applesaucedream | We Are Awakened With The Axe [Open to All]

Current Music: September 29th/30th, 2013

We Are Awakened With The Axe [Open to All]

photo zombie dream party_zpsbb0hfksu.jpg

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.]

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Rita lapses into a silence that is only somewhat satisfied and definitely doesn't qualify as 'companionable.' But silence is better than talking for plenty of reasons, and at least now she knows Asadi's head isn't entirely in the sand.

They make it to Park without incident, but the avenue is too wide and unobstructed for them to escape the notice of a ragged cluster of zombies a few blocks away. "Company," Rita says with a nod. And they're runners, too - that's just perfect.

Rita doesn't wait to meet them. She charges forward, the suit elongating her stride, and swings her sword in a vicious arc, cleaving the frontrunner in half. No resets, no fuck-ups, no option but to get the job done. She rounds on another, using her own momentum to send the blade straight through the putrified remains of its abdomen, severing its spine. It still claws at her blindly; she lifts a fist to its head and spares a short burst of gunfire at point-blank range, shredding its skull into an unrecognizable, pulpy mess. Still gotta conserve ammo.

But hey, the suit's working. And this is vastly preferable to sitting in some random flat.

Iman raises her arm, ready to fire a blast, but then Rita just takes off. Holy shit, she can move in that thing. She must be strong as all hell. Iman ends up slowing and stopping completely, just watching as Rita rains down hell on the horde. That sword. Her fucking gymnastic grace.

"Fuck me," she announces to no one before recovering herself and charging forward. As if she's gonna let Rita have all the fun.

She slams her arm through a creature that's coming up behind Rita, swings and knocks another down with it, and then fires an unforgiving pulse of rippling energy, the pressure alternately crushing and ripping them apart. That was a big one, all right. With that and the battery recharge she's gonna need to wait a bit. Which is fine, cause she can sure as fuck still punch.

She draws the sidearm too, and gets several clean headshots in a row.

All right, playing field leveled. Now she can just break some faces.

She does not think about how cathartic this is.

After dealing with mimics, there's almost no contest. Close-range combat is their only option and the only time they pose a real threat, their movements are comparatively slow and predictable as hell. This feels less like real combat and more like an unnecessarily messy training exercise as Rita methodically slices her way through the horde, no longer bothering with guns or grenades because she doesn't need to. The sword is enough.

It helps that she has back-up. Asadi does some more weird science with her arm, causing two of them to crumple like a pair of beer cans, then lapses into neatly executed headshots and a hell of a lot of punching. Shit, imagine what she could do if she had a suit.

Most of the zombies have been downed, but there's one more straggler approaching. Rita charges forward and cuts it down, planting a boot in its face as she skids down the pavement, leaving a wet smear behind her.

Okay. That was fun.

She walks back to Asadi, breathing heavily but in better spirits than she was before. "Okay?" she asks, looking her over for obvious wounds.

"For all intents and purposes," says Iman, looking up at her with a small, sharp grin. "That was pretty badass."

She straightens up and wipes herself off, more or less. "All right then. Shall we?"

The journey to the park is slightly less fraught, a miraculously clear shot. The park itself is a mostly flat fucking surface crawling with scattered clusters of undead. The procession is slow and stubborn, lit with scattered slicing and punching.

"Look," she's snapping after an uncertain amount of exploration. "If you want to try getting off this rock you are welcome, I'm just saying, and it's not cynicism, it's not going to-"

She cuts herself off as her eyes drift over the horizon and land on - is that a castle?

"Okay," she says, and points to it. "That's where we're going. Happy?"

"Thrilled," Rita deadpans as a shambler reels out of a neighboring shrub. She dispatches it absently with the flat of her sword. The park had been a more manageable search area than 'the entire island,' but it's still pretty goddamn huge. A more specific target is a welcome change. The fact that it's a castle is... yeah, probably fitting. If Greta really is from some medieval era - or just a little too into that kind of thing - sure, that's probably where she'd go. It looks fortified, at least from here, so they might even find her alive.

