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Dead Men Walking
Topic Started: Nov 28 2014, 02:20 AM (70,892 Views)
DoctorYerishi
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Dude, wake up! We've got a world to save.
“Agreed,” Eli said.

He didn’t drop his AR-15, but he dropped any pretence of aiming it at Hank and his family. He’d concluded that this wasn’t a Wendy or Cory situation – these people, it seemed, weren’t a threat. It wasn’t even a Darren situation, because the only harm they’d done so far was to Jimmy’s car and the group’s ammo cache.

And if they truly had found Jimmy’s stuff, and were indeed willing to return it – well, that mitigated the damage even more.

He looked behind him. Connor was waiting at the window, watching the scenario unfold.

“It’s okay, Connor,” Eli called out. “You can go get Kelsey and your mom. It’s over.”

* * *

Hank thanked God again. It’s over, and everyone was okay. The worst had failed to come to pass.

Now, however, he was at a loss. He didn’t even know where to start.
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Strompy
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More posts, more Busey.
Brandon seriously doubted these people would want anything more to do with them after this. If they let them go, they would probably never see them again. But there was a chance that if they did, they'd see them again down the road where they were waiting in ambush. If they could get their own wheels then they could simply leave these people at the ranch and stay ahead of them. That was all highly dependent on that horde they spotted and if it was still a problem.

"What's the rotter situation?" Brandon asked Jimmy.
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DoctorYerishi
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Dude, wake up! We've got a world to save.
“Oh,” Jimmy said, as if the question jogged his memory. “Oh yeah, right – the rotter situation is not good.”

He explained their findings to the west. The wall of rotters stumbling in from that direction was five-maybe-six hours out when they spotted them. Which meant they were closer to four-maybe-five now, after the intervening time scoping out the roads south and then east, and apparently failing to spot Hank and his crew of excitable poor aimers.

Hell, maybe less, Jimmy relayed that thought too. He’d kind of lost track of the last half hour or so, and maybe the rotters had heard their pitched gun battle. In his experience, the creatures tended to move faster and with more purpose when they were following sounds of life. The difference might seem negligible from afar, but it was impossible to deny up close, and the shaved seconds added up.

“Wait,” Hank said. “Rotters?”

“Sure,” Jimmy replied. “Walking dead fellas – the ones with the bad manners and poor posture. They smell like weeks old tuna. Ringing any bells?”

“We call them biters,” Hank explained.

“Hooray for you,” Jimmy deadpanned.

“That’s not – the point is, they’re not just coming from the west,” he said. “The south too. They almost rolled over us this morning.”

That report caused some frowns. Including a frown from Annie, who had returned with Connor and Kelsey, but still left them in the house while she wandered out to join the conversation.

“How far away?” Eli asked.

“I’m not sure,” Hank said, hesitant, probably because of the question-asker.

“Say you had to walk from there to here,” Eli insisted. “How far?”

“Eight hours?” Hank ventured a guess. “Maybe more.”

“Huh,” Jimmy said aloud, mulling that over. “Well – good to know.”

Indeed, it was good information to have, but he also considered its source – and what that source was supposed to do next. He had to imagine Eli, and some of the others, were considering the same thing. He had to imagine the source was considering the same thing most of all.

Hank looked impatient, but also like he was trying not to seem impatient. Some other members of his crew – including the Lowell guy, the one that snaked Jimmy's jacket – looked impatient and didn't care to hide it.
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Make-7-Up-Yours
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Is that so?
Antonio was uncomfortable with these guys being disarmed, held at gunpoint, and forced into submission. Even if it was just temporary. He was fairly convinced by now that these people were of no immediate threat -- they had children with them after all. This was why he was here now. To mediate and temper those with less agreeable temperaments.

"I believe we got off on the wrong foot here. We have rotters approaching from two directions and neither of us are prepared to deal with them." He voiced his opinion carefully, he wanted to make it seem like an alliance of convenience rather than one of common decency. "I believe we got off on the wrong foot. I suggest we consolidate our efforts for the time being. Once the rotter situation is dealt with, we can go our separate ways peacefully."
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Strompy
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More posts, more Busey.
Another horde on the roads south was bad news. If it weren't for that they could have possibly set about finding themselves some new wheels and setting these people free to go and putting them safely in the dust. Now they were stuck. Couldn't go back north because there may still be some people out for their blood that way.

