Who: Dhaval and Tayne Where: The hotel lobby When: Midafternoon
Dhaval was restless. He was used to not being able to get out much, but not to having nothing to do. He usually had three books he was reading and one he was writing, a few seasons of interesting TV on DVD, his blog to update and everyone else's to catch up on, his usual physical therapy regime, and, if all else failed, calling his parents or bringing his day job home with him. His mind was accustomed to being as busy as his body was restricted. Now that the first wave of terror was over, he was going a little mad. At least talking to Pepper, Penny, and Taylor had lightened his mood. Of course he felt an innate connection to any other survivors that already felt stronger than any flimsy friendship the shy man had cultivated in his life, or at least since his accident. And meeting a fan of his work was amazing. Still, his agitation was too much to be placated by reflecting on how cute Pepper was and how gratifying Taylor's admiration.
He'd been staring into the mirror, sign enough of agitation. Dhaval tended to avoid his reflection studiously. He pulled his hair back into a slightly neater tiny pontytail than usual to justify the glass-gazing to himself and spun around. He supposed he could go at least get a change of scenery, see where things were on the first floor. Heck, maybe he'd get in the elevator while it still worked, though the upper floors were most likely just hallways of rooms that looked just like his. Probably down to the painting of a vaguely Mediterranean cityscape and the weird, flowery bedspread. He brushed his fingers against the little bronze Shiva figure he'd brought from home, its head worn shiny from years of the habit. He didn't give his birth culture's beliefs any more credit than those of his adopted homeland's, but familiarity was still a comfort, probably why he'd brought stacks of stories, tiny statues, and his baby blanket instead of the clothes or food that space could have held. Dhaval opened the door, glancing up and down the hallway for any angry teenage girls, and headed out. Wheeling up and down was a lot less satisfying than pacing, but what other choice did he have?
Tayne was out in the lobby, just down the hall from Dhaval's room, loudly hammering away at the plywood he had made a quick run out for on his motorcycle, and then brought back carefully balanced on the seat behind him and in the now-empty saddlebags. It had been an interesting trip, especially since he'd had to dodge a couple monsters on his way back, with all that shit attached to his poor bike.
But now they had plywood, and he and Terry had split up to work on windows on opposite sides of the building. He had headphones on-- noise-cancelling headphones, thank god-- with some country music playing on a CD player, and that was the only way he was surviving the job. His own enhanced hearing, which now he was starting to wonder if it wasn't some kind of "power" like what Terry had described-- didn't much like the loud pounding of a hammer on nails.
Dhaval was good at drowning out noise, growing up as he had in thin-walled apartment buildings, and often with nasty headaches or weird sensory side effects of painkillers and other drugs. He hadn't really noticed the hammering until he saw the man at work. Dhaval hadn't thought of barricades, but that did make sense. Just as Dhaval could spin beautiful words into meaningful tales on paper but not communicate worth a damn face to face, stammering, hesitating, and qualifying everything he said, he could only craft elaborate, sensible battle plans or general strategies staring at a computer. He felt rather useless watching the man work, and for more than the usual reason.
Maybe he could help? Probably not with the real work. The windows were too high, and he'd barely used a hammer in his life. He'd probably just break his thumb. But he could hold things steady. Dhaval was a lot stronger than one would assume, though he'd let himself skimp on his usual attempts to not decay into skin and bones the last few days, and with the brake on, he and his chair made for a pretty immovable force. ...Or he could fetch nails. Whatever, as long as it didn't leave him such... deadweight. Dhaval headed over, realizing only has he reached the man that he was wearing headphones. Dhav wasn't used to raising his voice, and he really hated yelling. "Um, hello?" He really didn't know how to call attention to himself.
Tayne didn't hear him, of course, but he did smell him-- it was another distinctive smell, that was both "human", "male", and mixed in with metal and plastic and some weird cloth-ish smell, which said that he didn't know who this person was-- and he glanced down with a little blink. There was a guy in a wheelchair approaching. Wow, of all the rotten luck, to be stuck in one of those curing the apocalypse. He paused in his hammering and moved one of the headphones away from his ear, grinning, a bit sheepishly. "Hey," he said, by way of greeting, not at all sure if the guy had spoken or not. "If you said anything, didn't hear it. Noise-cutting headphones."
