joycewatkins (joycewatkins) wrote in downfallrpg, @ 2010-04-09 19:45:00 |
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Entry tags: | 2015-09-01, joyce, joyce and tayne, tayne |
Unnecessary Rescue
Who: Tayne and Joyce
Where: The streets by the craft shop
When: Afternoon
For her part, Joyce would rather not have to stay behind, but she had the long-range weapon and some moderate amount of experience, compared to the other women, anyway, in using it. And she was one of the leaders. It was her duty to give them time to escape. It was the right thing to do and at the end of the day, if Joyce had to go out at all, it would be doing the right thing.
The dogs - which was as good a description as anything - ran the gamut of Corgi to German Shepherd in size, only warped through the virus or whatever this end-of-the-world scenario was all about. They'd probably been pets in the neighborhood and now they'd banded together as mutant mutts, just trying to survive. And she was currently on the menu.
She'd been able to kill or wound some of the pack, but the trouble with shot guns, even such a decent model as Juan's, was loading time. It took too long for her to load fast enough to keep them at bay, especially since she was running as she did it - running in the opposite direction from where Tayne had driven. And the dogs were fast. Joyce finished loading, turned and fired as two at the front of the pack lunged to take her down. The gun went off, one of the dogs howled and Joyce went down.
Grasping at straws, she yelled out, "Heel! Stay! No... bad dog...!" It got its huge jaws around her arm and bit down, hard. She yelled again, just out of reflex, as anyone else might who expected to be bitten and torn, limb from limb. The rest of the pack had caught up by now. With her free arm, she swung the butt of the shotgun at one of the smaller dogs. She hit it, but figured it wouldn't be long now before... Before...
Joyce was dragged, by the sheer mass of the creatures. She looked over at the big dog, who was pulling at her arm. In vain. He couldn't get his teeth into her and her arm was still attached to her body, despite his desperate efforts. Her shirt was torn, but her skin was untouched. Another dog was trying to get at her leg and bit into her jeans. Inspired by this new turn of events, she kicked it away and swung her gun at the head of the big dog. It yelped and let go.
God, what is going on?
Joyce brought the gun up again to fire on another dog and the pack turned and retreat. Better fled than dead, even if you're a monster dog pack. Live to eat another target. She stood, shaking, unharmed, dazed by the experience. Walking back to the hobby shop, she wondered what other miracles would happen today. She removed her baseball cap and shook out her hair. It was almost too much to absorb. For the next little while, she sat on the step to the store and shifted between double-checking her body for injury and dragging a hand through her hair.
It took almost half an hour to get Jasmine and KJ back to the hotel, take a break to throw up in the shrubs that lined the building next door, and then speed back to the site they'd had to leave Joyce. That had been one of the hardest things he'd ever had to do, but you couldn't fit four people on a motorcycle-- it was hard enough to fit three, and they'd almost not gotten away because of it-- and Joyce had refused to drive. Tayne hadn't had any choice, and his poor, fuzzy brain hadn't been working well enough to come up with any alternatives, even if there had been some.
It had still been a shitty thing to have to do, and it was guilt more than hope that Joyce actually needed a rescue that brought him racing back to the scene of the attack. At the very least he could chase away those dog-shaped things and bring her back to the hotel to bury her in the lawn... that was something. Right?
When Tayne reached the craft shop, he didn't find the bloody scene he'd expected. He found a dead few dogs-- which he immediately considered the feasibility of getting back to the hotel to cook up-- and Joyce, alive and well, sitting in the doorway to the shop. He slowed the motorcycle down as he approached, staring a little. "What the hell?" he asked, more rhetorically than anything else. "Joyce?"
She heard the motorcycle and looked up, but didn't have the thought processes to stand. Looking as confused as she felt, Tayne, in all his pale glory, pulled up on his motorcycle: the cavalry, come to rescue or retrieve. It made her feel really good to know that regardless, he came back.
"Hi," she said weakly. "Nice day for a drive, isn't it?..." Joyce sighed. "I have no clue, Tayne. They... " Where did she start? She was a smart woman, tough, strong. Why couldn't she seem to form sentences? "They didn't like me..."
"My rear view mirrors said oth-- otherwise," Tayne pointed out, killing the bike engine and kicking down the kickstand, though he didn't get off it yet, still staring a little. He couldn't see her very well, sunk into the shadow of the building as she was, but none of the blood he could smell had that distinctly human scent to it. "They were sure attackin' like they liked you. Or at least wanted a b-bite of you to find out. Are you okay? What-- what the hell happened?"
