Olivia Jensen is on her way to ʀᴇᴀʟʟʏ ғᴀsᴛ (sprinted) wrote in remains_rpg, @ 2015-10-23 22:34:00 |
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Ever since Savannah had warned her about the Hellhounds' rival gang on the First of the month, Olivia had approached her scouting with a little more caution than usual. She kept her eyes out for them whenever she was out of the Library and double checked her gun like, obsessively. So far, she'd been in the clear. (At least, when it came to raider gangs. The zombies she and Babs had run into on the Fifth had shaken her up, but it wasn't something totally out of the norm.) But she couldn't get Andrea's last words to her out of her head, now that they'd been drudged up from the recesses of her memory by Savannah's warning: 'Stay away from the North Loop.' How long had this group been working their way into Austin? Andrea had died three months ago, in June. Olivia hated all this uncertainty, the worry she'd never really had until this week. Scouting was her thing; it was what she was good at, the only way she could contribute to the LBJ. She'd never felt so out of sync, but she guessed hearing about a group who were partially responsible for the deaths of thirty-seven people could shake anybody up. At least today they had a car. It was a novelty loaned to them to help them hit a few stores at Barton Creek Square and save them from a fourteen mile round trip on foot. It felt almost normal for them to drive out to a mall of all places, two women out on an abandoned ghost town to do some shopping. And their list didn't have too many things on it, either, which was always nice. They finished collecting the goods in no time. It might have felt more natural if only it weren’t for all the broken glass, toppled display cases, the occasional withered skeleton, and the sporadic noises of a distant shuffler setting their nerves on edge, stringing the pair of women even tighter. Nadia had noticed her friend’s rattling tension, and it was contagious. Malls weren’t meant to be this abandoned and empty. "So," Olivia said casually, backpack slung tight over her shoulders, glancing over at Nadia as they walked back towards where they'd parked. The warnings were still echoing in her head. "Have you seen those graffiti signs around? The black cats with the gold chains?" “Mm.” It was Nadia’s own carefully-casual admission, a brief attempt at playing her cards close to her chest. Sometimes she still fell back on old habits, that years-old reticence creeping its way back up despite her opening up over the last few months. It was hard to unwire. But then she did. She sighed. “The new gang, yes? I have been seeing warnings about them, on the freenet. As if we did not already have enough to deal with in this city, no?” "There's always something new happening," Olivia said, careful to keep her eyes out in front of her. She'd recognized Nadia's initial reticence for what it was -- instinctual reflex -- and knew it was caused by the same thing that so often made Olivia herself chatter and ramble on and on about nothing, just to fill the space and distract the other person from the questions they'd tried to ask. (The two women were opposites in that way, but there was still a palpable fondness for each other that had been reaffirmed when Olivia had moved back down to the Social Justice Wing.) “True. I suppose at least it is better than everything pausing and stopping and rotting, but I just wish…” Nadia’s voice trailed off. She wished a great many things: that she could find her brother. That women hadn’t been murdered. That the Capitol and the Hellhounds would stop shooting at each other. That she could have real cachaça again. That their greenhouses could be built, and grow, and flourish. But it was pointless lingering on those, and they should focus on the here and now. Such as the sound of a sudden crash that jolted both of them where they stood, muscles tensed and leaping like startled cats. Their footsteps started unconsciously speeding up, turning to brisk steps across the cracked, broken pavement. Glass was shattering, tinkling and scattering across the front hood of their vehicle. Ordinarily, they might have turned tail and moved away from the sound, but this was their car, their only way of getting back safely from Barton Creek—otherwise they’d be caught out here, trapped on foot for the long walk, one that would likely bring them into sunset and the hordes. The long walk could be a death sentence, yet it was one that drivers wouldn’t have blinked twice at pre-outbreak. The two scouts slowed to a stop, but the group of disheveled men smashing up their truck had already caught sight of them, eyes drawn to movement. Their hands gripped tire irons, crowbars, bats. Guns waiting at their hips. Their hair was shaggy, their faces tanned, teeth grinning and white. The