Setting: Cemetery below Shilo's house, truck, Crescent Grove Cemetery Time: Late night Characters: Graverobber and Shilo Summary: Graverobber takes his apprentice out for a little on-site training Rating: PG-13 for language and corpses
Graverobber cracked his knuckles as he waited for Shilo, lounging in the graveyard at the bottom of her house. Tonight he was going to show her the tricks of the trade ... well, some of them, anyway. He told her she'd have to get rid of the short skirts and dresses for something more practical - pants, boots, and a long coat. Something protective. And to pull her hair back or wear a short wig or something - couldn't get that stuff in your eyes when on the job. He was vaguely curious what she'd dig up, and amused himself with the thought of the petite girl in her father's Repo-man uniform, drowning. He took a long drag on the dog-end in his mouth, then flicked the cherry onto the wet ground.
Shilo's small form appeared, creeping out of her mother's tomb, having used the secret tunnel connecting her house to the graveyard. She had actually taken his advice to heart. She wore a form fitting black coat , open in the front to reveal what had to be a very daring low cut white top and although Shilo didn't have much to work with when it came to cleavage, she had somehow managed to summon some. A pair of black pants completed the outfit, pants that were neither too restrictive, nor too loose; and sensible combat boots. Her long raven hair was pulled back in a long ponytail down her back, though a few rebellious bangs hung in front of her eyes. She looked more like a woman this way. In fact, her outfit seemed to scream that she was here to rob graves, but that she was also a woman.
She spotted him on the outskirts of the cemetery, giving him a nervous smile as she approached, fiddling with the black fingerless gloves that adorned her small hands. "Hey.."
He looked her up and down, amused by the incongruously adult clothing in contrast to her anxious air and little-girl face. It was kind of cute, how hard she was trying. It wasn't hard to see she was going to be quite beautiful when she got older, but the extra effort to produce cleavage where there had been none seemed more sweet than anything else.
"Planning on meeting some eligible corpses tonight?" he joked.
Shilo made a face at his teasing comment, immediately breaking the theme of her current outfit. "Maybe I feel a bit...rebellious." She stuck her tongue out briefly, the conversation obviously helping to calm her nervousness about the highly illegal crime they were about to commit. She's seen him harvest Zydrate before, so she knew what was going to happen, she was just nervous because Amber Sweet still hadn't removed that pesky little 'Graverobbers shot on sight' law.
Of course, she had dressed up for a reason, but it was a reason she would never, ever utter. Shilo, like any girl with her first crush, had dressed to impress.
He snorted, black lips quirking, and then pulled from his pocket one of the long steel needles he used to punch into the brain. He held it out to her, barrel first. "You'll need this."
Shilo's eyes widened as he held out the long steel needle,gulping visibly as she curled her hand around the barrel. She handled the needle like a loaded gun, careful and tentative. "Ok. So we need to find a body next..."
"Right. That's an art in and of itself," he agreed. "And we're not going to start here." He smirked - her training was beginning now. "Tell me why."
Shilo still held the needle, glancing down at it thoughtfully. It shouldn't have felt as heavy as it did, but her conscience made it seem like a dead weight in her hands. What she was doing was wrong, a part of her brain logically argued. It was immoral to disturb the dead. She shook her head, frowning as her thoughts wrestled. No. She was going to do this. She'd signed on for this work and..well she had to take a hold of her destiny, leave behind the restraints of her genetics. That was the lesson she had learned the hard way.
Now, back to our regularly scheduled grave-robbing quiz. Shilo frowned in thought, glancing around the cemetery. It was quiet. Almost too quiet. "Umm...you've harvested here recently?" She offered a weak explanation.
Graverobber shook his head, raising one eyebrow. "Try again."
Shilo brought a fingertip from her free hand to her lips in thought. "Does it have something to do with the Genecorps?"
"It has something to do with you, kid," he told her, giving her a hint.
Shilo bit down on her lower lip for a few seconds. What did she have to do with where they did their grave-robbing? "Oh I don't know! Tell me..."
He shook his head in mock disappointment, tsking as he started out of the cemetary, motioning she should follow. "Because, kid, we don't shit where we eat. First rule of grave-robbing. If you start hitting up somewhere near where you live, it's too easy to find you. Best to move around if you can, but if you're gonna stay in one place, never harvest nearby."
Shilo's pink lips form a large 'O', nodding her head to show that she was listening and taking mental notes. It made sense... "Ok. Gotcha. I won't ever do any grave-robbing around here." She held up her hand mockingly, as if taking an oath.