The castle itself isn't very big, which becomes more apparent the closer they draw to it. Most of the windows appear to have been smashed, though many have been hastily recovered with wood and formica. There's something flying from one of the tower windows, though - a mostly-white scrap of cloth, twisting in the intermittent breeze like a flag of surrender. Rita squints at it, and the thinner ties streaming off the main square of fabric. "Is that an apron?"

"Where?" Iman looks up sharply, follows Rita's point, and breaks into a huge, relieved grin. "That's her. That's her!"

Thank fuck. She picks up the pace, just barely avoiding breaking into a run. She knows this isn't the end of it. There is still a solid chance Greta was there and... isn't, anymore... but she can't think about that. Can't, won't.

"She's a baker!" she shouts over her shoulder, and neatly clotheslines another zombie as it jumps up out of a shrubbery.

Step one almost - fucking finally - completed. Rita breaks into a lope, swinging at any zombies that have the poor fortune to come after them. The short iron fence between the first pavilion on the rest of the park bears a few signs of fortification, but either it wasn't enough, or the fortifiers realized they were wasting their time and pulled back. Now, most of it lies flattened. Rita steps over it and crosses the pavilion in a few long strides, ignoring the corpses already stretched across the stones.

The arched doorway leading into the lower level of the building is shut, but riddled with sizable holes. Rita approaches it sidelong, and shouts, "Anyone alive in there?"

Nothing. No movement.

Rita glances at Asadi, then shoulders the door open and steps inside.

It used to be a children's museum, from the looks of things. Most of the tables and chairs are now covering the windows, but there's a large fake tree covered in model birds. Rita tromps past it, looking for the stairs.

Iman passes her easily - Rita's fast when she needs to be, but not exactly nimble in that thing - and darts up the stairs as soon as she spots them. She has a rough idea of where the apron-marked window is and she has to get to it as fast as possible.

"Greta?" she calls recklessly. "Greta, are you there?"

The place is actually pretty small given how it looks from outside. She swerves into what would ordinarily be an adorable little tower room, though it's currently more of an unnervingly cramped space, and there - there she is, there she is, still alive, fighting one of them back with a push broom.

"Greta!" She grabs the thing, punches it once for good measure and hurls it aside for Rita to take care of if her punch didn't do the job. She turns and throws her arms around Greta without hesitation, pulling her close and holding on tight. "Thank god you're okay," she whispers, trying to keep her voice from shaking.

Greta doesn't know how long she's been up here. This whole day has just been a miserable, terrifying blur of monsters and hiding with varying degrees of success. She had thought the castle might prove to be a better stronghold than it turned out to be, and she'd felt so foolish when she discovered the truth of it. Does anyone else even know of this place? Who would think to look for her here? Is she going to die alone in this little joke of a tower?

And then she hears Iman's voice.

She can't even muster a reply before Iman's inside, recklessly grabbing the monster she'd been holding off and hurling it backwards out the door. The broom clatters to the floor, and then she all but collapses into Iman's arms with a sob of relief, squeezing her eyes shut. She wants to say that she knew Iman would find her, that she was certain, but she hadn't been certain of anything. "I missed you," is what comes out instead, ragged and unsteady.

There's a distant, wet sound from the little courtyard outside, and Greta opens her eyes, hurriedly blinking the tears away as a bizarrely angled outline blocks the doorway. There's someone else out there, not a monster, but a woman in some kind of mechanical shell, and she... her face...

Greta gapes, her throat spasming with several unuttered questions.

Iman pulls back when Greta looks up and starts sputtering. "Yeah," she says. "How 'bout that, huh?" She looks at Greta and smiles, unable to express anything but relief right now. "That's Rita. She helped me kick ass all the way to you."

She glances back at Rita. "Told you she looked like you," she says, unnecessarily. "And that we'd find her."

