M. Toombs
It's always nice to run into someone you
got along with while out on the town. Molly and Alex experienced this
earlier in the evening, when the sun had just barely dipped below the
horizon, in a loose crowd of people just outside the Ogden. They'd been
there to see the same music show (go figure), but much like the night
that they ran into each other at the club they were in agreement about
bailing early tonight.
It had been a summer-warm day, a day for
tank tops and shorts, and that heat carried well into the night even
when the sun had gone down. Molly was dressed in a pair of high-waisted
black denim shorts with a loose white tank-top tucked into them. She
wore a light-knit sweater overtop for the sake of not showing too much,
with sleeves that stopped just above the elbow. Black and white canvas
sneakers, somewhat faded, were on her feet, and her hair was done up in a
high ponytail. Make-up on her face, nails painted, Molly's sense of
vanity hadn't diminished since Alex saw her last.
They'd left the
show and were walking to get food. Molly knew a place about five blocks
up, and they both decided that they may as well just walk if it was
that near. Between the Ogden and this restaurant in particular, they
had to go down one of several side-streets to cross west.
This is
where we place the ladies as of current-- walking down a residential
street of squat brick and wood-siding homes that was crowded with parked
cars, just wide enough for one vehicle to pass through at a time.
Molly had her hands in her sweater pockets and was gabbing away merrily:
"...and
that would be probably the third time someone's tried to give me their
number in the E.R., I think. At least he wasn't doing it puking into a
pan, like the first time."
M. Toombs
[Perception 3 + Alertness 3]
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (3, 3, 4, 5, 5, 9) ( success x 1 )
Alex Fisher
[Per+Alert]
Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (6, 6, 7, 7, 10) ( success x 5 )
M. Toombs
As
they're walking, Alex is tuned in to the world around her, nearly to a
transcendent degree. Perhaps it's the warmth of the night and the way
the air was clear and fresh and recharging in her lungs. Maybe it was
that they neighborhood they walked through was economically depressed,
and one of the houses they'd walked by before turning up this street had
five people hanging out on the porch who grew silent and watched when
she and Molly walked by.
Whatever the reason, she could hear and
sense that the people didn't get off the porch to follow them. She saw a
glint and noticed a dog watching them through the slats of a wood fence
in someone's backyard. She smelled charcoal from a grill a dozen homes
away.
More importantly than that, though, she could hear the
tones of a human voice coming through the half-open window of the house
she and Molly were about to walk in front of. She could hear it well
enough that she could tell it was coming from the small window well of
the basement, the window itself pushed open about half a foot for
ventilation.
The voice was male, and it was trying to command
authority. The authority was flimsy and weak, though, for everything
beneath it was wrought with panic and terror.
"Stay yourselves... Stay-- no. No! Back! Shit, no-- I said stay!"
Alex Fisher
Fate
had brought them together once more, first there'd been that bit of
business, at the pawn shop. Then there was the night outside the club
where the pair had indeed agreed to bail early for the sake of their own
desires. It seemed that fate would have them repeat their previous
experience, and so here they were tonight walking down that back street
with smiles on their lips, yes even Alex is smiling.
Molly was
dressed in shorts and a tanktop, which was appropriate for the weather.
Alex for her part was fighting that appropriate weather gear in a way.
She wore a pair of dark red jeans and a grey tank top, which left
muscular arms and broad shoulders apparent to all as they strode past.
Alex
for her part offered up a snorting chuckle at the thought of the guy
puking into a pan as he asked for her number. "God damn, guy thought he
was being a suave and debonair stud with puke rolling from his lips?"
Her hands came up slightly as she shook her head and looked utterly
grossed out before chuckling again.
"Fuckin ridiculous." She
exclaimed. But then she's stopped, her eyes narrowing deeply as she
listened for a long moment before turning to Molly. "You hear that?" She
asks quickly. "Someone sounds like their about to shit themselves." She
said as she turned and started for that ajar window, moving
cautiously...slowly.
One never did know what you'd run into after all.
M. Toombs
When
Alex had heard something out of the ordinary and stopped, Molly did as
well. That could have just been because Alex stopped, though, so asking
to clarify if they'd heard the same thing still made sense. Molly was
looking around, like she was trying to locate the source of something.