At least he'd been noticed. When Dhaval failed to get people's attention, easy when you were shy, soft spoken, and well below eye level, he tended to just wait for a moment and try to roll away when it happened. Dhaval returned the smile, though it took him just a moment too long to find his voice again. Dhaval wasn't comfortable with people under any circumstances, but on a sliding scale, he was most at ease with aging English professors or librarians, least with attractive males in his own age group. The net difference wasn't very much; he stammered and hesitated a lot either way. "Oh, um, right. That's what I guessed, actually. Though I thought I'd try just to see. Just, um, wanted to know if you wanted a hand with that? I'm not doing anything. ...Really, anything." He shrugged a bit sheepishly.
Though he didn't often have that problem, Tayne had, had it often enough to recognize it: boredom, exacerbated by seeing someone else working. He pulled the headphones off entirely as he thought it through, taking a moment to do so-- he wasn't the fastest thinker-- then suggested, "You can hand me nails. Digging around in the box slows things down a lot, and I wanna get some of these on each window by nightfall. Ain't thinking I can cover them all complete, or anything, that'll take a few days. But enough that if they break, won't be too much a problem, you know?" He was thinking that leaving a planks-width open here and there, to let in light, might not be such a bad idea, at this point. Electricity wasn't going to last forever.
"Mm, yeah, we don't want to leave ourselves feeling too fenced in. But the defense would be good." Good way to go loopy, from what he was able to tell. "Even Medieval castles had arrow slits, um, didn't they?" Dhaval maneuvered himself over to the nails. Sure, he was being about as useful as a five-year-old might be, but it was something, and at least he wasn't staring at the wall. Alone. "I can also just, um, hold things steady for you, for the bigger pieces. I know I don't look like it, but I'm, well, not entirely helpless." He didn't sound bitter. He understood the other man's perspective pretty well. His legs didn't work. That was pretty much the beginning and end of it. "Um, I'm Dhaval Singh."
"Well, and I'm all for keeping windows open on the floors upstairs," Tayne commented, turning back to the wood. At the moment, there wasn't much bracing to be done, or he'd have suggested it; he just had one more nail for this board before he'd call it done and get a new one. "Ain't seen one of these things yet that flies." He hammered again, winced, and braced himself for the next. "Tayne," he answered. "Tayne Peregrine. And-- well, don't take this wrong, friend, but you got a nickname?" That time the wince was for having to ask, not the hammering.
"Dhav?" He'd been called Dave back in school, but he wasn't willing to go quite that white bread. He knew his name was a little bit daunting, but it wasn't really phonetically difficult, just not familiar. As an avid fantasy reader, he was used to the way a strange name just became a starting and perhaps an ending sound with a garble in between, read or spoken. Dhaval was a lot less sensitive about his name and accent than his wheelchair. There was no help for that, after all. Honestly, seeing Tayne a little nervous made him feel better about being awkward. "It's, um, alright. There's an approximately zero Indian population around here." Not that Tayne really sounded like a Detroit native.
"It ain't even that... exactly," Tayne explained apologetically. "I had a speech problem as a kid. I worked past most of 'em, but I still have problems with names that're anything other than normal, and even normal ones, if they're too long, I still have problems." He didn't really mind admitting to the stuttering, as long as he wasn't doing it. Sometimes if people knew, they ignored it when it did come up. "So... Dav, then?" It was close, anyway. And it was short.
"Oh, that's completely fine, sure." Dav wasn't bad. "I, um, know what you mean. Kind of. I mean, I was a non-native speaker, and I got sent in with the speech therapist along with a lot of kids with different problems. I was barely intelligible." Though at least as much because he'd spoken almost silently as because he'd had his heavy accent. Six was too old to pick up English quickly, though both his parents had tried to speak it to him a little bit. "Tayne is, um, kind of an unusual name, isn't it? Not that I don't like it or anything. Um, it's nice." Ah, digging himself a hole. Familiar territory.