There's absolutely no point in gloating about something she was so uncertain of, but she doesn't care. She'd been so terrified, and now - now everything's okay. You know, relatively.

Well, this is awkward on several levels. Rita stares at Greta, barely recognizing herself in the other woman. She looks so... nice. So profoundly unsuited to all this. God, it's like looking at an old photograph of her mother, gently blurred and over-saturated and careworn around the corners. When was the last time Rita was that soft-edged? She can't remember. Maybe she never was.

Her gaze drops to the floor, then flickers over to Iman, and that just makes it worse. Christ, she's beaming. Are they a couple? They have to be a couple. Which makes her the third wheel, holy shit, this is absurd.

"... So I see," she finally says, shifting her weight with a clank and a hiss. Then, somewhat warily directed towards Greta, "All right?"

"Um." Greta wipes at her face, then nods unsteadily. "Yes, I--I think so." She turns to look at Iman with such open admiration that it makes Rita want to squirm. "Better now that you're here."

Iman grins and sweeps Greta into another hug, burying her face briefly against her neck. God, she wants to kiss her more than anything right now, but something stops her, maybe the weirdness of Rita's presence, or something else signified by an itch at the back of her head. Whatever. Doesn't matter. There'll be plenty of time for that later.

"Rita saw your apron," she says, pulling back again. "Brilliant." She settles for standing up on her toes and kissing Greta on the forehead. "Come on, s'not safe here. Too open."

She snatches Greta's hand and trots back toward the door.

Greta lets out a little giggle when Iman pulls her into another hug, too giddy to help herself, turning her face into Iman's hijab. Thank goodness they found her. Now she's safe.

She grins when Iman mentions the apron. "You saw!" It had seemed like such a futile effort, and she'd thought about pulling it back more than once, not wanting it to advertise the presence of... whatever was left of her. But never mind that, now. She's going to be fine.

Rita steps back to clear the exit, and Greta follows Iman out the door. She's skirting nervously around the mangled remains of the monster they recently dispatched, and is in the process of taking in Rita's enormous sword when the other woman speaks, drawing her gaze up to her face.

... She doesn't like that expression.

"You're limping," Rita observes flatly. "What happened?"

Is that what she sounds like? That can't be what she sounds like. Greta shrinks closer to Iman, taken aback by how cold the other woman looks, and it isn't until Rita ticks her eyebrows up pointedly that she realizes she hasn't answered.

"It's... it's nothing," she stammers, her grip on Iman's hand tightening. "One of them..." she hesitates, mouth twisting distastefully, then finishes, "... bit me, but it's hardly anything." She glances between the two of them, heart sinking. "I can still run on it, I'm sure," she insists. Why are they looking at her like that?

Iman looks distractedly at Rita, wondering why she's stopping, what her problem is, what's-

-what-

Her blood freezes, a leaden weight forming in her gut, how could she not have seen this, how could she - no, no, no no no

Greta doesn't know. Why would she know? She's never had to contend with anything like this before. She doesn't know what they are, how they infect.

"Greta," she says softly, her voice wavering. She doesn't let go of her hand. Oh god. She swallows, struggling to stay calm. "Let me see."

Rita watches as Greta looks nervously from her to Asadi and back. It's hard to keep her face impassive while Greta's is an open fucking book, confusion and growing fear written plainly across her features. She's still gripping Asadi's hand, but the other eventually fists into her skirt, lifting the hem to reveal an open wound just above her ankle. The skin around it has gone dark with ugly bruising, gangrenous threads weaving up her calf.

"Oh," Greta says with distant dismay. "It... it didn't look that bad before."

She didn't know. How could she not know?

Rita looks at Asadi, not saying a word. She knows what this means.

Iman doesn't want to, but she can't avoid meeting Rita's gaze.

"No," she blurts, and she drops Greta's hand abruptly, pressing it instead over her mouth as she backs away, feeling like she's going to be sick. "No. No. No, this can't- I won't - no!"

