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Dead Men Walking
Topic Started: Nov 28 2014, 02:20 AM (70,849 Views)
Make-7-Up-Yours
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Is that so?
Kelsey tried to fight back, but to no avail. She couldn't overpower Eli. She would probably never be able to. But she wasn't about to cooperate; she let herself be dragged.

"Yeah, of course it's about dad. It's always about dad."
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DoctorYerishi
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Dude, wake up! We've got a world to save.
Eli rolled his eyes at Kelsey’s struggle. She was really making saving her life difficult. He stopped and turned around again.

“Uh huh,” he said dismissively. “Now listen – if you don’t want to be dragged, you can be carried. What’s it gonna be?"
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Is that so?
He's not going to back down.

The sense of futility in it all finally swept over Kelsey. There was nothing that she could say or do that was going to get through to Eli. He was perfectly content just letting Lowell get away with it. He was willing to divert resources and manpower to kill Cory, but he wasn't willing to go after someone who had just betrayed them. It was bad enough that Nolan was dead... but the guy that did it was going to be allowed to walk freely. It all seemed so... unfair.

"Fine." Kelsey finally relented.
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DoctorYerishi
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Dude, wake up! We've got a world to save.
Thank you,” Eli said.

He finally let her go, and then looked again at the crossroads behind them. Without the aid of streetlights, it was hard to entirely make out.

“Now stay close,” he warned. “And stay quiet. There might be people looking for us.”

* * *

Eli started feeling weak about 45 minutes into their walk. It didn’t help that the effects of the motorcycle crash seemed to finally catch up to him. The road rash along his arms and legs flared in pain, reminding him of his desperate need for clearing and antibiotic cream – and some Tylenol wouldn’t hurt either.

The stab wound in his foot also started screaming out with every step. Over the course of his rescue mission, he had managed to just about forget that injury. He had been so focused on Kelsey he hadn’t remembered the hurt. Now it was too hard to ignore.

Despite all that, he kept his grimacing to a minimum, as he didn’t want to alarm Kelsey, or cause her to doubt his capability. He reminded himself that he was invincible, and could take a little discomfort.

It’ll blow over, he told himself. It always does.

As they walked, Eli heard the faint growling of rotters, but never too close. He made a point of not stopping. Even if a rotter spotted them, he made Kelsey maintain a swift pace so that they’d never clear the distance.

Fortunately, he never heard humans – not their voices, nor the dull roar of their car engines. He was thankful for that. Humans might not have been so easy to evade.

“There,” he said, after a long silence, which until then had only his and Kelsey’s breathing to break it up.

He pointed to a house, the first they had seen since they left the crash site together. They had just arrived in Eagle Mountain, a master-planned city of residential developments to the southwest of Salt Lake City. Eli faintly remembered the name from the maps he had been studying, and was reminded of it by the ‘Welcome to’ plaque they passed on the way in.

There were several cars parked out front. They just needed one to work. Eli crossed his fingers.

As they approached, however, Eli heard some more growling – less faint than he was used to. He tried to focus in the darkness. After a few moments’ concentration, he made out two gaunt forms wandering down the street in front of his target home.

He reached for his knife, but realized it wasn’t there. His police belt – the one he had looted from poor Roland’s corpse all the way back in Kisco – was back in Salt Lake City, with those cultists. So were all his weapons. Including his Supergrade, which he had come to rely on so heavily. It hurt to lose that in particular.

Plus all his tools and clothes were gone, he remembered. They had been stashed in the backpack he had salvaged from Mac, after the group’s first encounter with unstable survivors.

So much history – all gone. It made him sad and it made him angry.

Wallow in it later, he chastised himself.

The two rotters were moving now. Their groaning had become louder and more excited as they spotted Eli and Kelsey.

Eli focused on what he did have, which wasn’t much – an empty rifle, and a pistol with just one round left. The pistol wasn’t a good option. Even if he didn’t think the bullet was too valuable to waste, there was the noise concern. He’d have to be more creative about this. He prepared himself.

“Don’t move,” he whispered to Kelsey.
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Kelsey rolled her eyes. She had a gun with her. And probably half a magazine or so left in it too. Taking care of two rotters would be easy. Two shots and they go down. In theory, at least -- she knew her aim still left a lot to be desired. The aim must have been a family thing; dad was a decent shot at best and Nolan's ability with a gun was infamously sub par.

"Fine." Kelsey whispered back to Eli in the present.

She waited to see what Eli was going to do. Briefly, she considered using this opening to run away, but that wouldn't accomplish much. Eli would track her down far too quickly.
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DoctorYerishi
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Dude, wake up! We've got a world to save.
Eli removed his rifle from the strap and adjusted his grip. He held the narrow portion of the butt with one hand, the fore grip with the other, and started advancing cautiously. He squared off with the two rotters, who were approaching in lockstep.

