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 Posted: Sat Dec 19, 2009 2:01 pm
Coming back from the edge of reason was never an easy thing for Gray. He'd only done it a few times, and generally, when he was aware again of who and where he was, he was greeted by some unpleasant sight. The first time, it had been to find the remains of a bird, clutched in his hands while he greedily ate the stomach out of it; the second, he'd been up to his elbows in what remained of a former student, long since beyond the point where they could move on their own. Feasting upon those who looked like him was not the best possible pastime, but it was preferable to finding and hunting living survivors, which he was dimly aware he had done this time.
He didn't remember it. Not beyond scratching the girl, anyhow, though he was sure it hadn't ended there. Sitting beneath a tree, propped up against it in an awkward position, he examined his nails, eyes roving over the blood flaking beneath them. That had been the problem, hadn't it? Not only had the zombie queen been controlling him, but he'd smelled blood, fresh blood, and he'd blacked out. He couldn't remember anything, not even how he'd come to be slightly more mangled than before, sitting under a tree with what probably passed for a small furry creature beside him in tatters.
Looking toward the sky, he sighed a little, plagued as he always was by the dark thoughts lurking in the back of his mind. More troubling, however, was the simple question of why. Why hadn't the zombie queen disposed of him when he failed to live up to her demands? He couldn't have killed the girl - he only had a little blood on his chin, and most of that he'd already scratched away - and there wasn't a great deal of blood on the ground, so he was assuming no one had died. That was a comfort, but at the same time, he was still entirely confused.
Someone had stopped him, that much was obvious. His legs weren't working properly, which led him to believe he'd suffered some sort of spinal injury, but he didn't really have anywhere to go, either. All he actually wanted to do was take a nap, but zombies didn't really need to sleep, did they? So he couldn't even have that.
He couldn't find Avalon, either, not in the shape he was in. Who knew what would happen if he did, anyway? Maybe he'd try to attack her too. Considering what he'd just gotten a taste of, he had no idea if he could control his impulses. Or if the zombie queen would show up again, for that matter.
Leaning back against the tree, he closed his eyes, trying desperately to subdue the sharp, vicious pains of hunger that resonated through him.
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Posted: Sat Dec 19, 2009 2:57 pm
When Remi woke up that one time, it was not to reason but the realization that his school was burnt down, the sky was a hellish black, and he was indeed very, very, dead. Any hopes about being a best-selling aurthor, the reason he came to Barren Pines in the first place, were destroyed to the same extent as his dorm room, and were further crushed that, as a zombie, the only career he had was devouring others and making moaning noises. It didn’t help that his computer which contained his last book was melted, meaning that the book wouldn’t have the chance to ride the waves of gossip and talk that came out of his gruesome death and rise to the top of the book charts. There was nothing left now, and since there were no answers, he was left figuring out things on his own.
What he came to was this: Remi was in hell.
There was no other explanation for zombies and being trapped to roam the school grounds. That and the torment of having to eat off of your fellow peers, but while other people were having trouble, he had adopted his new role as abomination with relative ease. It helped that he died at the hands of a girl who ate him alive, which gave him a pretty good first lesson. He tried this out on the first girl he meet, and his success was evident by the left arm he was now dragging around with him as a meal on the go. He knew he would get hungry again, and this would buy him some time.
Still, even he liked fresh meat, and he had followed a few cats outside, tearing off a finger from the girl’s hand he was dragging and holding it out, trying to lure them to him so that he could nab one. While a few did linger, considering the treat and the boy who held it, they eventually hissed and ran off into the bushes. Growling back, he chucked the finger at them and swore. “You’ll be back!” He shouted after them.
While a few appetizers had ran off, he saw a boy leaning up against a tree, and he wondered if this would be another meal. It wasn’t that he was hungry, but what he had eaten was a zombie and nowhere close to fresh. Dragging the arm, he hiked up the hill to see that the boy was slumped against the tree. That was a good sign, as Remi didn’t feel like running after anyone, but he frowned when he saw green skin. No fresh meat at all.
