karen sharpe (boltcutter) wrote in remains_rpg, @ 2015-08-22 22:22:00 |
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Entry tags: | # 2018 [08] august, karen sharpe, mortimer leander |
So the rest of Texas will know, and remember the Alamo.
Who: Karen Sharpe & Mortimer Leander
Where: A residential neighborhood
What: A very accidental meeting and a frantic escape.
When: Backdated, way back to when Mort was still a scout.
Warnings: Violence, profanity.
Perceptions were often misleading; memories capable of pulling one away from the truth. Karen Sharpe, sitting solemnly upstairs in the abandoned two-story townhome which had once belonged to family, set the weathered journal she had found aside. A scattered collection of notes, the item seemed worth keeping. She looked over from the dust-covered bed she had been sitting on and over to the windows; weathered in dirt and grime from the outside, the yard below was faintly visible. Without much effort, one could still imagine the grass that once patched the ground not so long ago, the young children who used to laugh and play there. A city that was once so familiar. But inevitably it all came down to simple science, she knew. Archeology dictated much about the history of human civilization. Cities built atop the husks of their predecessors, and for every tragedy and destruction and every fallen building and scattered temple, that cursed foundation of land would see humanity rise time and again. So was the easy misconception then, to consider Austin broken, battered, but yet the same in flesh and spirit, somewhere just under all of that dust and dirt. No, this city was new and grisly; its birth-bloodied face deceptively familiar, but a fresh host of dangers nesting around every shattered street and windy corridor. A new Austin, and with it a new populace of survivors and...something else. But so far, Karen had survived to survey these changes -- and perhaps too even more of her family than she was aware of. Picking up the journal once again, she stood up and walked over to her gear bag. A shotgun leaned against the wall beside it, and she slung both items over her shoulder. Just a soldier in another foreign and hostile territory now, she took a breath and steadied herself for the long journey back. Her thoughts were interrupted however, by a sharp, echoing clamor from downstairs. “Hell’s own luck,” she hissed, feeling the weight of the shotgun against her back. Instead, she reached for the small pistol at her waist and moved carefully through the hall. Settling back on pure instinct. The day was not going Mort Leander's way. It was bad enough that the two shops he'd planned on hitting had already been cleared out by the time he got there. Climbing out the window of the second shop nearly on top of a cluster of shufflers had taken the day a definite turn into worse territory. He'd spent the last couple of hours alternating between barely managing to lose one group only to stumble across another and cursing his short legs for being short as he tried to make his way back to the library he'd been holing up in. "Fucking shit!" he exclaimed, backpedaling quickly to avoid the shuffler he'd almost ran headfirst into as he turned the corner to run down the alley beside the townhouse. Out of options, he threw himself up the front steps and grabbed the handle, knowing the damn thing was probably locked with his luck. To his shock, the handle turned and he crashed into the living room as the door opened, stumbling on the rucked up welcome mat and crashing shoulder first into a coffee table with a loud yelp of pain. Grimacing, he shoved himself up out of the wreckage, looking over his shoulder as the shufflers started heading up the steps into the house behind him. Boots padded quickly across the dust-caked floor and left a frantic trail down the hall. Just as Karen turned the corner, the first hostile had already shambled its way inside. Someone struggled, out of sight, cursing. No time -- another head bobbed into view behind it and she didn’t hesitate. Training, muscle-memory. Twin peals of thunder and two shots entering just under the slope of the forehead. The undead jerked and fell, its twisted, mangled body spread out at the edge of the stairs, its (not he, not she; not a person, not anymore) soiled hands reaching up in futility. Karen let out a ragged breath, the terror and adrenaline racing up the length length of her veins and infecting her lungs. She rushed down the creaking wooden staircase, avoiding the creature with its head bowed, the skull split open and blossomed, rotted out and blackened. Pushing around the corner, her pistol gripped tightly, Karen fought to find her aim once again. She didn’t recognize the human, didn’t waste the time to think it over. “Get down,” she screamed out to him, “get down!” The blasts of the gun in the confined location combined with a truly unfortunate slap from a chunk of coffee table had Mort's ears ringing as he finally managed to kick himself free of the remains of the coffee table. The woman who'd come down the stairs with her hand cannon was yelling something. He shook his head, trying to clear the damn wasps that must have lodged themselves in his damn ears as he got to his feet. Grabbing the backpack he'd dropped when he hit the table, he grimaced at her for a split second, the tinny echo of her voice penetrating the din. Get down? What the fuck kind of insanity was she subscribing to? Get out not down! He bared his teeth for a second in an odd cross between a snarl and a smile and turned to head for the back door and the empty yard he hoped was back there. He got less than two steps before his conscious got the better of him. Sighing in exasperation at himself, he turned and closed the distance between him and her, grabbing the back of her shirt. "Are you an idiot or just got a death wish?" he snapped. "We gotta get out of her! This might be Texas, but