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Dead Men Walking
Topic Started: Nov 28 2014, 02:20 AM (70,929 Views)
Strompy
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More posts, more Busey.
Eli was right. It wouldn't take long to locate a Walmart, throw a stone and you'll hig one, but the day was at its end. Even if they found one they'd gave to deal with the rotters and that was much riskier once the sun had gone down. He had to chucke a little about his California remark though. Only California. It might as well be the Andes. It'd been hard and long just getting this far, and now they had more people to account for.

The prepper in Brandon hated not having every conceivable contingency covered. His parents thought they were prepared but they never saw this coming. This had all made him more than ready to simply wing it, but he'd still rather wing it with a huge amount of equipment and supplies.

He made it to the van and retrieved his carbine. It felt good having it back in his hands even if it was empty. He'd taken it off a dead bandit and put it to some good use, the idea of it in the hands of bandits again was sickening. They took it all back. He was hoping there would be a little more satisfaction in it.

He retrieved Connor's knife as well as the holster for his pistol, it was about time he got those back. He still wasn't sure if there were going to be any more lessons with either of those, he didn't think Annie would want him any nearer her son than circumstance decreed.

After he got Connor's things he sought her out to give them to her, as well as to speak withher about something he needed cleared up.

"Annie, I was wondering if I could have a private word with you." he said, meeting her eyes uncomfortably.
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DoctorYerishi
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Dude, wake up! We've got a world to save.
Annie was still as the others dispersed, starting with Eli and Jimmy. Only a few strides away from the huddle, however, Jimmy came to a stop and looked to her.

Eli noticed and looked back expectantly.

“Go ahead,” Jimmy said. “Just give me one second and I’ll catch up.”

Eli shrugged and kept moving towards the lake. Jimmy, meanwhile, made for Annie. She waited with her arms folded.

“Doc – have I told you yet it’s good to see you?” Jimmy launched right into his charm offensive. “You know, I couldn’t get to sleep some nights there, I was too worried I would never again gaze upon your lovely face.”

“That’s interesting,” Annie responded dryly. “Incidentally, I’ve been sleeping fine. What’s going on, Jimmy?”

Jimmy smiled, only encouraged by the light barb. “The quarterback.”

She cocked her head.

Nolan,” he clarified. “He got scuffed up outside Chicago, where I found him, took a poke from a low calibre round. I did what I could myself, but you know, medicine’s not my discipline. I have other talents.”

“I’ll check on him,” Annie said.

“You’re a peach,” Jimmy smiled, and Annie half-frowned. At that, he took off after Eli.

Annie started to move herself, looking for her bag. That’s when Brandon interrupted, looking up at her with what she was sure was shame. He was right to have it, as far as she was concerned. He wasn’t her favourite person right now. He had been outspokenly bloodthirsty back at the strip club, and he had been one of the ones doing the executing in the street. The thought brought back mixed feelings of sadness and anger that she had only just gotten to settle down.

“Maybe later,” she said with a frown, meeting his eyes right back.

With that, she moved right on herself. She knew she’d have to deal with him – and probably soon, at that. Out here, there was no little room for pettiness and a lack of cooperation was a good way to get killed or bitten.

She knew that, but that didn’t meant she had to deal with him now. Like she said. Later.

She found Nolan quickly, conversing with Antonio. She tapped him on the shoulder.

“Hey,” she said. “I heard you’re in need of a checkup.”
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Is that so?
"Thanks, Father." Nolan gave Antonio an appreciative nod as he accepted the razor from him.

"Don't think anything of it." Ha assured him back. "I have more than I need anyway. They are easy to find."

Nolan hadn't been sure who to ask about razors, but Antonio seemed like the logical choice. He was the one with a meticulously trimmed goatee and mustache -- a Vandyke he had called it in the past. Nolan was no expert on facial hair. In the past, he had always been cleanly shaven or scruffy; what he had now was far beyond scruffy and, quite frankly, kind of disgusting and very itchy. Now that he knew they were staying for the night, he had a list of things he wanted to get done before the sun set. The first one was shave.

As he was contemplating his options, that was when Annie got the jump on him. He turned to face the doctor that he had gotten pretty well acquainted with.

"Oh, that? Did Jimmy tell you about that?" Nolan smirked and scratched his head. "It doesn't feel that bad, though. Really. Just kind of a... glancing blow."

"You fell down when he shot you though." Kelsey pointed out.

"I was just surprised. Wasn't expecting it." Nolan was quick to justify himself. "See?"

Nolan rotated his right shoulder a little bit to prove that it was fine and looked at Annie expectantly.
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DoctorYerishi
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Dude, wake up! We've got a world to save.
“Very impressive,” Annie deadpanned. “Regardless, I still think I should take a look. This way.”

She gestured for him to step away from Antonio and his sister, to someplace nearby where he could take a seat and she could examine him in potential privacy.
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"Hey, but doc, I..." Nolan started to protest as Annie walked away.

He could feel the slightly annoyed stares of Kelsey and Antonio boring into his back. If he even thought about asking them, they would both say 'just go and stop complaining'. With a defeated sigh, Nolan slumped his shoulders and followed after Annie. His shoulder felt fine. Honestly, his forearm was more bothersome, but after Annie had worked her magic on it before, it felt a lot better.

