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frayedflower rolled 1 100-sided dice:
70
Total: 70 (1-100)
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 Posted: Mon Dec 07, 2009 5:50 pm
Sam wasn't really sure how long he stayed huddled in those bushes, drifting in and out of consciousness. To be honest, he wasn't sure how long he'd been in the room in the first place. The dim hope of waking up had fizzled into nothing as time had gone on, snuffed by the cold and the horrific memories still fresh in his head. Part of him expected to turn around and see the girl standing there behind him, glaring at him with those horrible sunken eyes, the blood of that poor boy still dripping down her mangled lips.
That boy... his guilt was almost as heavy a burden as his fear. He hadn't been able to do anything. He'd been absolutely powerless to help him. Worse, he'd left him there. It hadn't been his choice to leave him behind. That was what part of his mind kept telling him. But there had to have been something. The monster hadn't liked the mirror. Maybe he could have tried to go back. Maybe the boy had still been alive.
In the end, for lack of knowing what else to do and numb from the cold, he began to walk. Eventually, things began to look familiar to him again. Even if it didn't make him feel much better about it, at least he could find someone at the campus and tell them? They could make sure this never happened again. They'd find the girl and the boy's... body... and...
... no. They wouldn't believe him. They'd think he'd done it, wouldn't they? If the girl hadn't devoured the poor guy's remains already. He paled. The weight in his gut had grown heavier with the thought, and he knew he couldn't exactly pretend like nothing had happened. But maybe he could pull something off. Maybe ...
That had been when he'd come across the burned, ruined remains of what used to be his school. The numbing embrace of shock might have been almost welcome if it didn't open the floodgates to a thousand times worse. Again, he was still for a long time, the sun's warming rays lost to him. Hesitant, uneasy, he began to move forward, his vibrant green eyes wide and uncomprehending. "What... ?"
His uncertain steps escalated into a mad dash, stumbling over the blackened wreckage, and terror began to seep in through the edges again. Where was everyone? Sebastién, Alease, ********, anyone! Why had - what had - his room. Oh god, his room. His camera. His ******** camera. He stumbled and fell to his knees, mindless of what the wreckage did to his bare skin. The boy's mind was racing with a million and one questions, while he fought to keep his eyes from burning with tears. He wondered what it said that the death of a boy on his shoulders didn't make him cry, but the loss of his damn camera was threatening to break him down. The straw to break the camel's back.
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Posted: Mon Dec 07, 2009 7:30 pm
Sue had walked the wreckage as carefully as he could, found the places where the walls were solid, and... where they weren't. The floors seemed to be mostly stable, on this level at least. The cats were able to get up to some of the upper levels, but they didn't suggest that he tried.
Eventually, he'd pieced together a rough map of the new terrain. He'd used some paper and a broken half of a pencil he'd gotten out of the math class to sketch it out - where the passages were open, where the walls might fall - and was now sitting around, studying it carefully, trying to envision the best path through it. He scratched behind one ear with the jagged butt of the pencil - if they blocked off this passage here, they could probably take out this wall with a few hits, and....
A low, anxious mewl alerted him. There was someone else near the building.
Sue stood quickly, tucking the pencil behind his ear and the paper into his pajama sleeve, and wrapped his hand around the handle of his golf club. The cats were good for catching sounds, but until somebody got a look at the intruder, there was no way to know if it were a zombie or survivor. Chances were better that it was the former. If it was, Sue was going to hit hard and then run for it - no point in taking a stand yet, he had too much he had to do yet....
... Wait. Was that the sound of someone crying?
Yes, it most definitely was. Sue nearly hissed. It had to be a greenie trick. They knew he was here! They were trying to lure him out! But he had the advantage - he knew his way around. If he took his passage here, stepped over the rubble, he'd get behind where they were expecting him from. Moving slowly, taking the same dainty, sure steps as one of his cat-friends might, Sue drew himself through the passageway, got around to the back of the room that the noise was coming from, readied his club....
"GOTCHA, ********!" Sue hollered as he whipped around the corner, ready to bash in some heads.
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Posted: Mon Dec 07, 2009 7:55 pm
Sam was trying to calm down, but it was hard. He was at a complete loss for what to do next. He hadn't even seen a single soul on his way in. Maybe everyone had just been evacuated... but shouldn't there be something here? Cop cars, people investigating, news crews going on about the near tragedy. There wasn't anyone.
