sgt cal davidson. (resourcefully) wrote in remains_rpg, @ 2015-08-27 14:36:00 |
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Entry tags: | # 2018 [08] august, calvin davidson, emilie galloway |
i made a fist and not a plan, call me a reckless wrecking ball.
Who: Emilie Galloway & Cal Davidson
Where: The streets of Austin
What: A grieving ghoul tries to steal a sergeant’s unattended SUV, and two forces collide. Rated for violence!
When: Evening of Sunday, August 16
The Ghoul was restless. No, that didn’t really cut it. She was miserable and angry and lonely, and the only thing that made it even remotely tolerable was the constant push of wash into her system. She was doing too much too fast; her arm was bruised to hell, weeping blood in some places, but she didn’t feel the pain. As long as she kept shooting, she didn’t feel anything, and that’s what she wanted. Better to be numb to anything and everything than feel like she was being torn to pieces from the inside, right? She looked for Ezra every night in the tunnels, even when she knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that he wasn’t there and wasn’t coming back. Emilie wandered through the dark, eyes cutting through shadows like sharp, ice-blue knives, and every time she happened upon anyone with dark hair, her heart seized with hope in her chest. But it was never Ezra. And, as far as she knew, it would never be Ezra again. When the itching need to get up and move became too much, Emilie grabbed her knife, strapped it to her leather-bound thigh, and made her way through the labyrinth of tunnels until she breached the surface. It was dark out, thank goodness — she wouldn’t have gone out, otherwise — and she only glanced about once or twice to be sure that there were no biters before she took a breath and pressed onward onto the streets of Austin. It was another hour, maybe a little less and maybe a little more, when she happened upon it. It was a Jeep, it was armored, and it was all by its lonesome. Emilie’s motto was simple: if she wanted something, she took it, and she wanted everything. So, with that in mind, she made her way to the big beauty, hands ghosting over the metal as though it were something precious (because it was), and she went to work. -- She had a long stretch of time with the door, to fiddle and scrape and click and pick at the lock—because while it was easy to armour vehicles against raider bullets and zombies, just layering on more layers of metal, they were still susceptible to good old lock-jimmying if one was stubborn and persistent and determined enough. The timing was off, however: the Jeep’s owner eventually came trudging back, the sound of boots crunching down the road. In the darkness, with night-vision goggles denting his silhouette, Cal slowed to a halt once he spotted matted hair and a too-thin skeleton, bones pressing against the woman’s clothes. But as the figure straightened by his car, he realised she was too tall and willowy. It wasn’t Clover. That realisation made Cal immediately shift into a defensive posture, muscles tensing and knotting, a hand drifting towards his belt. Fuck. He shouldn’t have stayed parked for this long, gone so far off-curfew. But the geeks didn’t care about silent, unmoving vehicles without warm flesh and blood inside them; raiders didn’t care as much when he wasn’t driving a Capitol supply truck; it had seemed safe. He’d underestimated the desperate restlessness of a ghoul, though. Flicking off his goggles, Cal traded them out for thumbing a flashlight and swinging its thready beam onto on the haggard figure by the door, illuminating sallow-pale skin. Hoping to intimidate her, like sending a starved raccoon scurrying off into the night. “Not your car,” he said thinly. -- It wasn’t the voice that had her hissing like some sort of wild animal but was the sudden splash of light. He might as well have hit her, the way she recoiled up against the Jeep, hands shooting outward to guard her eyes from the beam. She was so accustomed to the darkness now, to the dull flicker of lights that hardly ever worked to begin with, that a light like that caused very real and very immediate pain. In the light, she looked even worse off than she did in the pall of darkness. She was too thin, especially for someone who had once been so curvy and soft, and her features were all comprised of harsh angles and shadows that made her otherworldly blue eyes seem almost terrifying in their own right. Emilie had been beautiful, before her descent into the world of an addict, and even now one could see the potential for beauty, but it was shrouded with insanity and hard times. “Is that so?” she asked, once she had her eyes covered against the light. It put her at a disadvantage, but she didn’t need to see well in order to give someone a run for their money. “Don’t see your name on it anywhere.” Though she couldn’t make out the