We Are Awakened With The Axe [Open to All]

[applesaucemod]

The city has been abandoned.

Its infrastructure has been slowly deteriorating for quite some time, now. Traffic has long since ground to a permanent halt, taxis and trucks rusting by the curbs or abandoned mid-intersection. Most of the ground-floor windows have been shattered. Electricity is spotty, if it can be found at all. The eerie silence is broken only by the wind, the calls of crows, or the gentle collapse of some structure or other. And, of course, the occasional screams.

The city has been abandoned, but it is not empty.

What caused the various outbreaks hardly matters. Viral infection, fungal infection, some new or ancient bacterium suddenly released into the general populace - who knows? What does matter is that the city has become home to thousands if zombies, some slow, some fast, some mindless, some retaining a savage kind of intelligence. And they are all so, so hungry.

There are weapons to be found or improvised, and places to hide if you're lucky enough to come across someplace well-fortified and otherwise empty. Others have clearly had the same idea, leaving hastily constructed barricades in some places. You might even take those as a blessing, if the conspicuous absence of the original builders doesn't bother you. They're probably living on a nice farm somewhere.

One thing is certain: if you don't want to succumb to whatever plagues have ravaged this place, you will have to fight for your survival.

[OOC: usual dream party rules apply; all are welcome to participate, and characters can remember or forget at the players' discretion. Also, usual zombie rules apply: if you get bitten, you'll be turned into the sort of zombie that bit you. Whether your characters deal with comically dim shamblers or the terrifying sprinty variety is up to you.

Finally, let's just go ahead and say tw: violence and gore for the post as a whole, because it's gonna get messy, folks.]

Comments

[deadeyedchild]

"I guess?!" Adrenaline has Jay's voice pitched and hot. He struggles to breathe normally, weird since he doesn't even have lungs right now. He feels these sensations, adrenaline, chest-tightening panic, without having the means to experience them. Which is totally awesome, really.

"That's what I did to the last one, that's what I mean," he says. "I don't know how I'm doing it, it's just like... pulling them apart or something, I - Do you mind if we don't get into that?"

There's more. There's always more. He can hear them scuttling around, growling like rabid animals. "I don't know where we're gonna go, but we have to go. Get up, Tim."

[postictal]

"Fine." He straightens fully upright, arms wrapped around his middle to alleviate the stinging of the lacerations down his chest and stomach. "Don't know where you think we should go. This place never lets me just leave."

He peers out into the hallway. Yep. Same hospital as always, corridors burned and darkened and crumbling with fire damage. Zombies were just the shit icing on the cake, really, even if he has no special fear of them. It's hard to be scared of shit like that when there's something there that can flay your mind past recognition.

[deadeyedchild]

"I just said I don't know where," mutters Jay mostly to himself, raising his voice to add, "This isn't your dream, it's everyone's. I came in here from post-apocalyptic Manhattan. I'm pretty sure we can get out."

He drifts down the hall slowly, affecting a dumb sort of defensive stance in case anything else feels like flying out at them. This must look so weird, now that Tim can actually see him, hovering just barely above the floor and floating around like Casper the friendly fuckin ghost.

"Just stay close, all right?" he says softly.

tw: suicide ideation

[postictal]

"So?" He looks at Jay, coldly withering. "Where d'you think this place came from? It took this from my head, I - I might not even be able to get out again."

Maybe he should've died here before. Maybe that's what the Rift or his subconscious is trying to tell him.

Or just his regular consciousness, straight-up. That feels about right. When hasn't he wished for this to finally be over? Isn't that what Alex wanted?

Well, he had it right to begin with.

"Great." He follows, pausing to shoot a glance over one shoulder to ensure they're not being stalked or anything. "So what's your plan, then?"

[deadeyedchild]

"You're gonna get out," he says impatiently. "You do always get out, you always did, so just..."

He sighs, letting it sit. This is not the time for this conversation, if there ever is a time.

"What, so you can shit all over it?" He leans around a corner, cutting halfway through it. "Get out, keep you alive. That's pretty much it. And I can do it, okay, for once I can actually do something, so I'm gonna do it."

He pulls back to look at Tim, almost challenging him to argue.

[postictal]

"Oh, you wanna keep me from waking up?" Tim glares, watching Jay clip through the crumbling brick-and-mortar like something out of a glitched video game. "Because, what, this is like the one place where you can be useful?"

He regrets saying it as soon as he does.

"Fine," he mutters, ruthlessly severing that line in conversation, hopefully before Jay can pounce on it. "Let's just - go, then."

He stops only to wrench one of the loose bits of rebar from the debris, hefting it in his grip, and ducks around the corner.