What could they do? Jimmy and his truck divert one horde along a different path while somebody in the RV did the same with the other? No guarantees of success or a safe return there. They could hunker down, stay quiet and hidden and wait it out. Nobody would want to start trouble with potentially a few thousand rotters passing by. That idea was unappealing to say the least, but they had car no aside from Jimmy's truck which, as generous as it was, was far too small for them all. Sp they weren't going anywhere soon.

"What can we do about them? The way I see it, we're all just in for a really uncomfortably close night. We board up the windows, we splatter the outside walls with rotter guts to cover our scent and we all stay completely quiet until these hordes figure out where the hell they're going." Brandon offered his appraisal.

A night of complete quiet. That actually sounded pretty good just then.
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DoctorYerishi
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Dude, wake up! We've got a world to save.
Jimmy scratched his beard. “Yeah, that’ll work,” he conceded.

He was looking forward to going out and doing his whole diversion thing, since it was a muscle he hadn’t stretched in a while. But Brandon was onto something. This new information changed things, and staying in and waiting it out might have just become the best option. It was worth more consideration, at least, and Jimmy was nothing if not adaptable.

“Either way, we should probably take this inside,” he added. “We’re not going to get anywhere standing out here and being awkward. And I’m sure we all have questions.”

* * *

That was true. Hank did have questions. He also had concerns.

He paced around his RV, attracting suspicious looks from the Hispanic guy. He frowned as he noticed the front tire was deflated. In the chaos, it must have taken a stray bullet, and the air must have gone right out of it.

Looks like they weren’t going anywhere any time soon, even if they wanted.

“Sure,” Hank looked to this other group. He tried to put on a friendly face, in spite of how shaken he was.

He guessed it was time for some introductions.
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Is that so?
* * * * *

Seeing almost 20 people crammed into one living room was a little bit much. The housing and cabins up here were really not constructed to hold anything more than a small family at any given time; this was far above the specifications. The couches were filled up and a few chairs had been brought in to accommodate the extra people. Despite that there were still people sitting on the floor and those that preferred to stand.

Willow could still feel the tension hovering in the air; in fact it seemed almost more suffocating now that they were inside. It probably didn't help that having so many people in one house was suffocating enough on its own. They had come here at Antonio's behest to consolidate their resources and knowledge until they could go their own ways.

"I suppose I will start." Antonio unsurprisingly took the reins -- he was the once that voiced this idea after all. "First, I need to apologize for our aggression. We were attacked by people just the other day; we lost several cars, a lot of supplies, and one of our own. I for one would like to start over and try this again properly. I am Father Antonio Mendez, but you can simply call me Antonio. I am a Catholic Priest that worked as a student counselor at the University of Iowa."

"My name is Nolan. I was a student at that same university when all of this started." Nolan sat on the ground in the corner of the room. "The little girl at my side who is eyeing you all suspiciously is my little sister, Kelsey."

"I'm Willow. I've come all the way from New York." She introduced herself. "My claim to fame is getting shot five times in the last two weeks."

"Should you really be bragging about that?" Nolan asked pensively.

"Well, I'm still here, aren't I?" Willow smirked knowingly; but quickly realized her comment might have hit a little too close to home with Jen's recent death. "I... didn't mean it like that..."

"It's fine." He brushed it off as best he could.

"Which reminds me." Antonio glanced in the directions of Jimmy and Emily. "While you two were gone, Jen passed away from her injuries and turned. Nobody got bitten, but..."

His mouth curled into a frown as he trailed off. Willow knew what he was implying; nobody was bitten, but her death was affecting the group still.
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Strompy
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More posts, more Busey.
Emily sank a little deeper as she sat on the floor. The fact that Jen died was the bitterest of disappointments, the knowledge that she had then turned only gave the knife turn. She was supposed to be watching her. If she had been there she could have least given Jen a dignified end.

"Kelsey almost got bitten." Brandon added calmly, in an informative tone rather than an accusatory one.

Emily nodded her head at the light chastisement.

"We were still burying her when all of this happened. What the hell was that about anyway? Why did everyone start shooting in the first place?" Brandon asked.
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DoctorYerishi
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Dude, wake up! We've got a world to save.
“You started it,” Lowell said, his tone accusatory.

“You ever hear of a warning shot?” asked the redheaded man – the one whose supplies they had apparently taken back in Vernal. “That was supposed to be your cue to stop, not kick-start the Guns of Navarone out there.”

Hank was worried about Lowell arguing, so he made sure to speak next. “Just a misunderstanding, then,” he said. “Let’s just thank God no one was hurt.”