person’s face behind the flashlight, she could hear the deep velvet of a male voice, which instantly raised her hackles. “She’s pretty. Shiny. Think I want her to be mine now.” -- Cal patted the pocket of his coat, where the sound of metal jingled on metal—the truck keys. A barbed reminder that she hadn’t been able to break in, and that he held the literal key in his hand. “Ask your parents, maybe they’ll get you one for your sweet sixteen.” Behind that unwavering light, the man’s voice had become harder, with none of the careful compassion he wielded around Clover. This didn’t look like the soft, dreamy, vulnerable washer he was used to; Emilie was more like a feral creature, all ragged edges and sharp bite, and as a result, the agent’s posture turned to granite with the knowledge he was facing a potential enemy. The word ghoul was so appropriate for them. Hissing and sun-starved, their cheeks carved into hollows, skin withering from the Prax with an unhealthy sheen even if it wasn’t outright necrotic. There was a hunger that he didn’t like (and didn’t trust) in those bright, livid blue eyes. Cal kept the light trained on her though it made her scowl and squint owlishly at him, set on keeping the woman—or girl? it was so hard to tell when the drug ate them away like this, making them seem smaller than they should be, but their faces prematurely aged—within his field of vision. He could taste danger in the air, and didn’t want her to slip out of view. “Just step away from the door and we’ll forget we came across each other, alright?” -- “Mm, but what if I don’t wanna forget?” she posed the question, all dangerous smiles behind the hand that shielded her eyes. The flashlight might have hurt her eyes, but it wouldn’t keep her from lunging like a wild animal if she so decided. No, for now, she was playing nice. Or as nice as Emilie Galloway could play. Without Ezra, her mood was even more sour. He had been the only good thing she had left and, without him, there was no reason to even pretend to be human any longer. No one else thought she was a person. Why should she act like one? If they wanted a ghoul, she’d give them one they’d never forget. “Got a nice voice. Why don’t you turn off that light so I can see the face that goes with it? Or are you afraid of the dark, like everyone else?” Emilie had learned long ago that the darkness was the only reprieve offered these days. She and darkness weren’t just friends; they were bedfellows. It was her sanctuary and her hell all rolled up into one shadowy package. -- He knew some women liked his drawling Southern accent; this girl, on the other hand, had barbed wire in hers. “The dark’s just something to get through, headin’ from one place to another,” Cal said stiffly. He was a man built for the outdoors and the blazing sun: cornflower blue eyes, dusty dark blond hair, something clipped right out of the Appalachians, rows of golden wheat fields and winding mountain trails. Taking a deep breath, he closed one eye. It was stupid, probably—with a brief pang, he wished that Karen were here as that reassuring presence by his side, and that he hadn’t forayed off the books again. But he needed to break this stalemate, needed to shoo this animal away from his truck before he could get back in and drive home. And besides, she was stick-thin and malnourished. He could take her. So he rose to her bait. After he felt that one of his eyes had adjusted to the darkness enough, seizing a slight preparation for the transition that was to follow—Cal clicked off the light. -- Emilie was so relieved for the absence of the harsh beam of light that her sigh was audible on the humid Austin breeze. “See?” she prodded, smile breaking out wide and slow on a face that was too angular without her once soft, youthful cheeks. “Not so hard. Not so bad.” For the first time since his approaching, she was able to take in his appearance. He was handsome, though she always found herself comparing everyone to Ezra, and his features were the exact opposite. He looked to be someone who spent time in the sun, gold-dusted and warm. Where his hair was dusky, Ezra’s was pitch black. Where his skin was kissed by the blaze of a sun, Ezra was nearly as pale as she was. He was the kind of guy who Emilie would have flirted with relentlessly back in her college days, maybe even would have ended up finding herself tumbling into a dorm room that still smelled of alcohol, but those days were so long gone that she could hardly remember them. Absently, she trailed her thin fingers over the Jeep in question, a silent promise that she had no plans of just walking away without getting what she came for. -- He hadn’t fully realised how tense and rigid his muscles had become until they eased up a little when the girl didn’t pounce; he relaxed by an inch, breathing out slowly. Letting his eyes adjust to the murky darkness under the moon and stars, now taking