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Open Memento Mori

Zach listened as he heard the snapping, the groans, and then the pounding of feet. A moment later the sound of blade in flesh, and then Alayne ran by, yelling "NOW!" He got up and stuck his good leg out as soon Alayne was passed, tripping the zombie, though it only stumbled lamely and turned toward him. As it turned slowly, he whipped the blade up, stepping forward and jamming it into the zom's skull, then using all his force to pull it out and swing the zom toward the ground.

It groaned as the sickening squelch of the blade leaving its head sounded, and then hit the ground, scrabbling. He quickly dropped to one knee and brought the blade down into its head again, twice, thrice. When its groaning and twitch stopped, he removed the blade, and then punted the head a bit, which mushed and rolled off the neck from all the stabbing.

Good. He didn't want to see that thing getting up again. It seemed hard enough when they weren't stabbed up, but if they survived that... bad things, he figured. He turned to look for Alayne and see what was next.
 
Alayne turned just in time to watch them take out the other two zoms. She was curious as to what they were going to do. James charged, tripping the second one with his umbrella, but then she got nervous as he fumbled and fought the zom on the ground. He managed to stab it, push it off, then he gave it a makeover to remember. Zach waited and took the first one out by tripping it old school cartoon style. Then he gave it a makeover before kicking it and decapitating it.

That works, she thought.

She patted Zach on the back as she made her way to James, "You okay?" she said as she looked at his arms, neck, anywhere that could have been bitten. "A little close for comfort," she smiled as she turned and made her way to the soldier where she'd left it, "but I guess I owe you a drink now, James."

She started to pat down the dead soldier. They'd hit the jackpot, it was a medic. She found a few rolls of gauze and tape, some shotgun shells, alcohol wipes, a military grade med kit (this was the holy grail), and some meds. She left the meds, she doubted they'd be any use after so long. She cleaned her blades on his clothes, then, putting the medical gear aside, she reached into her pack and pulled out a can of green spray paint and marked the body to let the other teams know that they'd been through.

Repacking her bag with the med gear she stood, "We keep moving," she answered Zach. While packing she remembered the cut on her hand. With a curse she reached inside her pocket and pulled out a red bandana. She looked at it sadly, remembering who it belonged to. She shook her head and tied it tightly around the cut to stop the blood, not wanting to waste their new med gear on herself.

Coated in a fine layer of blood and dirt, they would keep going. They would reach the safe house by nightfall.

"We're looking for an old gun store," she finally told them. "It will be boarded up, and have a huge red 'X' spraypainted on the door. It should be on one of these corners coming up."


[I sort of RNG'd the soldier. We got medic.]
 
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[That works. Quite well, too.]

Zach nodded, walking after Alayne and looking around at the old buildings, looking for this big red 'X'. It would be good to be able to get some rest, after all that. The buildings all looked the same though, with the aging and darkness that covered the old town. A marking like that would stand out, hopefully. He dismissed his doubt that the place would be any difficult to find and kept moving, keeping an eye out.
 
"I'm fine, thanks," James said in response to Alayne, not totally sure if he was being honest. "Yeah, you do, I was just going to say. Though you may as well just have it yourself, because I'm not a fan of booze-if you find a can of Coke though, it is mine. I fucking loved that stuff before the zombie apocalypse. There's probably a few cans in people's houses or something.

James saw that Zach had done pretty well (gone a little insane with the decapitation, but he was hardly one to talk after he had made a zombie pancake), and that the soldier they found was a medic. Alayne seemed excited about the basic medical supplies he had, but he would have preferred a machine gun.

As they walked through the streets, in search of the gun store with the big red X on it to signify it being a safe house-wait, what?

"Big red X internationally means danger. Why would you put it on a safe house?" he muttered audibly to himself. He kept walking, kept scanning, kept hearing scratches that he hoped were animals. Although he hadn't seen any, stray animals probably still existed.
 
[.... Wooow. I was gone for only a few hours and this mess happens. Good work, you guys! Zombie pancakes for all of us!]

Axelle had hid herself away during the onslaught James, Alayne and Zach fought furiously through. Zoms had fallen to the three, which Axelle know deemed as natural born killers for the brutality— one by an umbrella and a boot, which made her grin at the thought, two more by a knife. Though she had been looking forward to grabbing the zombies' attention on her own with her singing, Alayne wanted her to beacon only a few zoms rather than the whole town.