Joyce sighed and stood slowly. Her shirt was a mess, torn and splattered with blood - none of it hers. One leg of her jeans was a write off. There was blood there, too, but then, it was on her skin, as well. "I thought I was puppy chow, too. Now I'm..." She looked down. "Jackson Pollock." She looked over at Tayne and took a tentative step forward. "They couldn't eat me. They... They couldn't break my skin or... My arm is still attached and it shouldn't be..."
The sight, and the smell of the animal blood coming closer, made Tayne feel queasy all over again. He swallowed heavily and tried to breathe through his mouth. "They couldn't-- what? They tried to bite you and couldn't?" How did that work? Was there some sort of force protecting her skin...? "C'mere, lemme see...." He could ignore the smell. He could. Yesterday it would've made him hungry. Today it made him want to throw up. Goddamn, what was wrong with him?
"They couldn't... get through my skin... pull me apart... they tried..." Joyce started walking toward him, then she blinked through the fog that was smothering her mind and his reaction registered. She stopped moving. "Tayne... I don't... mean anything by this, but... you look like you're going to be sick..." She tilted her head a little to one side. "In fact... you haven't looked well since I saw you this morning..." Something was wrong. "I'm... in 'mother mode', Tayne..." she warned gently, unable to avoid some humor.
"I'm fine," Tayne waved it off. "Already did the sick thing, so d-don't work 'bout it.... Think I'm still jus' payin' for drinking too much last night." He swallowed again, got the urge under control, and got off the bike finally, using the handlebars to steady himself until he was sure of his footing. "So they couldn't bite you?" he asked, forcing himself to focus, holding out a hand for hers so he could look. "They couldn't get close, or they c-couldn't actually bite, or what?"
Her eyebrows rose a little, but she didn't say anything further. Tayne getting drunk was, for some reason, not something she'd think he'd do, but just because she wouldn't do it... though maybe she would have a beer or something after today's events...
Joyce placed her hand in his, looking at it as if it belonged to someone else. "No, the dog tried to bite into it and then... dragged me a bit trying to pull my arm off and..." She pointed at her leg with her other hand. "Same here. Different dog, though. It's... over there..." She nodded toward a few canine corpses. "They... couldn't hurt me... at all...."
"Huh." Tayne gave her arm a squint over, then glanced down at her leg. Shredded cloth... whole skin. "Maybe that's your gift. Or power. Or whatever these things are. Unbreakable skin. That'd be pretty damn useful...." The inability to be hurt, even if it was just on the skin, was priceless if you wanted to go out and hunt or scavenge or even just scout. Nothing out here could hurt her, if so. Tayne would love a power like that....
Joyce blinked a few more times. Why hadn't she thought of that? "Maybe it is... well... that was... unexpected, but... timely..." Pause. "Um... Can we try something? See if a knife can cut my arm..." Joyce wasn't self-destructive, but she needed to know how far this thing went. If her skin couldn't be broken, that would be very useful for the group. She could do all kinds of things and not be as much at risk as some of the others. "Of course, maybe standing in the street... isn't a good place to try this..."
"S'as good a place as any...." Tayne patted his pockets, then pulled out a swiss army knife. "Not like it'll take long to try." He flipped the knife open and, giving her a warning glance, gave it a try, trying to slice shallowly across the top of her forearm.
Not even a scratch.
"Well," he said, folding the knife again, since he wasn't about to dull the blade with multiple attempts, "that settles that...."
"Okay," she said, and at his warning look, braced herself. The knife just slid across her skin, as if it was made of stone or something. "Yeah, that.. settles it..." She sighed and flexed her fingers. "I wonder if I'm bullet-proof, too? And no, I don't think... we should test that, just in case. At least... not here..." She wanted to know, but she didn't want to push her luck. "Well... Hot damn..." She sounded dazed, probably because she was dazed.
"Maybe later. With that healer-girl around, just in case." Tayne pocketed the knife again and said, "You ready to go home? I'd say we should g-go look for that garden store, but... but." He passed a hand over his eyes tiredly. "I just ain't up for it. We can take the stuff we found back, though. And a couple've these." He nudged one of the fallen dog-monsters with a toe. "At least there'll be more meat, then." As soon as he got over this... whatever it was, then they'd go out looking for stuff to plant and enough dirt to coat the roof.
"Good idea." She looked at the canine corpses and swallowed. "You're right. Yeah. Um... Shame about the garden store, but if you don't feel up to it... and I'm still..." Joyce ran a hand through her hair again. "I'm still in shock... Another day." Looking back to Tayne, she added softly, "Are you up to even dealing with the dogs?" The thought of eating something that had once been a pet wasn't the most appealing thing she'd ever considered, but since the monster 'chicken steaks' Tayne had made, she'd been working her head around being as practical about the food supply as she usually was about anything else.