"Yeah. My mother had funny ideas about creativity." Tayne rolled his eyes a bit, but it was amiable and directed at his mother, not Dhaval at all. Having something in common-- having trouble talking when they were little, though presumably for different reasons-- kind of endeared him to the guy. He finished off the nail, holding out a hand for one more to finish off the board entirely. "Mine's not too bad-- easy to say. My brother was a bitch to say, though. I think the only reason I could manage was cuz I grew up with him."
Dhaval fished out a nail and passed it over carefully. "Oh? What was his name?" He was a little surprised that Tayne was talking about family. Maybe his brother was alright, and here? Or maybe it just hadn't sunk in yet. Dhaval felt like he should have trouble thinking of his parents, but it just hadn't penetrated yet. He was still expecting his phone to ring with advice about some ridiculous internet rumor his mother had found about what would give him cancer, an invite to dinner to listen to his father's weird old war stories, a knock at his door because they'd just been in the area and thought they'd stop in and check on him. He even still found all those ideas annoying. Denial, yes? Stage one of grieving, if memory served.
Quite honestly, Tayne had no idea how the rest of his family was doing. None of them had answered their phones, but his parents didn't have a cell phone and could easily have been chased from their house, and his brother probably was ignoring all calls since a lot of them would be from patients who he couldn't deal with, and... yeah. It was probably denial. "Torshael," Tayne said with a lopsided grin, flinching just slightly as he started hammering again. "What kind of name is 'Torshael' anyway, right? I think she just made them up, I've never heard of anyone else having names even close."
"Torshael..." Dhaval smiled. "No, I haven't heard it. And, well, I spend a lot of time with books of weird names." One of his favorite things about writing in historical periods was giving his characters subtly appropriate names, spending hours searching for the perfect one. "Sounds... Almost Arthurian. Torshael of the Round Table." Dhaval didn't notice the wince. His own ears weren't particularly sharp. He was pretty sure that all his time spent under anesthesia and the coma after his accident had dulled his senses, but he wasn't sure if that was even feasible and didn't want to sound paranoid by answering.
Snorting an amused laugh, Tayne said, "He'd probably like that, actually. He's a real knight in shining armor, or he thinks he is.... Psychologist, and charity worker, and shit like that. He's a nice guy, but I think he goes overboard sometimes." After everything, Tayne going off to join the army, Torshael hadn't even decided to stay on the farm... Vanessa got that lucky break. If it could be called that. Right now, maybe it could... a farm was isolated enough, and easily defensible enough, to be pretty safe in times like these. As long as they killed the animals, anyway....
"Oh, yeah, I know the type." Well, theoretically he did. Dhaval knew people from reading and writing about them much better than in reality, when they didn't seem to make any sense at all. the characters he put together were far more real and complete to him. Dhaval regarded his companion for just a moment, wondering about him, whether he had one of these strange "powers," how he'd wound up here. He was surrounded by stories, and in a strange way, that was exciting. "So busy riding everywhere on his metaphorical white horse, hmm?"
"Basically." Tayne shrugged, and stood back. The board looked pretty well nailed on. He reached for his stockpile of plywood for another piece, held it against the window to make sure it was both long enough and not possessing any cracks down the middle, then said, "Okay, now you get to help support somethin', because I need an extra pair of hands to hold this in place while I start hammering." It was even at a good height for Dhaval to hold up. "So... is it considered rude to ask what changed for you? Guy here told me that people can... like... do shit now. Weird shit. Like teleport."
Dhaval felt a familiar, icy twinge for a moment, mistaking the question at first for a more familiar one. Funny, sometimes he didn't mind at all explaining about the accident, sometimes he enjoyed telling it in grisly detail to make people uncomfortable (though he had to be provoked to do that), and sometimes he just couldn't bring himself to talk about it. When he realized Tayne had a far more pertinent question, he relaxed. "Oh... Oh, yes, I did hear that." He was still embarrassed about the whole thing, really. How like him. Everyone else had Marvel-style superpowers, and he had a decreased need for sandwiches. "I, um, can't say it's rude. You know? What etiquette would there be? But, well, it seems incredibly silly. I don't seem to need food anymore."
