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Post by vampirechicken on Jan 23, 2013 5:11:49 GMT -5
Henry tried to keep himself distanced from the whole situation as Pru fell to the ground in despair. She had to find out about her cousins eventually, but he immediately regretted blurting it out. He watched over his shoulder, obvious distress on his face as she mumbled something which he didn't quite catch.
Why had he attatched himself to the child so quickly? He had never even wanted kids, or even liked them in his old life. He turned to the door again, he needed to leave Pru before he changed his mind... and pried her from Reys arms to carry her to the truck whether she liked it or not.
"You can come with us" Airas voice rang out behind him "we need all the help we can get if we want to survive."
"What?! But Aira..." Henry hissed at the woman, surprised and put off that she was just suddenly inviting people into his vehicle, people who could possibly eat him.
He barely had time to formulate an argument when the sound of the car reached his ears again.
Fuck, he hadn't hidden the truck.
"Weapons?! Guns?! Do you have any more?" Henry cried out to Rey, looking out the window and pulling Aira away from the window. He followed them behind the desk, deeper in the shadows of the store.
Pulling up in the carpark was horrific sight. A car strapped with body parts and painted with blood. The shrunken, rotting heads of the owners victims adorned the front like grotesque hood ornaments. They pulled up next to Henrys truck, stopped the car.
4 figures emerged, they turned to the entrance of the megamart and began to approach.
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Post by alexharvey on Jan 23, 2013 6:56:24 GMT -5
Pru hardly realized anything anymore whilst being led to the desk. She felt simply ice cold and heavy and had lost every sense in moving at all. It was a scary feeling that wrenched her heart and insides, the feeling of nothingness and despair and she wondered if that was what dying felt like. Henrys shout for weaponry made her bolt from her constitution and the former numbness was replaced with fear clutching to her hard and tensing her body up. She quickly ran her sleeves over her eyes when things became hectic, Henry pulled Aira back, Rey released the safety catch on his shotgun.
Her eyes flung to her own rifle which was still lying only a few feet away from her on the ground. She quickly jumped over to get it, then backed up behind Rey again, clutching the weapon to her chest for dear life.
She tried to take a few deep breaths, but they were mostly shaky and didn't quite do the required job of calming her body down. She raised the rifle, the shaft pressed to her shoulder, trying to be ready for a possible enemy, but the rifle was shaking so hard in her arms she doubted she could fire a possibly accurate shoot.
Where did this damn fear com from so suddenly a moment ago she wanted to die now she was clutching to her life like a lunatic. She wanted to be home. With her Mom and Dad, and Cousins, she dreamed herself back to the last thanksgiving with the whole family, ignoring the small piercing voice in the back of her head, telling her it would never be like that again. But at least she could hold on to the thought that she had been happy once.
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Post by spiritandsand on Jan 25, 2013 10:04:25 GMT -5
When Henry grabbed Aira she felt her ears press against her head; the instincts she had lived with since the apocalypse washed over her and replaced the emotions and bitter taste in her mouth. Now her only thoughts were survive, hide, and kill if necessary. A fourth thought had sneaked in between the others; protect the others too.
She squatted behind the desk resting her right hand on her scissor-belt while the left had a tight grip around her bag. If they were lucky, no, if they were blessed by god himself they might not be discovered by the looters and avoid a fight. If not... It would be a bloody battle.
Unless.
She looked down at her bag. Inside it - among other things - was a hand grenade. She had found it a few weeks after she had lost everyone, and kept it as some sort of "safety net" if she happened to end up in some hopeless situation where scissors and broken circular-saws wasn't enough. Was this the right situation? She would have to warn the others did she decide to use it, it would be very risky, but it could turn out to be their ticket to freedom... For now.
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Post by vladimir on Jan 27, 2013 17:55:45 GMT -5
At the sight of the raiders and the knowledge that it was no longer just himself he had to keep alive, Reinhardt forgot what he was and who he was supposed to be and reverted for a moment to his old self. With his gun already halfway shouldered, he nodded to the back. "Ah have a spare in the back, a Marlin three-three-six," he nodded towards one of the farther aisles with a look, visible only in the one uncovered eye, which expressed a Boolean sort of conviction in this matter. Moving to crouch behind one of the other checkout desks, covered enough so that the darkness of the building might be enough to keep him hidden in this position until he fired and so that he stood well between whoever came through that door and Prudence, Reinhardt's asinine fear of self acknowledgement was forgotten in exchange for the overwhelming urge not to let the girl die. If he'd just stayed quiet the three might have been in and out of here quick enough to avoid getting trapped, if not they'd at least have been paying enough attention to hear the car approaching and better prepare themselves. As far as he was concerned, some part of this situation, if not most of it, was his fault, and self pity had no place in such a scenario.