Well, I suppose there's no rush today anyway.
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DoctorYerishi
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Dude, wake up! We've got a world to save.
They ended up on the back of Jimmy’s truck, and they cleared enough space for Nolan to lay down. Before he was on his back, Annie got him remove his shirt so she could take a look. The wound was covered with a bandage secured with adhesive tape, and she removed that too.

Jimmy was right that it wasn’t bad, but no gunshot wound was good. And he hadn’t done the best job cleaning up after himself. He had used a surgical stapler – she knew for a fact he had found more than one on his runs, and must have took one with him when he left town – but had been stingy with the staple supply.

She reached into her pack for her scissors, and then concentrated as she removed the staples.

“I take it Jimmy removed the bullet?” Annie asked after, peering closer. “The wound doesn’t look too deep.”
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"Was no bullet. I guess it just grazed me. Might be hard to tell though with Jimmy's handiwork on it." Nolan quipped as he lay on the back of the truck looking at the sky. "God, I think Jimmy's 'help' hurt more than actually being shot."

He paused and adopted a more contemplative look as the doctor did her thing.

"Hey, can I ask you something? About what happened back in Lincoln?"
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DoctorYerishi
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Dude, wake up! We've got a world to save.
Annie had produced a needle and sutures, readying herself to close his wound more thoroughly. She looked up cautiously from her preparation. She was pretty sure she knew what he wanted to know.

“You want to know how those bodies ended up there?” she asked. She lowered her voice a little. “You’re not alone on that. Eli, he…”

She took a breath. She viscerally recalled the disgust she felt when she saw the scene herself.

“He and Brandon, they captured the woman who robbed us,” she continued. Her tone made her disapproval clear. “From what I understand, they used her to get her friends to surrender. Then they marched everyone out onto the street, made them get on their knees, and then… Well, you saw.”

She exhaled, and then shook her head, trying to shake the bad feelings – at least for as long as it took her to get this done.

“I was afraid something like that might happen,” she said, a little bitter despite herself. “I wanted to drop it. Just keep going. Eli said no. I guess he’s not much of a believer in democracy these days.”
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Kelsey's lips curled into a visible frown as she overheard Annie tell Nolan what had happened back in Lincoln.

Unbeknownst to Nolan, Kelsey had decided to follow her brother. She wanted to be on standby as soon as he was ready to go. She was kind of excited to formally introduce him to Willow and Brandon. Apart from Dad and Glenda, they had been the two that really stepped up to look after her. She liked Julie, she liked Jeff, she even liked Mac for the brief time she had known him. But Eli... Eli was a different story. She wanted to like him more than she actually did like him. He was kind of scary. Intense. He always had been. There was something about him that made her cautious, even before that incident a few nights ago. He was dad's friend, but she had a hard time seeing what dad saw in him.

"I see." Nolan's voice rang from the bed of the truck where Kelsey could not see him. "I'm... I'm sorry you had to go through that. Do you think Eli and Brandon are still trustworthy after that?"
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DoctorYerishi
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Annie first responded to the question by looking behind her for any trace of either one of them. She didn’t find any.

“They had their reasons,” Annie said with a sigh, as she turned back to Nolan. “Or, they thought they did anyway. And I know they care about this group. They just…”

She trailed off, and worked in silence for a few long moments.

“There are lines,” she said, finally. “I just hope they can still see them.”
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Nolan pursed his lips. Like his sister and dad had been known to do. That was hardly the most inspiring answer, but he wasn't sure what he had been expecting either. At least they cared about the group. And that included Kelsey. So he decided he shouldn't have anything to worry about. Hopefully.

"What about dad?"

By the time he realized what was on his mind, the words had already come out of his mouth. It was hard not to think about him sometimes. But he couldn't really shy away from the question now.

"Er, I mean Randall... What do you think he would have done?"
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DoctorYerishi
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Dude, wake up! We've got a world to save.
Annie thought about that. Her fond memories of Nolan’s dad battled with her bitter ones of earlier that day. She remembered how he went back to save Jen, how he sacrificed himself in that elevator to save her, Eli and Brandon. Even when he confronted Ethan back in Flint, he hadn’t done anything drastic, and afterwards he was quick to settle his people down and accept the house arrest.

She couldn’t imagine someone so selfless doing anything like what Eli did today. She couldn’t see him with a gun, standing over a surrendered opponent, and pulling the trigger.

“He would have found a better way,” she answered confidently. “He was a good man.”

She looked up at Nolan meaningfully, then back to her work. She had finished with the stitches, now she just needed to apply some ointment and dress his wound up again.
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Nolan smiled at the compliment Annie had given his father. Of course, he already knew dad was a good man, but it was good to hear. He was proud of his father.

After Annie had finished her handiwork in relative silence, Nolan sat up and stretched his back a little. His shoulder felt... a little better, actually. Probably because Annie had taken the staples out and applied some cool ointment to the wound. If anything, it reinforced that he should never let Jimmy near another one of his wounds again.

