Urban Dead: The Price of the Oath

[Josh]

"And he was talking to himself about killing me, in case you missed it," he said. "Because he's fucked in the head from what he caught from that rotter. So we went at it, and I got him back out, and that's worth getting my shit hammered. It's a fucking mess, and for the moment I went in and got the best fucking answer. I don't have the luxury of sitting down for fucking tea and figuring out the best answer for everyone and you know it."

[Caz]

"I made a mistake," she said, "I underestimated the severity of his damage."

She turned onto her side, facing him.

"Just remember, Petro, we have a common enemy here. It's not Silver. Hell, it wasn't even Jaycee."

[Josh]

"If I thought Silver was my enemy, I'd have shot him straight off and ended it there, or had FM shoot him. Don't you get it?" he said, frustrated. "I did it to save him. This wasn't macho bullshit. He's my fucking brother," he concluded. "I'd go to hell for him."

[Caz]

"It doesn't matter why you fought," she snapped, her voice cracking. "What matters is the fact that the people in there fucking depend on us and you are losing sight of that!"

[Josh]

"Fuck you!" he shot back, rolling off the bed and rising unsteadily to his feet. "You don't have a fucking clue about what's going on with that! The reason Silver was out there in the first place was because I sent him out there to defend these people!" he jabbed a finger at her. "I let him dive into being an animal because I need a god damned warlord that will put the fear of fucking god into anybody who tries to take this place away from us! We've got a month's worth of food, more if we can get that livestock in from the farm Sherry's found, and sooner or later... god damned sooner... people are going to try to take that away from us. It's not going to be very long until we're at war with the whole fucking city. So he's going to be my hammer, and if I'm asking a man to go into that, I have to go in with him. This is what we are, and what we do. And if you can't handle it, get the fuck out."

[Caz]

Then why fight him where the patrols, those on the roof, where the whole goddamn mall could see? Nothing shakes a population more than seeing its leaders at their worst...

But there was no point in stating that; he knew just as well as she did.

She looked up to him, her stare unwavering. When she spoke, it was the voice of a child trying to understand the mechanics of adults.

"Is that what you want me to do, then?" she asked. It was supposed to sound angry... instead, she just sounded defeated.

[Josh]

"Fuck no," he said.

He wasn't particularly in the mood to admit it, but that jab that Silver laid in about his ex-wives had hit close to home, though. Then the silent treatment shit piled in on that, which was usually what he got around the time they were deciding to get in touch with a lawyer.

"But if you're going to," he said. "Half the food's yours, so's the bed, we flip a coin over the 'house', but you don't get the porno mags." He shrugged.

[Caz]

She grabbed him by the wrist, pulling him back toward the bed. She then gently pulled him down beside her, wrapping her arms around him from behind.

"Just shut up for once in your life, okay?"

[Josh]

He would've had something to say to that, but mostly it came out in a series of 'grr' and 'argh' noises as he managed to jostle around every battered part of his body.

After a they'd managed to get arranged in a fashion so as to apply the minimal amount of pressure to his tender flesh, he reached up and put an arm around her.

With great force of will, he stayed silent.

[Hedgecore]

Murphy stepped over to the pair. The one on the ground looked emaciated, weak too. Probably couldn't be a threat even if he wanted to. His friend, on the other hand...

"Booth" Lasko let out weakly, "need t' see...Mel..."

With that he slumped down to the pavement, unconscious. "C'mon! Fuckin' DO somethin'!" Gator said through gritted teeth.

[Josh]

"Henney, get me a line down here and radio in for medical," Murphy shouted back up. "We've got wounded down here!"

[Pcm979]

It was gruesome work, chopping a man to pieces and nailing him down, but Punt found he enjoyed it. Cathartic, that was the word. Kept the beast at bay.

He stabbed Jaycee's head onto a pike with a squelch, and adjusted it like a painting that was askew, patting the man's head when he was done.

"Suits you." He said, then leaned over and bit one of the man's ears off. He chewed slowly and swallowed. "'N ear for 'n ear." He muttered, and tramped off to get clean. And to rustle up another bottle of booze.

