One Wrong Step... Who: Bruce Banner What: Bruce goes hunting for provisions, and messes up. Where: at the edges of a town not a long ways away. When: Monday afternoon Warnings/Ratings: PG-13 with mentions of violence, sickness, and NPC death Status: Narative
Bruce walked through the warehouse. He'd gone several towns away, pushing the borrowed vehicle he had found the night before to its limits, and finally, here in the outskirts of town, he was sure he had found something worth finding. A warehouse section, mostly looted, but with a locked, barricaded freezer section that looked unbroken. Bruce had gone to get some tools, and now he moved toward the freezer door with a heavy duty steel-cutter, borrowed from a local factory. Seemed like this had been the industrial part of the area, once, long ago, and some of the things were still around
Bruce was just hoping he would have luck. Fresh frozen food? That was worth taking a chance for, right? he nodded to himself and set to work cutting the latch and bar off of the door to the freezer, which looked to be pretty large. When he succeeded, the cutter slipped, of course, and slammed against his hand before skittering away. He swore, and looked down at his hand, the slice medium sized, but not deep. Damn it. He took a long few breaths, calming himself, and thought for a moment he hard a sound, like a voice. Or a cough.
He turned and reclaimed his flashlight, and shone it's beam around. Nothing moved, and no sounds came again. He shivered and began to wish he had called on someone else to come with him. He checked his phone, but of course the signal was dead inside the building, so he couldn't even toss up a post. He had to be panicking over nothing. Silly Bruce. He nodded to himself, looked around one more time, then ducked into the freezer room. And he swore, this time with a grin. In addition to several large sides of beef, a quantity of frozen liquid that might be blood or some kind of gravy?, there were several large shelves of meat of all kinds. Beef, chicken, fish, and even some pork! Bruce had, indeed, found the mother-load. With a laugh, he did a dance, and stepped out of the freezer, grinning as he turned to head toward a forklift he had seen.
That turn turned him to face two men, holding each other up, and one holding a shaking gun. The men were wan, and their skin was in turns pale and flushed. One coughed, which seemed to set the other off, but soon both were back to staring at him, almost manically, it seemed. They were sick, he knew, with the superflu, and somehow they were still alive. Shit! His heart leaped, and he felt somewhere in him the Hulk start to stir, even as he tried to control his fear and pulse both. "Wh-what do you want?"
The guys laughed. "Food! Whatever is in there and whatever you have in that car outside. Give it all to us, and we'll let you live, old man." The taller man staggered toward Bruce, waving the gun, while the second one dragged himself forward, dragging a board as a weapon. And both of them laughed a high pitch laugh, one broken by coughs, and the spitting up of blood and something else.
"You one of those people who are so holy you don’t get sick? You one of those freaks?" The second guy's voice turned into a shriek of some kind of madness, and Bruce felt his control slipping as the first man closed.
“I don’t want any trouble…” He took out his keys and held them out. “Take the food and the car, and I’ll be on my way.”
“I don’t think so, holy man! You have to pay for your troubles! You have to pay for our troubles. Isn’t that what holy men do? Sacrifice for others? And pay in spades! Which is exactly what you’re going to do.” The taller man leveled the gun at Bruce, and Bruce sighed, and began to release his control, to let out the Hulk. Before he could, the man, close now, began to cough, violent and terrible hacking, and spitting. Blood, and mucus, and more came flying out of his mouth, and the gun went flying to the ground as the man lurched forward, falling right toward Bruce.
Bruce tried to scramble back, getting hit in the face by the man with one of his flailing arms. The other man hacked and started coughing, too, and Bruce retreated farther, watching in horror as the men collapsed, seeming almost to just run down. He realized they must have been sick for some time. He forced himself to turn away from them and to get the forklift, using gloves and an apron from the freezer to load as much of the meat as he could into the car he’d gotten, before he headed back toward the train. It wasn’t until he was almost to the train that he looked down at the cut he had sustained, and then paled, his heart beating a little faster. Mucus and blood, almost definitely not his own, touched his wound, and as he looked, he realized he’d been exposed to the superflu.
He cursed, and slammed a hand on the wheel as he drove. He reached into his mind, looking for the Hulk, for help, and heard laughter. He knew the Hulk wouldn’t let him die, for that would kill the Hulk, but let him be tormented? That the Hulk would do. He swore again and forced himself to breathe and plan. He’d use the gloves and apron to unload the mat, and then he would leave the others, at least until Hulk changed his mind. And he just hoped that wouldn’t be too long a wait.