Slowly stepping out of the building she fled into, Axelle made her way over to the other three, careful not to step into the mass pile of strung-out zombie brains and fractured skull James created with his victim, and nodded approvingly. "Da-yum, you guys got skill," she told them, her voice a bit louder than she realized, "Pretty beast way of felling a zombie. You know, with an umbrella and all." She smirked over at James with a toothily grin, then heard Alayne mention a building with a large red "X" on it containing weapons. "Wait, an 'X?'" Axelle asked, then looked over her shoulder as the group started off in search of it. "It's back this way. Saw it on my way in."

Not caring if the others followed her lead or not, Axelle turned on her heel and walked a few feet in the other direction, then stopped as she saw the boarded-up building, the intimidating red "X" telling them danger of some sort lay in wait inside its walls. With another glance at the group, she whistled to get their attention, and waved them to come over.
 
"Pretty beast way of felling a zombie. You know, with an umbrella and all."

"Yup, I was pretty damn awesome with the whole falling over and flailing and almost being eaten alive. Doesn't get cooler than that."

He felt a toothy grin would be appropriate, though he doubted so that he could pull that off, so he simply kept his face alive and animated-as if he were enjoying himself, having a laugh at himself. He was glad that they were none of them [[[100% proper grammar, by the way]]] vindictive, and no one had said anything about his near-death experience. The more time distanced him from the event, the less sure he felt about himself-was he confident enough to engage in something like that again? Did his first victory make him want to surge onwards, or did the almost-dying have him longing for the relative safety of the city again?

Not a fucking clue.

And then Axelle found the red X, which meant leaving the open air for confined spaces. Not that he'd have a problem with confined spaces, if there was a guarantee there were no zombies in there. He wondered over to the safe house when Axelle whistled-struggling not to feel like he was coming like a summoned dog-and a question attacked his mind. He voiced it to the group at large-though he was only expecting an answer from Alayne.

"Anyone know if anyone else'll be in there? Or are we on our own?"

Whilst it was a question that could have been answered by sticking a head in the window and shouting 'Is anybody there?' he didn't feel like being shot at by some over-excited survivor mistaking him for a zombie.
 
How in the hells could I have missed it? She hadn't been to this house in a long time, not since her first run to Sacramento.

"The 'X'," Alayne explained to no one in particular, "was a danger sign, at least, a few years ago. When the outbreak first hit people would hold up wherever they could. You were like to get a shotgun to the face if you barged in on someone's little nest, so a few people marked their holds so that people knew there was already someone there." She looked at the building, once a gun shop. It was well barricaded, and the red symbol over the door was faded with age. It was a two story building. She rubbed her cut left hand gingerly, it was starting to throb pretty badly, but it was nothing she couldn't handle. It probably needed stiches. She'd dealt with worse, and it would have to wait. Way to overdo it, dumbass.

"Anyone know if anyone else'll be in there? Or are we on our own?" James asked her.
Alayne shook her head, "No, at least, as far as I know." She drew her revolver, "It never hurts to be sure though."

She walked up to the door, motioning for the others to follow. She knocked on the door, a familiar beat. Shave and a haircut..... she waited for the last two beats. Nothing. She knocked the last two beats herself, and opened the door.

It took a second for her eyes to adjust to the darkness inside. The only light was sunlight that had creeped in through the gaps in the window barricades. What once was a gun shop now was an empty room, it's contents looted long ago. Remains of campsites lingered, a pot here, fork there. Clear, she thought, but just to be safe, "Friendlies!" she said, half a shout to anyone who might be inside.

No response, and if there were zoms in here they would have come by now. And zoms don't do stairs, she thought. She holstered her gun, "We're clear, I'm checking upstairs," she said as she approached the stairs. The second floor had been an small apartment at one point, a broken table sat in one corner, a couch in another. There was even what used to be a kitchen. In the hall there was a second set of stairs that lead to the roof.

She was more interested in the walls. She scanned them with a flashlight. They were covered in writing, messages from one person to the other. Names of people who'd hid here, messages to loved ones, names of the lost, warnings (like where the most zoms were, where hordes were heading). I wonder if it's still there, she wondered, after all it had been six years.

"We're all clear," she said to the group as she headed back down, "might as well get cozy we'll be here for a while. Feel free to look around. It's getting dark, I want small fires set up wherever we can. Meet me in fifteen on the roof." She turned and made her way to the second floor, not really caring if the others followed.