Now that he was pretty damn sure it hadn't been a dream, that left one other question. How had they ended up there in the first place? Him, that girl, that boy, that couple - had any of them made it? Had they ended up dead too? The pink haired boy choked back a quiet sob, rubbing his face on the back of his hand. Just what --
He was snapped from his train of thought when the sound of somebody bellowing met his ears, his head still pounding from the onslaught of screeches he'd endured for who knew how long. Sam wouldn't deny it; he screamed another blood-curdling cry of his own, his voice already hoarse from being exposed to the elements and who knew what else, and scrambled to face his 'foe'. If he'd thought about it, he would have realized the voice had spoken instead of just shrieked. But he wasn't thinking, just acting, his nerves frayed beyond belief.
The pink haired boy awkwardly ended up on his knees facing his 'attacker', the broken mirror outstretched -- it'd saved him once, right? -- pale skin riddled with bruises and tiny cuts. But not so much as a hint of green anywhere but his eyes, wide and frantic.
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Posted: Mon Dec 07, 2009 8:10 pm
In that same moment, a sheer, unfiltered panic filled up Sue's face. It wasn't hard for anyone who knew him to guess his thoughts at that moment - Oh s**t, he's no greenie - backpedal, backpedal! When it came to actual vocalizations, of course, all that emerged was a long and vivacious string of profanity as Sue ducked back and disappeared behind the corner again.
"s**t god damn mother ******** -- SAM," Sue hollered around the corner. His heart was beating hard, his voice was raspy. "It's Sue. Floor one, room GOT-26." Logic path: They'd practically been neighbors. Sue would not kill one of his neighbors, now that he knew who it was. (Though if it had been Trace... no, that was beside the point.)
Now that Sue surely had earned Sam's trust, it was time to get to the heavy questions. "Are you ******** alive or dead?" Sam had looked alive, of course, but you couldn't be too careful these days. Elke could have fooled Sue, after all, if he hadn't been prepared.
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Posted: Mon Dec 07, 2009 8:25 pm
Sam's hold on the mirror only tightened, even as the other boy backed away and back out of sight. But even if he was still ready to defend himself in a heartbeat, it was strangely a relief to hear a string of profanities instead of... that thing greeting him. He wouldn't exactly be proud to admit the way he flinched when he heard his name bellowed from around the corner. But even before he explained who he was, the pink haired boy began to lower the mirror. It was someone who knew who he was, someone capable of speaking, and it was someone period.
"Sue... " he echoed, his eyes widening briefly in comprehension. "Sue!" He didn't know the guy well. But they'd been on the same floor, and he'd seen him around enough. Why he was prowling around the burned remains of their school with a club, hell if he knew. He'd take familiarity where he could get it by now.
But the next question threw him right off again. "Um... what?" Was he serious? No, really. That had to be a joke. "Isn't that... kinda obvious? 'Course I'm alive." Dead people didn't exactly get up and walk around. Idly, he kind of wondered if maybe Sue had been around for the fire. Maybe a little too much smoke had -- "What happened?" he questioned almost desperately as he pulled himself to his bare feet, wrapping his arms around his bare chest. He'd lost his other 'weapon' (his shirt) in the flight away from the damned room. "Where is everyone? How did the school - did anyone get hurt?"
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Posted: Mon Dec 07, 2009 8:28 pm
Sam's questions echoed in Sue's skull. Literally - every time he said something, Sue had to pause, rerun it in his mind, ask himself if that was really what he was hearing.
Sue appeared around the corner again. His gaze was harsh, his face lined - but the club was down, relaxing near his feet. Unless his master plan was to take a whack at Sam's kneecaps, he wasn't looking for a fight.
"Most of them are dead."
There. That got the good news out of the way.
"They're zombies," Sue continued tonelessly. "They eat people. Us. How the hell'd you survive, Sam? Not knowing any of this?"
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Posted: Mon Dec 07, 2009 8:44 pm
Sam stared at him. Then stared some more. He opened his mouth as if to say something, then hastily shut it again. He tightened his grip on the mirror again, if only to try and keep his hands from shaking. "They're... dead?" he echoed, his voice hollow.
But wait. There's more. "Z-zombies...? ... tell me you're kidding?" he finally managed to get out. Zombies weren't real. They were just things in movies that swooped around and occassionally made spiffy choreographed appearences in pop videos. They were one of the horror genre's best cash cows. They were not their classmates. Even just looking at Sue though, he could tell this was no joke. He might be crazy. But he thought it was all real, anyway. "There's no way... "
He trailed off, shivering as he thought back to the room again. "... I was... taken someplace, " he murmured, looking down at the ground. "I just got out of there." Sam didn't go into detail. That would mean admitting that someone was dead because of him. Even if Sue might have lost it anyway, he just couldn't bring himself to say it. "When did the fire happen? How long has it been?"