That was a little silly. Though Tayne couldn't help but notice the moment of tension. The guy's muscles froze up for a moment-- well, the ones that worked, anyhow. Lucky for Dhaval, Tayne had seen people torn up by the war, so he wasn't too weird about disabilities like that. He wasn't sure what the tension was about, he was just glad it went away. Dhaval seemed like a nice sort of fellow, and he didn't want to make him uncomfortable. "Uh, yeah, gotta say... interesting sort of change, but kind of a weird one. Though then again, maybe it'll be the most useful-- it won't matter to you when the fresh food runs out, yeah?" Which it would. He had no illusions of that. Especially once winter set in.
"In that respect, well, it seems sort of... fair. I mean, I won't be able to do much to contribute to our store of food. I'm not complete deadweight." He didn't want to seem like he was just moaning and feeling sorry for himself, and he really had been alright when he and Pepper went scrounging. "But I'd be a liability for anyone else, and using me as a wheelbarrow isn't quite worth it. So at least I won't be consuming what I, well, can't provide." Holding the board still, he wedged himself at an angle where he'd still be able to talk comfortably. Or as much as one could over the hammering. "What about you? Um, anything interesting yet?" Tayne still looked perfectly normal, but a lot of people seemed to. Meeting Pepper first had been learning to swim by jumping into the deep end.
That was a kind of worrisome way to think, and Tayne shot Dhaval a brief frown. There were all sorts of things men in wheelchairs could do-- he'd seen it. But he also wasn't sure how to explain that, especially to a near-stranger, so he let it lie for the moment. "Well. Sounds hurt my ears more than normal, and I can smell things I couldn't, before.... I knew you were coming because I smelled you, not cuz I heard you or anything. And light hurts my eyes. I don't know if that really counts, though. I thought, before, that it meant I was, like, messed up from being sick."
"Hmm. You, my friend, either have slightly annoying superpowers or you're developing a migraine." Dhaval smiled faintly. He was quite used to all the things he could do, whether in actuality or just in theory. No, he'd never made any sort of peace with his disability, but he was very good about his physical therapy, had held down a job without difficulty, if also without interest, and he had become the writer he'd always wanted to be. He was only useless in this new context, and really only by comparison. The fact was that he was less effective physically, and aside from maybe Taylor, nobody needed to be told historical fantasy stories. "But either way, I would say, really, um, you have an advantage. Knowing what's going on around you is, well, awfully important."
"Suppose so... though it's a hell of a pain right now, when I'm supposed to be nailing up boards, and the hammer-sound makes me scream," Tayne chuckled a bit. "Oh, well. That's what the headphones were for." And he'd put up with it to keep chatting. Everybody still needed social interaction, or they'd probably all go crazy. "It's a lot more useful when I'm out there." He pointed with the hammer to the window, meaning outside. "Probably what kept me alive, until I got here, I guess. How long you been in here, anyhow?"
"Not long at all. Um, since yesterday, really. My friend and I noticed that very useful sign." Or he'd probably still be wandering the streets with the childish ogre-woman. Or... wheeling the streets. He was never sure how certain verbs applied to him. Dhaval wished he could offer to hammer in Tayne's stead, but he was pretty sure he'd just smash fingers. He wasn't very handy. "Moving has been pretty limited for me, so I haven't seen much. ...I, um, imagine there isn't much that's special to see, though. Besides people." Who apparently now had magic powers or... something. He was still very unclear. "Hotels are meant to be transient places. Seems as though setting up lives here will change the spirit of the place..." Dhaval blinked. He had thoughts like that all the time, but he usually had the sense not to offer such strange comments out loud. "Um, I mean... I don't know what I mean."
"The spirit of the place?" Tayne repeated, sounding a little amused. That was an interesting way to put it. "Hell, man. I ain't ever really lived anywhere that wasn't trans-- tran-- wasn't like a hotel. Not since high school, when I lived at home. So I'm used to it. Too bad hotels don't have better long-term living shit... a fireplace in each room would be useful, or windows in the stairwell." Otherwise things would get pretty interesting when the power went out. Tayne was a practical sort, and that was what he was worried about-- less about the spirit of places. He wasn't sure he was even sure what that meant.
