Who: Charlie St Cloud charliestcloud & Dr. Liv Moore psychicish What: Let's call it a rescue attempt. When: Tuesday, May 5, midday Where: Ballard Funeral Home Rating: Audience Discretion is Advised Warnings: Zombie. Violence. Necromorphs. A guy who sees dead people and is panicking. Status: Closed/In Progress
~*~
Everything was happening too fast. Charlie hadn't seen Sam in too long. Sam could think he'd abandoned him, broken his promise, wanted him to cross over. It was awful enough he had that to think about, but now he was seeing things coming out of the graves he'd been tending. Hansel had buried Mr. Porter recently only to have the fellow's body claw its way out of the freshly dug earth, tentacles growing from his back out of his second-best Sunday suit before Charlie could scream.
He had been screaming, too.
People always talked about how hurricanes were the thing which kept them from wanting to sail around the world. Charlie St. Cloud had never been afraid of dying on the ocean. He'd laughed at the wind whipping across his face, his boat thrashing back and forth like a fish caught on a hook. It had felt exhilarating to him. All he'd ever felt had been excitement on the ocean. The idea of dying out there? It was only a part of it. Sailors were meant to die at sea. It was the same for them as it was for soldiers who went into battle: they knew some of them wouldn't make it home from the day they made their choice.
Charlie hadn't made a choice to be attacked, eaten, and mutated by whatever those things were which was why he'd started screaming and ran with his device pressed against his face, yelling at anyone who'd listen to stay out of the cemetery. Those things were dangerous. They were desecrating the graves. They were using the bodies as hosts or something right out of an Aliens movie. Nothing, absolutely nothing, about them was good and anyone with any sense should know to stay away from them.
Ballard was the next logical place for it to hit if those things came from the dead. The funeral home would have corpses on hand. Liv would be in danger. Oh God, what if Liv herself was in danger? She wasn't totally dead. They couldn't---could they? Charlie didn't know. He didn't know anything except he could preserve his air better if he stopped screaming and ran faster. He could run still even if he hadn't sailed in too long to call himself a sailor any longer. Charlie could run.
Throwing himself through the doors at Ballard, Charlie chanted, "Be okay. Be okay. Be okay."
He made it to the ME office to take a deep breath before opening the door.
"Liv? Please tell me you're okay. Are you okay? These things---they use the bodies. Please tell me they haven't gotten you. Or anyone here. Is everyone here okay? The cemetery isn't. Nothing is safe there. We have to get somewhere safe. If they haven't started here? They will soon. They will. Liv?"
Charlie couldn't tell if he made any sense. All he knew was he had to get her and get her out. Fast. He wasn't the kind of hero who could fight off reanimated monster corpses with a machete. Charlie didn't even have a machete. He had a cell phone and a set of keys to a cemetery overrun by things out of nightmares.