Hell must know- Characters: Ben Urich, OTA who will saaave him Setting: Daily Bugle offices then street? Idk Content: Zombies and stuff Summary: Ben is losing his mind stuck up in the Bugle offices
J. Jonah Jameson was growling again in his office. Jesus. Ben put his hands over his ears, his eyes squeezed shut as he took deep measured breaths and counted to ten. Keeping calm was getting harder every day, every hour honestly. He still wasn't sure how he'd managed in the first place after he'd seen Jonah take a chunk out of his temp secretary's stomach and start gnawing on her insides. Ben had always thought Jonah could be a heartless son of a bitch, but Christ. Turning into a monster apparently brought out the worst in a person. Ben had somehow wrestled zombie Jameson into his office and barricaded him in there. The poor girl had bled out and there wasn't anything Ben could do and maybe that was a blessing in and of itself because then she didn't have to suffer being alive when she turned. And she did turn and Ben handled it with a heavy potted plant and he still couldn't think of the gruesome mess without feeling ill. He shouldn't have had to do that, he shouldn't have to be here in the abandoned Bugle offices, holed up for the past two weeks with the editor-in-chief turned monster locked up and raging and the body of that poor assistant decomposing in an elevator.
At the start the whole staff had stayed, drawn together in a crisis and with a vow to keep the panicked public updated. They'd put aside Jonah's penchant for anti-cape vitriol and reported real news. It was actually a refreshing change and Ben had almost enjoyed it because they were actually doing something that mattered. When most of the city's other publications closed down shop, but Bugle kept reporting. The papers were the first to stop rolling, but then they turned to the internet and, when that was gone, radio broadcasts. Even now Ben made a report every day on an old junky CB radio someone had pulled out of storage. The broadcasts had become increasingly desperate and hopeless and he didn't even know if they went any further than a few blocks and, if they did, if anyone was even picking them up. Still, it was something to keep him moderately sane. In the end, everyone else had abandoned ship but Ben, Jonah, and that temp who was interning for college credit. Carrie was her name, she and Ben had got on well, she'd dealt with Jonah with surprising ease. She'd been a good kid and now she dead.
Ben couldn't blame a single person who'd left when they had families to care for and their own lives to worry about. Ben only had himself and his dedication to his craft which he'd never regretted more than now. He should've got out while he still could, before the trio had to defend the side entrance against a group of monsters and before Jonah got bitten and didn't tell anyone. That was the worst of it, Ben had never expected it, never would have imagined what was coming and up until he turned Jameson swore he was fine, it was nothing. Nothing managed to kill Carrie and made Ben do the worst thing he'd ever had to do in his life. Now he was trapped here because the streets were overrun and he knew there was no way he'd make it on his own, not without a weapon and not in his state of body and mind.
He was barely surviving on water he'd rationed from water coolers on every floor and he'd scoured all the food he could and rationed that, too. Most days he spent in semi darkness, turning off the generators in the basement (god, he hated going down there) to conserve power, talking to himself and sometimes to the shell of Jonah groaning in his office, or writing, just writing anything he could think of. Every evening when he turned the generators back on he went dutifully to the CB and made his update. When Jonah's growls quieted, Ben rose from his seat and went to the CB.
"If anyone can hear this please help me-" he began, the same way he had on every transmission for the past week. It was the only hope he had left.