Dhaval felt absolutely silly for that one. He blamed Taylor's enthusiasm. People didn't like talking about the dopey ideas that floated across an author's mind. A lot of them didn't even look good on paper, let alone in conversation. To cover his moment of ridiculousness, he was quick to agree. "Oh, a fireplace would be fantastic." He was speaking a little more quickly, trying to sound... like less of a brain-dead daydreamer, maybe? "Um, that sounds... unique. What did you do?" The first idea that came to mind was traveling salesman, but that was archaic, romantic, and silly, personable and potentially effective at such a task as Tayne seemed.
"Army," Tayne answered simply, "then I took up welding and woodcutting when I was discharged. I've done a lot of traveling, following pipeline jobs or moving one logging company to another." He shrugged, hammering again. "I always did kinda like travel, anyway. And it worked out, cuz when everything went down, I had an axe in my hand." He grinned faintly at that. Probably not the most cheerful of subjects, but it did still kind of loom large in his mind.
"Oh, wow." When Dhav was younger, that was the sort of life he'd envisioned for himself. He didn't think he'd ever have made much of a fighter, but his father had been a soldier. As a child, he'd played as much with guns and little plastic army guys as much as anyone. Up to the accident, he'd wanted to be a fighter pilot when he grew up. A flicker of admiration crossed his face and he sent a soft smile back to Tayne's grin. "That did work out well for you, then. Um, I always meant to travel, but finances kept getting in the way." Traveling was actually perfectly easy for him. There were few people as solicitous as transit employees who'd had to go through dozens of training videos and other such nonsense about how to be careful with the handicapped. But except for a couple trips to Chicago or to the North Woods with his Dad, he hadn't managed to get much in on an office bitch's salary. He'd sort of assumed that if his books took off he might go on tours or to conventions, but that'd hardly happen now.
To be honest, Tayne was just glad Dhaval hadn't asked why he'd been discharged. He might not have minded talking about his stuttering, but talking about his terror of something as simple as water was a different story. The admiration embarrassed him a little, but it was a little heartening, too, and he shot the guy a slightly sheepish grin. "It's not really that great. Traveling all the time. You have to be able to put up with shitty hotels and tents and sleeping in your mini-camper. Or, well, I did. My kind of travel was to get money, so I suppose it would be different than traveling, like, for vacation."
"That's a much more efficient way to do it." It still sounded exciting to Dhav, but it was easy to romanticize things when your experience was mostly sitting in a cubicle and cursing fate to a spreadsheet. "I guess I'm not really very used to slumming it, so, well, that doesn't sound too bad to me. But I'm probably just speaking as an office monkey. Though I guess now I wish I were, uh, still being bored at work." At least when the world ended he was finally getting out and meeting people. Dhaval felt awfully callous for even thinking such a thing, but bad humor seemed to be his coping mechanism of choice.
Tayne winced, but it was the kind of wince that went with a groaner, and came with a little chuckle. "You know, I think we all are wishing that, right about now. I'd rather still be cutting trees than... this." Though at least maybe he had useful skills, if they needed trees or buildings demolished, or needed any pipes in the building fixed. Really needed to get back out to the truck in the next few days, maybe find a way into town, or move some other cars out of the way, so he could get the thing up to the hotel....
At least he was amusing the other man with his strangeness. "Well, um, so would I. Be cutting trees, that is. I almost prefer this to the office. And I don't think I've ever held an axe. I'd probably... cut off my own leg. Not that I'd miss it so much, um, I assume." Dark humor? Not very like him, but only out loud. He normally just made such comments to himself. Or sometimes to the internet at large. Was it sad to require an apocalypse to come out of one's self-imposed shell?
"Uh, you might not feel it, depending on why you're in that chair," Tayne said, wincing again but still smiling, "but I think you'd probably miss it. I know guys lacking in a limb. It's more of a pain to lose than not to feel, I think. Especially if then you've got one, and you're all off-balance." Okay, so maybe he was playing the dark humor a little too deep. But he wasn't the best with that kind of thing, and Dhaval seemed a forgiving sort. He hoped.