In the corner of the small etched in the wall was her name... and his. As well as a set of dashes, counting the numbers of zoms they'd killed to get here. She knelt in front of it, and drew her knife. Slowly, she carved a few new lines under her name. When she was finished she brushed his name with her thumb, smiling as she remembered him. She spun the plain silver ring that sat on her left ring finger, lost in her thoughts and old memories. I'm still kicking, David, she thought, still smiling.
 
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"Small fires, small fires. I can do that."

He headed up the stairs, into what looked like a remnant of a living space. Everything that could even have been remotely used as a weapon was taken, which left a broken table, a couch, and some cooking implements. A gas cooker among them. The gas was obviously long gone, so it would be no help.

He went to the couch, took out his letter opener and slit it open. He took a healthy amount of the stuffing inside it, carrying it with two arms, and brought over to the broken table, which was still much too solid. He began to break the bigger parts into large pieces, and when he was done, piled up the stuffing into a great, dense lump.

He took out a half-empty box of matches, found one which didn't look to broken, lit off the friction strip, and dropped it in the stuffing. The fire erupted quickly, and he had to hurry to get the bits of splintered wood on top of it before it burnt out. He could tell from here that without an accelerant, it wasn't very likely to work.

He went about exploring the rest of the house in search of one, not really sure what he was looking for. The first room he tried had faded posters on the wall and moth-eaten sheets over a tattered bed. There was some clothes in the drawers, nothing much left-except for a can on Lynx. Wonderful.

He headed back to his dying fire, shook the can thrice and sprayed it. Five minutes later, the can was practically empty and the fire roaring. Thinking that this deodorant was pretty useful, he headed back into the room and scoured the place, finding two more cans. He dragged back a chest of drawers to the open space with the fire in it, lifted them high and shattered them off the ground nearby. This healthy amount of wood would last the fire the night.

"Well, that was painless," he said, kicking off his shoes and sitting beside it.
 
((Good God, I go on break and you guys go and progress. :/))

Miles had little interest in the building. He found a corner far from any windows or doors. He pulled out his little pocket knife for skinning rodents. He scratched a horizontal line into the wall near the ground, about the length of his forearm, with the end sharply changing direction to a slanted line about the length of his thumb. It was his way of marking an area as his, though he doubted any of these people knew that, or cared if they did know. It was mostly a habit, at this point, so he did it despite the fact he wouldn't be here long.

Other trappers did similar things. A few times, when trapping was bad, and he'd been exceptionally hungry, he'd steal from one other trapper, and leave signs of whoever was on his bad side at the time.

He observed James and his little fire for a moment. He shouldered his bag, having grown into the habit of never leaving it behind, and went straight to the roof. He looked at the names and writings on the wall as he walked up. Some were utterly terrifying. Some were just plain stupid and vulgar. Strangely, he found himself stopping. He hadn't thought anything here would catch his eye. But here he saw a name on the wall. Pondered over this other person who must have been like him in some way. He'd never met anyone else with the name Miles, so "Miles Dunley" was certainly someone who, in a sense, was a link to this place. Chances are, he's dead. Most people tended to be that way, nowadays.
 
Alayne stood and stretched. She watched as James began building a small fire and collecting wood, she walked past him and made her way to the roof to wait for the others.

Miles was already there. Alayne made her way to the edge and looked out at the world; or what was left of it. They were safe, for now, but they needed to figure out their plan on how to get an active zom back to the City. The sun was already setting, leaving the sky somewhere between orange, blue, and black as it disappeared.
 
The fire was nice, James supposed, but it didn't seem to have much warmth when there was no one around it. Knowing it would keep without help for some time, he got up and left it. He walked around the apartment, getting a feel for it, seeing where he could escape if a Zombie came from the roof, hallway, stairs. It ended up feeling pretty depressing, and no matter where he turned to, none seemed overly likely to happen, so in the end he just bounded up the stairs, with a strange, surreal spring to his step. He was happy to be out here. The thronging sense of despair, of untreated rot, that had always surrounded him in the city was nowhere to be found here. Sure, it was less safe, but it was a place worth being.

The night air was cool, pleasantly so, and the sun was just setting, he could see it in the gaps between buildings. It wasn't anything amazing. He'd been on the London Eye, once. Nothing in the real world could even really compare. Still.

He nodded to the quiet kid, unsure of his name, and walked towards Alayne, and stopped a reasonable distance back. He swung himself up on top of an air conditioning duct and swung his legs, waiting for the others to arrive up here.

Which was when he saw the zombie.

