Urban Dead: This Means War

[Pcm979]

A constant tapping sound came from the corridor, getting closer. Finally Mike rounded the corner and glared at a wall clock like it'd insulted his mother. "88 minutes, 15 seconds." He muttered and strode over to a large metal box, which he flipped open. He pulled out a nondescript cylinder and started fiddling with it.

[Caz]

"Yeah," she said, "we've got about ten or so. A dozen if we let some scraped up kids head out. They want him just as bad as we do. He killed their brother; they're a family."

She stared at him, unable to keep from pitying him. Despite the fact that he'd stepped flawlessly back into the leader's roll, it was evident that there was hidden anguish inside him.

Don't worry, she thought, if anyone can do this, you can.

It was then that Mike rounded the corner, and she stared at him as though he'd materialized out of thin air. "There you are!"

[Josh]

"Talk to Zimmerman. He'll have a stack of wanted pictures with Jaycee's ugly face on them. You can hand those out. Get a hundred and twenty Powerbars from the stash he's got. Keep sixty for payoff on the reward, use the rest for bribery. Shake every hideout and safehouse from here to the quarantine zone if you have to," he ordered. "You have free license to take him down. If he's alone, hunt him. If he's pulled in more followers, call in, we'll bring the numbers, including the Guard if we have to."

He turned to Mike. "I'll see you up there."

He looked back at Sherry, his eyes dead and cold. "Good hunting."

[Pcm979]

"That's me." His voice was unusually clipped, even taking his BBC accent into account. He twisted a knob on the end of the cylinder, and red LEDs lit up along the side. He grunted and turned the LEDs off again, and with a complex hand movement pulled the cylinder into two pieces, revealing an ampule containing a clear fluid with a cloudy grey suspension. He held it up to the light and tapped it experimentally.

[Caz]

"I won't disappoint," she said, nodding as she memorised the tasks given to her. That bastard was going to pay, and after he was burning in Hell she'd make sure he still felt it.

Sherry stepped toward Mike, her cold demeanor fading as she watched him fiddle with what she guessed was a revivification syringe. She'd never seen one up close, personally, but she could remember what it had felt like...

"Time to save the day again," she said glumly, a sense of gravity and purpose in the words. "But I know you'll do it. You always come through for us, even if I fuck things up, right?"

She smirked, but the humour was superficial. At best.

[Josh]

He went hopping along back to the import shop he'd turned into his quarters. Hobbling was entirely too slow for him, and the one-footed hop, painful as it was, moved him along faster. Getting inside, he plopped down in the chair near Jared, sagging back into it. He was afraid to look at Melanie, chained to the bed. He knew what was happening there, already. He'd seen it plenty of times.

[Caz]

One of Sheehan's men approached Petro, clearing his throat a bit in order to announce himself. This was the last thing he wanted to be doing, especially around someone rumoured to be so damned unstable...

"Ehm," he said, "General, sir... there's a problem..."

[Josh]

"What?" he said, not looking at the man.

What now?

[Pcm979]

He grunted in something resembling satisfaction and reassembled the syringe.

"I don't know." He rummaged in the metal box amost violently, and eventually pulled out a gigantic needle. He started threading it on. "It's my fault, really. I had to stagger out the triumphant hero and leave that arsehole alone with her."

[Caz]

Sherry looked to Mike sternly, holding back the urge to slap him. Instead, she onnly glared at him with a stare that could have split a fucking glacier.

"Don't. you. dare. say that," she growled. "She trusted you. She told you to do it. Even if you'd have said no, it would have happened."

Meanwhile, in the import store, the man said to Petro with a bit of a stutter: "She's... not reanimating."

[Josh]

He closed his eyes. "Give it time. I haven't seen anybody die for good in this town since the Big Fuckup."

Oh, wouldn't that be a massive fucking joke. Like... whoops, the virus just ran its course, all the dead stay falling down again, oh, and you just killed the woman you love. Looked in her eyes as you cut off the blood to her brain.

He balled his hand into a fist and slammed it down on the arm of the chair.

"MOTHERFUCKER!" he yelled.

She'd come back. She had to.

[Pcm979]

"That's not what I said." He finshed threading the needle and gripped it in his hand in the proper procedure, fingers curled around the shaft and thumb on the electronic plunger.

"I said that I should've stuck around afterwards." He swung the syringe towards an imaginary neck.

[Caz]

"How do you even know that's when it happened?" Sherry asked. "She's been in the trauma ward ever since we brought them back from the battle; he's had hours when he could have done it..." With a bit of a sigh, she shook her head and looked into his eyes. The fading blonde dye in her hair made her brown eye seem impossibly, creepily dark.