[deadeyedchild]

Jay expected Tim to argue, not quite that. A look of blindsided affront passes transiently across his pale, ghostly face, and then he just lowers his eyes. Tim's moving on, either because he's guilty or because he honestly doesn't give a shit, Jay can't guess which. No sense dragging it out, not when they have other shit to worry about.

Anyway he probably deserved it.

He lets Tim get a little ways ahead of him, hanging back to protect him from behind.

Keep you from waking up screaming, he wants to retort, and doesn't.

What do I have to do for you to cut me a break? he wants to ask, and doesn't.

"I just..." He huffs out a sigh. "I just don't want to watch you die."

Did he just conveniently allow himself to forget that whole embarrassing spill of honest fucking emotion, when Jay admitted he needed him? Is he doing everything in his power to not think about it? Probably.

tw: strangulation and body horror

[postictal]

"Yeah." Tim stills, his shoulders stiff beneath the torn edges of his shirt. "I didn't wanna watch you die, either."

He can't place his own tone, whether it's meant to sound spiteful or vindictive or quietly resentful or laden with regret.

Then he stops worrying about that as he starts worrying about the sound of someone hacking their goddamn lungs out.

The sound is too alarmingly, chillingly familiar for Tim's reaction to be anything but immediate. He tears after it, rounding corners, desperately seeking the source and partly expecting some halfway-decomposed face of Alex or Sarah or Brian to come looming out from the fucking woodwork, coughing, regarding him balefully, wordlessly demanding why he couldn't help.

But up ahead, there's nothing but smoke.

"Someone else is in here," he calls over his shoulder. "Someone - "

The call resolves into a strangled yelp as something shoots out from the sheet of putrid green-gray smoke, dull and slimy and winding its way around his chest, around his neck, dragging him swiftly and inexorably to something hidden in the dense cloud.

Tim tries to yell, but he can only gag against the agony itching in his lungs and the rapidly constricting vice around his throat.

[deadeyedchild]

"Tim, wait!" he yells, struggling to hurry after him, okay this the problem with staying behind him is you're not very fucking fast, are you, there he goes, wanting to help, reminds Jay of himself and look where that got Jay? You'd think Tim would know better.

That smoke cloud is nothing good and Jay's reaching out to protest again when something snaps out of it, slithering fast and taut around Tim and pulling him into the smoke, out of sight.

"Tim!" Fuckfuckfuck, he propels himself forward as fast as he can and dives right into the cloud. He can pass through it unharmed but he sure as fuck can't see anything, so he's just groping around blindly until his arm passes right through Tim, and he jerks it away sharply.

This creature is more repulsive than any of the others he's seen so far, but he doesn't hesitate before lunging at it, driving his hands into its hideous mass. "Let him go!" he growls fiercely, and tears the thing apart.

Not out of the woods yet (hah). Tim's released but he can't breathe in this smoke, on top of just being nearly choked to death. Jay drops down and seizes him around the chest, and he can grip but he can't move him. "Fuck!" he yells, releasing him and gripping his shirt, trying to pull. It barely makes a difference. "Fuck, fuck, fuck!"

He's not letting this happen. He's not.

He plunges his hands into the floor and hey, what do you know, he can rend that apart too. It was about ready to give already. He seizes Tim again, arms locked around him, as the floor crumbles and they drop through it, into somewhat cleaner air. He can't fucking fly or anything, he can only let himself sink, and Tim's weight adds a fuckload of speed, so this wasn't exactly a great goddamn plan, but there's air here, and he manages to slow the fall just enough that Tim lands without breaking anything.

He'll call that a fucking win.

tw: strangulation, physical trauma

[postictal]

You goddamn moron.

He should've known there's no one in here but them. It's always just him, and now Jay. It was blind, stupid hope, and now he's getting burned for it.

Choked, rather, in a cloud of smoke by a thing that drags him back by something slippery and tentacle-esque as it seizes his shoulders with withered hands.

How fitting.

His fingers scrabble numbly over the appendage wrapped around his throat, his vision graying into shadows.

Even when Jay practically rips the thing off, he curls in on himself, lungs and chest aching like there's some impossible pressure levered over him, his throat raw, his shoulders quivering with each gasp. He can't breathe. He can't fucking see, he can't -

He's -

Falling.

Okay.

That's cool.

He hits burned-out wood and cement and brick and skids, tumbling over debris, sucking the mercifully, blissfully clean air into his lungs.

He's on his back, he's looking at the ceiling and the hole that's been torn clean through it, at the dissipating smoke, and trying to blink the kaleidoscopic blots of color from his eyes.

