Post by mock on Aug 19, 2007 23:44:44 GMT -5
((Just a little one-shot that takes place the day after Brainz vs Brawn. As in, the day after Eddie issues the new rule and Cass and Jonny leave. This one ended up being a friggin' epic, so my feelings ain't gonna be hurt if you don't read it))
At about ten in the morning or so, Eddie was kicking a can of dog food down Baston street, thinking about whatever poor sap had finally decided to eat it. He rubbed the back of his neck and took the first drag off a freshly lit hand-rolled cigarette.
He was supposed to be smoking less. Smoking less and drinking less. But in his defense, he was only smoking because he was so godd*mn hung over.
Well, at least it was pretty cloudy out, dark for 10am. And there wasn't much trouble on the street to keep him from taking just the regular old sidewalk. Hands in his pockets, he booted the can further through the rubble every time he caught up to it, heedless of the noise. Any feral creep who came shuffling up to him this morning would by God wish they hadn't. He'd had a big bitch of a yesterday and he was on a mission to let off some steam. Well, officially his primary was to go check on the Bullpen, cause he hadn't checked on the Bullpen in a bit with everything going on. But whether he did it in there or out here, he was definitely gonna hurt something.
So when in the sam hell was he gonna learn that people are just no d*mn good, anyway? It sure wasn't like he was hearin' it for the first time. Mighta been a handy thing to remember when he was taking in ol' Calamity Jane there, handin' out a place to stay and things to do. In hindsight, there had been absolutely no reason for Eddie to believe that Saratores wasn't the typ to stab him in the back. Cut from the same cloth or not, people with that much pride can convince themselves that anything they do is the right thing.
An emaciated skeleton of a zombie reached it's one functioning arm up at Eddie from the gutter and croaked. He drove his bootheel into its fragile skull, wiped his boot on the curb, and kept on.
He'd gotten offers to join this or that militia group. Hell, tons of times. But he'd known better, was the thing. They were as bad as the death cults. You go in there and you sign away any kinda sense, anything that makes you you. That girl had been a part of something really amazing. Really just a hell of a thing, that house. Then some old hasbeen weasels in the door and tells her it's a joke, and her eyes go all spiraly and she zombie-walks away from it. Back to the f*ckin' hive-mind.
And what the hell should he care what a nothing like Oshay thiks about his house anyway, Eddie thought as he took a leak on a pile of burnt trash. Any fool could see he was just trying to dress Eddie down. His big revenge on the one that got away. Cussin' him out and turning tail. Yeah, congrats buddy.
He came to the street where, at one point, a mob of industrious survivors had piled some car wrecks together to barricade the road. It hadn't saved them, in the end, but it was still a hassle to creep and living pedestrian alike. Eddie climbed over it uneasily, his muscles still a little creaky from passing out in a weird position last night.
Still, it's never bad to get an outside perspective. Even an ignorant one. A broken clock is still right twice a day, his mama always used to say. Hard to deny, the place was a bit of a mess these days. Hopefully Sarah jumping him and Eddie cleaning her clock was the last word in what had been a lot of unecessary static. Hopefully this new rule was something everybody would settle into nicely, and then they could all go back to pointing their guns at the creeps.
But yeah, he agreed with himself as he landed on the other side of the pile-up, people were gettin' antsy. Well, that's alright, sooner than later their standard of living would be upped considerably. The next step'd probably have to be to get himself a sit-down with that Melisande lady, find out what he could expect outta her and when.
After that talk to...Fridges probably? He could count on one hand the number of people he'd remotely consider involving in this project. Even if his trust in Cass hadn't just been severely reduced, he had never thought he'd be able to convince her to hit that target. Mock neither, even though he was a steady go-to, and there was definitely no love lost. The kid just couldn't swallow killin' the living. Besides, with the little guy's hard luck, he'd get himself shot and Eddie would never hear the end of it. John was a little kid now, apparently? Well, maybe he still remembered something handy. Looks like the legwork was probably gonna be ol' Fridges, though.
A-1 Fish "n" Chips was this greasy old mom and pop in the middle of a burnt-out chunk of wasteland in Hollomstown. When he rounded the corner and saw it again he wondered, like he had every time since he first found the place, who the genius was who though the "n" was supposed to be in quotes. The windows were shabbily boarded, and new and old trails of blood ran from the sidewalk and under a massive old hunk of sheet metal that covered the front door. It was badly barricaded, too small to live in, and had been picked clean of anything edible beyond cockroaches by the time Eddie had discovered it. It's absolute uselessness to survivors was what made it such ideal real estate. And if anybody did squat, they'd d*mn sure leave as soon as they found the basement.
Eddie made his way over the streaks of gore leading from various directions toward the front door. The hunk of metal shrieked its way across the pavement as Eddie pushed it aside. He ambled past the counter, with the smashed-pen cash register still laying on it's side, and ducked through the low door into the kitchen. The big prep table was covered in various tools, smears of blood, and another ancient tape player similar to the one that Eddie kept at the hotel. He put on the chain-mesh butcher's gloves he kept on the counter, and hung up the worklight over the basement door. He slid back the little deadbolt he'd built to bar it from the outside and opened the door.