She'd heard a voice, she thought. Something, maybe an animal? She
wasn't sure.
Alex had explained what she had heard, though.
Molly's brow furrowed, and the frown portrayed a number of things at
once. Dominantly, reasonable human concern and curiosity and
confusion. Secondarily, and this is the curious part, Molly looked
aggravated. Like she didn't much care to have her evening interrupted
by antics like this.
All the same, Alex started to cut across the
yard and the driveway to where the window well was. Her feet crunched
on the gravel driveway, and Molly's steps followed not far behind.
There
are no floodlights or motion sensors to illuminate the two, so they
soon slip into the shadows created by fences, buildings, and trees on
the residential plot of land. No one is outside to stop them, and this
property has no 'Beware of Dog' signs or animals to follow the promise.
Before
the ladies have a chance to bend low enough to peek into the window
sheltered by the well cut into the ground, they're able to hear a
strangled, weak, gargled cry for help. It's barely the word 'Help',
really, and is more comparable to a sheep's bleat than it is language. A
pathetic dying cry if ever one was heard. Then, to follow, wet sounds.
When
knees bend and bodies are lowered enough to peek through the window,
they find that they have to peek through the six inch gap to see
anything, for the glass panes are opaque from years of cobwebs and dirt
and dust. What they do see through the gap is a horrible scene.
Bodies,
figures, with pale skin and open wounds, huddled in around and actively
tearing apart a man in his thirties who is either dead or nearly there,
pinned up to the wall by the monsters that sought to consume him.
Alex Fisher
[WP]
Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (4, 7, 8, 8, 9) ( success x 4 )
M. Toombs
[Molly, do you hold it together nearly so well?]
Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (2, 3, 4, 4, 4, 5, 7) ( success x 1 )
Alex Fisher
Alex
had expected a number of things, trapped animals, abused and beaten
perhaps attacking their master's and imposing a little bit of poetic
justice. What she finds as she looks through the window slit is however,
much...much worse. Worse then the dogs, worse then some home invasion
scenario...no they had to look in on something out of a true blue horror
film. Cannibals was the first thing that went through Alex's mind as
her stomach made flip flops.
But then there were the wounds, the
pale skin, and the feral way at which they tore at the poor man. Alex
recoiled from the scene, pulling her head away from the slit to avoid
any more of the sight, the smell, and the sounds and she turned to Molly
as she backed up.
"oohhhh fuck." She said taking a deep breath.
"We....we have to help him, or...I don't know, call the cops. Yeah,
cops." She said as she started to fumble for her phone. Her hands were
shaking, but they were growing steadily calm as her training took hold
in the crisis. The guy was still screaming though...and Alex looked at
Molly.
"Does he have a chance?" She asks quickly, and looked ready to bolt...the question poised as if she might try to help him.
M. Toombs
Molly
had crouched down with her knees open and apart, one hand on the ground
between her ankles to help keep balance. Otherwise she would have
needed to place bare knees on the gravel, and that's just plain
uncomfortable. She was huddled near to Alex's side when they both
looked through the window. Near enough that when they both registered
what they were seeing, Alex could feel the dry heave start deep in
Molly's gut and roll up into her shoulders and neck. She clapped a hand
over her mouth, but did not recoil like Alex did.
Instead, Molly stared in horror, but the tiniest bit in fascination too.
So, zombies are a thing now too.
When
Alex started talking, Molly's wide eyes pulled away from the scene
inside the window to stare up at her instead. She blinked once, twice,
then gave her head a small shake. Alex had suggested they call the cops
and went for her phone, and that apparently was what it took to snap
Molly out of her horrified daze and back to her senses.
She shook
her head again, but this time with meaning. "No." Inside, through the
window, the screams were little more than gurgle-gargles. There wasn't
enough strength or life left in the man to muster a real voice anymore.
"No," she said again, confirming her initial statement. It was
difficult to determine if she was saying no to the situation as a whole
or answering Alex's question pertaining to survival. Thankfully, she
swallowed hard the bile and lump in her throat and clarified.
"He's... He's gone. Don't call the cops."