He hurts.

Kind of all over.

He rolls onto his side, coughing weakly. "Jay?"

[deadeyedchild]

"I'm here." Jay winces at Tim's obvious pain and the coughing, though it's not as bad as what they're used to. "Sorry, I - didn't know what else to do." He reaches out and sets his hand on Tim's arm, not quite sure what to do with it, but feeling like he ought to anyway. "You okay? I mean, like... relatively speaking?"

You know, considering he just almost got choked out by a zombie's tongue and then fell an entire story down. Things could be worse.

He glances around quickly, taking in their new location. No enemies here, at least not yet. "This isn't your hospital anymore," he comments. "See, we did get out."

[postictal]

Relative to what? To his life?

If they're going by that metric, Tim's never been fucking better.

His shoulders shudder with the effort to clear the dust and grit from his lungs as Tim transitions his weight to his hands, then shifts to his knees. His fingertips brush the dark welts on his throat where that thing's tongue-tentacle sunk into his skin. Wincing, he drops his hands.

"Oh hey," he rasps, his voice hoarse. "Look at that."

Fuck. And talking is painful. His hand goes back to his throat as he pushes himself to his feet with painstaking slowness, sending rubble clattering.

[deadeyedchild]

Jay ignores the ongoing snark and gets up when Tim does, moving around to scout the place out.

"I don't think we should stay here either, though," he says. "Too many ways in. Hole in the ceiling."

He looks back at Tim. He looks terrible. "Are... are you okay to walk?"

[postictal]

He puts his full weight on each leg experimentally and is rewarded by several stabs of pain up his spine. Tim winces.

"Yeah," he says, the word a pained scrape over his vocal cords. "Yeah, I'm good."

Sorta.

Kinda.

Mostly.

He plants one hand against the wall and starts hobbling forward, mouth set in a determined line.

"Okay," says Tim, trying to recover some of his missing wherewithal and authoritative outlook. "Let's get someplace not-here, then."

[deadeyedchild]

Jay drifts ahead, never too far, unwilling to let Tim stray out of his sightline - not that Tim's moving very fast. Slow's fine, as long as Jay can keep protecting him, preferably without any more near-fuckups. Slow and careful.

He slides up to a stairwell, hoping maybe it'll lead them to the ground level and a way out, and stops short, holding an arm out to keep Tim at bay.

"Fuck," he whispers. "Okay. Uh. Turn around slowly."

Cause he's not sure he can take out that many at once.

Most of them don't look as deadly and fucked up as the last few he's had to help Tim with, just sort of shuffling aimlessly around at the foot of a half-blown-out staircase and seemingly unaware of the presence of others.

"We're going that way," Jay says quietly, turning around.

Well, at least they have a set direction now.

[postictal]

Ignoring the idiocy of Jay trying to physically hold Tim back - he might be more solid than he is in reality, but that doesn't change that Tim could probably walk right through him regardless - Tim tracks the line of Jay's stare to glimpse - oh, that looks nice.

Tim backs away, mouth twisting in disgust. Some of them look weirdly stiff or contorted in unnatural formations, like rigor mortis set in belatedly.

He doesn't need to pursue that line of thought. He turns around and moves in the opposite direction.

"How many of these things are there," he hisses under his breath.

[deadeyedchild]

"I really don't know," Jay murmurs back. "There were a ton outside too. I mean, we're not really safe anywhere, but..."

He heaves a sigh, which, perhaps comically, propels him up by a few inches. "Look, I know you think death is gonna be a quick way out, but I can think of plenty of reasons why that's not a good fucking idea. There's no death here that'll be quick or easy, and there's no fucking guarantee it'd even kill you. What if you turn into one of them? Do you think for a second the rift wouldn't make you dream about that?"

That's got to get his attention. Surely.

"I'm finding somewhere you can hide," he says, attempting to sound firm and decisive. "And I'll protect you until you wake up naturally."

tw: suicide ideation

[postictal]

"It'd be better," Tim mutters, half to himself. "At least I wouldn't need to think about this shit."

Would it be better? It'd have to be, really. Much as he grew to dread the blackouts, the moments where his brain lapsed into inactivity while something dark and inhuman took hold of his skull, at least he was spared the bleakness of reality for a little bit.

And it's so fucked that he's even considering this.

"All right," he says tiredly, turning to face Jay. "Where to, then?"

[deadeyedchild]

Jay's never been the one who leads Tim. Not unless Tim's chasing him cause he took off running after a hooded stranger like an idiot. It's always been Tim - from "some light trespassing" to "where could he have gone?" Tim is the leader, of the two of them. He's smarter and more practical. But Jay has to now. And he's not going to fuck it up. Goddammit.