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Posted: Mon Dec 07, 2009 8:51 pm
There were some questions you didn't ask. Some things you didn't want to know. How long it had been....
Well. Let's see.
"Two days since I saw Elke. Three days since we started Meatgrinder. A week since Zeke was eaten," Sue mumbled, tucking the club under his arm so he could count it off. "Another day... another day... nine." His throat clenched on itself, like a hand was around it. He swallowed against a lump. "Nine days since the fire." That's all....
Sue was silent for a long moment after that.
"We can't get out. There's something blocking us." When he resumed speaking, it was with a certain anger in his voice. "Nobody's come to help. Nobody's even tried. There's still food and water and medicine, if you go to the right place, but we're outnumbered something bad. We're working on a plan to hit them back, but we need more people, you know. We need to get their numbers down, or we won't even make it to week two."
Nine ******** days... Sue's head hurt to think of it....
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Posted: Mon Dec 07, 2009 9:11 pm
Nine days. He'd been down and out for at least nine days? It was something Sam couldn't even bring himself to be emotional about, not when it all felt so surreal. Just one series of blows, one after another after another. He'd been taken from his room. He'd been trapped in the bowels of hell for who knew how long. He'd watched another student die, helplessly. Everything he owned was burned away into ash. If what Sue was saying was true, anyone he'd ever given a damn about at this place might be gone. Or worse. And no one seemed to give a damn about them. It had been over a week since this whole thing had started.
Even the careless tossbacks to other students as Sue spoke made his blood run cold. Zeke. He'd known Zeke; again, nobody close. But he'd known him. He wondered who else he knew was dead. The pink haired boy sagged against the wall nearest him, shaking his head. "... unbelievable, " he murmured, mostly to himself. He clentched his eyes shut tight, as if willing desperately just one last time. Please, wake up. Just let him open his eyes and be back in his bed, safe and secure. Let him head out the next day and give Sebastién a cheerful 'bonjour!' Maybe he could go ask Alease to sit with him for breakfast again. That had been nice. Yeah, he would. He'd do a lot of things. Maybe he'd even clean his room for a change, put everything back in its proper place. Take his camera and go wild, snap pictures everywhere he went, make a million memories to hold onto.
He opened his eyes again to see Sue still standing there amongst the burned ruins of what had once been their school. Sam knew one thing; you never felt this exhausted in a dream. "What's... Meatgrinder?" He frowned deeply, toying with the mirror in his hands as he asked, "Who's... still around anyway?" He almost asked who was dead. But if half of what Sue said was true, better just to ask who was still alive and kicking.
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Posted: Mon Dec 07, 2009 9:19 pm
Sue didn't think much about the old days. He didn't have the time, or the energy. He was focused on the moment, survival, and to break out of that for even a moment....
The number nine was stored away in the back of his head. Some other time. When it was safe. He could access it then.
"Me." For a wild moment, it seemed like Sue was stopping there (and surely, it would be perfectly reasonable if thoughts of suicide were to enter the pink-haired boy's mind at that moment - not saying that they did, but many people in his shoes would have certainly thought of it.) Thankfully, though, he was just gathering the list in his mind before continuing. "Yahya. Kirin, Evie, Jess. And the cats."
And then Sue stopped. And this time, it was for real.
"There might be some more survivors. Hiding, you know. Don't know where they'd be getting their food or water, but... hey, Sam." Sue stopped suddenly, looking at the other. "When's the last time you ate? You don't look so great, you know."
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Posted: Mon Dec 07, 2009 9:35 pm
Sam's jaw dropped when the names stopped at one. A thousand dark thoughts ran through his head, though to his credit, they didn't involve dropping off a cliff or running back to the screaming bloodbath girl at the thought of his companion being Sue. But when he said they were 'outnumbered something bad' - was this how bad it was? All those students, an entire full school, and it was nobody but them? His heart was beating rapidly in his chest, panic setting in again.
Even after the rest of the names followed, it didn't do a whole lot to calm the boy down. Counting Sue and himself with those names, that made six. A grand total of six survivors and some kitty-cats. He harbored the hope there for a second that maybe the list would keep going after a pause, but there was no such luck. He swallowed hard, staring down at the ground. Was it really such a lucky thing that girl had pushed him out the window after all? If this was how it was, maybe - no. Don't start. Just breathe Sam, have to breathe.