“Hey, kid. You okay?” It had been a while since he talked to anyone, and he wondered if he would know anything more than the girl he first met. If anything, a little chat was fine by him.
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Posted: Sat Dec 19, 2009 5:57 pm
Eyes opening, a little blurred to the world, Gray slowly glanced over, unhappy gaze falling on one of his former classmates. He was pretty good with putting names to faces, and he was pretty sure this was Remi. Or, had been Remi in a past life, the same one where he had been Grayson. From a distance, it was a little hard to tell, and so he leaned forward, back popping sickly as he did.
Yep, definitely Remi. And he seemed to be in the same boat as Gray, the poor guy. So far, actually, he'd only seen two living beings; maybe that was a blessing. Maybe not, because he couldn't seem to control his own impulses, and when the lifeless corpses ran out, he would start going after the ones that weren't so lifeless.
It wasn't a pleasant thought.
Trying to push up from the ground, he managed to mostly get to his knees, and held out a hand. "Hey. Stop there, please. I'm not sure I won't... you know, attack you."
He sighed, once again thinking that the whole flesh-eating impulse was very inconvenient. God, he wished he could just go to sleep - sleep, and if this was a nightmare, wake from it.
If not, maybe just go into a coma, and not have to deal with it anymore.
"I haven't eaten in a while." Face screwed into an unhappy look, he asked, "How are you?" not noticing the arm that Remi was dragging along with him.
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Posted: Sat Dec 19, 2009 6:53 pm
Remi was terrible with names, and usually off the mark, never succeeded in actually calling someone by their appropriate title. For some reason he wanted to call the kid ‘Black’ or ‘Yellow’, but wasn’t sure why and guessed it was the hair. The skin made him want call him ‘Green’ or ‘Red’, but decided that maybe being dead, the lack of oxygen getting to his brain was making him stupid.
Instead, he looked the kid up and down. Slumped against a tree, blood on his fingers and chin, and green around the skin, Remi felt the same type of familiarity a football player might feel when walking onto a field and seeing all his comrade sport the uniform that showed they were all together in this and all had this same way of life. It was the uniform of being a zombie he supposed, being ragged, bloody, and looking as if your skin was about to mildew, and he liked it. Gray was the second person he saw since returning to school in his current state, and he felt chatty in his loneliness.
It was why then that he stepped closer, deciding he’s sacrifice a bit of food for the weaker boy. Didn’t being nice kill you in the end? Have you learned NOTHING from that? It was true, but he ignored it all the same. “Don’t worry. I can defend myself well enough. Here, let me help you out and give you a hand.” For once, Remi was being literal, and taking the arm he had been carting about, slipped it between his legs and pulled out the paring knife from the flesh that he was keeping as his only weapon. Taking the handle, he started to saw through the wrist like someone would cut into a loaf of bread and since it was going to be a meal; Remi guessed this would be the equivalent of a zombie sandwich. If anything, it would keep his classmate going for a few days without giving away the arm flesh that Remi was saving for later. With some bending back and forth, he broke the hand loose and offered it to Gray. “Here, munch on this. It will keep you going and keep that hunger down a bit. At least until you find yourself something better to eat.” What Remi meant by better, he didn’t say.
“Can’t say I’m doing fine, but I’m getting along. You know, for living in hell and all. Haven’t seen anyone aside from some girl and you, but then again I don’t know much about what’s going on. Do you?”
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Posted: Sat Dec 19, 2009 7:12 pm
Gray's eyes widened a bit as his classmate brought the arm into view, and he clamped his mouth shut tightly when he began to saw, turning away. There was an answering call inside of him, a part of him that thrilled at the prospect of something to eat, but it still made his stomach roll. At either side of his, his hands clenched grass, tore it from the ground in a useless gesture of frustration. He didn't want the severed hand, but he needed it.