So far away that it was barely identifiable as a zombie, the tiny blip limped on. It was missing a leg, but it didn't care. From this distance, it was robbed of every detail that could have held the illusion of humanity-no face, no clothes, no hair. Just a barely-visible silhouette. He took his gun out of his umbrella, kept the safety on, and pulled it up. He tried to keep the gun steady on the tiny blimp, but his hands shook too much. It was too far away, you'd have to be a sniper to hit it from this distance, and even then it would probably be a waste of a bullet. Soon, it would be night, and the setting sun-the only reason the zombie was even visible-would descend, and it would be invisible.

He wasn't sure how comforting that actually was.
 
Axelle had watched, but not really bothered to help, as James made a small fire, keeping it ablaze with a can of spray-on deodorant, and stood by it for a while. It didn't really give off much heat, so she soon left it, following after James when he had went to the roof. She saw the guy she didn't catch the name of, and also saw Alayne. Oh, and that wall written all over with names. She had actually stopped to read some before heading up to the roof, seeing if there was anyone she knew. There wasn't much sunlight left, so her sight was limited, but the words "Jayden Roswell" were scrawled out at eye-level. Huh. That was strange, considering Jayden was her brother. Was. He was gone now. Killed off by zoms when the Infection first struck Sacramento. Maybe he came here while the first wave was stumbling through the city...

Shaking her head, Axelle slid her back against the A.C. duct, sitting at the bottom as she hugged her knees close to her chest. The girl sighed, quite deeply, in fact, and was strangely silent for a moment. She wanted to say something, break the silence. She glanced up at James, her mouth slightly ajar as her tongue started to form a word, but stopped. What was he aiming at? Was there something out there?

Abruptly standing up, Axelle swung her legs over the side of the air conditioning duct and seated herself by James, squinting her eyes to see what he saw in the distance. Her brown eyes widened. Was that... a zom? It was off by a leg, awkwardly hopping along, but it seemed to scarcely notice that. But of course. It was a merely silhouette, however, as no other features were visible to her. "... Can you shoot it from here?" Axelle whispered to James, not breaking her gaze on the figure. "Or is it too far away?"
 
A strange sound caught in his throat as Axelle surprised him. He'd been too engrossed in the far away non-threat to really be aware of his near surroundings at all-that was something he was going to have to check. In answer to her question, he shook his head, and fastened the gun back to the umbrella pole. He'd never even turned the safety off.

"Noh, it's way too far. Even if the gun can fire that far, I have no hope of hitting it. 'sides, it's not doing us any harm. Not even shuffling in our direction. Unless we're going to go out and hunt that one zombie down, which seems silly, we should just leave it be."

He slid off the ventilation duct, scanning the streets around, not seeing anything.

"Still, Zack-no, can't call 'em that any more, we have a Zack in the group-Zedheads are in the area. I mean, not much, but I don't suspect I'll be sleeping very easy. How safe can a safehouse in enemy territory be? Not that we have a whole lot of cosy places to choose from. Scotland'd be great for this kind of thing. Mountains and castles everywhere. Castles on mountains. Even a mountain on a castle or two. Zedheads'd smash themselves falling onto rocks and into ravines before they reached us, like as not."

He shook his head, breaking away from happier, more accented times to reality. "This is the best we can do, I suppose. Keep an eye out for closer Zeds. Anything in danger of discovering us really should be taken out."
 
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Alayne turned to James as Sir Zedhead Limpy hopped out of sight, "Oh, yeah, castles on mountains are great, until you run out of food or water, or drown in your own shit, or get sick, or slip and fall."

She frowned, "No where is safe, you just have to keep moving.... You ever been to Scotland? I always wanted to visit there, at least before this shit happened."

"I guess the others are taking their sweet time," she said, glancing at the door, "might as well start. So, how do we catch a zombitch to bring home? Anyone have any ideas?" She stole a glance at Miles, who'd already shown signs of being a trapper.
 
"Yeah, I've been to Scotland. Half-Scottish, actually. We moved around a lot, but the first bit of my life was spent there. Apparently, I used to have the accent for the longest time...And I disagree. On the move, you're always in danger, all the time. In the castle, unless it's old or stupidly designed, you're always safe unless you let them in or when you're getting food. You could probably keep some crops inside the courtyard or something to help keep those food runs down. Maybe even become self-sustainable. Cause that's the dream, right? Outlast them. Survive the plague until they all rot away and then hope the rest of the world hasn't advanced too much without us so that we spend the rest of our lives playing catch-up. And life will be how it used to be, and kids will be as uncaring for it as we were for World War II, and we'll have a ton of prevention set up in case it ever rears its ugly head again, and this will just be a blot in our history.