He would have loved to take some solace in Sue saying there were more, but how could he take much comfort in a 'maybe'? When their resources were limited, if things were like Sue said they were - he swallowed hard again, for the first time taking in how scratchy his throat felt. "Don't remember, " he admitted honestly, leaning heavier against the wall. It had been pure adrenaline and terror that had gotten him this far. He stole a glance at his fractured reflection in the broken mirror, wincing when he took a good look at himself for the first time. "Wow. ... yeah. Guess I've seen better days, huh?"
Tired, he was so tired...
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Posted: Mon Dec 07, 2009 9:50 pm
"Don't go falling over on me, now." Sue said it like a joke, but his eyes shone something much more serious than that. Sue'd carried Yahya from the gymnasium to the math room once, but that had been a gesture of pure desperation after the death of one of their companions. They hadn't run into a single zombie along the way, and were damn lucky for that. If he had to carry Sam from here, across open ground....
He didn't think they'd be so lucky. And privately, Sue speculated that that would drop the number of survivors to five - because he couldn't say yet whether he'd be willing to take a stand that might drop it down to four. Not when things were so tight, the ship barely sailing, already.
"Pull yourself together." Now Sue wasn't sounding friendly at all - cross, rather, as though Sam was suddenly getting on his nerves. "Seriously. ******** keep it together. You need to walk, and if you can run, all the better. There's food with the rest of them, but it's in the main school building."
Here was the part where Sue was supposed to ask if Sam thought he could get that far - but it was ignored. Sam would get that far, because if he didn't, there was no reason he should have lived this long in the first place.
Sue shifted his weight, turned to evaluate the passage he stood near, then nodded toward it. "There's nothing you need here. We should start going, before something finds us."
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Posted: Tue Dec 08, 2009 10:44 am
Sam pulled away from the wall, standing straight again. He flinched lightly at the harshness in Sue's voice; if everything was true, he was one of the last people left alive, and the only chance he had to find anyone else. Last thing he wanted to do was to piss him off.
To be honest, he still wasn't sure if he should believe every word of what he was being told. Everyone dying, all the talk about zombies, it was still pretty... out there. But he'd also been plucked out of his room with a bunch of other students and trapped with a bunch of buck-toothed bat monstrosities and Samara 2.0. So much for nobody believing him, right?
Yeah. In other words; wouldn't hurt to go with the flow. Sam had made it this far. Would it kill him to push himself just a little more? The main school building wasn't that far. It was just like the window, just a little further. Just keep thinking of that light at the end of the tunnel. Just keep thinking of the boy he'd left behind. His stomach churned. "Right, " he murmured, taking a deep breath and pulling himself to his full height. It wasn't too impressive to begin with. But he was trying. "Then let's go."
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Posted: Tue Dec 08, 2009 5:24 pm
Oh, poor Sam. Thinking that Sue could somehow avoid being pissed off. Didn't the poor boy know, that was just Sue's natural state of affairs?
Sue certainly didn't feel any need to attach a disclaimer to himself. He just carried on with his business as usual. "Is it clear?" Sue seemed to be addressing thin air, but when his question elicited a response - just an odd vocalization from the shadows, something between a yowl and a mewl - Sue nodded to Sam. "We've got a clear shot, but we gotta take it now. C'mon!"
And, for the first time, Sue turned his back on his fellow student in order to lead the way. Now that was a sign of Sue-trust if there ever was any.
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Posted: Tue Dec 08, 2009 6:03 pm
For a near split-second there, Sam thought to himself with striking clarity 'I'm following a crabby guy who talks to cats in a burned school so zombies won't eat me'. It sounded like one of those god-awful straight to DVD horror flicks that were good for a few laughs, maybe a cheap jump scare or two. Right after he'd crawled out of a cheap Saw knock-off.
He shook his head and took off after Sue without so much as a pause, no matter how much his legs wanted to wobble beneath him. Just had to do like he'd done when he'd run from that room; don't think about it. There'd be time to sit down and gather his wits back once he was sitting safe and sound with everyone else. He could freak out all he wanted to there.
Just one thing he kept in mind, now, one other goal. Maybe he hadn't been able to watch the other boy's back. His grip tightened again in the hilt of the mirror. But with Sue's back to him now, he wasn't going to let anyone down again. Nobody else should have to die.
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