"Mornin' fellas," Eddie croaked, the first time he'd used his voice that day. They'd been swaying in the dark, aimless and placated, but at the first note of a human voice, the Bullpen swelled up in a sudden chorus of wails and groans. They all reached up at him, strainng to grasp at his feet from the spot where he had burned out the old wooden steps. They were about 7 feet down, and they were starting to look crowded down there.
All the creeps he'd been killing and dragging here over the last little while, who'd died in the street and stood up again in the pit. Somewhere between twenty and twenty five.
"How we doing?" Eddie sat down on the floor in the doorway, finishing his cigarette with his chain-covered hand as dead arms scraped at the wall below him. "Sorry I ain't been by. My other house is bein' a real pain in the ass lately." Eddie wriggled his right arm out of his jacket. "You guys remember I was tellin' you about that little girl I got there, can't keep from waving her gun around? Check this out." He held up his wound over the heads of the starving horde, and the crowd went wild. Hunrgy moans and shrieks rang out as they all tried to stretch their creaking limbs skyward.
"I know, right?" Eddie put his arm back in his jacket. "Runs right in on me and does that to me. I said though, I said, hands down, y'know, that's f*ckin' it. I don't know when I'm gonna be able to let you guys out, those folks keep interruptin my train a' thought all the d*mn time. Anyway, I ain't got anybody new for you today, I'll bring somebody by soon. I just wanted to make sure y'all didn't eat eachother while I was gone, or something. You're all pretty self-reliant though." He finished his smoke in silence as he sat and stared back into their hungry, desperate faces. There was no kind of person Eddie hated as bad as a creep, but at least you know where they stand.
A zombie gnashed his teeth at him angrily, raking its decrepit fingers against the concrete. "Alright, sorry buddy, it's you today," Eddie shrugged as he flicked his cigarette butt down into the mob.
He reached his covered hands down into the crowd, planting his boot against the doorframe as he took the zombie by it's wrists. It groaned and snarled as he pulled it up out of the crowd, dragged it across the kitchen floor, into the old shed-structure in the back where the potatoes used to go, and beat it savagely back to death.
When he was done, he tossed the body back into the crowd, where it would wait to reanimate. Then he closed the whole place back up and headed back to the hotel, already feeling a little less uptight.
Hardly anybody had any vision anymore, or any goals. And if you did, then you owed it to yourself not to forget about them. If you lose yourself in every little thing, nothing's ever gonna get better. Y'know?
At about ten in the morning or so, Eddie was kicking a can of dog food down Baston street, thinking about whatever poor sap had finally decided to eat it. He rubbed the back of his neck and took the first drag off a freshly lit hand-rolled cigarette.
He was supposed to be smoking less. Smoking less and drinking less. But in his defense, he was only smoking because he was so godd*mn hung over.
Well, at least it was pretty cloudy out, dark for 10am. And there wasn't much trouble on the street to keep him from taking just the regular old sidewalk. Hands in his pockets, he booted the can further through the rubble every time he caught up to it, heedless of the noise. Any feral creep who came shuffling up to him this morning would by God wish they hadn't. He'd had a big bitch of a yesterday and he was on a mission to let off some steam. Well, officially his primary was to go check on the Bullpen, cause he hadn't checked on the Bullpen in a bit with everything going on. But whether he did it in there or out here, he was definitely gonna hurt something.
So when in the sam hell was he gonna learn that people are just no d*mn good, anyway? It sure wasn't like he was hearin' it for the first time. Mighta been a handy thing to remember when he was taking in ol' Calamity Jane there, handin' out a place to stay and things to do. In hindsight, there had been absolutely no reason for Eddie to believe that Saratores wasn't the typ to stab him in the back. Cut from the same cloth or not, people with that much pride can convince themselves that anything they do is the right thing.
An emaciated skeleton of a zombie reached it's one functioning arm up at Eddie from the gutter and croaked. He drove his bootheel into its fragile skull, wiped his boot on the curb, and kept on.
He'd gotten offers to join this or that militia group. Hell, tons of times. But he'd known better, was the thing. They were as bad as the death cults. You go in there and you sign away any kinda sense, anything that makes you you. That girl had been a part of something really amazing. Really just a hell of a thing, that house. Then some old hasbeen weasels in the door and tells her it's a joke, and her eyes go all spiraly and she zombie-walks away from it. Back to the f*ckin' hive-mind.
And what the hell should he care what a nothing like Oshay thiks about his house anyway, Eddie thought as he took a leak on a pile of burnt trash. Any fool could see he was just trying to dress Eddie down. His big revenge on the one that got away. Cussin' him out and turning tail. Yeah, congrats buddy.