She's being childish.

She's panicking.

She's not making this any fucking easier for Greta.

"There has to be something we can..." She runs out of breath, out of will to speak, before she can finish. She casts about desperately for a solution, when she knows there is none.

Greta reels back against the exterior wall when Iman drops her hand, feeling unmoored, feeling sick. Her leg looks bad, all right, she knows that, but surely it's not worth this kind of panic, not from a woman who lost an arm and soldiered on. What unspoken understanding have these two shared? She feels a hot stab of anger at the thought; she hates being in the dark.

"What's going on?" she demands, releasing her skirt and letting it drop back over the wound. "What aren't you telling me?"

Rita looks at Iman for a moment, then meets Greta's gaze squarely. She doesn't look as upset as Iman, but her gaze isn't entirely devoid of pity. When she speaks, her voice is almost gentle. "It's the plague - the illness these things have." A twitch of her sword indicates the crumpled, bloody heap near the door. "That's how it spreads."

It spreads?

Oh, god. Greta slowly slides down to the floor, lifting a trembling hand to her face. She was so foolish. She knew there was something wrong with people, she'd seen healthy individuals dragged down by the horde, but she hadn't stopped to watch what happened next, she hadn't thought of it as--as catching. She doesn't know what she thought. She supposes she wasn't thinking at all, she'd been too scared to think, and now... and now...?

"Am I--I'm going to turn into...?" she can't bear to look at the remains of the thing, and she especially can't bear to look at Iman. She hides her face in her hands, gasping for air.

"Greta, I-" Iman feels weak, dizzy, but she forces herself to step forward and crouch down. She reaches out to grip her shoulders with trembling hands. She doesn't know how to explain, no, they won't let that happen, they'll - She can't say it, she can't. Can she even do it? Fuck, she's not letting Rita do it. "I'm so, so sorry."

Fucking inadequate.

She should have seen. She should have gotten here sooner. She should be able to think of something. She's a fucking scientist, isn't she?

She should have told - should have told her. Really told her, meant it. Let her know she meant it. Like Rush said, when he - when they-

Her tear-streaked face takes on a look of distant bewilderment as she looks from Greta to the ground for a moment, trying to get her thoughts in order. It's like falling asleep and trying to grasp a thought, knowing you're slipping into-

"Dreaming," she whispers suddenly. "Greta, we're - we're dreaming. We're dreaming, this isn't real. Oh god, oh god, Greta-" She pulls her forward into another tight embrace, clinging to her in desperate relief. This isn't real. They're going to wake up and they're going to be okay.

Rita's not entirely clear on the plague's incubation period - it seems to vary - but she weighs the idea of suggesting Asadi step the hell away, nevertheless. Greta might be fine for now, but it's not going to last, and for all any of them know, she might turn on a dime. It would be in their best interests to not be clinging to her when it happens.

(Yeah, that's all this is. The fact that seeing Asadi desperately entwined with a woman who looks just like Rita herself - or how she might look, if things had been different - has no bearing on her discomfort levels whatsoever.)

Asadi's conclusion that they're dreaming stops her cold, though, as does Greta's immediate and evident relief. "Oh my--" the other woman gasps out, throwing her arms around Asadi's shoulders and burying her face in her neck.

"Dreaming?" Rita repeats. It wouldn't be the first unlikely assertion of Asadi's that turned out to be true, but the odds of finding Greta - slim as they were - still have to be a hell of a lot higher than the odds of this whole damn thing being a dream. She's had more than her fair share of nightmares and flashbacks, but nothing as involved as this.

"Yeah," says Iman, utterly unconcerned with Rita's obvious confusion. She must not be a rifty, she's either some fucked up figment of Iman's own imagination (holy hell, scratch that, she better not be) or some poor soul pulled in from the outside. It doesn't matter. Greta's going to be okay, but they're not out of the woods yet.