Eli took a few quick, calming breaths. He waited for his moment. It was dark, he had Kelsey to worry about, and his arms left something to be desired. He wanted this to be quick and efficient.

When he was ready, he stepped forward to meet them. He launched a kick at one of their shins, before immediately jumping back to avoid their lunges. He was successful in separating them. One rotter fell to its knees, the other kept going.

Eli jabbed the standing rotter with the butt of his rifle, striking him in the jaw, hard enough to knock him off his feet and onto the ground.

He turned to the first rotter, which was climbing back to its feet. He delivered a similar blow, but this time to its ear. Again, he got it on the ground.

Back to the second rotter. Eli jabbed the stock of the rifle into its downed face – once, twice, three times. He felt and saw its skull cave in. It stopped struggling.

He went back to the first one again. He kicked it in the ribs as it tried to get up, causing it to roll onto its stomach. Then he put a foot on its back, and his weight was enough to pin it in place. It struggled feebly and impotently to right itself.

Eli moved to dispatch it the same way as the first – but then he remembered Kelsey’s presence. He looked up at her through the darkness. He nodded to her, then to the thrashing head below him.

“Go ahead,” he said.
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Is that so?
Wordlessly, Kelsey approached the rotter that Eli had pinned. At least this wasn't the worst of his little 'training games' that she'd had to endure. Kill a pinned rotter. It wasn't Lowell, but it would have to do. She lifted the butt of her rifle and brought it down clumsily on the rotter's head. Once. Twice. Thrice. Between her bruised shoulder and general lack of power, it took a handful of beatings until its skull finally cracked open like a rotten egg. It smelled no better than one either.

Before this, the rotter had probably been a white collar worker or something -- whatever they called those people who sat in offices and worked at a desk. He had a collared shirt that was probably kind of nice at some point and a pair of ripped up slacks. Of course, it didn't matter now. He was dead. Again. And Kelsey felt no remorse for him at all. She wiped the gore off the butt of the AR-15 on the rotter's collared shirt.

She looked up at Eli; "Can we go now?"
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DoctorYerishi
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Dude, wake up! We've got a world to save.
Eli looked up from the second rotter’s cracked skull to Kelsey. He admired her determination, but not her petulance.

“Not quite,” he said. “Help me check out the cars.”

He led the way to the nearby parking lot, where there were five cars parked, two of them not even on the pavement. Eli didn’t bother questioning why one household needed so many vehicles. He just got to checking the doors.

“This one’s unlocked,” he reported when the door clicked open. “See if the others are too – and see how much gas they got.”

He waited and watched until she moved to do as she was told, then he crouched behind the front seat of the mid-size Accord he had just broken into. He found it was running on empty and got out.

He moved down the line to a dark blue Toyota Camry. It was also unlocked, and the gas looked to be about half full. It could do the trick. Eli started to think about hotwiring it, but instinctively lowered the vanity mirrored first. A set of keys dropped right down onto his lap. He smirked and scooped them up. They fit right in the ignition.

That makes things easy, he thought, satisfied by the stroke of luck.

Then he heard a car engine – or what sounded like a car engine – far off in the distance. His smirk and his satisfaction faded.

Kels,” he whispered fiercely, exiting the car with the keys in hand. “Did you hear that?”
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Is that so?
Kelsey peered out from behind a nearby Chevy Suburban that she had just discovered the doors were locked to. It looked like Eli'd had more luck than her. She made a mental note of the car.

Then she furled her brow at Eli and loudly whispered back; "Hear what? Rotters?"
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DoctorYerishi
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Dude, wake up! We've got a world to save.
Eli narrowed his eyes and focused, listening intently for the car engine he had just heard, but apparently Kelsey didn’t. He figured she just wasn’t as alert he was. Her mind was so clouded with thoughts of revenge that she had forgotten to be vigilant – probably.

He couldn’t hear the engine anymore, but that didn’t mean the danger was gone. And if more than one of Leonora’s goons caught up to him and Kelsey in the state they were in, with the few bullets they had left – well, that would be bad.

“Inside,” he decided. “Better to wait until first light, before something or someone takes us by surprise. Come on.”

He pointed to the door of the nearby house. He started briskly walking that way. He stopped himself mid-stride.

“Bodies!” he whispered suddenly, just as the thought hit him. “Help me get them off the street.”

The corpses would be a dead giveaway – literally, a dead giveaway – if Leonora’s men came this way. They needed them out of sight.

Eli grabbed one under the armpits and waited for Kelsey to grab its feet. He wanted to lift, not drag. He didn’t want a trail of blood leading to the driveway. That would be just as obvious.
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So he heard people?

