Welcome to Gaia! ::

As the mess hall began to fill up with humans and vampires alike, seeking breakfast, the quiet chatter of the room was interrupted by someone kicking the heavy doors open. A frosted, gun-toting guard stormed in, with a face colored red from the cold. He quickly closed the door behind him, to prevent any uncomfortable breezes from rolling in. He shook the snow off of his heavy boots and clunked his way over to the table where Troy and the girls sat.
"Miss Ellie, I need to speak with you, quietly. It concerns your husband." He motioned for her to follow him.

The guard nervously shuffled from one foot to the other. He had heard from Tyler, himself, about the fiery temper that Ellie had shown on more than one occasion during the couple's travels together. He hoped she wouldn't get angry.
"Well, here's the thing...about an hour ago, we lost contact with him and his group." The guard deliberately looked over Ellie's shoulder so he wouldn't see her face. He gritted his teeth and prepared to tell her the worst of the news. "And...he was in some sort of trouble, last we heard. They were four miles from safety, when the storm picked up, and they encountered something big. We don't know if he's okay." The guard closed his eyes as tightly as he could, and waited in fear for the impact he thought was coming his way.

The guard almost collapsed from sheer relief when he realized that Eleanor wasn't angry. After collecting himself, he cleared his throat and said, "We don't know what it was. We're guessing it's one of those Malice things. We didn't hear much, but we record every transmission that goes in and out, so I'll let you listen for yourself." The guard then pressed play on the recording device, and Tyler's deep, twangy voice echoed through the lonely hall:

"This is Elmer Fudd to Guard Tower 1! Be advised, we've encountered a hostile! We're about 4 miles due east of PL Gate, as the crow flies! Keep an eye out for more, we're trying to get away! We--!" Then, there was the sound of a loud grunt from Tyler, and then rushing wind, followed by a metallic clatter as the radio had skidded away. Then, there was only static. The guard gulped. He hated to bear bad news.

"If you're going out there, take someone with you! Tyler'll kill me if anything happens to you out there," shouted the guard as Ellie darted off.

Meanwhile, about four miles from the gate, the storm raged on, but Tyler hadn't given up. He had his revolver holstered, and his assault rifle slung, as his hands didn't have enough feeling left to use them properly. With some help from the others, he managed to dig out a large pocket in a huge snowdrift. Then Ryan began to build a fire. Daniel expressed concern that the fire might make the snow above collapse on them.
"Nah, it won't do that. The snow layer's too thick right above here," Tyler explained, indicating the low ceiling. "That'd be like trying to melt an ice sculpture with a Zippo. Not hot enough." Tyler moved to sit by the entrance, so that he could kick out any new buildups of snow around it.

After Troy finished his breakfast and sipped the last of his coffee he glanced at Nicole as Aivi was about to take some blood from her. He thought how strange it was that even though we are walking blood bags to vampires that we we also family to them. He then glanced out the window hoping that Tyler and the rest of the group was alright in the snowstorm. Realizing that it would be impossible to find them in this snowstorm he got up and left Nicole with Aivi and rushed to the gate where Ellie and Russ where. Troy shouted out to Ellie and Russ in the buss ling blowing snow "Ellie I know you are concerned for Tyler and want to go out and find him. But this storm is going to make it impossible even for your vampiric senses to find them and the same goes for your super senses too Russ. The only thing you will be doing is endangering yourselves, now Tyler is got smarts in survival camping so I would not worry too much about him he will be fine. So lets go back inside and wait for the storm to dissipate then we can go out to look for them. Ok?"

Crawling into the snow den, James also had concern about the roof. "If the fire does get too big it could collapse. Not exactly what I call a 5 star hotel either, if those even existed anymore." He rubbed his hands together, trying to get them warm, at least enough to be able to load his guns with more ammo. "Why Canada again? These winters are going to kill me one of these years."

Tossing the last o his firestarter into the small fire to keep it going, he dug around for anything else to burn. There was plenty in his bag to burn, but nothing that wouldn't produce super toxic smoke to kill them alot faster. "Don't worry about the fire getting too big, I honestly and worried about having no fire at all." Tossing his bag behind him, he layed back and used the bag as a pillow and layed his rifle across his chest. Water is bad for guns, and snow is water afterall. Letting out a yawn, he closed his eyes. "WELL GUYS...if you can find anything not plastic, feel free to burn it. If it get's bad enough, we can burn the wooden stock of my rifle, but somebody if making me a new one. Composite stock. I think I would like that. Well, if you need me, I'll be resting here. There is some beef jerkey and beanie weenies in my bag if you guys get hungry. And if worst comes to worst, I vote we eat James first. I don't have much meat to my bones anyways." With that, he scooted around and got comfortable, and started his nap.

During his time out fighting the undead, Tyler's body was eventually conditioned to be quite the effective zombie-fighting tool. One example of this was his trained ears. He had learned to ignore normal sounds, in order to pick up things that were out of place. He told himself he had to be imagining it, but he would have sworn that he heard a young girl shouting "daddy!" He waited for the wind to shift, and gestured to his comrades to be silent. In a few moments, the wind carried an unmistakable sound to him. It was the voice of his own daughter. He scrambled to get out of the hole they had dug, and saw a vague shape amidst the snow carried on fierce winds. He dashed madly for the shape without so much as an explanation, and soon got close enough to see that Aivi was not alone. A male Stryker-class had followed the Brute and found Aivi wandering around. He raised a spiked club-like arm to swing at the child. Tyler grabbed a fistful of her jacket and tossed her aside, taking the full force of the blow across his back. The short spurs in the creature's bone bit into his flesh, and he felt heat spread from the wounds across his cold body. His hands were too cold to grasp for his weapons, so he tried to employ a wild haymaker and catch the Malice off guard. He missed, and took a knee to his chest. Then the creature began to beat him senseless, as it was unaffected by cold. Tyler spit blood in its face.
"Don't watch, Baby-girl. I don't want you to see this! Go hide in the bunny hole with the boys," he said feebly.