Urban Dead: The Price of the Oath

[Caz]

"Close 'nuff," she said of his name. "Besides, I didn't even know it before the gala."

She then asked:

"I've heard she's kinda crazy. That true?"

[Josh]

"Find me a sane person in this town, and I'll show you a shuffling corpse about five minutes later. We all do what we gotta do to get by," he answered, a tad defensively.

[Caz]

"Hey, hey," she said. "Sorry if I overstepped a boundary there. I bet rumours are just rumours anyway," she said with a shrug.

[Josh]

"Yeah," he said. "Besides, if you could see some of the shit I've seen since all this started..."

[Caz]

"Yeah?" she asked. She then yawned, snuggling up to him as though to say he'd better hurry because the proverbial hour was drawing late.

[Josh]

"Oh, let's see..." he said. "There was the intelligent zombie we had to hunt down and kill, then there is the telepathic kid who adopted me as his father, and, hmm... well, that about covers it. But the month is young."

[Caz]

"Telepathic kid? There was a girl that could do some freaky shit that ran with us for a while... Maybe the virus is changing people or something," she said with a shrug.

[Josh]

Jared was a whole long story that they really didn't have the time to get into. He rehooked his canteen and secured his gear, then carefully scooped her up.

"It seems so. Let's get back over to my place and let you get some sleep," he said.

[Caz]

"I can walk!" she snapped, squirming a bit in his arms. But she gave in this time, let him. She was too tired to argue and her lungs hurt and she'd have to stay awake to be their lookout.

As they re-entered his old apartment, Sherry was sitting at the card-table dining set and glanced up to them, nodded hello.

[Josh]

He gently deposited Gwen on the floor, pressing the powerbar into her hand and leaving the canteen next to her. He looked over at Sherry and whispered softly. "You've still got about half an hour. Couldn't sleep?"

[Caz]

With her other hand, she held his loosely until she nodded off, seeming to deflate as her breath deepened.

"Heard you two," Sherry said quietly, sipping from a bottle of cheap wine she'd found in his pantry.

[Josh]

He brushed Gwen's hair away from her eyes, then rose to his feet and proceeded toward Sherry, snagging the bottle from her and taking a drink. "I take it as an insult," he whispered. "That they didn't find this worth looting."

[Josh]

"Not a damn thing in here worth looting," Sherry said with a sly grin. She looked to the woman on the floor, who seemed to be sleeping evenly.

"Couldn't do it?" she asked. She'd seen him with the hatchet.

"She changed her mind, volunteered to set watch for us. There's a horde moving in the area. If she's still alive when we get back, we're taking her home."

"Doubt it," Sherry said a bit remorsefully. "She's already starting to look like one of 'em. I know you've got a history with her, but if there's a horde near here and they get track of us..."

"It's not us I'm worried about. We can shake them if they hit our trail. It's the Caiger. As for her..." he looked back. "If she doesn't make it, I'll take care of what has to be done. Keep an eye on her after I bunk out, and tell the relief to pass it along." He looked back at her. "There was another scrap of a girl I stumbled over that wasn't supposed to make it either."

She stared at him evenly, then snagged the wine and took a gulp. "And I'd be saying the same thing if it were that other girl," Sherry said tonelessly. "You know how important this is."

"I damn well do know how important it is. She goes out on us, you take the head if it's on your watch. Anything else you want to remind me about my job?"

"Other than I could do it better?" she said with a grin.

"You really think so?" he said, the side of his mouth quirking up.

"Nah," she said dismissively, taking another swig of the bottle and smirking. "I know so." She ruffled his hair affectionately.

"Good then," he said. "I'll just retire and let you run things. I've got a kid on the way, I don't need the hassle." He snagged the bottle from her hand and finished it off in a long gulp.

Sherry stared.

He handed her the empty bottle. "Enjoy your reign, general," he concluded with a smirk, then turned to find a place on the floor to settle down.

"No, nonononono... You don't get away that easy," she said, snagging him by the shirtcollar. "Explain."

He turned back toward her. "I thought you knew how this worked, but apparently..." he started making the dread hand gestures of copulation.

"You two haven't even known each other for--" she counted her fingers, then said: "For a while!"

"A month. Considering that we were..." he repeated the gestures. "On the first day, well, she apparently caught quickly. But then, these are my wigglers we're talking about here."

Sherry put a palm to her forehead. "Get cancer," she said.

"Well I love you too, Punk-ass. Perhaps you missed the normal social proprieties while you were busy -knocking over liquor stores-," he said, heavy sarcastic emphasis on the last part. "But the -normal- procedure in these situations is to congratulate the expecting parent."