The Marlin to which Henry was directed was in beautiful condition considering how much time had gone by since the apocalypse. Clipped to a tattered Osprey backpack beside some dented pots and pans, it lacked the rusty decay which had taken its toll on its companions and bore the sheen of a gun well beloved. Tucked into a dark corner, the pack itself leaned against an empty shelf and rested atop a raggedy collection of winter coats, matching its environment in terms of rot and ruin-- all of which should have been simple enough to spot.
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Post by vampirechicken on Jan 28, 2013 6:05:14 GMT -5
Henry forgot all his misgivings about Reys character, whatever the man was, the looters were worse. He picked up the rifle suggested to him and ducked behind the shelf that it was perched on just as the terrifying figures pushed open the glass doors. Already feeling more secure with a gun in his hands again, Henry took a deep breath, quiet as he dared. He made sure Aira was well hidden behind him before he risked a peek out behind the cover.
The jingle of the welcome bell rang out across the store and the sound of 4 pairs of boots followed. They were making no attempts to be quiet, armed to the teeth as they were, strapped with daggers and random bits of metal, they looked like they might gore themselves if they tripped over. Also they each had guns... 4 guns to the survivors 3. The odds were not looking good for the survivors.
A lean man with longish brown hair seemed to be the leader, his face was smooth compared to the others and he had a black hat decorated with fingers. He wore a terrifyingly calm expression and he had a shotgun on his back, although he was the only one who didn't have his weapon ready. He looked as though he planned on watching his thugs do all the dirty work.
The man closest to him was large and blonde with burn marks over most of his body, many of which were visible because looters wore mostly strips of leather and hung scalps over their torsos instead of shirts. The eerie thing about the second man was that he had an uncanny resemblance to Henry... like a preview of what might have happened if he had gone feral after the castastrophe. He had a revolver in one hand and a bowie knife in the other.
The other two men sported mohawks, one red and one black, they appeared to be smaller and skinnier and only sported handguns.
These were the men that had killed Prus parents.
They stood just out of accurate range, behind a row of cashier desks and observed the store calmly for a moment.
((have fun killing these guys off, no need to ask my permission))
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Post by alexharvey on Jan 28, 2013 8:10:11 GMT -5
The girl crouched next to Rey, rifle clutched to her chest, ready to strike any moment. She stretched her back, carefully letting her head peek over the cashier desks to get a look on their enemies. She immediately slid back down again, her thin fingers cramping around the rifle, causing her knuckles to turn white.
She recognized them. She recognized the blonde who had shot her mom and with the lead of the brunette one had chopped up her Dad while the other two had been scavenging around the store. She resisted the urge to throw up at the terrible memory.
Her despair and Sadness seemed to have reached it's limits as it was now replaced with something Pru had never felt this intense before. Hate. Aggression. Senseless Anger and the deep wish to put a bullet through their faces, preferably their heads exploding into gory bits. Before she knew what she was doing she had jolted up from her crouching Position, within a momentum all of Rey's rifle lessons flooded back into her and she started to shoot mechanically, hitting the blonde's chest and neck while he gave a surprised gurgling roar.
It became a simple mechanism, aim, shoot, reload, aim, shoot, reload. She didn't even have to think about it, her body just worked on his own, not in the least realizing it was exposed to everyone who aimed at her.
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Post by spiritandsand on Jan 29, 2013 6:19:32 GMT -5
Aira had her arm stuck down in her bag grabbing the hand grenade as she saw the looters enter. She had to calculate their positions and future movements in order to make a perfect strike on them. She pulled it out from her bag still holding it - she did this so that the others had time to notice it. She didn't felt like saying anything afraid of causing noise, or flash it up their faces. Soon. Luckily the looters didn't spread out too much. If she could get rid of them all in one hit it would be the best.
And that was when Pru suddenly burst out in a blind frenzy starting to shoot. Pure attack, no defence, this was really bad. Aira felt a jolt of angst dig through her ribs, and she lost all her calculations simply just pulling Pru down and throwing the hand grenade per reflex - at least she had enough sense to pull out, "watch out", she said hoarse as if she shouted and whispered at the same time making herself as small as possible behind their temporary shield.
The handgrenade rolled on the ground until it bumped into the black mohawk's foot. 3 seconds after it exploded.