[Pcm979]

Punt took another swig from his bottle; It didn't seem to have any effect, but the burning sensation as the cheap piss went down his throat was something to savour. He walked into the jewelry shop and tapped the bottle against what remained of the window glass. His eye was bleeding again; The kid was in here.


The boy was there all right, quietly scratching his pen along the paper in total darkness. The dark helped to insulate the voices from the others in the mall. Wondering about loved ones, screaming due to their injuries, whimpering with hunger and futility... Jared didn't say anything for a long moment as the knock sounded against the glass. Finally, he relented: "... Come in."


Punt walked across the room softly. Not out of intent to scare the kid, but simply out of habit. Even in the dark, even with his patch on, the boy stood out like... Well, not a searchlight, but the... Ties were strong. They always were, with the revived, but even more so with the kid.

Punt knelt down next to Jared, elbows resting on his knees and bottle hanging loosely from his left hand. There was a pause, with only their breathing and the scratching of pen on paper. Finally, Punt broke the silence.

"Well? Don't y'know what I want?" The blood reached his lips and he licked them compulsively.

"I can't read you like the others," the boy said simply. He set the notebook down, revealing his latest sketch: two dinosaurs, one rearing on its hind legs and the other bent forward, scavenging for food in the dirt at the roots of a giant tree with sprawling vines. Fairly impressive considering that he couldn't see it.

"Good work." Punt said. "Never got past stick figures m'self." He raised the bottle and drained it, then continued. "Tell you, then. Kill. Want to kill something, eat it raw. Didn't used to. Then I died." He reached into his breast pocket and tore off a hunk of chewing tobacco, jaws working furiously. "Hungry again." He muttered. "You?" He asked the kid in his disjointed fashion, not clarifying what he was asking.

"Always hungry," he said quietly. "I give my rations to the folks in the infirmary, so I don't eat much." He shrugged, as though it didn't really affect him whether or not he ate. Besides, Jared seemed healthy enough. Perhaps because Petro and Melanie managed to get a bit down his gullet every once in a while.

"Not what I w'sasking, but good 'nough." Grunted the man, and dabbed at the blood now steadily running down his face. He cursed and pulled his eyepatch off to better attend to the growth masquerading as an eyeball. Hey, the kid couldn't see it, right?

The problem was that undoubtedly, Punt had looked at it in a mirror once upon a time, and as he thought of the lesion on his eye, Jared twitched. "Miss Melanie could take care of that, you know," he said quietly.

Punt looked back at Jared with his unpatched eye, and grinned ferally. "Oh, that's an old memory, kid." He said dangerously. "Got the others bottled up but good." Then, images flashed across Jared's mind: The fight that had cost him his life, shambling through the streets mindlessly, searching for food, returning to the land of the living, and then the eye. A black spot, getting larger. Images faster now. Green eye turning grey, then black. Blood vessels shrivelling. Caracts. Pain. Then, the lines. Fain’t at first, but getting stronger. The bleeding, the pain.

Then, a month ago, he reached into his own head and ripped his eyeball out.

It grew back. Utterly black. And the bleeding started again.

The images finished abruptly.

Jared shuddered a bit, backing away. He wasn't afraid of Punt, per se, but the things he showed. "Stop!" he begged, wishing he could shut out the eye in his head and blink it all away. His hands, held up away from himself in a feeble posture of protection, quivered as the violent images came to an end.

"Still think I'n just show it 't the docs?" Punt asked, pulling his eyepatch back on and just as abruptly snapping his mind closed.

"Miss Melanie isn't like the others," he said, a touch of fright still in his voice.

"What 'n she do?" He demanded angrily, digging the nails of his right hand into his palm until blood flowed. He stared at it for a moment, and then sucked on the cuts eagerly. When he was finished, he seemed calmer.

"S'ry, kid." He said, turned away from the boy. His eye settled down a bit. "'M a threat. Liability. Should leave you to your drawing." He knelt down to pick the empty bottle up.

"You're like Sherry," he said quietly, listening to the other man's breathing and slowly returning to where he'd been sitting before as opposed to being scared up against the wall.