Pale
as a sheet and shaking faintly, Molly leaned forward and reached out to
the window. Slow and careful, desperate not to make a sudden sound to
alert the beings that appeared all the more rotted, bloated, and dead the more she looked at them, Molly closed the window over.
[Dexterity 3 + Athletics 2, spending WP 'cause please don't let them know we're here]
Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (1, 7, 9, 9, 10) ( success x 5 ) [WP]
Alex Fisher
This
is where things start lacking sense for Alex, she'd been prepared to
call the cops, or to rush in and save the guy. [Well pull his likely
half eaten corpse out of the hands of the creatures in the basement. This had been her plan, so far in that she had been on the cusp of
enacting it.
But then Molly says what she says, and it flies in
the face of everything that Alex knew, everything she had been taught
and trained and told to do. She looks incredulously at Molly as she
pulls the window closed and tells her not to call the cops. She watches
Molly like shes a completely new individual, and for a moment revulsion
flickers on her features.
"What the fuck?" She asks as she stands
up straight, her phone still in her hand. "You wanna just leave that guy
to those fucks? Let them eat him or whatever the hell they are doing to
him?" Her voice starts to rise, anger becoming apparent on her features
as she sought reason in Molly's action, and when she couldn't she
reacted as she did. With anger.
She started to turn shaking her
head at Molly as she started to move intent on the door. She'd find a
weapon, maybe a fire poker or a...something.
M. Toombs
[Manipulation 3 + Leadership 1: Trust me to be the authority here! You know you wanna]
Dice: 4 d10 TN6 (4, 8, 8, 8) ( success x 3 )
Alex Fisher
[WP]
Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (4, 6, 6, 9, 10) ( success x 4 )
M. Toombs
Though
her fingers were shaking when they reached for the window, touching the
pane stilled and steadied them. The window slid that six inches closed
silently, gliding like a knife through butter, and snugged into its
seal to be closed with zero protest, little more than a sigh of thanks.
It was tired of being open anyways.
There's a flash of anger and
disbelief in Alex's voice, and Molly looked back up to her again, then shook her head sadly and rose back to her feet. The pebbles from the
driveway were dusted from her hands. Molly's voice was reedy and it
shook when she answered back.
"There's no medicine that would save him even if we did
go in to get him. Alex--," but Molly paused when the firefighter
stepped around her to walk toward the front door of the house. A small
jolt of panic struck Molly in the chest, and that made her words
stronger, more authoritative in a way. It came across as bossy when she
said: "Alex, wait!"
But the panic does shine through,
and the worry. She wanted to compel Alex not to go in the house, and
whatever reasoning she had it was probably very sincere. Molly hustled
along after the woman, circling toward the front of the house and the
front door, and tried hastily in a hushed voice to explain.
"Those are zombies, Alex, what are you going to do? Drag the guy out just for him to reanimate and eat us
or something? Huh? And then what happens when the cops get here--
they call the CDC and this shit hits media and scares the world to
death? Just hear me out, please."
Alex Fisher
Alex
was almost at the door when she is finally stopped by Molly's words.
Her jaw is flexing though as she turned to look at her, and those hard
blue eyes were harder then she had ever seen. Her intentions set, and
the force of her voice having no effect on the headstrong woman.
Infact she might look like she's about to deck Molly, she just needed a reason, any reason.
But
she was listening and when Molly mentions Zombie's, fucking zombies the
woman's features go from anger to incredulous and she she shook her
head and chuckled obviously disbelieving.
"Zombies, what the fuck
is this the walking dead?" She asked with ire in her voice as she
turned to grab the door. But something stops her, ever so
briefly...because how would the cops react if they were actually
zombies.
"You've got five seconds to say your piece, and if I
don't like what I hear I am calling the cops, and then I am going in
there and I am fucking those assholes up, Zombies or not."
M. Toombs
[I probably should do this before Molly starts busting knowledge out: Intelligence 3 + Occult 3]
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 2, 4, 4, 6) ( success x 1 )
M. Toombs
[Molly you're better than that. That was balls. Redo.]