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Post by vladimir on Jan 29, 2013 7:40:52 GMT -5
Grenades were something Reinhardt had little instinctive understanding of. His knowledge of armament and self defense were purely the result of learning by recreation and never had he really been threatened by such a small, seemingly harmless object. It was for this reason that when the grenade rolled across the floor to rest at the Mohawks foot, it took the man a moment longer than the rest to process what was happening and take a step back, lucky to be far enough away already that the small explosion would have done little (if anything) to him if he hadn't, and that much only by way of flung debris. As soon as he flinched, the man turned right around again and raised his shotgun. It was very, very obvious, even to him, that the raider (or raiders) who still remained somewhat functional knew they were here. Even the one who'd taken the grenade had a very good chance of being alive enough to make for a gun and start shooting back til whatever damage had been done to his legs and abdomen carried him off into red death.
True to his prediction, he could tell that the man who'd taken the grenade was still twitching at the very least, a sort of deathly undulation spotted at the corner of one eye. But he had his eye set on another target, the one still standing and, to him, the most dangerous. Leveling the barrel of his gun, he felt his trigger tense and his aim waver between bodymass and head, bodymass and head. He'd never shot a man before, just rabbits and deer, sometimes duck or geese if he had the time to go out for a ride and- that was where he stopped, the thought of his hunting hawk and his horse, nag though she was, hurt him in a way he'd forgotten he could be hurt. Best not to think of them. The point was, he recalled, that with animals he almost nearly aimed for the head, but hitting someone in the body was a much better way to keep them alive... if that was something you wanted. Still, one was definitely an easier target than the other and there were few people who could pop off a perfect headshot on a dime. Cocking his gun, Reinhardt made his decision and fired for the fellow's stomach.
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Post by vampirechicken on Jan 29, 2013 8:20:13 GMT -5
The blonde went down onto his knees after a few too many bullets to the chest and neck, but not before he let off several shots in Prus direction, roaring like a wounded animal.
"Get down kid!" Henry screamed across the room at the girl, frustrated by her reckless attack. He fired off two shots at the mohawked looters, hitting one in the shoulder and sending another ducking for cover before he could fire at Pru. "Get the fuck in cover!" He yelled again as he hid behind the shelf. She was just standing there, reloading and shooting while bullets whizzed past her head.
"Watch out!"
Airas voice rang behind him and Henry turned around in time to see her throw an object in an arc over the shelves. Three seconds later it exploded.
The explosive took out the two smaller thugs immediately, blowing chunks of leg and torso sliding down the aisles and leaving the large bullet riddled blonde with a hunk of shrapnel lodged in his forehead. But the blonde wasn't dead, in fact he showed no signs of pain at all. He stood up again, wiping the blood of his companions off his face with a thumb and walking towards the little girl with a sick grin on his face.
"Yer gonna pay fer that doll." he said raising his gun at her face, his eyes were off focus and his words slurred, like the shrapnel had pierced his brain somehow. The bullet holes were probably not helping either.
The man with the black hat had been far enough away to avoid the blast, he was furious. Although he didn't say a thing you could see it in his cold eyes as he smoothly drew the shotgun and aimed it at Rey. Until Reys buckshot hit him in the gut.
Henry didn't get a chance to duck after the grenade landed, there was a short whistling sound past Airas head after the blast and Henry suddenly grabbed one side of his neck, dropped the rifle with a clatter. Red blood was seeping through his fingers as he abandoned the weapon and picked up his shovel, running and swinging it one handed at the blonde mans head, his other hand still grasping his neck.
When the looter was on the ground, Henry finished the job, slamming the end of the shovel into his throat and all but cutting his head off. Not cleanly though, the shovel was too blunt for that.
Henry leaned on the shovel, splattered in blood and grasping at his neck. While the final living looter bled out in front of Rey.
His black hat rolled across the floor and landed at Prus feet.
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Post by alexharvey on Jan 29, 2013 10:59:40 GMT -5
Pru sat paralyzed on the ground, trying to cope with the fact of how fast it had been over. It was done. Over. They were dead. Why didn't she feel relieved. Why didn't she feel anything. It wasn't until the hat rolled over to her feet, the fingers on them arranged neatly and she spotted her Dad's finger among them. His wedding ring even was still there. The girl retched and she would have thrown up if she had been filled with something to do so. She hadn't eaten since the evening two days ago. WIth utter disgust she used her rifle to flip the thing out of her sight, a spastic shudder shaking her and turned her head away from it.
That's when she spotted Henry leaning on his shovel, Blood soaking into his shirt, the cloth over his shoulder was already crimson colored. She felt the heat and color drain from her face as she finally kicked back into gear, scrambling to her feet and to his side.