He chuckled slowly. "Oh, worse, kid. Worse." Before he could stop it, an image flashed through his head- The guard on the roof, intestines dragged out of his body, blood and digestive fluids mixing on the ground

The boy's mouth opened in shock; he whimpered a bit and finally forced the image out of his head. "Why? Who?" he asked.

"Why? I could. 'N couldn't stop m'self. Who? Bad man. Not bad enough, mind." He slumped to the floor. "Haven't you heard, kid? The Second are feral." Another dark chuckle.

"Save it for your real enemies," he said quietly. After all, they'd need the firepower sometime soon. In a sudden, brave move, Jared stood and closed the distance between them, his hand brushing along the man's side and then raising up to rest upon his forehead. A soothing warmth seemed to emanate from the boy's hand, easing some of the swelling in his damaged eye.
"You and Mr. Silver can't help what happened to you any more than I can fix what happened to my eyes," he said.

"Careful, kid-" Punt started to say, but too late, as the boy received a sense of what Punt saw through his eye: A brilliant flash of contrasting colours, lines and shapes, flickering and guttering like candles in the darkness, all connected by little beams of light that shimmered, swayed and jumped.

Jared shouted as though stung, his body going rigid as waves of pain shot through his limbs the moment he saw the bright lights in his head. His entire skeleton seemed to go rigid, pain drilling into him from his hands and feet, and he collapsed into a useless heap at Punt's feet.

"You might not like what you see." Punt finished redundantly, and drew the kid into a sitting position, fingers on the boy's pulse.

He was stunned but conscious, and the boy twitched as he was moved. Peculiar burns covered the hand that had touched Punt's skin, the smell of cooked skin thick in the air. Jared groaned a bit, attempting to come to his senses as his fingers twitched involuntarily. It was like being electrocuted...

"'Preciate the concern," Punt continued, propping the kid up and reaching for his water bottle, "But 't's not nice up here." He tapped his head, then unscrewed the canteen and poured some of the cool water on the boy's burns. "Best t' leave it be."

"What..." He groaned again, hand twitching as the cold and heat met uncomfortably. "What is it?"

"Good question." The man said, tipping the canteen to Jared's lips next. "Best I can tell, it's minds. Consciousnesses." He left the big word a sentence all of it's own, as though isolating it from the smaller, more concise words he typically employed.

Jared sipped the water, still trembling all over. The charms and trinkets tied into his hair jingled quietly, and when he looked up to Punt next, as though using actual vision, he said: "You see, I hear. That must be it."

Punt leaned back against the wall, taking a sip from the canteen himself. "Halle-fucking-lujah. Wonder 'f there's a poor shit out there who smells minds."

"Probably wouldn't last long," Jared opined. "Some people are pretty rotten."

Punt couldn't help laughing at that. It was a horrible joke, for sure, but oddly funny nonetheless.

"You'll keep, kid." He said finally. High praise by his standards.

"Ain’t got any other choice, do we?" he asked, somewhat subdued. Nobody ever really knew what Jared was thinking, did they? He never said much, although his suffering was obvious. And he always carried it alone, for his own reasons.

"One other." Punt countered, even more softly.

Once again, before he could muzzle it, a fresh memory from only a week before, as his combat knife descended towards his blackened eye...

Almost cautiously, Jared sat up, leaning against the man's shoulder. "No," he said, "I don't got that choice." He sighed, wasn't sure whether or not to tell him of the news.
"Miss Sherry ain’t dead," he said finally. "But she's got a bad spot in her now." And the unspoken: it was up to him to see her through it.

The man grunted and threw an arm over the kid's shoulder. "Squash it 'fore it gets like mine, hey? Don't need two psychos runnin' loose."

"Problem is she don't even know it's there," he said quietly.

"Never do, 'till it's too late." Punt said darkly.

"Ain’t too late for you," Jared drawled.