"Thanks." Because it was impolite not to, and because at the core of it, he was still Grayson, he glanced back, tried for a little smile. At the proffered hand, he reluctantly reached out and accepted it, not caring that he got shreds of grass all over his next meal. By the time he actually ate it, it would go down easy enough, he knew.
It felt like he was being stabbed in the stomach with a hundred knives, but he set the hand aside, forced himself to look away from it. Remi seemed a little newer to the whole situation, somehow, like Avalon. He couldn't decide if that was a good or bad thing, but he was a little regretful that he couldn't offer much information.
"I'm not really in the know, no." He pursed his lips, lifted his shoulders. "I know there's a zombie queen and she can make you do whatever she wants. I know I died, but here I am, I guess until I die again. If that's even possible. I don't think we're in hell, but I don't believe that's a real place, so I suppose anything is possible."
He placed his hands at either side of himself, tried to shift against the tree a bit. "And it seems like it's going to be dark forever now. Sky changed a bit ago," he explained, gesturing upward with his chin.
Really, the two of them seemed to be quite well-adjusted for zombies. Gray didn't see the point in panicking, anyway, when there wasn't much he could do about his predicament. That would just waste energy, and he was a fan of doing as little as possible whenever possible.
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Posted: Sat Dec 19, 2009 8:05 pm
He looked up and frowned, guessing that blue skies and fluffy clouds would be asking too much in this place. There was nothing around to lift your spirits up for even a fraction around here. It really did seem that this entire place was designed to make a person miserable, and he licked the paring knife as he looked at the black sky. “Not even some stars to look at.’ Stabbing the paring knife back into the arm, he found a place on the grass and plopped down, needing a break from running after cats for the last hour.
“Zombie Queen? Do you think she might have some answers? I mean, I wouldn’t mind getting controlled if I was just given an answer as to what happened and what I’m suppose d to be doing here? Not even a ‘damn to wander the earth for all eternity’. If someone just told me that, I’d at least have some direction. I’m sort of just wandering around looking for something to do.”
Remi guessed that even while starving, Gray was trying to hold out as long as he could before he had to eat the hand. “You know you can eat that. If you need more, I can give you some to take with you.” Leaning back, he set the arm across is lap. “No offense, but you look like you got beat. Did some guy try and jump you for a bite or something?”
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Posted: Sat Dec 19, 2009 11:03 pm
Sue really, really hoped that arm didn't belong to their next Zodiac. He was going to be really damn pissed if it ********," Sue muttered, observing the flesh-eating pair from a considerable distance. Swearing, he'd decided, was well-warranted in the situation. The Queen hadn't seemed bothered by it so far, so why the ******** not? "It's gotta be one of them, m'am. But y'know... we oughta be careful this time. They're probably dangerous."
Because friendly greenies always carried a human arm around with them. You know, to wave at the people they met, right?
"Maybe Foramen ought to handle this first," Sue suggested. The last thing he wanted was for the Princess's body to get chewed up on his watch.
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Posted: Sat Dec 19, 2009 11:07 pm
"More zombies."
Wasn't it just their luck? Or maybe the Zodiacs themselves were just that unlucky. Dead once, and resurrected. Now dead again - or undead, more precisely. There seemed to be a theme going on.
Foramen nodded at Sue's suggestion. "Stay behind me, please," he said wearily to Serenity. "At least until we can see if they're lucid or prone to attacking anything that moves."
He did NOT like that arm. It didn't bode well for friendly relations.
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Posted: Sat Dec 19, 2009 11:08 pm
"I agree with your assessment," said the Queen. They did have an arm. They weren't exactly carrying it around as a memento. The worry was not for her, but for Chronos' body. You did not want to harm somebody else's skin that you were wandering around in. "Sailor Foramen, please take care as you check the situation."
None of them had any idea who the Zodiac of the two was.
