of reinforcing the weak points in the building. If she wanted to add to that, she'd have to look in other rooms.
Kin cast one fearful look at Agate and Cass, hesitant to leave them even for a minute. Yet she'd be of no use to them standing around like this. Clasping her shoulder bag against her side, she darted off down the nearest hallway in search of chairs, tables, anything useful.
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Post by dray on Jun 1, 2007 11:06:04 GMT -5
"You're caught!" Agate stated the obvious, and as Cass struggled he tried to see if he could reach through the piles of broken furniture and detritus to twist her gun enough so that the window-frame was no longer a barrier to her entry.
The sound of relentless pounding on the doors on the side kitty-corner to their entrance startled the sh*t out of him, until he realized that all of the rattling outside must be calling in zombies from other directions! sh*t, they weren't going to be able to hole up in here for long -- and those shamblers that had caught on to them were pretty well nearly in grabbing reach of Cass' idiot behind. "C'mon, ditch the gun, chick!" if that shotgun wasn't coming loose from the window frame, he would have ditched it. He wasn't so much of a packrat that he put his possessions before the safeguarding of his life!
He was torn between helping her get in and putting some weight on the 'cades on the other wall, there. It wasn't just one set of fists pounding on the battered doors... that would have made a more rhythmic noise. Zombies didn't generally windmill their arms after all. Just lean back, smash, lean back, smash... but he could hear a lot of smashing.
F*cking Cass. She was probably acting like bait, here. Why the f*ck did she have to go and get herself ripped up? Why the hell hadn't she just sent someone else over and sat the f*ck down over in the office and had her wounds looked over?! You don't f*cking go zombie-hunting when you're bleeding out -- for once, Agate wasn't railing on her like he usually did towards people doing stupid things. He was too scared to bitch.
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Post by kinrrataiyath on Jun 2, 2007 18:19:23 GMT -5
"No sh*t!" she snapped back through gritted teeth. The butt of her shotgun was digging into her spine, making the effort to dislodge it that much more painful. "Got any more genius revelations for me?! Maybe you can explain to me how I'm supposed to ditch it when it's f*cking stuck with me!" Cass was growing increasingly frusterated. She could almost feel the rotters breathing down her back. If they got ahold of her like this, she was lost. She couldn't move forward and moving back would only put her in greater danger. However, she could at least get unstuck that way. Bracing her hands against the solid window sill, the soldier let out a furious howl and shoved backwards with all her might. She felt something tear along her stomach and knew that her rough patch job had just come undone. The gun scrapped along her back with a protesting squeal before jerking free of the obstruction. The leather straps that had held it securely in place during all her running and fighting snapped under the strain. Cass was already on her feet and whirling to meet the nearest opponent as the shotgun clattered to the ground. The life of a zombie wasn't all eating and groaning. Sometimes there was hunting involved. For a creature with cranial matter that looked more like slush than watered down porridge, hunting was a very difficult task. The living, breathing counterparts to their undead selves were fast and very adament about not being eaten. Only those who had been severely injured already were slowed down enough for your average shambler to catch. As such, many zombies had learned that the scent of blood usually meant easy prey. There were a few instances, such as this particular case, where that wasn't the case. One of the starved masses lunged forward when the smell of fresh, warm blood assaulted its senses. The rain made its already poor eyesight worse and the cold stiffened its limbs to near immobility. Yet that smell was so sharp, so close by, that it drove the zombie into a frenzy. It wanted food, and it wanted it now. Cass balled her hand into a fist and swung it around in a wild arch, uncaring of form or dicipline at this point in time. Long ago she had learned that it wasn't loyalty to one's country that made soldiers fight. It was the urge to survive, and it effected every man equally. Malton was different in only one way; those that fell didn't stay down. There would never be an end to this battle, and yet no one was willing to give up. The zombies didn't know how to give up, and "surrender" was not a word that fit into Cass' vocabulary. Her fist impacted with the zombie's face square on the mark. There was a second where it seemed like it might keep going, but the generated quality of its bones and the festering wounds eating away at its tissue gave it a cottage cheese-like stability. The zombie's face seemed to fold it on itself with a loud mixture of crunches and squelches. Clotted blood ooze out through the splattered mass that used to be its nose, covering Cass' hand. She drew back just in time to avoid being body slammed by another rotter, but as she scrambled backwards through the open barricades, another zombie managed to latch onto her leg. Cass gave another shout that was a mixture between rage and pain, reacting on instinct to the white hot agony lacing down her calf. She kicked out with her free foot, leaned back, and felt the zombie's hold loosen at the precise moment that she lost her balance. The soldier woman landed with a sound thud on the debris littered ground. "Sonnovaf*ck..." she mutterede from her prone position. ---- Meanwhile, Kin had been successful in finding a couple of chairs to use as bracers for the barricade. They had been arranged around the room in a morbid mockery of a sitting room. There were even moldy old magazines piled up on a nearby crate for reading matterial. Kin ignored the "lived in" look of the area and grabbed the nearest piece of furniture. She could only drag one chair at a time, given their heavy build, but at least it was something. Hurriedly the scrawny scientist tilted the chair onto its two back legs and began to yank it towards the hallway. ((Mock, feel free to have Eddie come across her at any time. S'why I sent her out on her own. ![:P](//storage.proboards.com/forum/images/smiley/tongue.png) If you'd rather I move her closer to him, then I can do that with the next post.))
