Nike Papadopoulos, who killed Hercules. (orfire) wrote in olympos, @ 2009-11-01 07:45:00
who's getting scared now, tell me how does it feel; [backdated to last night]
“Goran?” Nikki knocked hesitantly on the door to her brother's bedroom. He hadn't come out since last night, and then only briefly—he had needed water, and more aspirin for his head. The ER must have bandaged him wrong, he said; his arm was itching non-stop, he felt dizzy and nauseous. Maybe the person who'd bit him was sick or something. She knocked again. “Goran? How are you feeling? We're—you haven't been out in a while, and we're worried.”
No reply.
Nikki leaned against the doorpane and crossed her arms. She could hear Maggie flipping through an astronomy book in the other room and made her voice sharp. Half his size she may have been, but Goran knew better than to attempt to provoke his sister when she was cross. “Come on, this is ridiculous. You didn't mope around this much when you had pneumonia. Come out, let's have a look at that bite.”
There was a groan on the other side of the door. He sounded worse than he had last night: she could hear him shuffling around listlessly, from one side of the small room to the other. Something knocked over inside.
“Goran?”
Another groan.
“Goran, you answer me or I'm coming in.” She rattled the doorknob—locked. Goran rarely locked the door against her, certainly not when he was sick and expecting her to look after him. Maggie came out of her room, book clutched to her chest. “Goran!” Nikki said, louder.
A knock didn't answer her, but a very distinct bang. The door shook. He banged against it again. Nikki moved back against the wall and waved hurriedly at Maggie—“Go back in your room, sweetie—” before a third bang replied. The doorknob rattled. She could hear her heart knocking around in her chest, though she knew that was crazy; why should she be scared? It was just her brother. Even if there were these faux zombies running around. And riots. And people attacking each other. It was still her—
Goran opened the door in three pulls. His arms didn't seem to move as he wanted them to, and when he looked out at her, his face was pale and sunken. It looked like he hadn't eaten for days. Veins pulsed in his forehead. “Nike,” he said, like he was talking out of the bottom of a deep well. Croaky, dry. Disused.
“You...look awful,” she said hesitantly.
“I'm—hungry,” he said. “Starving. I need to eat.”
Nikki shrugged and laid a hand on his arm. His head ticked to one side, like a bug's antenna focusing in. It almost made her pull back. “Maybe we should just focus on medicine and getting you rehydrated, huh? You look like you've got the plague.” Breath rattled in his chest and behind his heavy-lidded eyes. He was watching the floor awkwardly, as if he wasn't used to the way his feet moved. “But hungry is a good sign. That usually means you're getting better.”
Goran shook off her hand, but as soon as she let go, he latched back onto her. His grip was too tight; sometimes he was rougher than he intended to be—he was a big guy, and before Maggie was born, had never had any real reason to be gentle—but now he was actually hurting her. “Goran—”
“Please,” he said. “I just need to eat.”
“Let's get you some water fi—”
He threw her to the floor in one smooth motion. It was almost graceful; one moment he had her arm in an increasingly painful grip, the next she was picking herself up from the carpeting, cheek and front bruised, and he was looming over her. “I asked for some fucking food,” he said, in that well-bottom growl. “What is so hard to fucking understand?”
“What is wrong with you?”
Up she went, like a ragdoll. Goran was horrifyingly strong, and though she knew she should struggle, knew she should claw and kick and get Maggie and go, all she could do was stare down at him, her arms locked to her sides in hands nearly the size of her head. Her brother's skin was slick; his hair stuck to his forehead, and his eyes were bloodshot. Nikki tasted the bile rising up in her throat.
“You're fucking useless,” Goran said. “No wonder you can't find a man and move out. Have to leech off of me—”
“Fuck you, Gor—”
Goran shook her roughly. “Shut up, you stupid little whore, and just get me some—”
Nikki spat in his face, and he dropped her. His body still wasn't moving as he seemed to want it to do, and she used the chance to dash down the hall and snatch Maggie's hand up in her own. Goran was already wiping his face and lumbering at her, shouting something she didn't want to hear, knocking from wall to wall, groaning between shouts. Maggie started screaming and planted her feet—they couldn't go outside, those people were on the news, Nikki said it wasn't safe, what about Daddy, she couldn't leave without Daddy—and then Goran swiped viciously at his own daughter. Without thinking about it, Nikki reared her fist back and landed it as hard as she could into her brother's jaw. She caught him just between steps, and the sudden force knocked him off balance and head-first into the counter.
She wanted to stay and check up on him. She wanted to apologize, hope the punch had knocked sense back into him—but even though his forehead was bleeding, and his joints seemed to crack and pop of their own volition, he was already getting up, swearing and groaning in a way that was distinctly unlike her brother.
“What's wrong with him?” Maggie asked quietly. Nikki did not respond: Goran was already moving toward them, and she scooped Maggie up in one arm and her car keys with the other, and made a dash over furniture and through her bedroom to the fire escape, slamming and locking the door behind her. No time for dealing with the fussy window pane; she shut her eyes, turned Maggie away, and kicked as hard as she could through the window. Maggie screamed.
“Maggie, honey, shut up,” Nikki snapped, and Goran started banging on the door. It shook on its hinges, and she frantically looked around her room for something, anything—god, what she wouldn't have given to have bought a gun at some point—and settled on a can of mace and a barely used baseball bat. Maggie went out first, crying and asking after her father, and just as her bedroom door began to splinter under Goran's weight, Nikki grabbed her niece and ran down the fire escape. One of her neighbors leaned suddenly out of his window to grab at them, and Nikki gave up believing there was any way out of this that wasn't at the end of a bat she barely knew how to swing. But swing she did: her neighbor's arm crumpled, and Nikki, Maggie in tow, ran as fast as she could to her car in the lot below. Civilians be damned; she was driving the fuck out of there.