"Oh god, Henry" she carefully pried his fingers away to get a look at the cut, "Oh god, Henry I'm so sorry, I'm so sorry."
Luckily the shrapnel didn't seem to have injured the artery, but the gash was pretty long and would likely need some stitching.
"Sit down", she said pointing to a shelf he should lean on, "I will stitch that."
She tunnel stared her way to her backpack unwrapping her first aid kit and returning to Henry, forcing herself to overlook the gory mess that was her fault.
"I'm sorry, I don't have anesthetics, only ice spray and disinfection stuff. You'll have to bite through", she said apologetic before getting to work and stitching the gash the cleanest way possible. She wasn't good at though and the stitch became really uneven. But at least it stopped the bleeding. She then proceeded to wrap his whole neck in a fresh white bandaid, finishing with a deep frown.
"Sorry for messing up", she mumbled, fiddling her now bloody hands in her lap, "It won't happen again."
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Post by spiritandsand on Jan 30, 2013 5:24:03 GMT -5
The tremendous tremor and sound from the hand grenade caught Aira off guard - she had no idea that it would be so effective, and it left her deaf for what seemed like a lifetime.
The man comming out of the dustcloud, Rey shooting him down and Henry decapitating the last looter with his blunt shovel felt like a dream. And then she saw the blood on his neck and hand that probably covered a wound.
A wound that she had caused because of her stupidity.
The red trail was like an arm pulling her out of her silent dreamworld shaking her back to life. But even now when she had got her hearing back there was quiet except from Pru's selfblaming cries that made Aira realize for real that she had almost killed Henry. It should've been her whining about how sorry she was, and that it was all her fault. Pru was just a child that had lost her parents. She had reacted in blind rage. But Aira was an adult supposed to be reasonable, and yet she had almost succeeded in reducing their number to 3 persons.
Tons of thoughts rushed around inside her head; She had insisted in joining them for the mere egoistic reason that she was alone. It wasn't them who had asked her to come with them, and frankly she didn't even know if they really needed her. Therefore she had promised not to be a burden and help the best she could, and then she just ended up hurting one of them. How foolish she had been. She had clearly been alone for too long to be able to be together with anyone again. She was too reckless because she didn't valued her own life, and although she thought that it had changed now she was with other people it hadn't. This was too risky. She was too dangerous and hasty.
Aira got up on her legs with an empty look on her face. Her brain had already accepted the fact that she had to leave the others if they wanted a change to survive. She would just... Maybe go out and kill as many looters as possible before she would die. Why had she even been trying to survive for so long? Why hadn't she just let that man kill her three years ago.
Hope had left Aira. She walked towards the exit not looking at the others.
"I'M sorry", she said putting a pressure on "I'm" to correct Pru. It was not Pru's fault, "I'll go out and distract potential loothers so you have a chance to get away. Goodbye."
There was no self-pity in her tone, and she even tried to look relaxed, but she already regret that she had said anything, the mere words oozed of a bitter melancoly nomatter how she had said it, and the others were not stupid. Somewhere she hoped that they would stop her and tell her to stay, another part wished that she hadn't blamed herself for all this, and wanted her to check if Henry was ok, and a third part hated her depressed pathetic guts and told her to just run away before they could do anything about it. Only her leg preventer her from doing the last thing.
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Post by vladimir on Jan 30, 2013 23:32:35 GMT -5
Reinhardt Kaufmann had never killed a man, not in his conscious state at least (what he had done in that time he did not remember and couldn't stomach thinking on) and it was with a strange feeling that he watched the raider bleed out in front of him. It was a terrible sort of sensation because it was not guilt nor regret in any real form, it was terrible because it stirred him so little. For a moment Reinhardt wondered if he had always been so distant a man, but he excused himself almost immediately with the thought that this raider and his companions wouldn't have remotely questioned chopping his own head off and jamming it onto the hood of their car. That resolved part of the present situation's... disquiet, but not nearly all of it.
There was still the matter that Prudence was back to distress, the woman seemed about ready to walk out and Henry was bleeding-- how he had been injured Reinhardt did not know, he assumed debris played some part-- amidst various mutterings and statements of self-blame. Between it all, his own sense of separation and wanton isolation came back to him. With his hands tightening so tightly about his shotgun that his knuckles went white beneath stained bandages and scaled skin, Reinhardt began to back away into the shadows in slow, quiet steps. This had been a bad idea. He was never meant to be involved in the lives of the normal and it had been more foolish than usual for him to allow himself such impulsive actions. If he'd only shut up, if he'd only shut up then they'd have been out of here, but that didn't matter because it was the present situation he found himself horrified with as opposed to the prior threat of the raiders. It was the required medical attention and volley of strained human emotion, abstract forces which drove a recluse like himself to panic.