her in when she wasn’t colourless and pallid, blanched in the light. “There’s tons of abandoned cars out here.” The hand holding the now-dim flashlight gestured it vaguely, motioning towards the various rusted-out hulks scattered across the roads, pavements, littering the city. “You could even probably even find an SUV. Some scrap metal, you’ve got armour. ‘Cause you ain’t getting this one, darling. This one’s my baby.” And it was, it truly was: Cal felt an instinctive teeth-gritting protectiveness towards that car. He’d scrubbed his blood off that steering wheel. Its bumper had torn apart zombies and saved his life. Friends had sat in that passenger seat, their arm propped against the window. It even had his stupid fake Rubiks cube mirror ornament dangling inside it, a lucky charm of sorts. It was home, in a way that the Capitol building wasn’t. -- “Your baby, huh? She’s pretty. Can see why you love her.” Emilie had no need for a vehicle, not really, but fuck if she didn’t want it even more now that she knew he seemed so very attached to the hulking beauty. She could picture him, this handsome man with the gold-spun hair, sitting in the front seat, an arm resting on the window as the breeze rolled in. “Everyone’s so quick to call me darling,” she mused softly, almost to herself. “Why’s that? Am I darling? Or is it because you’re a bunch of men who like to make women feel small?” It was almost surprising, how Emilie could go back and forth from spewing seemingly meaningless words and phrases to almost sounding sane. Almost, but not quite. “Call me darling again, handsome,” Emilie dared, though it wasn’t clear whether she was threatening him or genuinely requesting to be called the nickname once more. -- “Maybe you were, once upon a time,” the sergeant said, surprisingly bluntly, with none of the sugarcoating he’d normally have spared for a younger woman. She probably had been pretty once—he could see it hints of it when her expression shifted sometimes, like someone else ghosting beneath her skin—but she was all skeletal now. And her voice was half-dreamy, half-challenging: teetering somewhere in the middle. Cal never was very good at resisting a bait. Set it out and he’d inevitably tread right into the bear trap, his own curiosity and temper getting the better of him. It was the same reckless, foolhardy instinct that had led to those various scars, an old knife wound in one arm that had left him sour and even angrier than before. (And the scar twinged now, as if someone had ground their thumb into it, an attempt to chide him and remind him of past mistakes. It didn’t work.) “In another life, darlin’.” -- Emilie had her own fair share of scars, some far more obvious than others. There were plenty of them on her inner arms, injections gone wrong. There was a vicious one on her shoulder, where a blade had gone all the way through, an interesting curve to her nose where it had been broken more than once. It seemed that anyone who still managed to stay alive these days had plenty of scars and bruises. She took a slow step forward, her eyes almost reflective in the dark, like some nocturnal creature that only surfaced when the sun went down. Emilie was a predator, but she was only that way because she got tired of being the prey. It hadn’t happened overnight; it was a slow, painful process, the carving out of her insides and replacing them with a hollow ache that was only satiated by violence. Speaking of which, she was moving closer now, step by slow step, and her smile was growing wider and sharper. Meaner. Wilder. “Now I’m bored,” she mused, pausing only for a split second in her movements forward. Then, in a whirlwind of black hair and gnashing teeth, she was lunging at him, her nails (talons?) grabbing at whatever they could reach to pull him closer. -- She’d moved slowly at first and so he’d started backing away in unison, to keep that invisible perimeter between them—but the frenzied leap carried Emilie right past it, up into his face, all hot breath and violence. The nails caught on his collar, ripping the shirt and raking into the meat between his throat and shoulder. Cal held himself in check for one moment—couldn’t hit a woman, shouldn’t hit a woman, his ma had taught him better than that—but then she scrabbled at his neck, tore at the skin in a way that he knew would draw blood, sharp pinpricks of pain flaring in his consciousness. So Cal seized that flyaway disheveled black hair and yanked it back, a violent tug at the roots of her scalp. His fist knocked into her too-thin ribs, flinging her aside like a hissing spitting cat by the nape of its neck, all claws and teeth. The military man was staccato, controlled movements where she was all spasmodic anger, a harpy from the depths of hell (the depths of the subways, rather), flailing limbs and spitting rage—and that was dangerous in its own way. His knuckles bruised against her