"Oh, I'd feel it." People usually assumed he was paralyzed, which was reasonable. "And I'd miss it. But if the hypothetical axe is, uh, cutting off a hypothetical limb, I'd rather it be one I don't really, well, depend on." Dhaval found this conversation surprisingly pleasant. He couldn't remember anyone who'd ever dared to joke back with him. He was much more used to being told he was very brave (no courage like having his lower half smashed by a drunk driver, after all) or having the chair be studiously, determinedly ignored. "I'm off kilter enough as is. Wobbly wheel."
"Wobbly wheel?" Tayne asked, pausing in the hammering to look down, distracted by a small problem that really should get fixed. Nobody should have to go through the apocalypse with a wobbly wheel. "I bet I could fix that for you. Or hopefully make it a little better." So the guy wasn't paralyzed. Just weakened or damaged enough somewhere in the spine or legs enough that he couldn't use them to walk with. That was probably good to know.
"It's not really that bad right now. As long as I've had this chair, it's had a tendency to screw up a little on this side, but it just needs to be tightened every so often." Dhaval smiled. "Thanks for the, uh, offer, though. I'll probably have to take you up on it sooner or later. It's getting a lot more exercise lately, relatively speaking." He took off the brake and wheeled back a little. Yeah, the right wheel was a little bit stiff, but not a problem for now. He didn't move his hand from the board and resituated himself a moment later.
"Well, you let me know. I'm relatively handy with screwing things in." And that... could be taken really wrong. Coughing a little, Tayne turned himself back to the hammering, hoping Dhaval wouldn't take it wrong, and plowed on, hoping it'd be overlooked even if it was taken wrong. "You oughta have a chair that works for ya. How long've you been using that one?" Not how long since he'd been in a chair, period, just that one. If it wasn't one he was comfortable with, the poor guy might be in trouble. They might have to find him a better one.
Dhaval quite entirely missed the possible connotations. In addition to being treated in general like he was made of glass, Dhaval was used to being seen as perfectly asexual. Strange, as he wrote rather elaborate, involved romance subplots into his books, but he'd found the easiest way to avoid that inherent frustration (as well as the difficulties attendant to his utter lack of attraction to women) was to distance himself entirely from the merest idea of sex and relationships. "Oh, I don't know... Since the end of college? And the one before that I'd had since I was thirteen. I, well, lived a pretty immobile lifestyle most of the time. In front of a computer at home or work."
Well, at least it hadn't gotten awkward. Thank god. "Shit, man. Sorry to hear it. You ever even get to go out for a beer with the office guys, or something?" Okay, so the most of office life Tayne really knew was from shows like... well... The Office. He'd always been an outdoorsy type, in work and play. "They got beers around here, right? In that bar?" He'd have to drag Dhaval into the bar at some point, just to say he'd been in one and had drinks.
"Bars are um, really, not my idea of fun. Um, can you think of a worse place to be crotch height to everyone?" And it made his usually latent claustrophobia act up to be surrounded by that many people, all of them acting stupid and failing to respect personal space. He thought about saying that when he drank, it was usually with his parents or alone, but that made him sound like king of the hopeless losers. Really, Dhaval wasn't in the habit of drinking a lot. He'd spent his teen years recovering from surgery half the time, on drugs that meant he shouldn't touch alcohol, and by the time he'd begun to have regular stretches without painkillers, he'd sort of lost interest. "I went to Fern Bar sorts of places sometimes, but that's probably the least exciting thing anyone could imagine doing. Ever." Nothing like the bland chicken wings and ditzy waitresses of Applebees.
"Oh. Yeah. I suppose I didn't even think of that." Why would he have? He'd never been stuck in a chair before. Tayne shook his head with an amused sort of look, still hammering away. This board was almost done, too. "Yeah, that'd probably suck.... Though does that mean I can't drag you off to he bar here? It'll probably be empty. Everybody needs to at least say they've been to a bar and had a beer once. I would offer you somebody to hit on, too, but I don't actually know many people here yet, and one of the few I do is way too young for you."