Kelsey tried not to dwell too hard on it. If they were stopping for the night, that was probably the best case scenario she could hope for. They hadn't lost too much ground already. And they still had a working car. It was enough incentive for her to cooperate. She he to put her gun down to do it, but she grabbed the first dead rotter by the ankles and somehow managed to lift it off the ground high enough to not leave a trail of blood. She tucked its ankles into her armpits.

"Okay." She grunted through the effort.

This thing was kinda heavy.
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DoctorYerishi
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Dude, wake up! We've got a world to save.
“Over here,” Eli indicated, leading the way back where they came.

With Kelsey’s help, he moved the two corpses to the driveway, and then rolled them with his foot under the cars and out of sight. There was no way a passerby would see them unless they knew exactly where to look. It wasn’t ideal but it would have to do.

Eli pointed again to the door, and resumed his walk in that direction. Once again, he readied the stock of his rifle.

The sound of the far-off engine replayed in his head. He was eager to escape its danger. He looked to his much-shorter companion, wondering if he could count on her to help. He remembered her poor showing on his test at the ranch, and then the hostile words she had for him later that night.

“Can I trust you to get the door?” he asked in a whisper.
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She didn't answer Eli. Instead, Kelsey simply opened the front door of the house. With the dim light they had at their disposal, the inside of the house was already obscured in darkness. But it was also filled with an eerie quiet and didn't seem to smell any worse than the outside did. Though it was sometimes hard to tell the difference these days -- the rot of the corpses sometimes felt invisible to her nose.

As she had seen her dad and everyone else do so many times before, she slammed on the open door and took a step back. The sound echoed briefly through the house, but Kelsey noted that it was only silence that greeted them. Normally that meant the house was empty. Or the dead things were locked in a specific room just waiting to jump on them. Was probably about a 50/50 either way.

"It sounds empty." Kelsey told him.

She slammed her little hand against the door again, just to make sure. Still as quiet than the dead. Though that saying didn't really work anymore now.
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DoctorYerishi
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Dude, wake up! We've got a world to save.
Eli frowned. In his estimation, she got the process about half right.

“But be more careful about just opening doors like that,” he chastised. “Remember the shed. They could be waiting.”

He advanced into the house, and then closed the door behind the two of them.

“We clear every room,” he ordered next. “Every single one. Come on.”

He led the way, and over the next 10 minutes, that’s exactly what they did. Each time, they made a little noise like Kelsey had, and nothing responded – no people, no rotters, nothing.

The kitchen was one of the first rooms on the list. Eli was able to scrounge a large chef’s knife from a block on the counter and return his rifle to his strap. It made him feel better to have something sharp at the ready, though he would have preferred a holster to go along with it.

The fridge, meanwhile, had long been depowered and was mostly empty. There was a six-pack of water bottles, however, and three remained. They were another useful acquisition.

The next productive stop was the bathroom on the top floor. After ascending some creaky stairs and freaking himself out, Eli discovered it was the last door on the right, and noted the night-light still living off its battery. With that to illuminate things, he found the cabinet to be a relative goldmine – some saline, some cotton dressing, some tape. There were even a couple Advils left in a bottle, and he downed both.

When he was sure the house was clear, he left Kelsey to keep scavenging around the ground floor, while he returned upstairs. He splashed some water on his face to scare away the sleep, then went to work on his injuries.

First he took off his shirt. Then over the sink, he dumped some more of the water on his arms, and used a nearby towel to gently scrub away the dirt and the debris from the road. He followed it up with the saline solution. The scrapes stung a little with every new contact but he powered through it with gritted teeth.

He returned downstairs with his arms and legs wrapped in cotton. He tracked down Kelsey in a second, and appeared behind her under a door frame.

“Find anything?” he asked to the back of her head.
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While Eli disappeared, Kelsey snooped around the house a little bit. Eli had checked out all of the rooms briefly, but didn't exactly stop to give them a thorough look through.

Ultimately, the people that lived here were probably old; it felt like there was a bunch of old people stuff that wasn't particularly useful. There were old binders and folders filled with fancy papers and forms. There were a few magazines like Golf Digest that Kelsey never understood the appeal of. Underneath the beds, she found a small collection of bins and cardboard boxes filled with piles of more old stuff. 'Old stuff' never included guns though. They didn't seem to have any of those; or if they did the guns were long gone. Since there were no dead bodies inside the house, the owners had probably escaped. Taking the guns with them would have been a no-brainer.

So in the end, Kelsey found herself sitting on a bed with a plastic bag next to her, flipping through a book. The Winter of Our Discontent. Written by some guy called John Steinbeck. It looked like a book some poor high school student would be forced to read and then complain about later, like Nolan always did. That meant Willow would probably love it.

"Just some old book that Willow might like." Kelsey held the book out with one hand without turning around, then looked at the bag next to her. "And some batteries."
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