Dice: 6 d10 TN7 (5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10) ( success x 4 )
M. Toombs
When
they stop, Alex is at the top of the three-step concrete stoop, about
to find out whether the door behind the busted and tattered storm door
was locked. Molly's standing down at the foot of the stairs, face aimed
up to this could-be would-have-been friend. She can see the energy
written into Alex's shoulders and arms and jaw. She was tense, she was a
woman of action. She couldn't just sit by while something terrible was
going on, she had to at least try to help.
But these
waters were unknown. Alex could confidently march into a five alarm
blaze and handle herself fine, but as much denial as she could put
herself in she knew that the skin was rotting off those bodies that
huddled around the man. She heard the wet animal hunger and the snap of
bone, slurp of marrow in that last instant before Molly sealed the
window closed.
This was scary shit, right out of horror movies,
and Molly seemed to be acting as though this was a sequel for her. She
was shaken and disgusted, but there wasn't an ounce of disbelief or
doubt in her. She knew what she saw.
And she was going to try to
share that to stop the firefighter from going in, even if it did look
like said firefighter was looking for a good reason to bloom a bruise on
Molly's pretty cheekbone.
"It's not the walking dead, this isn't
some mystery plague or anything. It's..." Her mouth pressed into a
line, and she faltered. Molly wasn't sure the best way to explain this
to make it easier to believe. But, that was an extra second of waiting,
so she pressed on even if the only words coming to mind already sounded
stupid and impossible.
"It's corpses-- people that are already
dead, reanimated by some really fucked up magic. They're tough as hell,
and they will tear us apart or die again trying. And they'll keep coming at you."
It's with a tone of pleading that she concludes with: "Please, this is
over our heads. Don't go in there. We're not prepared."
Alex Fisher
Would-be-could-be's.
There were a lot of those in this moment, Alex could go inside, she
could fight valiantly, she could also die horribly. She would like to
punch Molly for cowardice, she would also like to call the cops, because
Molly was right. They were unprepared, they were very much in over
their heads. But Alex was the sort of woman who fought hard and
desperately till there was no fight left in her.
But she stood on
that stoop, seeming ever so tall as Molly stood below her trying her
best to explain this situation and why Alex should concede to the
woman's supposed expertise on this. Her eyes narrowed as she tried to
absorb that information, and it looked like she might be choking on
these revelations.
It was that sound in Molly's voice, that
certainty that Alex knew she was lacking in this moment that stopped her
from turning and going through that door. She stood there looking Molly
dead in the eye as she spoke, the language of her body saying that she
was still very ready to go inside if what Molly said didn't jive.
"Ok,
then what the fuck do we do? Who the hell could possibly be more
prepared for this? If not the cops huh?" She asked as she tilted her
head and gestured back towards the door. "I don't know about your facts,
but mine tell me there are no superhero's. No one but us, or some other
guy with enough guts to get the job done. So unless you got some super
friends emergency signal stuffed down your bra, explain to me what we do
about this?"
M. Toombs
What they fuck did they do?
If
Molly were alone here she would have phoned a friend as soon as that
window had been closed. She knew people who were better equipped for
handling situations like this, who she knew were likely to answer her
call and come to her aid. After all, who better to help handle
something that's undead than a person who is Undead themselves?
The
fact was, though, that Molly wasn't alone. She didn't want to pull the
rest of the world into the realm of the supernatural along with her,
which was a big part of her insisting they not phone the police. She
didn't want to keep being associated in a recorded way with odd
occurrences like this. Her name was already on paper and electronic
file somewhere in association with that curious pawn shop explosion. If
she were to be recorded as stumbling on scene to another strange event
so soon after, eyebrows would raise and new questions would too.
She
had to shed her reluctance to share for Alex's sake, since the woman
had already seen so much, but she didn't want to bring vampires to the
firefighter's door any more than she already would have. So, phoning a
friend was out.
And she was right, they had to do something.
So,
Molly furrowed her brow and stepped back from the stoop, a half a dozen
steps so that she could look over the building in a wider scope. It
was a one-story establishment, probably only had two small bedrooms
unless the basement offered more than the ground floor. The siding was
made of wood, and the white paint has long since yellowed and begun to
peel. There was a dusty Cadillac in the driveway, but no other
indication that the place was occupied. It didn't look very lived in at
all.