"Don't bullshit me." Punt replied, testily. "I 'n drink it down, chew gum 'till it goes away, maybe suck my own blood t' keep it quiet, but 't's there. Always. 'N' what you saw was mild. Someday, I'll do that to a friend." His throat croaked from making such a long speech, and he swigged from the canteen again, violently.

"No," Jared said, "there's a way to stop it. Mama and Jaqueline told me how a long time ago..."

"Get many Zombies in the States, then?" Punt said with a trace of amusement hiding his hope.

"Back 'fore we left Haiti, we did," he said, large blue eyes watering over. He'd been small at the time, but the terror was fresh in his brain.

"Bet there's a story there." Punt said noncommittally. Truth be told, nothing surprised him anymore. Well, maybe if Petro waltzed past in a bikini, he'd- Nah, that'd be almost normal.

"So. 'M not done for?" He examined his nails. They were sharp. Razor-sharp.

"Nah," Jared said. "Your soul is intact."
Whatever he meant by that. The boy closed his eyes and took a few deep breaths.
"It hurts... But I can fix it."

"Everything hurts." Muttered Punt. "'T's how y' know y're alive."

"There's good parts to livin' too," Jared countered. "Even if we don't get much of it anymore, there's always somethin'."

Punt had nothing to say to that. He just sat there, toying with his overly-sharp nails.

"Don't you still have stuff you wanna do?" he asked. "Somethin' you couldn't do if you were dead?"

"Like what?" Countered Punt. "White picket fence, trip to Disneyland? Find the girl of my dreams, become an action hero?" He barked a short laugh. "I got nothing, kid."

"Got us," he said, sounding a bit wounded at Punt's unrelenting pessimism.

"'Till I flip out." He concluded.

"Not if I fix ya."

"How?" The man suddenly shoved his pinky finger's nail into his mouth and snapped it off with his teeth. He slid the knifelike slice of keratin around on his tongue and waited for the boy's reply.

"I need your soul," Jared said cryptically, then explained: "Mama taught me the soul is from the left side. I need clippings from your nails on your left hand an' foot. Some hair, too."

Punt shook his head minutely. "Some crazy shit you've got there." But he gnawed the nails off his other fingers and thumb anyway, and spat them into his hand. Shit, he'd poked his eye out the week before. Who gave a crap about some nails and hair?

Jared frowned a bit. "Some blood, from your eye, too..." And a whole host of other things, but that didn't matter. Those he could procure on his own. After all, they had everything in the goddamn mall.

"Got a cup, or such?" Punt felt mildly silly sitting there with his fingernails in his hand.

Jared reached beneath the neck of his shirt, pulling a small leather pouch from a cord up over his head. It wasn't decorated, like that of a Native American, but rather plain and worn. A mojo bag, for protection, given to him by his sister.

"Put it in here," he said.

"All together?" Punt shook the nails into the bag, but hesitated from flipping his eyepatch up.

He nodded. "Jus' go ahead. Won't hurt the bag any."

Punt hesitated, flipped the 'patch up, and concentrated. It hit him like a brick. He gritted his teeth as the 'world' swam into focus, technically impossible colours and shapes flickering in front of his eyes. The blood seeped from the corners, thick and black. He was probably putting on quite a lightshow, for those who could 'see' it.

Jared's heart thumped audibly in his chest as he kept his hands steady, somehow, and forced himself to keep from collapsing like before. /Hurry!/ he begged in his own head, feeling dizzy. This was too much for someone who hadn't seen anything in almost three months.

"I... Am!" He spat out unconsciously, leaning over the bag until the blood dripped in. As soon as it did, he flipped the patch back into place and kneaded it with his palm, cursing.

And then it was over. A few tense moments of silence, stunned and unable to articulate what they'd said and felt. Jared exhaled slowly, then said: "I should be done makin' it in an hour. Come back then. An' wear white."

"Right." Punt said shakily. "'N hour. White." He staggered to his feet, mopping the blood from his face with a rag. "Thanks." He added.

"I'll try," he said quietly. And he meant it. After all, it was the only thing he had to offer to these people. These strangers who'd taken him in for some reason, who continued to care for him... He couldn't possibly repay them. But this was his way of trying.