"Rather we use 'em than more monsters get fat off 'em," Tayne shrugged. "And we'll just sling 'em across the bike and walk back. Shouldn't be a problem." He was exhausted, overheated, and still feeling nauseous. But he wasn't going to admit it, and he wasn't going to let it beat him. "We'll go out for the garden store 'nother day," he promised, moving to grab the monster-dog by the scruff of the neck and the tail, to haul it up across the motorcycle's seat. "Maybe we'll bring a truck then, and get lots of dirt." It would take a long time to drive it, what with needing to move other cars out of the way as they went, but there really wasn't any other way to get that much dirt to the hotel.
"Yeah." She tried not to think about the monsters, dining in the streets, though having witnessed it, it was difficult to ignore the image. She watched Tayne handle one of the bigger dogs and tried not to think about her neighbor's golden retriever, back when she and Richard had the house. "Dirt. We'll need dirt. Dirt, plants, seeds... containers for all of that, though maybe we can find..." She bent over one of the smaller dogs, the one who had tried to eat her leg. It didn't look too much like a dog anymore, but it was definitely more canine than Human. "Wood, treated for the garden but without..." Joyce picked up the corpse and turned for the bike. "Without poisonous chemicals in it and build our own containers... and we could use bricks, too, outside..." She placed the little corpse on the bike and turned away, considering the other dogs.
"Hell, I was just thinking we'd coat a whole half of the roof in dirt and plant things in it," Tayne admitted, draping the body he carried over the seat and letting Joyce stack the second one in behind it. "It'd be easier, and less likely to break or rot or whatever than if we had to make containers for planters. All we'd need is a shit-ton of dirt, then, and we could probably find that." Even if they had to dig it up out of a park or someone's backyard, dirt was everywhere. Wood and brick, perhaps not so much. He glanced at the third with a frown, trying to decide whether there was room. It was a bigger one.
Might as well. Maybe some new resident would crop up who could freeze things, or maybe he could try that drying process V had suggested. "Help me get this one?" he suggested, moving back to grab its hind legs.
"Hmmm," she said in acknowledgment. "As long as there's proper drainage... but for the pots in the hallway we were talking about..." Her voice trailed off when Tayne asked for her assistance. Oh, dear... Poor thing... Whether she meant the dog or Tayne, she wasn't certain. "Sure," she said and took firm hold of the front legs. "Either we're going to have... one hell of a cook-out..." Damn, but the dog was heavy. Good thing both of them were strong. "Or you know of a way we can keep all this meat from spoiling..." She sighed as they placed the corpse on the bike. "Maybe we should set up a smokehouse..."
"That bird we had the other day was huge, Joyce," Tayne explained with a tired grin, reaching into the motorcycle saddlebags for a bungee cord to rope the dogs down with. "Taller than I was. And she barely fed half the hotel one day. Plus, she kept a good day and a half 'fore I butchered her, and then another half day until I cooked her. They'll last long 'nuff. Besides, one of the kids suggested a way to dry some, and I'll prolly play with that a but with leftovers. If you've got any idea how to smoke meat, though, I'd be glad to give it a try." He gave the cord one last tug. "That oughta hold 'em... let's get outa here."
"You're right. Just... If we keep finding sources of meat like this... or if we go hunting..." As if you know how to hunt anything... or are capable of killing... Of course, she'd killed in self-defense.
Joyce looked at the bungee cords and the dogs and Tayne. Despite looking pale and obviously not feeling one hundred percent, at least he wasn't throwing up at the moment. "I'd need a refresher. My grandmother was into pickling and preserves, so I have a better idea about that than I do about smoking. I'd have to look it up." She chuckled a little. "I nearly said that I'd have to Google it. Ah, those were the days." She crossed back to the stoop of the store and picked up her baseball hat, sticking it on her head without pulling her hair through into a ponytail. Then she picked up the shotgun, loaded it from the supply on her bandoleer and returned to Tayne's side. "The rest of the pack ran for it, so yeah, getting out of here would be a good idea..." Still a little giddy that she was alive, there was a bit of a bounce in her step as she started to walk.
"Once we get some fruit and veggies growing, or at least found somewhere," Tayne told her wearily, kicking up the stand on his bike and starting it rolling along, "I'll def'nite be giving some to you to work with." Preserved, pickled, or canned fruits and veggies would get them through winter. They needed plenty to hold them over.
She had all his bounce. Tayne's walk was more of a trudge, especially once he picked up the dropped backpacks and the edge of the luggage to hand over to Joyce to roll along. All he wanted was to get back to the hotel and sleep. Preferably for a week.