"I think the idea of me... hitting on someone is the strangest part of the equation." Afraid that sounded more like abject self pity than a quiet, habitual bemusement, Dhaval quickly turned it into a joke. Tayne was so easy to get along with that even the usual nervous ticks in his speech were disappearing, and he found it a bit easier to think on his feet. ...In a manner of speaking. That one wasn't bad, but he didn't see a way to insert it into conversation. "Just think how many pick-up lines would make people feel tremendously awkward. I'd, um, happily join you, as long as we raid something fancy and imported. Live up the end of the world. The upper crust of the Titanic, on a larger scale." Maybe he was being silly again? He hoped not. He found he liked Tayne, an increasingly familiar thing lately. Apparently, all the fun people had been hiding behind civilization and a lack of general misery.
"Guess it's a good thing I don't know anyone for you to hit on, then," Tayne chuckled. "It'll have to be an incomplete bar experience. I'll make sure we find something expensive to drink." Though he didn't know how much of it he'd partake in. He wasn't used to anything stronger or more expensive than beer or, on rare occasions, three-dollar wine. Maybe he'd just get really, extremely drunk. "Soon's we've got all the first-floor windows taken care of, anyhow. I don't wanna try to be hammering things with a hangover. It's bad enough now, but then? Ugh."
Dhaval really had a two beer limit himself, so he tried to make it count with reasonably nice, dark beers. Kingfisher Strong was an inherited taste, his father's favorite (and he couldn't put that in the past tense yet), but he didn't depend on finding an Indian beer in a hotel bar. He nodded in agreement over the hangover comment. "Oh, ugh, I've lived in nasty, thin-walled apartments all my life and even I think that's asking for either madness or the headache to end all headaches." Hammering was really fine compared to the arguments and loud sex noises that had often been his lot to listen to, but that didn't make it pleasant. "And, um, just might make those delicate eardrums of yours explode."
"Yeah," Tayne agreed, able to imagine it. "It can be to celebrate having a safe first floor, I guess. Or as safe as we can make it." He was half-tempted to find some iron grille to reinforce a few of the windows from the outside, but he didn't know how he'd manage that. "It's a plan, then?" he asked with a bigger grin and another piece of plywood offered over for Dhaval to brace. He was going to guess he'd made a new friend, here.
Dhaval turned the hold the plank steady. "Yeah, that's a plan. And it's definitely, well, safer than it was. Those things are... Well, alright, they're really very intimidating. But they're still bound by the same old laws of physics. They'd have to throw something pretty big to get though glass and plywood. And hopefully by the time they did, they'd be less of a problem." It would be completely silly to try, and if the monsters outside had any lingering sense of self-preservation or even just predatory instincts. But there was nothing to really say they did. The boards were an improvement either way, and Dhaval returned Tayne's smile with almost none of his usual shyness.
Peering out through the slit between the boards, before he started hammering again, Tayne said, "I'm not really sure what to think about those things, honestly.... It's like they're just killing and eating machines. Do they ever get full? Will they make packs or herds eventually, or just stay completely solo? Will they, like, breed? Or is this the only amount of life we're ever gonna have, now?" If that was the case, the human race was in a shitload of trouble. Maybe there was a kind of animal somewhere that escaped the virus, or was immune, and they could somehow find and tame that... but from what he'd seen so far, Tayne really didn't know.
"They're infants," Dhaval said before he could stop himself. The weird little thoughts that were always floating across his mind were apparently refusing to stay put until he found a place for them on a page. He cleared his throat a bit. "I mean, this happened overnight. Whatever's driving them, they're probably at least as confused as we are." Dhaval couldn't quite see that high. He realized with a start that he was probably stuck permanently on the first floor. The elevators depended on power that could go any time and it would probably take Pepper and Tayne to carry him up stairs in anything like comfort for anyone. Somehow, the idea of never getting any sun was rather horrifying. "Do you think maybe you could leave a slit more, you know, eye level for me next window?" The change of subject was perhaps a little abrupt, but remembering how good the sun had felt those hours scrounging with his odd friend, he suddenly couldn't stand to lose something he'd been avoiding for years.