"Thanks again." Nolan told Annie after he had slipped back into his shirt and sweater. "No offense, but I hope I don't give you a third reason to patch me back up anytime soon."

Nolan climbed off the bed of the truck and back onto solid ground. A few people were wandering around the nearby areas, but nobody really seemed to be paying any heed to him. Kelsey was not one of them though. Nolan assumed she had run off to go see someone. Wherever she was, she was safe. She was probably more capable than he was out here so he couldn't be worried. Her absence gave him a little time to get himself cleaned up anyway.

"Oh, is it safe to get this wet?" Nolan turned back to Annie and tapped his shoulder. "I was thinking of cleaning myself off at the lake a little before it gets too cold."
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DoctorYerishi
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Dude, wake up! We've got a world to save.
Annie smiled back at Nolan as she answered his question. “You can’t submerge it, if that’s what you mean,” she said. “But a little, sure.”

* * *

Eli hauled the jug out of the lake, and then held it out for Jimmy, who was standing on the shore, right next to Eli’s shoes and socks.

“You still haven’t said why,” Eli said, as Jimmy passed him the second jug for dunking.

“Oh?” Jimmy asked.

The coyness drew an annoyed frown to Eli’s face.

“You said how,” he clarified. “You found the hotel, and then you found the map, and that led you here. But you didn’t say why you changed your mind in the first place.”

“Oh,” Jimmy repeated with a different inflection. “Pretty simple, really. The open road gave me some more time to think, and the more I thought about it, the more I realized that this is where all the excitement was going to be.”

Eli dunked the next jug, waited as the lake-water flooded into it through the top. As he did, he gave Jimmy a disbelieving look.

“What, you think it was you?” Jimmy asked playfully. “My, but you have a high opinion of yourself, ‘mano. No, I mean it – after everything that happened at Flint, I felt one way, after some time alone, I felt another. You may not know this about me yet, but I’m mercurial.”

Eli looked away. He was a bit embarrassed by Jimmy’s rhetorical question, and he also was discomforted by the statement that came after. He focused on the discomfort.

“So you might change your mind again,” he said, not exactly phrasing it as question.

Jimmy shrugged. “Maybe. Who can say? But I’m not a total bastardo. I promise not to leave you in a lurch.”

Eli pulled the second jug out of the water and handed it to him once again. Jimmy’s words had far from put him at ease, but he didn’t see a choice other than to accept them.

“Fine,” Eli said. “As for the other thing…”

“The other thing?” Jimmy interrupted, smiling knowingly.

“Yeah,” Eli said. “As for that – that won’t happen again.”

“Oh, that other thing,” Jimmy said. “Now come on, don’t tell me you’re on the DL.”

Eli frowned intensely. “No,” he said. “I just have to stay focused. No distractions.”

Without meaning to, he thought about Julie – which meant thinking about her last moments, spent fading away in a bed they had just shared.

“I’m a distraction?” Jimmy asked, ignoring Eli’s frown, which had grown even more intense at the memory. “You know, I’m not sure if I should take that a compliment or not.”

“Take it how you like,” Eli snapped. “But if that’s why you’re here…”

Jimmy raised his free hand and hunched his shoulders in mock surrender. “Hey now, I already told you it’s not. It’s on you if you don’t believe me. And if you remember, you did invite me to come along last we spoke.”

Eli visibly relaxed, as the image of Julie’s dead body faded from his mind. “Fine,” he said. “Just as long as we understand each other. Welcome to the team.”
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Strompy
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More posts, more Busey.
"Obsessive." Emily remarked as she approached Brandon.

He was sitting at one of the tables with his carbine disassembled in front of him.

"Checking all the weapons to make sure they didn't sabotage any. So far so good, they were planning on keeping it." he said as he began putting it back together.

"So you really think they would have started killing people?" she asked.

"I know it." he said not looking up from his task.

"Okay then." Emily said simply.

"Okay?" Brandon asked, looking up at her.

"Okay. I trust you. You say they were going to kill people then that means you saved lives. The I-80 is an important road, lots of people are still going to be using it. Now those people are dead they won't kill any of them." she elaborated.

She took a seat next to him and picked up one of the other weapons, a SIG, and began disassembling it.

"You remember when we saw that quiet kid, Martin getting picked on by some guy a year ahead of us? Martin was just minding his own business, playing in the dirt by himself like always and that kid just started messing with him, because Martin had no friends. Because Martin was helpless." she asked more than simply reminiscing.

"We waited for the bigger kid with a pair if sticks after school and lay into him on his way home. Whipped his shins until he started crying. I remember we got in serious trouble and being told that wasn't how you deal with bullies. Then finding out years later that he had an abusive father and feeling pretty lousy about it." Brandon finished the story for her.

"I remember he never picked on Martin again. That's what I thought was important. His dad was an ass and that sucks, he should have been the one that got beaten. Those people you killed, what was so different about their situation? The world ended? They were hungry? Scared? Join the club. What you did wasn't good, but it wasn't bad either. I've still got your back." she explained.

Brandon gave her his first genuine smile that day.
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