playing Alamo is still fucking stupid!" Hell’s bells, she looked down on him and thought, who lead them through here in the first place? The retort remained unspoken, but Kay couldn’t help but narrow her eyes. Whatever the man lacked in physical stature, he apparently made up for in attitude. Hearing the sounds of more approaching hostiles behind her, Karen nudged them in the opposite direction; however more had went trailing after him, she didn’t plan to sit around for the house party. (After all, she’d picked up what she came in for.) “Get moving,” she said through grit teeth, charging through to the kitchen and toward the back patio entrance. Behind them, more scuffling; that broken, hungry pace of the undead. Karen fired another shot as they went running -- thankfully, her truck wasn’t parked too far. "Christ on a pogo stick, woman!" Mort complained, covering his ears as he ran. "Would you stop with the cannon? Do you want to bring the whole area after us? We just need to avoid them until they lose us!" God only knew what the hell she was doing in the house. Everyone knew that there were more of the damn shufflers in the old residential areas. About the only places worse had to be the places like Wal-Mart after the power went out and locked the bastards in when the doors stopped automatically opening and closing. They'd probably break out eventually, but you wouldn't catch Mort risking his ass going in one any time soon. He hit the back door at a run, slamming his already aching shoulder against it in an effort to stop himself in time as his hands reached for the knob, struggling to turn it. "Mother fucker!" he exclaimed, realizing the door was locked with a deadbolt that was conspicuously missing the key to unlock it. "What kind of stupid idiot puts a goddamn double key deadbolt on the fucking backdoor?! It ain't even fucking legal!" “Watch your mouth,” Kay spat, clearly less panicked despite the wounded undead that was shambling through from the other room; unthinking, unfeeling, bent on a single goal. “Take this, and hold on.” She handed the man with the foul mouth her pistol -- not her first choice, but for the clear sake of Jesus, she wasn’t about to get boxed in like this. Clearly, the soldier wasn’t about to suddenly shift to subtle methods or slick subterfuge in this escape. A moment to inwardly wish she was of a larger build, of some useful bulk to kick and force through the glass, but there were other methods. Reaching round for the nearest solid object -- in this case an heirloom cast iron pan, heavy and durable and long-abandoned by the home’s former residents, Karen gripped the object in her now free hands, reeled back and swung. And again, until the door to the patio shattered in a million jagged pieces, crunching underfoot and spilling across the front of her combat jacket. “Come on!” "Christ, woman, you couldn't be quiet if you had to could you," Mort yelped as glass rained down around them. He lifted the pistol and fired around into the closest shuffler's head before tossing it back to her. "Come on," he added, kicking the last bits of glass out of the door's frame and clambering through. "I ain't enough of an ass to leave another live one behind. There's an extraction point about a half mile off if we can make it there." “Just stay close,” Karen grunted, her voice hard but her patience somehow not quite shaved down to splinters; God and all his miracles, or so it seemed. She ran at a solid clip, though not outpacing her smaller companion (seemingly in agreement with his sentiment about leaving another behind), her boots now hitting against cracked, scorched earth. No well-kept lawn, no children -- just the sounds of running behind them and their own labored breath as they ran. Pistol in hand, she looked back. More, always more, like they’d kicked a hive (and what in the heck had he been up to out here exactly?) and had alerted the local swarm. A handful of undead came shambling around from the sides of the house, gasping and groaning in a terrible and bloodthirsty chorus. Death’s greedy hand, closing quickly its grasp around them. “Over here!” She pointed, a dusty pick-up visible just up the street. Instead of firing more rounds (as if she might attempt a futile stand), Karen switched the safety on and stuck the pistol in her waistband. Reaching for the keys, her own heartbeat hammered in her ears. "Don't even want to know how you managed to drive all the way here," he gasped out, his arms and legs pumping as he booked it towards the truck. "But holy crap am I glad to see that beat up son of a bitch!" He ran with his head down, pack shifting back and forth wildly on his back as he sent a brief but heartfelt prayer of thanks skyward for having come up empty on his earlier stops. The dead soil beneath his feet seemed to slither out from under the treads of his boots as he drew even with the back of the truck, making him slip down to one knee and his hands in a cloud of choking dust. He scrambled back upright, rushing around the corner of the truck and scrambling awkwardly up onto the rear bumper with a lunge. Rolling over the tailgate, he landed in the bed with a breath clearing jolt, coughing from the extra dirt and dust he'd kicked up from his clothes and the truck bed as he rolled over off his back to his knees. With her new passenger aboard (more or less), Kay wasted no time scrambling in through the driver door. The undead moved closer and closer outside, their deformed, blister-ridden bodies terrifying and frantic in their pursuit. “Neighborhood really went to hell,” she breathed out, ignoring the shadows looming in the corners of her vision, the pick-up truck’s tires screeching as she hit the gas. That day, the undead ate nothing but dust and curses. Sweat trickled down her neck, and as she looked back to the man who was now with her, Karen had a funny feeling that the ride back was going to be an interesting one. |