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

[singthesong]

Meanwhile, here's this idiot.

The Balladeer is making his way away from the Park, though he doesn't know exactly where he's trying to go. "Away from here" seems like a good enough choice at present. He's trying, but he's never been much for sneaking, so mostly it looks like he's just lurking along the side of a building like a nervous heron. Knowing that he won't hear anything approaching makes him more nervous than he'd ever thought - how on earth do people handle just relying on normal hearing?

[all_the_gifts]

Melanie rounds a corner, edging away from a group of hungries shambling in the other direction, then stills when she sees the man standing a little distance away. Oh, no. She remembers him. He's nice.

She approaches him slowly, both because it's smart to move slow, and because she's less than eager to face this. "I'm sorry," she says, once she's close enough for him to still hear her when she speaks low. "I think this is my fault."

[singthesong]

Melanie doesn't have to worry too much about startling him, at any rate. Once she's close enough, he snaps his head around to look at her, looking - well, as if he isn't quite sure how to feel. The Balladeer's relieved as anything to find another person in all this, but she's just a kid. It's dangerous out here!

He's considerably less cautious in approaching her, but he takes the cue when she speaks quietly. "What?" he whispers back. How on earth could she think that? "No, no, it's fine. This is just...one of those dreams, right?" That doesn't make it a whole lot better while they're still in it. Nobody wants to experience getting torn apart by a zombie, even if it isn't technically real. But it's no one's fault, and one way or another they'll all come out alright.

[all_the_gifts]

He doesn't understand, and she doesn't want to explain it to him, but it wouldn't fair not to. "I think it's mine, though." She looks around at what remains of Manhattan. There's not as much fungus as she would have expected, but it's still too similar to London after the Breakdown, and who else would dream up so many hungries?

"I'm sorry you got pulled into it." She didn't do it on purpose - she knows enough about how the dreams work to know she didn't do it at all. It was the rift, not her. But it doesn't matter; he's here now, and he doesn't belong here., and it will be her fault if anything bad happens to him.

[singthesong]

"Oh!" The Balladeer actually smiles at that, though it only lasts a second. "Well hey, that's fine! Everyone has nightmares."

And this isn't an unusual kind of nightmare to have either - not like the kind of thing his own subconscious might produce. She probably just saw one too many scary movies or something; someone should keep an eye on that. "We can get through this. Just gotta last until we wake up!" And you know, not wake up via death. That would be preferable.

[all_the_gifts]

"Not like this."

He still doesn't understand, not really. But she doesn't want to go into more detail than she has, not when he's being so cheerful. Maybe he's just used to the dreams, or maybe he's being nice for her sake, like the ROMAC people who first found her, before she'd made them understand how dangerous things were. How dangerous she was.

She's better now. She's not hungry.

Melanie sighs. "We should get to higher ground," she suggests.

[singthesong]

"Sounds like a good idea," he agrees, looking around the streets again. The Balladeer's the adult in this situation. He really should be taking care of her, shouldn't he? Not the other way around? But if she knows what she's doing, then she knows what she's doing. It sounds like she might have this dream a lot, and he certainly understands that the person who repeats an incident over and over would be the best one to listen to.

It's alright; if any zombies come, he'll just...deal with that. Somehow.

Maybe they won't come.

"We can go up into one of these buildings." He points out a nearby one as he makes the suggestion; one with an old metal fire escape. "Block the stairs off, they won't be able to get up after us."

[all_the_gifts]

The fire escape seems like a better option than the interior staircase - she has a vague idea that that could turn out messy - and she nods. They'll be exposed, but most of the hungries on the ground level won't be able to reach them, and they should see trouble coming before it hits them.

"Going up the outside might be safest," she says. Unfortunately, there are no conveniently placed rubbish bins for her to use as impromptu ladders. The Balladeer is tall, though. "If you lift me up, I can push the ladder down." She doesn't weigh much, so it shouldn't be hard for him (though her unexpected lightness might raise questions of its own... well, she'll deal with those as they come).

[singthesong]

The Balladeer cranes his neck back, reckoning the height, and nods. "Sure, I can do that. C'mere."

Once given permission, he'll swing her up and lift her. She's a lot lighter than he thought she'd be! Are children always that light? It's not as if he picks up a lot of them, but she just looked heavier. Is it some kind of dream effect? Well, that's far from the most important thing right now anyway - as long as she looks like she's getting enough food, which she does, her being light enough to easily lift up to the ladder is a stroke of good fortune.

[all_the_gifts]

Melanie siezes the bottom rung of the ladder as soon as it's in reach. It shifts a little, but doesn't drop - it must have rusted. She has to clamber up onto the landing and give it a good shove from above before it finally lowers with a squeal of complaint, showering down flakes of peeled paint like ashes.

"Okay," she says, scanning the nearest intersections for movement. She doesn't trust her own luck enough to hope the noise hasn't attracted attention.

[singthesong]

The Balladeer winces at the sound, darting a quick glance over his shoulder. Did anything hear that?

His pause is just long enough to hear the approaching sound of groans. Immediately, the Balladeer turns to scale the ladder, now heedless of the clanging metal. How many of these things are there? How do they even hear, honestly?

He's fast to get up, anyway, and once he's there he turns to try and pull the ladder back up behind himself. Can zombies even climb ladders? Who cares, let's just get rid of that possibility right now.