When she answered, finally, Molly swallowed and went out on a limb with:
"You don't keep a gun, do you?"
Alex Fisher
"A
gun?" Alex says incredulity in her voice as she took several steps
towards Molly, at the very least the nurse had managed to get the
firefighter to step back from the brink right? "What are you going to
do? Go down into that room and shoot them? How is that any better then
my plan to find a weapon and stopping them?" She asks, her brows
furrowing as if she were trying to understand the woman's reasoning.
"You
start shooting, someone is going to notice, and then the cops get
called anyways." She says matter of factly. "So I don't really see how
effectively implicating your own ass in murder is the best way to deal
with this, because if the cops get here and you have a gun and some dead
motherfuckers in the basement..they are going to blame your ass."
Shes
still angry, though it seemed now more to their inability to come up
with a real course of action then anything else. IF the man wasn't dead
before, it was fairly certain he was dead now. This fact hit Alex and a
grimace of anger and disappointment flashed across her features, though
it was disappointment in herself more then anything else.
She turned back to the house then and shook her head.
"Theres
only one thing you could do, and if these things are that tough...that
aint gonna fucking stop them anyways. And I am NOT helping you do that."
She doesn't say exactly what that thing is, because she wouldn't she
couldn't. To do so would be to go against everything she stood
for....and if it happened, what would that mean for her?
M. Toombs
A
gun would draw attention, of course. Alex demanded to know how it
would be better than a weapon, and the exasperation and stress was
apparent in Molly when she answered by tossing her arms up in the air
helplessly and grating out in a voice that would have been an excitable
yell were she not actively trying to keep quiet.
"Well at least
you can hit them with a bullet from across the room! I don't know what
you were going to use, a knife? A 2x4? What if it got hold of you?"
But
there was one thing they could do.... Molly set eyes on Alex's face
with a small gleam of hope in them, and recognition as well.
Fire.
Molly
licked her lips with a tongue that felt as dry as they did. She took a
breath deep enough to move her chest and shoulders, and looked back to
the window well. Wondered if the animated corpses would start trying to
find their way up out of the basement, or if they would return to some
kind of dormant state when no one was around them. She wondered also
about the logistics of weaponizing fire. Again, a glance to Alex. If
anyone knew anything about fire....
"Isn't there some way to
just.... contain it to them? And put it out before it sets the rest of
the house ablaze?" Quick thinking, thankfully, was something Molly
could claim to be in most occasions, and after a quick glance to
remember it was there, Molly approached the Cadillac that was sitting in
park. "If this thing has gas....," she started her thought to indicate
what she was thinking, but trailed off rather than finishing the
sentence.
Alex Fisher
Molly was getting irritated
as well she threw her hands in the air and the grating excitable sound
in her voice didn't help Alex keep calm either. Her jawline was tensing,
flexing under the pressure of Alex trying to keep herself in check and
when Molly started to talk about a controlled burn....
Alex could
only look at her like she'd just lost her marbles, like she was talking
about burning down the neighbourhood to take out a few rats. It boggled
her mind and as Molly approached the car, trying to figure out what
exactly she could do with the resources she had Alex moved.
She
was up behind Molly quicky, anger in her features as she grabbed Molly
by the arm to stop her. "No, you are not fucking doing this, WE are not
fucking doing this." Alex looked more sick to her stomach then she had
when she had seen the man being eaten alive.
"If burning down a
house is your best fucking idea to get the job done then you have some
serious uni-bomber mentality that will NOT fly." She'd let Molly's arm
go after a moment of vice like grip and held her hand up.
"Fuck it....fuck this." She had her phone out again, and she was dialing.
M. Toombs
Some
people respond with fight or flight when grabbed hold of. Were Molly
more easily offended, more quickly drawn to defensiveness, then she may
have tried to wrench herself free when Alex grabbed hold of her arm to
stop her. Or, alternately, she may have answered by striking her.
Instead
Molly just stopped walking and looked down at the fingers around her
forearm, then up into Alex's face. Disbelief and anger and stress all
muddled together there, and in that moment Molly's conscience flinched
inside her. She felt bad, really. She remembered disbelief like that.