tires were sagging on the wheels, the entire truck drooping into the dirt. “Porra,” Nadia whispered, ready to bolt. Olivia's feet were rooted to the ground, though, her mind otherwise occupied with the pieces it was putting together: the warnings in June, the weird feeling that she was hearing motorcycles a hell of a lot more often than before. The gun holster on Olivia's hip felt heavier the longer she stared at the men wrecking their car, choosing inaction instead of reaching for the weapon she did have. What if it'd been a misunderstanding, somehow, and the men whose faces she couldn't make out were Hellhounds who had mistakenly targeted an LBJ car? But then the men turned, revealing six snarling cats on their backs, and Olivia's mind snapped back into functioning. "The way we came," she muttered quickly. But when she turned to sprint she came face to face with a seventh man, looming above them both, a bat in his hands. She backed away, moving inadvertently towards the six men, hands up and eyes wide. Nadia backpedaled by her side. "I'm not-- we're not--" Olivia's mouth was moving despite herself. He smiled, the motion slow and predatory, clearly enjoying himself. Footsteps were audible behind her as the others walked towards them. Her eyes flickered from side to side, seeking escape. She was still looking over his left shoulder when the first blow landed and she cried out, a swipe with a bat that hit the two women's legs and knocked them down. "What nice toys we've found," one of them said in Spanish, his cadence languorous. Olivia's eyes met Nadia's as another man aimed a kick at her back -- dislodging her pack -- and another to her hip, knocking the gun away. Nadia had started scrabbling for her rifle as soon as they hit the ground, but she couldn’t whip it out in time; instead one of the jaguars caught at the shoulder strap and there was a horrifying little tug-of-war with a bullet at the other end, before the metal slipped out of Nadia’s grip and she suddenly found herself with empty hands. The language caught her, anchored her. Gave her something to latch onto. “Leave us alone,” Nadia said sharply back in Spanish. “Take our packs. Our supplies, you can have them!” Their eyebrows arched at the sudden realisation that their prey could understand them; the men exchanged a look, but it evidently didn’t change their intentions. “We’ll take a bit more than that, querida. Shouldn’t we have some fun, too?” Hating being on the ground, at the whim of those heavy boots, Nadia scrabbled back to her feet and tugged at Olivia’s arm to drag her up with her; the other woman got one foot firmly planted on the ground before a punch sent her back down, the skin along her cheekbone opening. There were noises, sad and pitiful, that seemed to be coming from her as she stared blearily up, wondering why they hadn't hit Nadia again. "We've been watching you both. Here when you first arrived, that pharmacy last week, the dollar store on Friday. You seem to have a knack for finding us. How nice of you to stumble into our newest piece of territory." It was the same man who'd addressed them before, the apparent ringleader while the other six served as backup muscle. He eyed Nadia with clear interest. "You'll be useful to us, bonita. The other one--" He made a gesture with his hands and a heavy thud followed, then a snapping sound that was quickly echoed by a hoarse scream as the bones in Olivia's ankle crumpled under the weight of a crowbar. An echoing noise came out of Nadia’s throat without her even realising it, a hoarse moan when she heard that sound, that snapping cracking sound that seemed far, far too loud to be coming from a human leg. She darted forward to reach her friend’s side, but ran into a raider’s fist instead; he stopped her dead, hand ramming into her ribs and driving the breath out of her lungs. A followup snapped her head backwards with an explosion of pain in her cheek, below her eye, the bone ringing. But nowhere near the sound when that crowbar impacted. Head spinning, Nadia could almost imagine, for a moment, that she could see little cartoon birds winging around them (it wasn’t cute; these cats had teeth and fangs and metal and they were very serious indeed). She stared helplessly down at the fallen Olivia, where the younger woman’s hands dug into the earth, tears welling in her eyes. Her friend's shoulders shook with uncontrollable, strained sobs that caught in her throat. Eyes met above the two women and nods were exchanged, looking for a way to shut her up. A kick was aimed, then, right into Olivia's side, then another, before she doubled over, the breath knocked out of her entirely. Nadia’s jaw was tense and taut, the sickening roiling fear starting to build up inside her. “Fuck you,” she suddenly shot back, the terror bubbling over and turning into anger. “Seven on