Urban Dead: The Price of the Oath

[Pcm979]

Mike's head jerked up sharply and he reached for his axe, stuffing the map into a pocket.

[Josh]

He was already scuttling forward on his tiptoes, firing a sharp whistle back as he slid the hatchet from its sheath.

[Caz]

As they rounded the slight bend toward the aforementioned Chinese restaurant, they could hear two female voices arguing. One was Sherry (the louder of the two, of course)...

... And the other belonged to a shorter woman, looked about the same age or perhaps a bit older. Her hair was chopped badly, close around her face as though she'd cut it herself more from necessity than anything, and she had some peculiar scarring on the right side of her face, down her neck and disappearing beneath the collar of her shirt.

They were fighting, or at least had been. Sherry now held her opponent in a flawless pin, arm twisted behind her back and one ankle beneath Sherry's bootheel.

"Wouldn't have done this, princess," Sherry grunted, "but this is what happens when you introduce yourself with your fists as opposed to your mouth..."

They glanced up as Petro, Mike, and Zed came into view, a fierce sight. The girl seemed to relax a bit against Sherry's grip, knowing it wouldn't be profitable at this point to do otherwise.

[Josh]

He lowered the hatchet, gesturing for the rest of the Irregulars to spread out and cover them in case the noise lured in any unpleasantness. The girl looked vaguely familiar. He crouched down, eyeing her.

"Holy fuck," he said. "Gwen?"

[Caz]

She looked to him, not recognising the black face or the menacing stance or the hatchet. She seemed to back against Sherry for protection now.

"... Stay back!" she squeaked lamely.

Sherry raised an eyebrow.

"What, like Petro's gonna gnaw your tasty brains?" the blonde said with a smirk.

[Pcm979]

Mike gave Sherry a little wave and positioned himself near the husk of a car, setting his rifle up to cover the road.

[Josh]

"Gwen, it's me, Petro," he said soothingly. "We're not going to hurt you."

[Caz]

"Petro?" she asked, momentarily knowing she remembered the name but not having anything to connect it with.

Sherry glanced down to the woman in her arms.

"You know this babe?"

[Josh]

He pulled his hat off, letting his red hair fall out of the hat. "Parsons Building, 2000, big nasty fire," he said. "And... some things after."

Which he'd really rather not discuss in front of god and everybody.

[Caz]

"Oh... my... God," the brunette said, slack-jawed. Of all the people from all the embarrassing...

Sherry let her go, her role as the bailiff useless, she figured, and wandered over to lean against the car and incidentally Mike.

Gwen looked to the group, cleared her throat a bit.

"I'm... Gwendolyn Sinclair... and the only reason I'm alive is because of him," she said, gesturing to Petro as if to use him to prove the fact that she wasn't dangerous.

[Pcm979]

"Hey hey." He said softly, drawing her close carefully, still keeping his eye on the road.

[Josh]

"Yeah," he said, almost as embarrassed by the praise as everything else. "Uh, Gwen, love to hang around and chat old times, but we're kind of in the middle of something here."

[Caz]

Unabashed, Gwen looked to him and said: "Can I come?"

After a moment, she then said: "I was staying with a group in Gulsonside... we were mobbed... Over thirty of us, I'm the only one that made it."

She peeled back her coat to reveal a nasty, deep cut down her side. The wound was obviously infected, as she'd had no means of dealing with it. But she seemed to be dulled to the pain for now.

Sherry smirked, watching the two, then said to Mike: "Wait 'til Melanie hears about this..."

[Pcm979]

"Remind me not to take us near my old haunts." Mike chuckled back. "At this rate, we're all going to run into people we knew."

[Josh]

He carefully stuffed his hair back under his hat before shaking his head. "No," he said simply. "We can aim you back toward our holdout back at the Caiger Mall, or we can set you up around here until we come back through and take you back with us."

She wasn't part of the unit, she couldn't be allowed to compromise the mission. The fact that they'd once traded bodily fluids wasn't going to influence that.

[Caz]

"How far is the mall?" she asked, too tired to argue with him. After the intial adrenaline of finding Sherry peeking around outside her temporary shelter was wearing off, she felt a lot weaker. Then again, she hadn't eaten in two or three days... good God, had it been that long? Her sense of time was all wrong.

Sherry grinned, poking Mike in the ribs."We've already run into mine," she said matter-of-factly. "I doubt yours could be much worse."

[Pcm979]

"Oh, I'm thinking of their safety." He said, winking and pecking her on the cheek.

[Josh]

"C'mon, let's get you to my old place," he said. "We'll leave you food and water, and come back for you when we're done. Fall in, Irregulars. You know the route."

He stepped up to Gwen's side, giving her a little lift. "Just lean on me. If anything happens, get low and let us take care of it."

[Caz]

She nodded, leaning on him and not the slightest bit ashamed of it. "Yeah," she said of his instruction on letting them handle whatever threats arose, "I know I'm in no shape for it," she said.

Sherry winced a bit as Mike kissed her, knowing he was probably going to have the taste of face-grease on his mouth all the livelong day now. Poor thing.

And then she hefted her pack and moved out, stepping silent as ever past the others until she was stalking up the restaurant's fire escapes.

[Josh]

The key still worked. Carefully he entered the flat, hatchet at ready. Predictably enough, the place was trashed, not that it had been terribly clean to begin with. By all evidence, this was a well-looted bachelor pad, with a de-cushioned couch in the living room, a small kitchenette, a bathroom, and a bedroom full of torn-up boxes and cases, with books scattered everywhere.

"Fuckers," he muttered, looking at his books. The shattered windows had let the rain ruin everything.

"Well," he said, as they filed in. "Make yourself at home."

[Pcm979]

"Nice." Mike said chirpily, the grease on his lips seemingly not bothering him. He dragged a box over to a window and propped his rifle on the wall, unobtrusively covering the street.

[Josh]

"Actually, Mike, need you to take a look at her wounds," he said, gesturing toward Gwen.

[Pcm979]

"Just a sec." Mike said, scanning the road for a few moments. "Okay, we're clear." He walked over to the woman and pulled his medical equipment out of a pocket.

"Okay miss, if you'll just let me look at that..."

[Caz]

Gwen had plunked down onto the couch almost immediately, breathing heavily as the stairs had been a bit of an exertion. She wrapped her arms around her torso in a feigned attempt at looking calm, let out a sigh as she closed her eyes.

No cushions, sure, but it was better than where she'd been staying before--an emptied dumpster behind the Chinese place.

As Mike approached her, she looked cautious at first, then lifted her arms back and allowed him to see the gash in her side.

It was the type of thing that easily could have disemboweled someone, and the tip of one of the zombie's claws was still embedded toward the bottom of the ragged cut. Probably the only reason she hadn't bled to death. The flesh around the wound was a sickly blue-black colour, a result of the more recent mutations the virus had taken.

"I know it's bad," she said emotionlessly.

[Pcm979]

"I've seen worse." He said truthfully, setting his medical kit out. "I won't lie, though. I can't do much more than clean it up and stitch it with what I have." He kept talking while he selected his implements, keeping her mind off what he was about to do.

"I'm gonna take the claw out first." He continued calmly. "It'll hurt, but not as much as it did going in." Before he'd finished the word 'in', he quickly yanked it out and staunched the inevitable bleeding.