"'S all I 'n ask." The man said, and staggered out.

[Hedgecore]

Gator helped them secure several lines around Lasko. Hauling an unconscious man up to a roof is no easy task, even if he currently weighed well under 70 kilos. Once he was safely on the roof, with only a minimum of bumping, they tossed the lines back down for Gator and Murphy.
"He ain't bleedin' and he don't have any visible wounds I could see." Gator said, once they'd pulled themself up and over the ledge. "And anythin' beyond a bandage is far beyond me."

[Pcm979]

Finding white clothes had been easy; No one wanted to wear that colour any more. It was simply too easy to stain beyond recognition.

Punt entered the jewelry shop again, not sure what to expect. A mad scientist's lab? A voodoo pit?

As Punt re-entered the jewelry store, the first thing he'd notice was the scent of smoke. Not quite of fire, simply smouldering coals. And a faint odour of incense. The coals glowed red-orange in the darkness. And as he approached closer, a few more unfamiliar scents. Jared was silhouetted in the faint light, and as Punt entered the boy lit several white candles, some sloppily mushed into cross shapes. His sleeping bag had been moved, the mattress pad beneath it moved to the centre of the room.

"Lay down," he said.

Punt did as he was told, his primal side, the one which had served him so well over the past few months but also been his worst enemy, ready to bolt at any moment.

The boy set the candles down, knowing where to as though by some unknown sense. He had one purple candle as well, and upon lighting it, he folded it into Punt's left hand.
"Let the wax fall on your hand," he said.

Punt gripped it tightly. The pain reminds you you're alive. He said to himself.

A strong smell followed by a crackling as he moved the dish of coals to the bedside, setting the contents of the bag onto a sheet of paper, upon which was written god knew what. He wrapped the bundle up and set it on the coals, where it slowly smouldered. "Why are you here?" he asked.

Punt played along, even though he felt like he was in a bad movie. Nothing new there, really. "I want to be normal again. Not like I am."

"I don't need to know," Jared said. "Jes' think about it. About what you wanna do when you're better."
With something cool and wet, he drew the sign of the cross on Punt's forehead. He lifted the dish of coals along with the burnt offering and lifted a grisly device: the severed wing of a bird. Using the wing as a broom of sorts, he wafted the smoke across them.

Punt felt momentarily hungry as he saw the bird wing; He wanted to rip it out of Jared's hand, st- No. He gripped the candle even more tightly, hissing as the wax touched his hand. You're alive, damnit. You want to stay that way. When this is over, you want to-

What did he want to do? With a sinking feeling, he realised he still didn't have an answer.

An aura of calm settled upon the room, and Jared knew it was now or never. He set the grisly items on the ground and lifted the eyepatch with a tentative tremble of his thumb and forefinger.

The eye was utterly black; It was impossible to tell where the pupil ended and the colour began, and the 'white' most definitely wasn't. Nevertheless, Jared had the feeling that it was focusing on him.

What do you want to live for, you bastard? Punt railed at himself. There must be SOMETHING you want to live for.

Suddenly, blood bubbled from his eye, and the visions began again.

Jared forced his hand to close over the disgusting thing, covering the gore as he fished for something in the bag around his neck. Two shiny silver dollar coins, from back in the States. He set them over Punt's eyes.

He glanced at the money before it covered his eyes. Money? Live for that? He laughed internally. Money helps you live, and it doesn't do shit in Malton.

Meanwhile, the colours and shapes assaulted his brain, driving rational thought into one of the dark corners of his mind.

Jared's voice, not in his ears but in his head. You got us. That's enough for now.
He tied a white cloth as a blindfold around Punt's head, securing the coins over his eyes. More blood from the bird was dribbled over the surface into intricate patterns, over the shirt and the cloth alike. The weavings and patterns of the Loa, designed to trap energy and purge the body of evil.
"You might get real sick," Jared warned. "An' cold. But stay still."
Steam rose from the coals as Jared poured water into the dish. And as he did so, the temperature of the room fell to an almost unbearable, freezing temperature.

"'Minds you y'r alive." Punt managed through gritted teeth.