"Right." He hooked his hand into the lip of a garbage truck that was rumbling past casually, as though he did this every day, pulling himself up to perch in the back, and holding out a hand for her to follow him. "Second, you have to know how to pick your targets. What's good, what's not, where're the hot spots? You're not going to be able to do that just yet, because it means you have to keep your ear to the ground, listen to what's going on in the street."
"Though," he added thoughtfully, giving her another up and down, "People might talk around you. You look harmless."
Shilo trailed after him, telling herself not to stop and gawk at how smoothly he seemed to operate, from robbing graves to hitching a ride in the back of a garbage truck. She reached for his hand, the gloves helping her gasp better as she leaped onto the back of the truck, sitting beside him. "Pick my targets … ok." She made another mental note, hanging onto every word he said. "I didn't know that grave robbing could be so complicated. You make it look easy." She pointed out, frowning and smacking her hand across his shoulder lightly when he called her harmless. "Harmless wasn't exactly what I was going for when I put on all this.... I just thought I might be taken seriously for once and not be just some kid."
Graverobber raised an eyebrow. "But you are a kid. How old are you .... fifteen, sixteen? And being recognized as that isn't bad - people let down their guard if they think you're harmless."
Shilo made an annoyed sound that was actually quite cute. "Seventeen, going on eighteen in a few more months. I think whatever dad poisoned me with, stunted my growth so I'm stuck with a fourteen year old looking body." She grimaced at the thought, hoping she would be able to grow out a bit more once that poison was completely out of her system. She frowned suddenly, looking him over. "How old are you?"
He shrugged and smirked. "Old enough to know better." And probably older than she'd ever guess, but it wasn't always good to go around advertising one's age. Graverobber wasn't vain, exactly, but he had good reasons for not wanting others to know just how long he'd been around.
Shilo frowned again. He had avoided answering her question completely, but she felt it was best not to pursue this one. "Ok....I mean, I guess if this outfit doesn't work, I'm pretty much never going to be taken seriously. I don't really know anything about the outside world and I guess that kinda makes childish in some ways, but it also makes me vulnerable and I don't want that..." She needed to learn. She needed to toughen herself up and at least she had Graverobber showing her a few tricks here and there. "Thanks..by the way, for this chance to work with you..err or under you, whichever way you see it."
"I'm training you," he said promptly, and then added, in a warmer tone, "Don't worry so much about how you look, kid. Our work in the field is mostly physical - it's more important to be practical than worry about whether anyone's taking you seriously. I'm the only one you have to listen to and impress right now and I'm going to care a lot more about whether you can find the frontal lobe than if you've got a chest or not." He patted her shoulder, glancing at the street signs as they passed. "So your dad was a doctor. Tell me where the frontal lobe is."
She had the decency to blush when he mentioned her chest, glancing away anxiously and avoiding his gaze for a few moments. His hand on her shoulder was comforting, drawing her wide eyes gaze back towards him as he asked her a question. A smug smile broke out on her face, recalling the medical books and diagrams that her father had given her to read from time to time. "Here." She brought her hand up, gingerly brushing her fingers over his forehead. "I know the basic parts of the brain and body, I used to get bored enough to actually read the junk dad left to keep me occupied. An occasional magazine, but mostly they were textbooks and stuff..."
"Then you know how to get up into the frontal lobe with a needle?" he asked, in a challenging, amused tone.
Shilo shook her head frantically at the question asked. "No...I um..I mean dad used to give me shots from time to time,but I've never handled a needle and...wait are you teasing me?" She had that vague innocence still, something born of limited social interactions. Let's not forget, Nathan had been her only companion for seventeen years.
He chuckled. "Just testing," he told her, and without skipping a beat he leaped lightly from the back of the truck to land on the uneven asphalt, then gave her an inquiring look at the vehicle carried her slowly from him, as if to say, What are you waiting for?
Shilo looked genuinely shocked. One moment he was there, the next he was watching her go by in the back of the truck. She gripped the long metal needle in her hands, took a deep breath, and jumped from the truck. Her landing...yeah, not so graceful. She took a tumble, rolling along the asphalt, but getting to her feet just as quickly seemingly without any scrapes at all, though it was hard to tell with the pants she was wearing. She glanced around, then realized that she didn't know where she was....