"Up," he says. "They have access to the ground level, obviously. I don't think those ones can climb very fast, those are more like... Romero zombies. Slow and stupid. The ones we've been running into are like, I don't know, updated video game shit. But I guess they don't move in packs, so I can pick them off. So."

Hey, look, his fucking film degree is sort of coming in handy.

"So we go up," he says, and directs Tim toward the opposite stairwell.

[postictal]

God, between the running and hiding that's comprised the majority of their adult lives, Tim's almost forgotten how much of a movie buff Jay was.

Is.

It's such a deceptively normal trait. Like their lives haven't dissolved into utter chaos. How long has it even been since either of them have had the time or energy to sit back and watch a goddamn movie?

Maybe not a zombie movie. That would feel too much like Tim's life.

Progress up the stairs is agonizingly slow, emphasis on 'agony'. Tim's ribs hurt, his legs hurt, his fucking lungs hurt with whatever the hell was in that smoke he breathed in. That better not be what infected these things in the first place. That would just be the fucking kicker.

[deadeyedchild]

Jay floats up each flight and keeps lookout as Tim follows. He looks like he's in a fuckload of pain, and Jay tries not to let his own nervous impatience show. He wishes he could help.

"Almost there," he says after a few climbs. "We're getting close to the top now."

And there, godwilling, they will find a safe sturdy room to sit in and play twenty questions until they wake up.

Yeah. This is a great plan.

[postictal]

"Awesome," he grunts, and there's just no way to make it sound sincere even if this time, for once, it actually kind of is.

He's practically gasping by the time he reaches the top, planting one hand against the wall, coughing up a storm.

Oh god.

Fuck. No. No.

Tim lurches to his knees, then to all fours. He can't stop. His throat's on fire. His head is burning. Something smothers the panic building in his chest, in his skull, suffusing the pressure with an ungodly ache. He can't see beyond the worn concrete, the flecks of crimson hitting the ground the longer he coughs, no, no, no.

At least he can't hurt Jay like this.

Because Jay's already dead.

And it's all - your - fault.

[deadeyedchild]

"Tim?" He turns back sharply when he hears that cough, hears it worsen. He floats over as fast as he can. "No, nononono, Tim!"

He crouches down, or rather just sinks into the floor a little ways, resting his hands on Tim's quaking back, trying desperately, hopelessly, to soothe and still him. "Tim!" he cries. "Come on, buddy, stay with me!"

Almost word for fucking word.

He doesn't remember seizing up on the lawn behind Alex's old house but it happened, and Tim pulled him out of that too.

Why can't he make this stop?

"Tim, please," he begs, pressing a little harder, trying to will it away.

tw: extreme mental distress, self-harm, mild finger trauma

[postictal]

Jay's voice cuts through the fog briefly, and Tim recovers enough wherewithal, barely, to reach up with a hand and swipe wildly away. Get back. Get back.

Oh shit.

He can feel himself shuddering under the weight of each hacking cough, his body buckling, his fingers curling into claws as they dig into the rough stone, scraping them open, tearing his fingernails, leaving his hands raw and bloody.

He remembers the first time this happened, the first time he knew, really knew what was happening to him as he shook and spiraled into distressed sobs, hands cupped over his face as other parts of him leaked through to crush his mind into compliance.

It hurts.

It fucking hurts.

It's every nerve being carved out and rearranged, it's his body being jarred into submission, it's his lungs left heaving and empty, it's mind being flayed alive. It's something bestial clawing its way out from the furthest corners of himself, something mired in that, that thing, eyes dark and empty, mind dark and empty and horrible and swirling and alien and its thoughts and its mind and it, its being pressing up against his, choking him out, drowning him, muzzling him.

Tim's body folds forward and into silence.

Silence.

Silence.

Silence.

Then.

His eyes open.

It always feels that it has been too long since this body was theirs.

[deadeyedchild]

"Tim," he says pleadingly, trying to grasp at his hands, stop him from hurting himself. "Tim, no."

It's no good. He can't do shit. He remembers only distantly what this feels like, and how impossible it is to keep it from happening. He keeps his hands on Tim even as he goes still and silent. Gone. For a moment Jay almost hopes he'll just wake up. Maybe this can't happen in a dream. Maybe-

And then he wakes back up, only it's not him anymore, not with those distant staring eyes. He lifts his hands away and backs off a bit. Even if Tim can't hurt him he still feels wary.

"Let him go," he whispers, angry and hopeless.