"Mike, it wasn't even supposed to be for her. Ned fucked up. Jaycee didn't even know she was here..." she hoped he caught on, not wanting to admit aloud that Melanie had inadvertently taken a bullet for her.

As Petro cursed, Jared jumped a bit in his chair, shrinking down toward the table. Everyone was yelling, there was static on the radio... it was too loud for him to make heads or tails of anything. After all, hearing was all he had.

"Maybe she isn't dead yet," the kid said.

[Josh]

"Oh christ no," he said. "I fucking killed her. You think I don't know when I kill people?"

He got up and walked over to Melanie's body, grabbed her arm to check for a pulse again.

[Pcm979]

Mike resisted the urge to bury the syringe in the tabletop, and rolled his shoulders to loosen them. He sighed and looked at her for the first time since he'd entered the room.

"I know, I'm not being logical. I'm also being an angsty bastard. But my patient, my watch, my responsibility. Irrational? Fuck yes. But if you thought taking the shrapnel out was difficult, this- You just don't know what you're going to get with these things." He shook the syringe.

[Caz]

"We don't have a choice, Mike," she informed him. "Besides... she's dead now. There's nothing you can do to make things worse." She paused. "It's a shitty way of looking at things, but there's nowhere to go but up from here. If we can't bring her back, then we can't. But at least we can't do anything that will hurt her more."

She gently took the syringe from him, setting it down on the table, and then shoved her hands into the wall on either side of his head. Leaning in close to his face, she growled: "Now cut that fucking teenage stuff out and tell me you're gonna do this. Because you can, no doubt about it. It's an issue of balls, sweetie."

There was an air about her that was so creepy that he'd later on wonder if he ought to have washed his hands after being that close.

Sheehan's people were crowded around the body, monitoring her in case her limbs started twitching. But for now, there was nothing. No pulse in her veins, no breath in her lungs, but no movement. Just like dead bodies used to do.

[Josh]

Took a deep breath, then walked back over to Jared, crouching down.

"Listen, sorry," he said. Apologies weren't his usual style, as such, but something about this kid brought the paternal right out of him. "Why would you think she's not dead?"

[Pcm979]

He raised a single eyebrow. "I'm going to do it if it kills me. In fact, if that's what it took, I'd consider it a fair trade. Good enough?"

[Caz]

"Just tell yourself that it won't come to that," she said to Mike, standing up and moving away from him, just barely. "If anything, it'll be a walk in the park. And you've got a full staff this time--there were five men that came in, all Emerald Guard, and they're all trained."

She smiled earnestly, grabbing his hand.

"If it helps at all, the way I handle shit like this, to keep from self-doubting and all that other crap, I just disengage myself. Let my hands do the thinking." She then smirked. "It works for other stuff, too."

She then looked at the wall clock. "Come on; it's time."

Jared was a bit startled at Petro seemed to suddenly materialise beside him, turning to vaguely face the general as he apologised.

"Sometimes you don't know how you know stuff, Mr. Petro," he said. "I think she understands that better'n both of us do."

[Josh]

His paternal feelings evaporated in a warm buzz of desire to wring another neck over that perfectly fucking useless answer. What, did he need to decapitate her while he was at it? Fuck the corpse?

"Great," he said, standing up and turning away.

[Caz]

The kid simply stayed there, his hands moving over the coloured pencils that Alex had been playing with. He picked one up, twirling it over and under his fingers. There was still some paper on the small table as well. Testing it out, he slid the tip of the pencil--who knew what colour--along the paper, listening in wonderment at the scratching sound, that seemed to somehow be louder than the chaos around him.

With a look of intense (feigned) concentration, Jared leaned forward and began to draw for the first time since he'd lost his vision. Although Petro's outburst had hurt a bit, he understood that its roots were nowhere near him. He was just trying to protect what he cared about and had no idea how to do it. That could be a frustrating thing.

Hadn't it been his sister who'd said that?

Or at he come up with it on his own?

Jared didn't know. He sketched furiously, shutting out the world around him.

[Pcm979]

Mike heard the ruckus from a way down the hall, and he increased his pace. He entered the room and assessed the surroundings; The Guardsmen in a circle around Melanie, arguing loudly. Petro, fuming in a corner, and the blind kid... Drawing? It's a funny fucking world, he thought.

[Josh]

He'd sooner pace, but his knee wasn't up to cooperating. Sooner or later, he was going to have to ask somebody to take a look at it. Nothing was broken, but he'd managed to fuck it up but good. Not a ligament tear, he didn't think...

[Caz]

Sherry paid no attention to the arguing nor to the boy. Instead, she marched up to Petro and said one word: "Sit."

Arguing was not an option.

[Josh]

He gave Sherry a look like You and what army's going to make me?

But he acquiesced anyway, dropping into a chair with a grunt of pain. "She's not reanimating," he said quietly.