"Not bad," he told her, brushing off the back of her jacket, then pointing out the spines of darkness against the odd orangey night sky. It was some sort of building, very large, but also apparently broken down. The spines were the interior workings of the roof, as much of the rest of it was missing. "There's where we're headed. Crescent Grove Cemetery, though there haven't been trees here in decades."
Shilo was used to a totally different reaction when she managed to injure herself. If she happened to fall over in the company of her father, he would have rushed to her side, carried her to her bed, and performed the necessary first aid, even for a tiny cut of scrape. But now, even though she probably had bloody knees, she found that Graverobber's lack of smothering was very...nice in a way. He seemed to trust that she could handle something as simple as a fall.
Her attention turned to the cemetery in the distance, holding up the needle, which had been undamaged by the fall, a determined look on her face as they began to walk. "It's bigger then the one near my house..."
"You can put that in your pocket, by the way," he told her, nodding at the needle, then lead her toward the crumbled wall that surrounded the grounds. "This is one of the big, older ones. It's why we're starting here - not a lot of new corpses means not a lot of patrolling or guards. They don't protect this place very well so a it's a good spot for practice."
He stopped her with a hand on her shoulder as they approached. "Now. Any time you go somewhere, any place where you're going to be working, it's important to check out the terrain, first. You don't want to be caught red-handed because you were too lazy to give the place a good look over. So I'm going to circle west, and I want you to walk around the east side of the cemetery. Look around, but walk casually. We'll meet at the other side."
Shilo tried hard not to appear like a nervous wreck, nodding her head to show that she was listening and taking mental notes, as always. She hung onto his every word, even saluting him mockingly as she turned on her heel and began to wander the graveyard in a casual way, as if she'd been here many times before. She marked her surroundings, checking for possible escape routes and hiding places...
She met up with him later, hands tucked into the pockets of her coat, managing to look as casual and disalarming as possible. Her eyes peering anxiously at him as if to say What's next?
He slunk out of the shadows with a casual air, but it was hard for the man to not look like he was up to something. He flashed a white grin at her, then demanded, "What did you see? Describe it."
Shilo was startled by him creeping out of the shadows. He really did look like a ghoul when he grinned, something creepy that made her pause for a few moments. She knew he projected that image on purpose, with his grungy goth clothing and white face. Really, deep, deeeeeep, deeeeeeeeeeeeep down he was a good man.
"Umm..there's a side gate over by that big oak tree and some mourners, but they're getting ready to leave. Other then that...I didn't see much else."
He considered this for a few moments, giving her a hard look. "Mourners. What do mourners mean, kid? What happens at a funeral? Do you know?"
"Well they had veils on and they were...crying. So I thought they were visiting a loved one's grave. You know, mourning the dead. It's not that uncommon." Her father had mourned Marni even seventeen years later. "I've never been to a funeral. Don't they bury the dead during one though?"
"Not a funeral? That's good. You ever see a funeral at cemetery, don't stick around. It's tempting, because of the fresh Z, but funerals mean extra staff around a place, because a proper burial takes some time." He eyed the stone wall, picking a spot and jumping up, catching his fingers on the metal railing and hauling himself up until he was perched above Shilo. He anchored himself with one hand and held the other down to her.
Shilo nodded, glancing around the cemetery after he had finished explaining the basics of grave-robbing. When she looked back at him, he had disappeared! The girl looked around for him and finally saw him above her. She bit down on her lower lip in thought. "I have feeling I'm going to have to become more athletic for this line of work..." She jumped up, her hand grasping his, hoping she wasn't too heavy for him. Her scrawny frame really didn't weigh much though.
He grunted a little, because as light as she was, she was still an almost full grown girl and he was using only one arm - and he wasn't exactly a body builder. But he pulled her up without too much effort, until she could find her own footing on top of the fence. He glanced around quickly, taking in the graveyard itself, then hopped down, indicating she should, too. "Never stay on top of evenly shaped structures, like walls, too long. You make a big, obvious silhouette."
Shilo apologized profusely the entire time her was pulling her up. She didn't like to be such a burden. He could probably move much faster without her along... "Ok, gotcha. No standing on top of walls..." She reiterated dutifully like a child in a classroom instead of a girl in a graveyard about to engage in highly illegal Zydrate harvesting.
Shilo jumped down after him and this time she actually landed on her feet, unlike her sad attempt to jump out of the garbage truck earlier. Instantly she crouched beside him, seeing a spotlight in the distance making regular sweeps across the graveyard.