"Greta," she says, pulling back and cupping her hand around Greta's cheek. "Listen to me. There's no reason to think the dream won't make you experience - becoming one of-" She grits her teeth. This is going to fucking suck, real or no. "We're going to have to wake you up." She searches Greta's eyes. "Do you understand?"

It's a dream. This isn't real, it can't be real, she's going to wake up and be fine and it will be as if none of this mess ever happened. Maybe she won't even remember it.

Her relief doesn't last too long, though. Greta stares at Iman, the implication of 'wake you up' slowly sinking in. They don't mean pinching her. If what she's already been through hasn't been enough to rouse her from this awful nightmare, there's only one other option.

"I..." she looks away, her gaze landing on the sorry mess by the door, distantly aware that her heart is racing. What if this isn't a dream? It doesn't matter; it's the same conclusion either way. If she doesn't want to become one of those monsters, risk the awful memory of--of attacking people like some kind of rabid animal, of wanting to tear into the nearest living person (and look at who the nearest living people are, god, her dearest friend and a woman who shares her own face)... she has to die.

They'll have to kill her.

She pulls in a ragged breath, makes herself look back at Iman. "Yes," she says brokenly. "I... I understand." It's not real. It's not real. There's no reason for her to be shaking like this. "But I don't..." she looks up at Rita, easily the most stoic of the three of them, the least invested, and the other woman stares back before shifting a little, shoulders dropping in unspoken acquiescence. Greta bites her lip and shoots her a grateful look before looking back to Iman. "I don't want you to--to do it," she says, lifting a trembling hand to Iman's hijab, straightening out the creases. "I don't want to remember you doing it, I don't--I don't want you to have to..." she cuts herself off, unable to continue.

Iman can't keep herself from crying again, much as she would like to; she pulls her hand back briefly to wipe it hastily across her eyes before reaching back out to stroke Greta's hair. "O-okay," she stammers. "If that's... if that's what you want." She pulls her forward again, clinging, not wanting to let her go. "Come find me as soon as you wake up," she says. "Everything's gonna be okay."

She stands up reluctantly, hanging onto Greta's hand as long as she can. She glances over at Rita, who's already made this implicit pact with Greta, apparently, and, well, this is about as fucked up as anything could be.

"I'll see you real soon," she whispers.

Greta shudders with something between a sob and a mirthless laugh when Iman pulls her in again, because what she wants has nothing to do with it. She wants everything to stop being so awful for both of them, asleep or awake, because they've been through enough. She wants to be not infected with some unspeakable illness, so they wouldn't have to do this, so she could stay - stay alive even in this terrible nightmare, because the most awful things are a little less awful when they're together and can look out for one another. She wants to stay right here, with Iman's arms around her and her hand in her hair. She wants to stop sobbing into Iman's shoulder; she wants to be braver than this, so Iman doesn't have to deal with her torment on top of her incipient loss.

But she doesn't want Iman to have to put her down like a dog, however temporary or necessary or--or merciful an act it might be. She can't ask that of her. She won't have her live with the memory of it. A small comfort, perhaps, but at least Greta and her odd twin can give her that much.

"As soon as I wake up," she says, wishing she could force it to happen on her own, wishing this didn't feel so solid and inescapably real. "The very moment, I... I promise."

As if she can promise Iman anything.

She gets to her feet, one hand braced on the wall for support, the other still clinging to Iman's. She finds herself running her thumb over Iman's knuckles, and it feels like a cruel parody of comfort, but it gives her something to focus on besides the subtle shift in Rita's stance or the alien whirring of all that machinery, and what it heralds.

She shuts her eyes, because she's not that brave, and quietly begs, "Please don't watch."

She hopes Rita will make it quick.

She's gone before she can hear the gunshot.

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We Are Awakened With The Axe [Open to All]

oh boy violence and gore

more gore and weird shit, gun violence, etc

and so, dear reader, they continued to slaughter the undead

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tw character death, EMOTIONS