Jared took the candle from Punt's hands, setting it on his chest and instructing him to rest his hands at his sides. And then, with his burnt palm, the boy slammed his hand down and squashed the candle. A hot white light would fill their heads, and a blistering pain unlike either of them had ever known.
"If you listen," Jared murmured incoherently, "you can hear the screams of the damned."
And then, mercifully, they both blacked out.

Jared woke a few moments later, although his companion seemed to have fallen into a far deeper unconsciousness. Good. That meant it had worked. The boy cleaned up the jewelry store as best he cared to, keeping the more grisly ingredients to his spells hidden in a cabinet behind one of the display boxes. He then sat perpendicular to the bed, hands on his knees. Waiting. His 'patient' would be awake in two or three hours.

The first sign that Punt was awake was a low moan, followed by a frantic jerking of his head from side-to-side as he tried to see something.

"Hey," Jared said, "you still got the blindfold on."
He'd removed the bloodstained shirt so as to keep his newly awakened comrade from freaking the fuck out.

Punt reached up and fingered the blindfold. He pulled it off, then yelled and rolled off the bed, clutching his eye. He stuck a hand out. "I'm 'kay." He grunted. "Just wasn't 'specting... It." He fumbled for his eyepatch, which he'd accidentally yanked off with the blindfold, and strapped it back into place.

"You don't need it anymore," Jared said matter-of-factly. "Try it."

He scrambled for a small mirror, a tiny compact from some cosmetic or another, handed it over. "Take a look."

"Yeah." He grunted. "It's the... The colours. And shapes. Eyepatch helps me block 'em out." He fumbled for the compact one-handed.

"Not anymore," he said. "Or at least not unless you want 'em."

Punt grabbed the compact and flipped it open, then carefully flipped the eyepatch up. He still had the scar, and his eyelid was partially shut around it, but his eye was- Normal. Blind, yes, but normal.

"Don't look so shocked," Jared said. "We're in a city fulla zombies; you shouldn't be so surprised."

"'S relief, k-" He started to say, then doubled over and flipped his eyepatch down again. "Grrr. Still need the 'patch, it seems." He panted, forcing the visions from his mind. "But... Thanks. Can't thank you enough."

"But the eye's not important," he said. "What should be gone is the djab blanc." There really wasn't an English equivalent, save for the literal translation. The primal urge, the violent tendencies. The white devil.

"'S a symbol." Punt replied, looking at the boy. "Concrete. Solid. Proof some'n's changed."

Of course the boy wasn't looking back. His gaze always hovered toward something off in space. "You'll be feelin' pretty dizzy," he said. "Some earl grey tea should help."

"Got tea?" The man laughed. "Now, that's magic."

"I don't have it," he said quietly. "But I know Mr. Petro does."

"I'll b'fine." Punt said, sitting down hard. "Now, 's my turn t' help you."

"I ain’t sick," Jared said, canting his head to the side with a few confused blinks.

Punt tapped his head. "Y' can't shut 'em up, can you? Day, night, 's there. Grates after a while."

Jared shrugged his tiny shoulders. "Been in my family for generations. Ain’t no way to stop it."

"Stop? No. Muffle? Can do that. Not perfect, but better 'n nothing."

"How?" the boy asked. He'd tried everything.

"Displacement." Punt said. "When I... Got... Hungry, I'd chew something. Didn't do anything, but helped. With the eye? The patch? Doesn't stop brain waves or whatever. But I... pretend it does. Trained myself to. I can try on you."

"O... Kay," he said quietly, not understanding.

"Well." Punt struggled for words. "Had a blood test? They tell you to look away, think of something else. Like that... Except... Very different." He trailed off.

"I ain’t ever been to a doctor," he said.

Punt sighed. "'Ll take a while. Can tell."

[Pcm979]

"Right." Mike rubbed his hands together after loading the trailer. "I think that's about it. We should radio ahead, let them know we're coming."

Sherry nodded, taking a bite out of an apple and chewing thoughtfully.