“Just our trucks,” the redhead responded, then pointed at himself. “Jimmy, by the way – Aquarius.”

He pointed at the speaker before him next, and after him the pretty young woman he had come from the truck with.

“That’s Brandon, Emily,” he said, then pointed to the woman who had showed up after the battle was over. “The big guy is Emmett. That’s Doctor Annie and her son Connor, and I believe you’ve already gotten acquainted with…”

“Eli,” the Hispanic man interrupted, as Jimmy’s pointer finger went to him.

Hank nodded. That was everybody, and most of them – now that they didn’t have guns in their hands – seemed friendly enough. Most of them. Eli, for example, no longer seemed like he was about to gun them down, but it still wouldn’t be accurate to say he looked friendly.

They all seemed to have been though a lot, though, so Hank tried to understand. The Willow girl had apparently been a magnet for bullets, and several of the others seemed to have taken their own fair share of punishment. On top of that, they had lost a friend very recently after a battle with other survivors… No wonder they were twitchy.

“I’m Hank, but you, uh, you know that,” he said, awkwardly beginning the process of introducing the people on his side. “This is my sister Riley, daughter Ruby, son CJ, and my friend Andy.”

Riley and Andy nodded cautiously at their introductions. Ruby summoned an awkward smile. CJ didn’t react.

“This is Noah, his girlfriend Alma, and their friend Lowell,” Hank concluded. “We’ve been together since North Carolina.”

The woman – Doctor Annie, according to Jimmy’s intro – tilted her head at that info.

“North Carolina?” she asked. “What brought you all the way out here?”

“The signs,” Andy answered.

Annie tilted her head a little more.

“On the billboards,” Hank clarified. “Alive in Salt Lake City. We’re on our way there.”

“Ah,” Annie nodded. “I understand. We’ve seen the same ones.”

“What about all of you?” Riley asked. “You said you were on the move until just the other day. Where were you all headed?”

“The west coast,” Eli answered quickly.

A moment’s silence passed, and he didn’t elaborate. Hank would have been happy to leave it at that, but he noticed the slightly suspicious look on Riley’s face.

“What’s on the west coast?” she asked.
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Is that so?
The room fell into silence at Riley's question. Willow glanced at Eli uncertainly; she had spilled the beans about a cure to Emily back in Iowa City and elicited the wrath of Eli for her slip up. It was a mistake that she was really not to keen on repeating. These people seemed decent enough and she didn't see the harm in telling them about the cure. But the last thing she wanted to do right now was get on Eli's bad side again -- she had enough on her mind without that being thrown into the equation.

It was Kelsey that broke the silence; "Well, back in New York, we found a-"

"Message!" Willow blurted out without thinking.

All eyes turned to her. She hadn't really thought about anything; so she cleared her throat to buy herself some time.

"You see, Kelsey and I were part of a community back in New York. Then, one day, Randall -- er, Kelsey's father -- brought back a message he found written on a dead soldier in town that said there was a safe zone in Chicago. After our little community got overrun, a small group of us that survived thought that checking out Chicago might be a good idea. Especially if the military was involved, you know? But when we got there, we found out that the place had been abandoned when the city was bombed. We also found some official looking documentation that claimed they had relocated to California in preparation for the bombings. We could be chasing a ghost, but we got some evidence at least to suggest it really exists."

Technically Willow wasn't completely lying. It still outlined their journey well enough, she just replaced all references of the cure with a safe zone instead. That made it sound like they were just trying to find a place to live in peace.

"Don't get us wrong, Salt Lake City could be the real deal. But I think we're sticking with the west coast as our goal until we know that this isn't just some elaborate trap set up to lure people in from across the country." Willow added cautiously.
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DoctorYerishi
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Dude, wake up! We've got a world to save.
Eli tensed up for a moment – but relaxed when Willow told them enough of the truth, but not the whole thing.

“It’s been a long road,” he added.

“I bet,” Hank said, looking remorseful. “I’m sorry about your troubles. About your friend. And your family.”

The mention of ‘Kelsey’s father’ – and the fact that he wasn’t among the people introduced – clearly hadn’t gotten past him.

And it didn’t get past Eli that Hank didn’t introduce his wife, or the kids’ mother. His sorry was obviously borne of empathy. Of course it was. These days, everyone had experienced loss.

“Thank you,” Annie said.

“Yeah – I don’t wanna be rude, but when do we get our stuff back?” Alma interrupted the niceties.