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Post by dray on Jun 4, 2007 13:38:14 GMT -5
Agate was ready to pick the soldier up by the scruff of her neck to drag her out of the way. Stupid bitch was going to get them both killed at this rate. "Listen," he shouted over the general racket of the rain and the pounding on the barricades, "you hold the f*ck still for like five minutes!" The last thing he needed was for her to roll over and start biting his ankles when he was doing his best to keep the zombie threat out of the building.
With a grunt, he pushed some of the barricades that were covering this window back into place, making the hole that they'd crawled through a little smaller. Pretty quick they were going to be attacked from the other side, here, but at least they could run for it further into the building if the shamblers overwhelmed them.
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Post by mock on Jun 5, 2007 20:45:30 GMT -5
The chair dragged across the floor behind Kin, sending a deep shriek through the tiles that reverberated through the floor of the hallway. The soldier had been standing in a corner down the hall, reanimated but motionless, presumably trying to adjust to hsi new, reduced weight. When the tiles carried the message of an objective, of a direction, he turned himself around uneasily. By the time the sound dissappeared down the hall, a heavy, rhythmic banging had begun in the room upstairs, echoing down into the main floor. But the soldier could only sense death upstairs; life was this way.
He caught sight of Kin as she returned for the next chair. He ambled up to the doorway, and whn she emerged again he was there, head lolled to the side, giving some kind of puppet parody of a grin. He swayed under the weight of the guns on his hips and the organs hanging from him. He outstretched his hand to the scientist. "Ghhhhk."
The soldier took a step towards Kin, tripped over something that was swinging too low from his abdomen, and hit the floor face-first. With great difficulty, he began the arduous process of lifting himself back up off the floor.
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Post by kinrrataiyath on Jun 9, 2007 20:58:05 GMT -5
((Holy Christ! New sleep schedule, lappy dies, power gets knocked out, and then Rogers screws up my internet for five hours! I'm frickin' cursed!))
Cass gritted her teeth and moved one hand down to her blood stained side to hold in the pain. The continuous, firey throb pulsing through her nerves didn't cease, but it felt a little lessened when she applied the pressure. The same sort of momentary restraint had to be applied to her tongue lest she cut Agate's legs out from under him with it. He'd failed as a scout, a defense, and a helping hand when she needed it. She was seriously beginning to regret taking him along in the first place.
Cass kept these thoughts to herself, knowing that he might yet be useful. He was just now trying to rebuild the barricades, which would keep them alive a few minutes longer. Whether it was enough to ensure that they survived to see tomorrow was still iffy.
The wounded soldier propped herself up on one elbow and dragged her scrawny hide backwards until she was out of his way. Once the pain subsided, she would be able to help again.
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Kin had no time to think. One second she was helping rebuild the barricade, and the next she was inches away from the half-mangled face of a fresh corpse. In the shock of the moment, she forgot herself. Kin let go of the chair and jumped back just in time to avoid being caught under it as it crashed to the ground. A short, shrill scream shattered the relative stillness of the building's back halls.
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Post by dray on Jun 10, 2007 10:33:50 GMT -5
If Cass had bad feelings about Agate, then his thoughts weren't exactly coming up rainbows and roses for her, either... but she got out of the way, and she did as he said, so that was one point in her favor. The scarred man began working at pushing things around -- the piles of furniture here seemed to be placed more haphazardly against the windows and doors, and since there wasn't a lot else kicking around down here, he went about doing some re-arranging and reinforcing. A little push here and a little shove there, and the place'd be able to hold out for a good few more minutes. Enough time to find their way up to the roof and out to another building, at least.
((Would that scream be audible from where they are?))
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Post by kinrrataiyath on Jun 10, 2007 12:49:26 GMT -5
((Indeed it would. I'm gonna wait for Mock before posting again.))
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