Hell, when she'd first been confronted with undeniable proof of the
unreal she'd actually started to cry herself. She knew the spiraling
loss of control that accompanied, and perhaps this was why she just
looked at Alex and didn't fight when she grabbed her arm and stopped her
from pursuing the attempt to kill the things with fire.
Maybe it
was why she didn't go after the woman to stop her from calling the cops
either. I mean, really, what was she going to do? Try and take the
phone away from her? No, she could already tell that was a fight she
wouldn't win. Molly wasn't big or strong-- she was fit, sure, but
chances weren't high that she could beat Alex if it came down to fists.
Given Alex's current state, there seemed a very good chance that it
would if Molly tried to take her phone away.
"Fine," Molly said
finally, and put her hands up in the air in a gesture of surrender.
"They'll just dismiss it as fucking bath salts or new meth or
something." She knew Alex was on the phone, that she probably had a
dispatcher in her ear by now, but Molly pressed on by saying:
"I'm not sticking around to be a part of this, though."
And, almost reluctantly, Molly started to walk away from the front of the house and back toward the sidewalk.
Alex Fisher
Alex
was with a dispatcher at that moment, and she was giving the address,
details and even her name. Because that was protocol, that was what was
supposed to happen when a first responder called in, you identified to
lend extra credence to the moments that came next, because dispatchers
listened to responders more then others, that was just the way it was.
When
she gave it all, she had the option to mention any other witnesses, and
she looked at Molly as she turned to start walking away, their good
night spoilt, their growing friendship perhaps irreparable now that this
had happened, and they had failed to come together on a solution.
The
dispatcher asked once more if there were any other witnesses on site
and Alex, well, she didn't lie. But she simply said as Molly stepped off
the property. "No, there are no other witnesses on site. Just me." She
said before adding. "I'll be on site when the police arrive." At that
she hung up. She wasn't supposed too. She was supposed to stay on the
line but she had something she had to do first.
She hustled then, right up to the edge of the property but didn't step off it.
"This
is the right thing to do." She called after Molly, almost reluctant
herself, perhaps for once not entirely sure if it was. "I'm....." She
bites her lip in frustration and then plowed forward. "I shouldn't have
grabbed you. Gimme your number, please. I won't tell them, but I wanna
know how the fuck you knew what they were."
At that she stood there, waiting, and if Molly didn't give her a response, then she would simply stand there...and wait.
M. Toombs
A
keen observer, and very much invested in whether or not Alex would
mention that she was there with her, Molly was listening in to the phone
call even though she was still walking forward, away from her and the
house and the vicious slippery scene in the basement. So she overheard
when Alex specified that nobody else was on site, and paused to look
back over her shoulder.
In that moment, their eyes met. Molly
could see that Alex would want to talk, would want to come over and
follow up. So when she finished with the call with the dispatcher she
did not have to hurry to catch up to a retreating Molly, nor did she
have to call out after her. She simply needed to step up within
conversational space of Molly and the sidewalk she stood on, and speak.
"I
suppose you're right," she relented when Alex insisted this was the
right thing to do. "I'm not willing to put myself in bite's distance
for the sake of putting those things out of their misery myself,
and--..." She paused and looked away from Alex, and masked that up by
pretending to not remember what pocket she put her phone in. Pretended
to glance down and search her pockets with her eyes and hands both.
Pretended
to continue the same thought rather than make it apparent she was
starting a new one. "...I don't exactly know of any task forces or help
lines for these types of events exclusively anyways."
With her
phone out, she would raise her eyebrows to inquire after Alex's number.
She would share her own phone number with Alex as well in exchange.
With that done, her phone went into her back pocket.
"I kind of
specialize in these things. I'd call it a hobby, but it's really more
of a lifestyle when it gets down to it. And I'm really sorry that you
now have to consider it for yourself. I'll text you in a couple days,
we can plan a date and I'll give some more insight, alright?" She
looked at Alex sympathetically, quiet for a moment, then added:
"Goodnight. And thanks for not mentioning me."
And Molly would turn, then, and walk back toward the Ogden and where she'd parked her car.
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