“Alma,” Noah – her boyfriend, apparently – said, in a chastising tone. “Come on.”

“What?” Alma responded.

“You can get your weapons back tomorrow,” Eli jumped in, an edge to his voice.

Alma leaned back where she was standing. She half-frowned. “Okay,” she said. “That’s all I wanted to know.”

“Sorry,” Hank said – Eli was getting the sense he was a real peacemaker kind-of-guy. “This is just new to us. We don’t mean to be, uh, you know – we’re kind of at sea here.”

“We’re not,” Eli said, his eyes lingering suspiciously on Alma. “The other day wasn’t the first time we were attacked.”

“Shit – I’m sorry,” Hank said.

“You said that,” Eli’s eyes went back to him.
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Is that so?
Nolan was glad that everyone else seemed to be taking initiative here. After everything that had happened, he didn't much feel like trying to figure out the motives of others and acting as any sort of peacekeeper. He just wanted some time to himself to think. And obviously he wasn't going to get that much now, but at least he didn't need to play any sort of leader right now.

"Thank you, Hank." Antonio said before anything could escalate. "Now that we are 'reasonably' acquainted, I think all of us have a bigger problem than each other right now."

The rotter hordes that were closing in from two directions.

"We have enough houses here that we could wait out the storm should we decide to go that route."
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DoctorYerishi
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Dude, wake up! We've got a world to save.
“Brandon had a decent idea,” Jimmy reminded everyone. “Board up the windows, paint the walls a nice shade of rotter, and burn the night away playing charades. Not how I would have liked to do it, but a second horde and a lack of vehicles means it’s probably the smart move.”

“Fine,” Eli said.

He wasn’t excited about it. A friend had died here, and they all had to process her death for a second time. As usual – and damnit, it had become usual – he would have liked to move on, leave her resting place behind. Brandon and Jimmy were probably right, however, in saying this was the best course of action.

“At least we have the raw materials for it,” he added.

“Raw materials?” Andy asked. “You mean wood?”

“And rotters,” Eli said, frowning. “There are five dead out back. We can use them.”

Really, there were six. That thought was numbing.

“Use them?” Riley was asking the question now. “And sorry, paint the walls… rotter?”

“It’s what we call the living dead,” Annie offered.

“Okay,” Riley said. “But what do you mean by using them? You said something about their guts, before?”

Oh right, Eli thought. Annie’s discovery must not have made the rounds yet.
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Is that so?
"The good doctor here actually discovered that you can mask yourself from them with smell." Willow explained to the new faces. "It's not pleasant, but it's a trick that has saved our asses before."

She wasn't originally going to outline the specifics of it to everyone -- she figured it was pretty obvious what was being implied here. Hiding using scents and rotter corpses? The connection should be an easy one to draw. Nevertheless, Kelsey elaborated anyway.

"We smeared the guts on our clothes and we walked through a horde."
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DoctorYerishi
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Dude, wake up! We've got a world to save.
There was a brief stunned silence. Eli would describe it as stunned, at least.

“And that worked?” Riley asked.

“We’re still here,” Eli answered.

Jesus – I mean, wow,” Hank said. “That’s good to know.”

“Yeah,” Eli said. “But if we’re going to do this, we should do this. Here’s how it is – this house we’re in now has five rooms. There’s also two cabins close by – a one-room and a two-room. If necessary, there’s also the barn.”

Those were their hide-out options. Now, as far as the supplies were concerned…

“There’s a wood shed around here too,” he said, and he knew because he’d tied up five rotters in there last night.

“Do we know if the area is clear of bite – of rotters?” Hank asked.

“Yeah, should be,” Eli answered – he was pretty sure, for the same reason as before. “But I haven’t looked everywhere. If you haven’t learned by now, you always gotta keep an eye out.”

“We’ve learned,” Andy said.

“Okay, good,” Eli said. “’Cause there’s also a root cellar I avoided so far, and some other buildings. Might have useful supplies.”

“We could help with that,” Noah offered.

“You sure you’re up for it?” Eli countered.

“We’re up for it,” Lowell said, just a little darkness – or maybe, defensiveness – in his voice.

“Okay,” Eli repeated, matching his tone. “Good. Then we should probably split up and get to it soon.”

He didn’t like the idea of the newcomers being on their own. Especially not this kid Lowell. Unfortunately, the pool of able-bodied supervisors in Eli’s group was limited. He had to take what he could get.

“Willow, think you could help them out?” he asked. “An’ Nolan, when you’re ready, could you join them?”
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