And panic he did, though restrainedly this time around with his muscles stilled from quaking and the blankness of his frightened mind a paradoxically serene sort. In his own distress Reinhardt forgot to keep his backpedaling and stopped only a few feet from where he'd started, leaning back against one of the aisles and watching this strangely familial exchange carry on in front of him. It was fascinating in a way, like bird watching almost, except he wanted to help somehow and to run away at the same time. Instead stasis seemed the best option; he had not the authority nor the familiarity required to compel Aira to stay; he did not have the authority or familiarity to approach Henry. What he did have the right to do, however, was stay put and shut up.
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Post by vampirechicken on Jan 31, 2013 20:57:10 GMT -5
Henry looked around for more enemies instinctively, but the last gunshot echoed away and left the store in silence again.
"Sorry about what? What?" He looked dazed as Pru came to his rescue like a tiny nurse. He sat down on the shelf and let her do her thing, she seemed so persistent about it. He forced himself to put up with the pain of her inexpert surgical skills, Bleeding to death was less favorable. "Don't.. just shutup, we're alive now." he said, watching Rey sink into the shadows curiously "Quit it with the self pity bullshit... ALL OF YOU!" he suddenly called out. He sounded like he was sick of being the only person in the room who wasn't oozing angst.
"Aira where the OWfuck are you going?!" Henry called mid stitch, when the woman seemed suddenly consumed by some sort of misguided self blame and tried to leave. Fuck he didn't want to have to deal with people wandering off on him when he couldn't move. "You stay the fuck herOW... just stay here! Stop I'm fucking serious!"
He forced himself to stand up unsteadily as soon as Pru had finished and he pointed at each of the people in the room.
"Rey go grab your things, supplies, any weapons you have! Pru go make us some dinner, canned food or somethin' whatever." he barked at them, not sounding unkind but not like he would take any of their shit either. "Aira search the bodies and I'll go look for things in the looters car. We're all leaving at sunup." he finished, picking up his bloodied shovel and heading out into the tinged orange carpark without another word.
The sun was setting, and for the moment the survivors were safe. It was time to regroup.
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Post by alexharvey on Feb 1, 2013 7:05:40 GMT -5
Pru flinched at Henrys sudden outburst of dominance, but it was good, it kicked her ass into gear. And cooking was something she was capable of, at least to some degree. Luckily Rey was perfectly equipped as always, carrying a camping stove and some pots, along with a bit more edible substances than she.
Cooking was good to get her mind off of things and she certainly didn't mind the perspective of sitting together with normal people and doing nothing but eating. No killing no scaring, just eating. And boy was she hungry, she had ignored the gnawing feeling in her belly for the last two days, now it was kicking in with fierce growling that even echoed in the empty store, making her whirl her head left and right to check if anybody noticed. It was a bit embarrassing.
She actually managed to create something fairly good, a thick potato soup with sausage, whole potatoes and pieces of apple. She had to admit she was quite proud of herself when she called the others to announce she was done.
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Post by spiritandsand on Feb 1, 2013 17:20:29 GMT -5
Aira froze on the spot almost tripping over a pipe on the ground when Henry flung out his orders. She was so relieved and happy that he had the balls to take responsibility and kick them out of their self-caused misery, yet it had blown her away, so it took her some time in which she uttered incoherent sounds that got cut off by her own confusement before she was able to put one leg in front of the other, and go loot the dead looters.
A half full lighter, a pocket knife, 5 batteries, a handkerchief, hammers, screws and other tools, and of course some ammo for their weapons were what Aira could find. She assumed that they wouldn't be needing small pieces of dryed out bodyparts or dirty bones. Maybe their clothes could be of use. But she didn't felt like undressing the corpses, also most of their attire were full of holes or partly burned.
She had to admit that Henry's rough voice had scared her, but no.. She wouldn't have any more of these insecure thoughts; she wouldn't underestimate her status or question her potency. Maybe it was her fault that Henry got hurt, but now she just wanted to be happy about that he was ok, and try to be more careful in the future.
Pru had succeeded to cook something good-smelling, and she gratefully accepted the dish, still not saying anything though. There was nothing she could think of as a legit subject to talk about. Instead she just enjoyed the silence and the tiny slice of normalty that lay over the group in this moment.
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