two! Seven big men against two young women! Are those the odds that you need, tontos? Are you really that weak? There’s no honour in this. I hope you’re goddamn proud of yourselves.” She was fiery in Spanish, words coming out like rapidfire bullets, so much faster than she tended to speak in English. Her outburst was met first with silence before one of the six barked out a laugh and the others, all seven of the big men, added their own amusement to the mess they'd made in the parking lot. "Brave words from a scared little girl." It was a different man, this time, who spoke up. Nadia’s gaze slipped to him. He carried heavy chains in his hands. "You talk like there's still honour left in this world." “There is if you chose to keep it. It doesn’t have to be this way. Just take our damn packs—” "Leave the paisana alone. No one touches her until I say so." The ringleader stepped closer to Nadia, his head tilted as he studied her face, the defiance in her eyes and fury in her stance. He reached out to run his thumb along her jaw, and her head jerked backwards from the touch. "Who are you? You speak Spanish with an accent. I could get used to hearing you speaking to me, mi amor. Why don't you tell me about yourself?" She was staring at their tattoos, and there was no doubt in her mind who they were dealing with. Los Nahuales. Marina had warned her about them, as had their shelter leader, and Antón’s mouth still went firm when he spoke of them—for good reason, it seemed. This man, Aarón, the leader, was looming into her personal space. And it meant something to the others, for they stepped back just as he stepped forward. Nadia’s heart felt like it was beating out of her chest, but she stayed focused, keeping her eyes riveted on the leader. Out of the corner of her eye, she could just barely see Olivia’s slumped form. (Was she okay? She couldn’t tell.) If she could just keep talking, keep distracting him—then what? Her plan ran out then. But she had to keep him occupied, she knew that much. If he was talking to the women, then his men weren’t laying into them. “I’m from Brazil, pendejo. And as far as I understand it, my brother is one of you, too: my name is Costa.” “Alejo?” Aarón spat. “You tell that cowardly piece of shit to show his face around the North Loop, and we’ll welcome him back to the family. He owes us.” When he grinned, his teeth showed the discolouration of the wash. He was remarkably well put-together, though; the other men around him wavered more, swaying back and forth on their feet in the apparent throes of the drug. “So you’re that bitch he sent off for years ago.” Her heart fluttered again, with a terrified little quaver. “Sí.” She was hoping it would have been currency, that invoking her brother’s name might have spared them. Evidently not. Which made her wonder… (Meanwhile, Olivia stirred slightly, one leg twisted up underneath her, and shifted her weight to relieve the pressure on her ankle. Her phone dug into her hipbone and her eyes widened.) "Pinche idiota." Aarón's eyes looked Nadia up and down deliberately, assessing her usefulness to him. "Already you show more fight than he ever did." It was obvious that with every attempt to defy him, Nadia only served to endear herself further to this man. "You would do well to think about joining us, querida." The smirk on his face made it clear just how serious that offer wasn't. The henchmen watched the exchange with as much interest as they could manage in their current state, their attention drawn away from the woman on the pavement, until one of them stepped away and began to itch at his face, followed by another one. The joy they'd seemed to find in tormenting the women had disappeared quickly, replaced by an uncomfortable need for something else. (Olivia hunched her shoulders and wedged an arm underneath herself to grab her phone, ducking her chin towards her chest and pressing her forehead into the pavement. She could barely glimpse the light of her screen, but it was enough to navigate her contacts list and begin to type.) Meanwhile, the tirade of Spanish flying back and forth between Nadia and the ringleader still wasn’t letting up. “Where is he?” she demanded, still grasping at every thread she could. This was an awful situation (her eye was starting to swell, the bruise growing livid on her skin), but it was also her first opportunity to grill Nahuales themselves about her brother’s whereabouts, straight from the horse’s mouth. Jaguar’s mouth. Whatever. “Isn’t he in San Antonio? Has he come here, to Austin?” But Aarón’s interest in discussing Alejo was clearly waning, and he’d caught onto his crew’s restlessness. As if to punctuate the point, his hand lashed out and slapped Nadia; not a punch, but still an open-handed smack that swung her head to the side. She’d tried to move out of the way, but he was still too