"Now we watch," he told her in a quiet voice - though he didn't bother with a whisper. There hadn't been anyone nearby to hear them. He pointed at the light, and watched it's pattern carefully. After about three sweeps, he nodded at her, and then rose, hurrying along a line of gravestones, and heading for a bank of larger, above ground tombs.
Shilo watched...and she soon realized that there was a pattern to the rhythmic sweeps of spotlight. It didn't seem so difficult to get past them without being seen. When he beckoned her forward, she followed him without question. The two of them ducking low along tombstones and sidestepping to avoid being caught in the light, making a break for tombs in the distance.
The older man found a tall tomb to stand behind, and he eased the small crow bar from his jacket. "Why're we here, and not at the gravestones?" he asked her.
"Because it's easier to access the bodies and we didn't bring shovels?" Shilo ventured to guess, it was actually pretty smart, but she doubted she was right. Her hand was inside the pocket of her coat, probably grasping the needle which would soon be put to work.
He flashed her a grin. "Good girl. That's right. Now I want you to find me one of these crypts with the most recent date on it." Graverobber apparently believed in a very active apprenticeship.
Shilo gawked openly him, surprised she'd answered right for once. Yay, score one for her! She nodded her head, accepting the mission her gave her. Here, she was actually an asset because her tiny form and sleeker body made her perfect for scurrying quickly between the tombs, with speed and precision at avoiding the spotlights. She returned a few minutes later and pointed towards a smaller crypt which bore the name 'Forbes' "That one. Less then a year..."
"Perfect." Graverobber's eyes brightened and his tongue darted out to touch his upper lip. He crouched low and made his way through the stone structures - he wasn't as small as Shilo, but he moved with a practiced ease. He found the tomb she pointed to, then motioned her over. "Most of this style of grave have a stone top, and it's not usually sealed. In the nicer places it will be, but somewhere like here, all that's holding the lid on is gravity. That's where this comes in," he explained, holding up the short length of steel.
"Leverage is key, here. It's still going to be hard for you, because you're small, so this is just theoretical right now. But I'll show how to get into all types of tombs. You need to find the crack - " And here he ran pale fingers along the lip of the tomb, finding just the right place, "And then you wedge this in." The pointed end of the crowbar was planted. "You use a sawing motion, because you want to lip to slip sideways, not just go right up. It takes less force, and it won't fall off immediately that way. Too much noise."
He demonstrated this with the deftness that came from years of practice. The top of the tomb slid to the side with a rough scraping noise, and then Graverobber peered in, that manic grin appearing. "There we go. Pull her out, kid."
Shilo crept close behind him, eyeing the crowbar as he took it out. She'd never seen him so excited as he was now...talking about his necromerchant trade. He spoke faster and there was a gleam in his eyes, she wasn't sure he even knew the changes in his demeanor. He was showing her how to leverage the stone off of a tomb, but she wasn't sure she'd be able to. She knew instantly that she really had to try to bulk up slightly. Drink some protein shakes or something...her scrawny arms wouldn't be able to do much.
When the lid was off, she grimaced at the smell. God it reeked! She thought for a second that she was going to be sick and wanted nothing to do with handling the body. At the morgue, the bodies had a clean, sterilized smell to them and looked nothing like this one! "I think...I'm gonna..." She clapped a hand over her mouth and turned away.
He turned his head to watch her with a frown, then sighed. She was going to have to get over that if she wanted to be able to do this. He'd gotten so used to the smell he barely noticed anymore - in retrospect he supposed he should have started her out on an older, dried out corpse, but fresher was better for practice. He waited, tapping his fingers on the askew stone lid. f It was only her second time being around rotted bodies. To her credit, Shilo didn't throw up. She sucked in that churning mass in her stomach and turned back around .She had to prove to Graverobber that she could do this, that she was cut out for this job and not just some kid. She looked even paler as she struggled to lift the plastic wrapped body from the tomb, her body straining with the effort just to lift the body. She dropped it onto the ground, holding in her breath she that decaying scent didn't make her pass out or throw up on the body. Her hands were shaking as she dropped to her knees near the corpse, fishing for the needle.
He watched her for a moment, softening a little. She was trying so hard! Without a word he pulled a small jar from an inner pocket and opened it. He reached out and smeared a dollop of something greasy on her upper lip, under her nose. Whatever it was, it had a pungent aroma, kind of medicinal, and he tucked it away just as quickly as he pulled it out, and continued as though nothing had happened. "Positioning is everything. Don't worry about the needle just yet. You have to tip up her chin, so that it's about a 120 degree angle to her head."