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Posted: Sat Dec 19, 2009 11:12 pm
Foramen nodded and stepped forward, inwardly cheering. He stared at the two zombies.
"Either of you two sane, now is the time to make it known," he announced. "If you're hungry," an evil chuckle, "well, come and get it. Or try to, at least."
He was SO ready to drop some zombies from half a dozen metres in the air.
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Posted: Sat Dec 19, 2009 11:16 pm
"You don't want to be controlled by her," Gray said flatly, bringing a hand up to cover his eyes. No, even if it seemed like you'd get answers, it wasn't worth the cost. Not when you were forced to attack innocent, sweet girls; not at such a price.
Though he was desperately hungry, he still had the willpower to hold out against the offer. If anything, Gray had found that since he'd become a flesh-eating zombie, he really didn't like having others watch him eat. It was demoralizing, for one, disgusting for another. In life, he didn't mind so much, but that had been a different time, different circumstances.
He was certainly not going to chow down on someone's hand if he could help it, but especially not in front of someone else. Even though Remi seemed to have adjusted fairly well, Gray still got a little queasy at the thought of eating something that had actually been human at one point. Still, he offered a tight smile to his classmate, sighed a little.
"She won't give you answers. She just... makes you do things." The wind shifted, blowing into his face, and a voice was carried on it. He frowned, stomach clenching, and awkwardly began to rise. It wasn't easy, and his movements were halting and broken, clearly due to the abuse he'd received at the hands of the zombie queen.
Seeing the human, his mouth began to water. He started to shuffle back, falling over in the process. Damn his back. "No."
No, no. They were alive.
He did not want to attack anything alive. If he blacked out again, what choice would he have?
Covering his face with one hand, he raised his voice just enough to be heard, though it was a feat, considering he was flat on his back. "Go away, please. I don't want to attack anyone."
Even as he said it, he licked his lips, free hand vising in the grass at his side.
Well. There was one good thing to be said for having spinal chord injuries; they kept him down, anyway.
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Posted: Sat Dec 19, 2009 11:25 pm
The other zombie kept it's distance. The one that replied... seemed SORT OF sane? At least it was warning people off, rather than flat out attacking. That may also have had something to do with the fact that it seemed injured.
"I think we're right to move a bit closer to this one, if you want to check if he's our zombie-of-the-hour," he called back to Sue and the Queen.
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Posted: Sun Dec 20, 2009 9:14 am
While he was told that being controlled by a Zombie Queen was bad, ‘doing stuff’ made it sound dirty. Smiling, he tried not to voice his thoughts as this kid didn’t seem in the mood. In fact, he seemed ready to pass out, and Remi was finding he wanted to get the kid to eat something. Sure, it was a hand. He wasn’t denying that eating someone’s hand wasn’t upsetting, but it was better than dying or being lead to just randomly attack people. If you did that, then you were the one getting chewed on and Remi did not want a repeat of his death. It had been terrifying enough, and call it selfish, but he’d rather eat than be eaten. He’d rather life this horrible undead life than none at all. He just wished more people around here felt the same.
What he didn’t expect was more company, and he looked out to a few guys who, and this was what really got him, were not green! Remi had yet to see normal humans and had felt this was just a wasteland of zombies that were forced to eat one another. The first idea that came to mind was that they looked very fresh, but he just ate and was able to push this thought down and allowed room for the next. “Hey, how did you guys survive?! I thought there was only dead people here?!” Now what did that mean?! If this was hell, he was pretty sure kids he once knew and were alive and kicking were not suppose to be here. Then……..then was this just Bareen Pines in some sort of other universe.
Standing, he made a step, but then remembered that he might be ripped apart if he did that. “I don’t think attack but I don’t make any promises. Zombie.” He pointed to himself to show that, by his very nature, he would probably bite on a hand that was brought to close to his mouth.
His attention went back to the other zombie, his crumpled comrade, and went over to look him over. “Yeah, you might want to just keep it there, but doesn’t mean we can’t talk.” There was nothing that said zombies and freshies couldn’t talk, now was there? With the way Gray was, it was somewhat safe to just be like this.