close, all sweat and leather and hovering over her. Her cheek stung, and she drew in a breath. “If you’re not going to join us, linda, well… Afraid I’m just going to have to let my men have their entertainment.” He said it wistfully, with false sorrow. Crocodile tears. “Find it somewhere else. We’ll pay you. We’re scouts, we have supplies,” Nadia said quickly, her voice now strained and desperate. But her time to continue pulling off the distraction had run out. As Aarón stepped back, officially dismissing her, the rest of the men moved in once more—one of them grabbed Nadia’s arm roughly, throwing her against the side of their wrecked truck. A couple others went for the fallen Olivia, picking her up by the shoulders. Her phone was back in her pocket and her lip bled from where she'd bitten through the skin. The Barton Creek Greenbelt was a two-minute drive from the square. Somehow, Rodeo manages to do it in less. Kali rips across the dust and rubble like a bat outta hell, carrying Rodeo to the mall. He knows the way, knows every road and route through this city, and shortcuts bring him into the Sears parking lot in under two minutes. A few patches are hot on his tail, but they can’t keep up. He arrives alone at first. The sight he pulls up on turns his blood cold. Seven men. Seven dirty fucking cat bastards on two women. They push and crowd around their prey like geeks, like mindless animals instead of men. Revulsion and righteous anger are a fire inside him, burning him alive as he jumps the curb on his bike to whip around, tires shrieking against pavement. His gun is already drawn, and he doesn’t hesitate to fire a bullet into one of the men to get their attention. He chooses the one furthest away from one of the girls-- Olivia, friend of the Wolfe Pup-- but his shot is true. The bullet collides with the back of the man’s head, and a normal bullet might have sliced straight through and out the man’s forehead, but Rodeo’s homemade hollowpoint blooms like a flower inside his skull. The cat drops with a spray of blood that splashes across his comrades. The others are twisting around, drawing their weapons, and most of them abandon the women-- most, save for one. One smart cat takes out a knife instead of a gun, and Rodeo sees him reaching for Nadia. Rodeo grits his teeth and turns Crow Jane to him, firing off another shot that hits the man in the throat. It don’t kill him instantly, but a slower death serves him right for plannin’ to use the lady as a human shield. Nadia lurches away from the explosion of gore, the side of her face now painted with the man’s blood, uncomfortably hot and wet. As soon as that second shot goes off, the cats start firing back, ignoring their prey entirely in the face of this threat. Olivia's fear and adrenaline -- and her one good ankle -- are doing a decent job of keeping her upright where she is, leaning backwards against their busted up car, but she's slowly slumping down and she reaches out to grab Nadia's arm as bullets zing through the air. Rodeo dives for a long, low cement planter. One of the bullets pounds into the back of his Kevlar, knocking his breath out for a moment as he flattens himself under the planter. It gives him cover for just enough time for his backup to arrive on two snarling bikes and a black Wrangler. “Hands up! Hands up!” his men are shouting, and the bullets stop flying. Rodeo shifts up from behind the planter, rising with Crow Jane at the ready. There’s five men left and four Dogs, including him. It would seem like the odds are ever so slightly in the cats’ favor, but Rodeo knows better. Five o’ these kittens is worth one of his men. The cats are disorganized, self-serving nihilists. They’re no match for the brotherhood that binds the Hellhounds. Rodeo can see it in their eyes as they cast to the sides, each seeming to consider who they can sacrifice to save their own skin. “Don’t shoot!” One man shouts in Spanish. “Don’t shoot us. We thought the girls were in danger. We were planning to bring them somewhere safe with us.” Huddled by the wrecked truck with her friend, Nadia makes a noise, somewhere between amusement and incredulity and anger. “No comprende,” Rodeo growls, shifting his gun to aim at the man rattling off in Spanish. “What bullshit you tryin’ to spit at me, partner?” “D-don’t shoot,” the man repeats, now in English. “We have it-- safe place. Safe for girls.” “Fuck you, man. You think I’m gonna fall for that?” Rodeo’s gaze shifts from the man, glancing from Olivia to Nadia. “What do you think, ladies? You reckon these fellas were sweepin’ ya off to safe haven?” Olivia actually laughs. At least, that's her intention; the bitter, gulping sound that comes out is more like a sobbing plea for this living nightmare to be over. She knows there's no point in actually responding to Rodeo's question -- the answer is clear