Shilo flinched as he smeared something under her nose, something that smelled faintly like...home. Her dad often smelled like medicinal stuff, sterilizers and such pungent stuff. In any case it blocked out the smell of the corpse and her performance seemed to increase after that. "Thanks.." She murmured, with that cute smile which lit up her face, showing her even white teeth. She'd grown up away from the public, no one had ever told her she was worthless or ugly or not to show her teeth when she smiled. She was purely her own person,but slowly being molded to fit what Graverobber wanted.
She tilted the head just so, holding the needle in her other hand and glancing anxiously at him, almost as if afraid she'd hurt the damn corpse if she did it wrong. She reasoned that the corpse was dead and couldn't feel anything, certainly couldn't complain. "Ok..so do I do it now?"
"Mhm." Graverobber's eyes were intent on the corpse now, and her small hand. "You take the needle, and you press up into the nose ... you're looking for the softer spot, where there's more cartilage, and then you smack it in. It takes some force." The smile on his face was almost lascivious as he regarded the dead, half rotted woman. "Try it," he urged with a purr.
Ok. Graverobber had officially passed creepy and was now just plain..well..something worse then creepy,but not quite rapist scary. Goosebumps broke out over her skin as she saw how eager he seemed for her to begin. What she didn't know wast that she was shedding some of her innocence right then and there, before his eyes. This was her first time harvesting Zydrate, she'd never react this way again, she'd know what to do after this.
"Ok..um..can you not breath on my shoulder?" She squeaked as he leaned in. She needed room to breath here! Her hands shook as she ignored him for now and eased the needle into the woman's nose, frowning as she felt around with it until she hit something soft. She grasped the shaft of the needle with one hand, holding it in place while smacking the palm of her other hand against the end of the needle, letting out a flinch at the sickening sound that echoed through the tomb. "It's..it's in..."
"Good," he murmured, torn between watching her face and looking at her hands on the needle. "Now pull the plunger a little - you want to see what kind of fluid you're drawing. If it's just blood and cerebral-spinal fluid, you'll have to reposition," he urged her.
Shilo pulled the plunger back slightly, watching with baited breath as a trickle of glowing blue fluid began to fill the plunger, she pulled it back further until it was full. Now that it was finished, she felt...triumphant! Her nerves tingled, body still on edge and full of adrenaline. "I did it!"
His hand landed on her shoulder and he squeezed warmly. "Good ... you have a knack, kid. Now pull the needle out." His voice was soft, and his breath was warm against the back of her neck, her ear, as he watched over her shoulder.
Shilo did as she was told, carefully pulling the needle out and disengaging the vial of glowing blow fluid. She held it up, her eyes wide with excitement at having harvest her first Zydrate. It was so pretty..yet so addicting. She had already made a vow never to use the stuff herself. Then suddenly Graverobber was very close. No sooner had his breath brushed the back of her neck then suddenly she had scurried halfway across the little tomb, rubbing a hand over her neck and blushing thoroughly. Seems her neck was excrutiatingly sensitive. "H-here." She held out the Zydrate for him to take.
He plucked it from her hands, eyes going wide in a greedy expression as the blue glow lit his face eeriely. It reflected off his grey eyes, making them look black, and he let the vial dance through his fingers for a moment before holding it out back to her. There wouldn't be that much potency is this stuff, so he felt he could afford to be generous. "It's your first one. Keep it."
Shilo was still rubbing the back of her neck as she watched how hypnotized Graverobber seemed to become. She could see that he was very into his line of work. She wondered if she could ever be that passionate about harvesting Zydrate. All in all, her first experience hadn't been too bad she supposed. The only problem was lifting the bodies. She gave him a shocked look as he tucked the vial back into her hands. "You sure?" It was very kind of him. She'd hold onto this Zydrate, to remember her first time here in this graveyard. "Aww..thanks Graves." She gave him a nickname and a swift innocent little peck on the cheek before rising to her feet and glancing around.
He snorted a laugh, shaking his head a little. She was such a cute kid, sometimes. "Get down," he told her amiably.
"Just because we're done here doesn't mean they stop looking. Keep low and we'll move out the way we came in," he directed, and then he was back moving through the tombs, just leaving the body sprawled where they'd left it (after an affectionate pat), heading for the fence.