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Posted: Sun Dec 20, 2009 9:41 am
Well... they seemed rational enough, anyway. Which didn't mean a damned thing, really - greenies that had their wits just meant greenies that could come up with a plan of attack, which was how they'd lost Evie in Meatgrinder. But as long as Sue kept his wits about him, it ought to be all right, shouldn't it?
... If nothing else, maybe he could at least keep their attention enough on him that Serenity could slip close enough to do her part. At least, moving cautiously forward, that was what Sue told himself the plan was. (In truth, he would have told himself anything just to feel like he was in control of the situation, and not setting himself up for a very unpleasant surprise. This excuse just had the benefit of sounding plausible and useful.)
"The fire didn't get all of us, if that's what you're talking about," Sue answered as he moved closer. Normally, his policy was to leave the talking to the people who were better at it - but hey, distractions were supposed to be noisy, weren't they? "And the greenies hadn't done it, either. But as for the bigger stuff, you know, the stuff that makes the sky go black and all that...."
There. Now he was close enough - Sue could catch a whiff of something unusual with that odd sixth sense, puzzle it out into a source and an identity. He pointed, singling out Grayson. "You're Leo, one of the Zodiac Guard. We're going to need your help with that stuff."
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Posted: Sun Dec 20, 2009 10:02 am
From his vantage point on the ground, Gray wasn't exactly in the best position to be puzzling much of anything out. He couldn't move very well, and when he did, it was with the kind of halting, jerking crawl that came straight from a horror movie. Therefore, he was perfectly content to just lie on the ground and let Remi do the talking; truth be told, he would have probably be content to do that without the spinal chord injuries, just because Remi seemed much more eager to be taking care of the details than he was. It didn't seem like they were going to be brutally dismembered by the approaching people, but then, he couldn't do much if that was their intention, so he wasn't too concerned.
Sure, if he could help it, he'd like to avoid being scattered into hundreds of pieces of Grayson all over campus, but if it was going to happen, it was going to happen. At least Remi could run, though he was more likely to black out and go zombie on them. He seemed pretty lucid, though.
Lips pursed, he saw Sue - Sue? - entering his field of vision, and he blinked, looking away when his stomach contorted once more. Yeah, he really should have eaten. It wasn't making any of this easy.
Nevermind that the things Sue was trying to express to him would have been nonsensical on a good day. For someone who did as many outrageous things as Gray did, he had a surprisingly inactive imagination. Magic and the like? He'd never given it a second thought until he woke up as a zombie. Part of him was still hoping this was some kind of crazy dream, or that maybe he'd been in a terrible accident and this was a coma hallucination.
Still, in one of his own hallucinations, he didn't think he'd fashion himself into one of the heroes. Too much effort.
"What?" Lifting his head, which was a lot more effort than it should have been, he used his palms to push up partly off the ground. His legs were sprawled before him, still useless, but at least he wasn't attempting to utilize them just then. "What does my horoscope have to do with anything?"
His stomach pitched once more, and he looked away, ashamed of himself as his willpower eroded. In the back of his mind, something tickled, something whispered that he wasn't paying close enough attention to Sue; that maybe there was some part of this he was missing, some memory locked away that was vastly important to him. Focusing on the fleeting voice distracted him from the hunger, if only marginally, and he clung to it like a drowning man.
"Wait... Leo?" It sounded right on his tongue, and it made him feel.. warm. He couldn't remember feeling warm since he'd woken up. Startled, he whipped his head around to Sue, mouth opening just slightly.
Leo.
"I..." His eyes glazed a bit, and he murmured, "I'm Leo." with a little more conviction, something like a smile ghosting on his lips. He still wasn't entirely certain what he was grasping for, but the more he thought about it, the more he liked the idea.
Perhaps he would wake from this dream after all.
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