enough, and she thinks that if she verbalizes the terror that's been thrumming through her ever since the men backed the two of them up against that car, she may collapse entirely. So instead she surprises herself by asking, her voice as loud and clear as she can get it, "Are you going to kill the rest of them?" Somewhere in the last few minutes, Nadia’s hand has ended up wound into Olivia’s, still slick with the dead cat’s blood. Her heartbeat is hammering in her chest but she’s almost surprised by how surprised she isn’t. She’d seen a lot of things on the road. While Liv presses back that strangled edge to her question, the other woman seems to shut down, her voice hard and empty. A retreat to the instincts that had kept her alive once. “They were going to do worse to us,” Nadia says flatly, and it comes out like a pronouncement, a sentence. The girls tell Rodeo everything he has to know with the looks on their faces, and by the time Nadia says her part he has the answer to Olivia’s question. It shows in his eyes-- a cold, bloodthirsty glint that makes his smile sharp as a blade. He strides forward, tucking his gun into the shoulder holster under his cut and reaching for the ka-bar at his hip instead. He takes out the knife as he reaches the man who had spoken, grabbing him by the throat and pinning him against the side of the van the two women had been trapped against just moments before. He watches the fear twist the man’s face, and he lifts the blade to slide the tip under the man’s chin. Olivia's stomach drops and she knows exactly what's coming, what she has commanded this man to do for their sakes. Her hand tightens harder around Nadia's, holding on for dear life, but she doesn't look away. Both women stare as if transfixed: they have to see this. “Don’t worry, partner,” Rodeo growls. “I got a safe place for you, too.” With one quick motion he jams the knife up under the cat’s jaw, burying it so far into the man’s neck that it comes out the back of his head. He draws the knife back out, Olivia's eyes following its movement all the while, as the other men jump into motion. The remaining cats are ready to fight for their lives, but the Hellhounds who have arrived on the scene are faster. Rodeo wipes his knife across his shirt, sheathing it as he turns to Olivia and Nadia, reaching for the one who looks like she’s having trouble staying upright and scooping her up quickly; her arms move instinctively around his neck and her head tilts against his chest as she lets out a breath she hadn't realized she's been holding. “C’mon, darlin,” he mumbles to Nadia, ushering the two away from the firezone as the bullets rain down on the cats. Nadia freezes for a moment, watching the carnage starting to erupt around them. Then she scoops up her fallen unused rifle (never leave a weapon behind) and scurries after him like a skinny stray dog being summoned, hurrying on the heels of the man who saved them from the wild. He carries Olivia towards the Wrangler, glancing a few times back and forth between the two women looking for blood or other injuries. By this point, it's hard to know if it's the cats' blood or their own. “The both of you alright till we get ya home?” he asks. He knows there’s something wrong with Olivia’s leg, but he wants to make sure there are no injuries that might need immediate first aid. Olivia doesn't answer. It's easier to stare at the truck's windows and take in the feel of the backseat she gets placed down on than to parse everything that's just happened: the assault, the terror, the grim satisfaction that comes with knowing that Rodeo and his men have killed for them. Her eyes glance forward to Rodeo and Nadia in the front seats, scrutinizing every little detail of them as though this moment isn't entrenched in her memory forever. Her leg and ankle are burning something fierce, though, and with a sudden gasp she realizes that she's crying. Nadia’s in the passenger seat, elbow hooked over the edge of the chair as she cranes to peer back at her friend. She exhales, then swiftly turns aside to give Olivia some privacy. She saw each and every blow Los Nahuales rained down on the scout; none of the injuries are life-threatening. But in some ways, it’s worse. “We are,” Nadia says, speaking for both of them, even as it rings slightly false. Alright is relative. Her voice has a ragged edge to it that she doesn’t like, and she doesn’t even have room in her to be properly grateful yet—not with the sound of percussive gunfire still ringing outside the truck, and she jerks slightly with each shot. Rodeo’s hands are unbelievably bloodstained on the steering wheel, leaving red smudges in his wake, his pretty blond face stained from the cat’s throat. It was a messy way to go, Nadia thinks distantly, with the sort of numbness she recognises as shock. “Thank you. Take us home, please.” |