Of course, then the cities started falling, throwing all that into doubt, and now we need answers and so here we are. Helping the war effort. Bringing back a live one could even secure ourselves in history. Not our names, but us, at least. Whatever. "

He began to feel oddly uncomfortable, as the full force of how important this was hit him. This was literally life-saving stuff. If they helped in some crucial research, it could prevent America from becoming 'the place that used to exist before we nuked it when everyone in it died'. He addressed their objective.

"Can't we just hack off a zed's limbs and tape its mouth shut? Drag it all the way back to the city... Or do they want a living specimen that they can...test? That makes it trickier. We'd have to tie it up, and to do that we'd need to be more careful. I don't suppose anyone here can lasso? No one hiding a bit of Texan blood?"

The last question was interposed with just the slightest hint at humour-if anyone could, indeed, lasso, than everything would be easier. The odds were about the same as him hitting that Zombie.
 
"What about just the arms? I mean it might be easier to transport if it could walk... The mouth is what we need to worry about; that's what's going to kill us," Alayne said, thinking aloud. "What if we make a gag or something? A metal bar that we tie behind it, something like," then she started laughing, "headgear!"

"Any ideas on how to get it in the first place?"
 
Miles had remained quiet. Alayne had glanced at him once. And now she asked if anyone had any ideas how to actually get one. He rubbed his eye before saying what was his first complete sentence since they congregated. "Certainly not with a lasso." He stretched out his arms, and his elbows gave little cracks. "I'd suggest a snare or something similar under normal circumstances, but I'm not sure we can make one big enough to support one of the slushbrains. Not in a timely fashion, anyways. So in all probability, it'll be a manual trap-er, and ambush." 'Manual Trap' was a term he used in his head. He'd never had to speak of such things before, so it slipped out.

"Anyway, unless you want to bother trying to find something to make a large enough snare or finding a way to dig one of them out of a pit-trap, we'll just have to be extra clever in either catching one alone, or extracting just one from a mob. Either way, really, it won't be a comfortable experience." He sat down opposite the ventilation duct, which most everyone seemed to have decided was the place to be. He was starting to wish he had something juicy. He'd lived off of rodents since the infection, really, and what he wanted more than anything was a mango, or even just a glass of water he didn't need to be afraid of. With ice.
 
[ Where is everyone?]



"True," Alayne murmured to no one in particular. Getting one alone could be hard. In truth she was more worried about bringing it back than catching it. She thought for a moment.

"Ambush is what I thought too. We draw them in, and get them into a fatal funnel; like an alley or something," Alayne said as she walked back towards the edge of building. She looked over and frowned, there were a lot more zombies now. She didn't even bother to count them, "We can't stay here for more than tonight."

"If James here hasn't ruined the cushions, we might be able to make a zombie sammich," she said imagined a zom with no arms tied up between two couch coushions.

I just might be losing my mind.

"Let's take inventory," she muttered as she opened her bag, "the sawn off shotgun, the med kit, water canteen - half full - , some beef jerkey, dried fruit, iodine, matches, mess kit, multitool... I'm set for bugging out. You guys?"
 
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[[tCoD's alert system seems to be malfunctioning. I'll have to check on this manually from now on.]]

"Bug out? As in, leave now? I have to ask, did I just set a fire for nothing? Because that is possibly one of the greatest fires ever built and if we're leaving it unused, we should all apologise."

He grinned a bit, though whatever 'bugging out' meant here, it either involved leaving this shelter immediately in the dark, or leaving shelter immediately in the dark whilst ditching the others in the group. Which, to be honest, didn't sound fun.

"I gotta say, slang isn't my thing. What does bugging out even mean?"
 
Alayne smiled, "We'll have to apologise to the fire. At least the others seem to be enjoing it. Bugging out, it was just a term for a pack meant for being on the move."

That's when she heard it, faint, but definately there.

A gunshot.

She left her pack where it sat and ran to the edge of the building. It was coming from the East. She cursed when she heard two more shots. She couldn't see anything, but the zombies had heard the shot, the mass that had been roaming the streets began shuffling to the East.

The other teams, she thought sadly. What had happened to them that they had to fire a gun? "Fuck," she cursed aloud as another shot rang. There was nothing they could do. The fight could be a couple miles away for all she knew, and she didn't want to leave their shelter.

[[There's an ALERT SYSTEM? It's never alerted me that someone's posted.... also... Coroxn...]]
 
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