"Hey!" she said defensively, "I know all about the prodecure. I got knocked up once and I took a pill to make the icky thing go away!" she whined.

"Could the two of you have this discussion somewhere else?" Steve said irritably. "Congratulations, Petro. Now go away." Petro rolled his eyes, then waved her toward the bathroom.

Poor Steve. It was bad enough dealing with just one Petro. He mustve had a cardiac episode when they'd added Sherry to the team. She smirked and followed him wordlessly, not bothering to admonish Steve.

He closed the door behind them, then dropped the lid on the toilet and sat down on it, pulling out a pack of cigarettes and offering her one.

She took one and sat on the lip of the bathtub. "So." She said.

"So. How 'bout those Malton Marauders? Think they have a chance this year?" He lit his cigarette, then held the zippo out for her.

"Nah," she said, "Shelbyton All-Stars are going to own this season just like last." She chuckled and lit up.

He sighed. "Fuck Shelbyton anyway. We torched their training facility when I was sixteen. Which is where I got my bump toward my current career. And I never have admitted -that- to anyone."

"Current career being jackass?" she asked. Then: "You just heard my big secret. Aint ever told anyone else either."

He took a drag on his cigarette. "How old were you?"

"Twenty when I found out," she said.

He digested that for a moment, looking her in the eye and saying nothing.

She tilted her head to the side, studying him and taking a puff. "Well?" she asked.

He shrugged. "Your life, your call. I'm not gonna get god-freak on you."

"Just curious what the look was for," she said.

"Just wondering who the father was," he admitted.

"You know already," she said, taking another deep drag.

He nodded. "Thought so," he said, putting his hand on her shoulder.

She softened a bit, looking to the tile floor with a bit of a defeated look. Still hurt, that subject.

He didn't say anything, just reached over to rub the back of her neck. His fingers passed over the scars left by the cigarette burns, and he grimaced. He hoped there was still something of Jaycee left in that head on the pike, and that every day was another extended tour of hell for the bastard.

She flinched as he touched it as though the wound was still fresh.

"I never told him," she said.

"Wouldn't have mattered to him, unless it gave him another chance to fuck with you," he said.

"That and it was already gone by the next time I saw him," she said. "If it'd been anyone else's I might have kept it... But I couldn't bring something like him into bring."

He crouched down, wrapping his arms around her. "Shh... it's okay, Tiger."

She sighed against his chest, didn't comment.

"He's gone, and you have Mike now," he pointed out. "It's a better world."

[Caz]

"Sad that it took something like this for us to get our shit together, eh?" she said, taking another long drag as she looked to Petro, sitting back. Actually, looked past him.

"What the devil?" she thought aloud, reaching past him to the shattered medicine cabinet and pulling a bottle from one of the slanted shelves.

"Brilliant Brunette?" she asked.

[Josh]

He snagged the bottle. "Ex-wife," he explained hastily, depositing it on the counter.

[Caz]

She stood, peered into the cabinet and removed a second bottle. A third. A fourth. A fifth. A sixth. All the same brand, various products--leave-in conditioner, rinse-out conditioner, shampoo-conditioner combination, as well as "fortifying gel," whatever that was.

She raised a single eyebrow.

"I'm assuming these are all hers, too?"

[Josh]

"...mostly," he said, rising to his feet and dumping his cigarette in the sink. "Anyway! Gonna turn in and get some sleep now. See you in the evening!"

[Caz]

Curious, she peeled back the curtain of the shower, only to see that it looked fairly like the facilities were being used by a group of at least three or four sorority girls.

"Look at the names of some of this shit," she said with a laugh. "'Love Spell,' 'Dream Angels,' and then shit like 'purifying ginger root extract' and crap. What a load of bunk."

[Josh]

He laughed, a little too quickly and loudly. "Women!" he said enthusiastically. "Go figure!"

[Caz]

"Yeah," Sherry said with emphasis, "women."

[Josh]

He hastily retreated into the living room.

[Pcm979]

Mike looked up from hovering over the woman. "So, only Steve can sleep tonight." He said with a raised eyebrow and a smirk.

[Josh]

He put a finger to his lips. Well, if Mike wasn't going to sleep... he made for the bedroom quickly, securing his old bed and flopping down.

[Caz]

"Steve can sleep anytime, anywhere," Sherry pointed out. "Although that didn't stop him from throwing a bitch-fit when Petro and I started talking about pregnancy..."

[Josh]

"Three seconds before I start killing all the talkers in the room," Steve said, sticking a pillow over his head.