"I'll ride in back for a while," she said, referring to the sorry excuse for a lorry they'd salvaged and managed to attach to the trolley.

"That way I can radio and provide cover fire if needed. 'Sides," she said with a grin, "ain't got a clue which way the mall is from here."

"That could be a problem." He acknowledged with a poker-faced nod. "But remember, if I get lost, I'm not asking for directions. Male prerogative."

"Well it isn't as though my memory of the trip is clear." She paused, thumb on her chin. "Or existing."

He shrugged uncomfortably. "Let's not dwell on that. Ready?" He clambered into the cab and looked back at her.

She leaned in through the window, giving him a kiss to end all kisses. Her mouth tasted of apples and the leftover wine from their picnic, and it was only after she couldn't breathe that she finally pulled back.

"We'll be okay," she said with affirmation, then she hopped into the bed of the truck and checked that everything was in order. August was riding in the passenger's seat, as well as two cat carriers' worth of tiny black bodies. The livestock--chickens, mostly--were in the bed of the lorry, and the produce was in the trailer.

"Wagons ho!" she called.

"Hold on to your hat." Mike said grandly, and started the engine. Several times. It finally caught, and they spluttered off, creakily and slowly. "Oh yes, we're on the edge here." He confirmed over the straining engine as they pushed perhaps 20 kmph.

---------- ---------- ---------- ---------- ---------- ---------- ---------- ---------- ---------- ---------- ---------- ----------

Some time later, they spluttered in view of the Mall. Mike kept an eye on Sherry in the rear view mirror, just in case seeing the place again set something off.

[Josh]

"I'm becoming the professional greeter," he grumbled to himself as he slid down the rappel line. This was going to be a fun expedition. Already they were rigging the tackle so they could hoist the cattle up to the roof, then bring them inside.

Everybody would be dining on steak while it lasted. The off-duty milia followed him down as he made his way across their ever-growing fortification line outside the mall. Pits, traps, trenches, every day the place turned more into a fortress, under the guidance of Zimmerman.

[Caz]

Sherry was heading the effort of loading the supplies via human chain to the mall's entrances. They couldn't chance leaving an entrance large enough for the vehicle. She (and Mike too, probably) was amazed by how the place had grown even in their brief absence.

Self-consciously, she pulled the hood of her jacket up over her head as she unloaded the trailer. Didn't want anyone freaking out until they were safe inside. Despite their week of solitude and bliss and kitties and the like, she was well aware that they were still in hot water.

--

Meanwhile, Melanie had parted with Petro at the call of her radio.

"Asked for me?" she transmitted to Murphy as she headed out onto the perimeter, using Petro's spare cane to keep her back from fucking snapping oh good GOD that stung. "Well not many know I'm here; trust him, I'd say."

[Pcm979]

Mike glanced up as Petro approached. This might get awkward.

[Josh]

He hobbled over, examining the inbound stock of cattle with a less-than-knowledgable eye. The cows were alive, and there ended his knowledge of anything cow-related.

"Good work, Mike," he said cheerfully. Fuck, did they ever need the morale boost right now. He'd only announced the arrival of the cattle when the truck had been spotted. Better not to get people's hopes up until he was sure.

[Caz]

Despite her excitement at getting home, Sherry had yet to even notice Petro's arrival. She hefted a case of apples they'd picked with a grunt, bodily shoving them onto the next poor fellow who happened along.

God.

Movement.

Straining her muscles to their limit.

Alive.

So good.

[Pcm979]

"Thanks." Mike said, relieved. "We've got a whole lot of winter supplies in the trailer, too. Coats and gloves and things."

[Caz]

"Oi, Mike!" she called, brushing her bangs from her eyes with a heavy breath.

"Any more perishables back there?"

[Pcm979]

"Just a sec!" He called, and hauled out another box of apples. "This is it." He said, passing it down the line and blowing a kiss.

[Josh]

He clapped Mike's shoulder, grinning broadly. No tension, no worries. He'd brought Sherry back, and brought her back whole. His Irregulars were home. All was right with the world. He saw Sherry coming and jerked his head indicating for her to hurry the fuck up.