"What? Oh. Oh!" The implications of where he'd been evenly spacing his boards hit him and he made a face. "Damn, I'm sorry, I didn't even think. I'll leave the bottom bit open on the next few, that oughta give you a view out. But you know, at least while the elevators are working, you should get out on the roof. It's got access. And, hell, I'd take you out front some, I imagine you'd be safe enough for a few minutes." Especially with somebody who could hear and smell anything dangerous coming. "Nobody should be stuck inside their whole lives. That ain't healthy."
"Um, I'd like that. Thank you." Just a week ago he'd made a show of hissing when the sun crept by his curtains too early and he'd made clawing motions at the air in a ridiculous pantomime of a movie vampire. To no audience but his poor, departed hamster, of course. "I guess I should, well, do some exploring while I can." Though he could just see the elevators finally dying while he was on the roof. It'd be just his luck. Well, stairs would be easier to get down than up. Painful, but possible. "If nothing else I need to raid some hand weights from the gym. Well, I'm, um, assuming there's a gym. The hotel seems a bit fancy to not have one. But if I don't keep up my PT regime, well, I'm sure you can guess how much of a workout I get incidentally. It's amazing how fast you can loose muscle mass, and just when I'd need it, too."
"There's a fitness center, yeah. Right here on the first floor, even." Tayne started nailing in the last board for this window, now that he had it straight, where he wanted it, and Dhaval had it braced well. "I'm sure there's shit in there you can use. Maybe even some of the machines, if you're into that sort of thing." Tayne was. He was planning on keeping himself in the best shape he possibly could; being strong and fast and enduring, in times like this, was probably the best way to keep himself and others safe. That, and being smart, but there was only so much he could do about smarts and his sometimes lack of them.
"Tells you how much I've looked around." Dhaval shrugged, a bit embarrassed. "Well, I've only been here for about a day. Well, good. I won't have to have someone, um, steal me a couple weights, then. And it'll make sure I get out of my room." Not that his room was a welcoming place. "The upper body machines can be good, though it can be a pain to get into them. Hand weights are my preference, though. Lots of flexibility. And while one can't always find a quad-enhancing tricep resistor, there's usually something heavy around." He usually only worked out in public around other disabled people, but somehow the idea didn't really bother him. People had much more to worry about than catching non-functional-legitis from him, and he had more to occupy him than funny looks.
The fancy name for the equipment made Tayne chuckle. "I don't think I even know what the things are called, I just use 'em. But getting out of your room's a good thing, so's keeping in shape. At least as much as possible, these days. Here's hopin' most of those machines don't need electricity." The treadmill probably would, they were all computerized these days, but the others, especially the weight ones, would probably be fine. He slammed the last nail home and added, "I think this window's done."
"Most of them should be fine, I think. Well, except for those little displays what tell you how much weight or how many calories, but who really needs those?" Dhaval shrugged. "It looks fine to me." He backed up a bit and nodded. Not much artistry to appreciate in nailing a board over a window, but it was certainly a serviceable job. "That's a few less nails you'll, um, have to listen to in the future, I guess?" Maybe he should stop trying to be funny. It seemed to happen on its own sometimes, but that was it.
"I still have a lot more ahead of me," Tayne sighed, thinking of the rest of the windows. He only had two done down here, and he still had probably half a dozen more in the room alone. The fitness center would need boards from ceiling to floor... this was gonna be a long few days, getting this job done.
Maybe he'd at least have some company for some of it. Giving Dhaval a grin, he hefted an armload of plywood, let him get the tool box, and said, "Best get started on 'em. Care to stick around a bit?"
"No objection at all." What was he going to do, go to his room and stare at the wall a while longer? There were some interesting cracks in his wall. It wasn't a bad wall by any means. But that wasn't saying much. "I've, uh, got no previous engagements, certainly. Just a long day of feeling sorry for myself planned, um, mostly." He grinned to make it clear he didn't mean that to be taken the least bit seriously. "And we've got, um, a whole lot of windows to shore up." He probably wasn't being that much help, but he'd try.
"No feeling sorry for yourself allowed," Tayne told him definitively, mostly teasing, but at the same time certainly meaning it. "Grab that tool box and my hammer for me, and we'll get this show moved down the line." Hurray for mixing metaphors-- and for company while he worked.