He came to the street where, at one point, a mob of industrious survivors had piled some car wrecks together to barricade the road. It hadn't saved them, in the end, but it was still a hassle to creep and living pedestrian alike. Eddie climbed over it uneasily, his muscles still a little creaky from passing out in a weird position last night.
Still, it's never bad to get an outside perspective. Even an ignorant one. A broken clock is still right twice a day, his mama always used to say. Hard to deny, the place was a bit of a mess these days. Hopefully Sarah jumping him and Eddie cleaning her clock was the last word in what had been a lot of unecessary static. Hopefully this new rule was something everybody would settle into nicely, and then they could all go back to pointing their guns at the creeps.
But yeah, he agreed with himself as he landed on the other side of the pile-up, people were gettin' antsy. Well, that's alright, sooner than later their standard of living would be upped considerably. The next step'd probably have to be to get himself a sit-down with that Melisande lady, find out what he could expect outta her and when.
After that talk to...Fridges probably? He could count on one hand the number of people he'd remotely consider involving in this project. Even if his trust in Cass hadn't just been severely reduced, he had never thought he'd be able to convince her to hit that target. Mock neither, even though he was a steady go-to, and there was definitely no love lost. The kid just couldn't swallow killin' the living. Besides, with the little guy's hard luck, he'd get himself shot and Eddie would never hear the end of it. John was a little kid now, apparently? Well, maybe he still remembered something handy. Looks like the legwork was probably gonna be ol' Fridges, though.
A-1 Fish "n" Chips was this greasy old mom and pop in the middle of a burnt-out chunk of wasteland in Hollomstown. When he rounded the corner and saw it again he wondered, like he had every time since he first found the place, who the genius was who though the "n" was supposed to be in quotes. The windows were shabbily boarded, and new and old trails of blood ran from the sidewalk and under a massive old hunk of sheet metal that covered the front door. It was badly barricaded, too small to live in, and had been picked clean of anything edible beyond cockroaches by the time Eddie had discovered it. It's absolute uselessness to survivors was what made it such ideal real estate. And if anybody did squat, they'd d*mn sure leave as soon as they found the basement.
Eddie made his way over the streaks of gore leading from various directions toward the front door. The hunk of metal shrieked its way across the pavement as Eddie pushed it aside. He ambled past the counter, with the smashed-pen cash register still laying on it's side, and ducked through the low door into the kitchen. The big prep table was covered in various tools, smears of blood, and another ancient tape player similar to the one that Eddie kept at the hotel. He put on the chain-mesh butcher's gloves he kept on the counter, and hung up the worklight over the basement door. He slid back the little deadbolt he'd built to bar it from the outside and opened the door.
"Mornin' fellas," Eddie croaked, the first time he'd used his voice that day. They'd been swaying in the dark, aimless and placated, but at the first note of a human voice, the Bullpen swelled up in a sudden chorus of wails and groans. They all reached up at him, strainng to grasp at his feet from the spot where he had burned out the old wooden steps. They were about 7 feet down, and they were starting to look crowded down there.
All the creeps he'd been killing and dragging here over the last little while, who'd died in the street and stood up again in the pit. Somewhere between twenty and twenty five.
"How we doing?" Eddie sat down on the floor in the doorway, finishing his cigarette with his chain-covered hand as dead arms scraped at the wall below him. "Sorry I ain't been by. My other house is bein' a real pain in the ass lately." Eddie wriggled his right arm out of his jacket. "You guys remember I was tellin' you about that little girl I got there, can't keep from waving her gun around? Check this out." He held up his wound over the heads of the starving horde, and the crowd went wild. Hunrgy moans and shrieks rang out as they all tried to stretch their creaking limbs skyward.
"I know, right?" Eddie put his arm back in his jacket. "Runs right in on me and does that to me. I said though, I said, hands down, y'know, that's f*ckin' it. I don't know when I'm gonna be able to let you guys out, those folks keep interruptin my train a' thought all the d*mn time. Anyway, I ain't got anybody new for you today, I'll bring somebody by soon. I just wanted to make sure y'all didn't eat eachother while I was gone, or something. You're all pretty self-reliant though." He finished his smoke in silence as he sat and stared back into their hungry, desperate faces. There was no kind of person Eddie hated as bad as a creep, but at least you know where they stand.
A zombie gnashed his teeth at him angrily, raking its decrepit fingers against the concrete. "Alright, sorry buddy, it's you today," Eddie shrugged as he flicked his cigarette butt down into the mob.
He reached his covered hands down into the crowd, planting his boot against the doorframe as he took the zombie by it's wrists. It groaned and snarled as he pulled it up out of the crowd, dragged it across the kitchen floor, into the old shed-structure in the back where the potatoes used to go, and beat it savagely back to death.
When he was done, he tossed the body back into the crowd, where it would wait to reanimate. Then he closed the whole place back up and headed back to the hotel, already feeling a little less uptight.
Hardly anybody had any vision anymore, or any goals. And if you did, then you owed it to yourself not to forget about them. If you lose yourself in every little thing, nothing's ever gonna get better. Y'know?