jaw, and she bit at his wrist, sinking into the flesh. One of those perfunctory movements finally slammed Emilie into the side of the truck, but not before she raked those terrible nails down the side of his face, sending the girl rebounding. Cal could feel blood slicking his neck, adrenaline buzzing in his skull. He heaved another breath. “For fuck’s sake,” he scrabbled at his pockets for his keys. He needed to get out of here before she latched herself onto him again. Before he got more injured. Or before he did something he’d regret. -- Ah, but Emilie was less woman now and more monster, so Cal shouldn’t have felt terribly guilty about defending himself. If he hadn’t, she would have gladly clawed out his eyes, just like she’d done to that poor ghoul just a few weeks before. In her defense, he tried to take something from her that wasn’t his, so she repaid him with blindness. He was still wandering around down in the tunnels, mumbling to himself as he wasted away to nothing. Emilie doubted he’d last another week. The fist he buried into her hair made her throat open wide in an almost inhuman howl, but there wasn’t time to focus on that because the white-hot pain that came with the fist to her ribs had her sprawling at the Jeep. She landed hard against the side then collapsed onto the asphalt with a painful thud that knocked out what little air she retained after the blow to her ribs in a rough exhale. She could feel his flesh beneath her nails, and it only drove her harder. She was too her feet in an instant, and though she couldn’t avoid the hook to her jaw, she paid him back for it by burying her teeth viciously into his wrist, not relenting until she felt warm, thick blood wash over her tongue. Her entire world was red right then — red and coppery and warm, and she wanted more. She wanted to make sure he would never forget the crazy ghoul with the unnaturally bright eyes and the ink black hair. They had very different styles of fighting. Where he was controlled, all funneled strength and trained blows, Emilie was a hurricane of biting and scratching, a wild animal who had just been set free from an unseen trap. He’d be bleeding for a while. She would wake up with deep, vicious bruises. Tit for tat, right? When she was slammed once again into the side of the Jeep, it rattled her just long enough to give him a chance to dig into his pockets. And then she was flinging herself at him again, but this time she had her favorite knife in her hand, the same one she kept strapped to her thigh. -- This time, the uncannily bright moonlight glinted off a blade rather than her gleaming eyes—Cal recognised it immediately, remembering the pain when Rodeo twisted that Ka-Bar, and so he managed to windmill backwards and swerve out of her way. Like a Three Stooges farce, except so much more dangerous. There was no spare breath for sass or mouthing off anymore. The flashlight was suddenly on again, blinding and its padded rubber blocking each wild swing of her arm. Not all of it worked; the blade cut into the fabric of his jacket, ripped into his forearm before he was able to hit the knife hilt with the flashlight, stunning Emilie’s clenched knuckles until she dropped it, sending it rolling in the dust. (His gun was latched in his holster, his gun was within reach—) But he’d never intended on ending tonight with a bullet in a ghoul’s skull, and so instead settled for grabbing her again. Disarmed and blustering, she came on like an onrushing bull, but he once again seized the girl’s hair (she should get it cut, it was so long, if he could grab it then so could the geeks—). She was so light. That was the thought that came out of the murk: she was tall but so, so very light, like a pile of bird-bones in his hands. He threw her past him, into the dirt once more. Then, without wasting any time, the key was jamming into the lock, a twist and a click opening the SUV. His blood was seeping into his jacket, slick on his hands and the steering wheel (again). He’d remember. Oh, he’d remember. -- Red, red, red. Everything was red and warm and she wanted more. Greed was Emilie’s greatest sin. She was never satiated, never full, and she was always looking for ways to fill that hollow ache of loneliness and need deep within her belly. Prax, blood, violence, it was all only a temporary salve. Had she known he possessed a gun, one that was just within his reach, she might’ve begged him to just fucking shoot her, to end it all in a painless bullet between her eyes. At least then she wouldn’t have to miss him. She wouldn’t have to scrounge for her next hit, wouldn’t have to return home to an empty train car as she tried to pretend she was still something resembling a human being. Emilie was light, sure, but it also made her very quick on her feet. Before the apocalypse happened, she’d been just a few pounds shy of being considered “chubby,” but those days were long gone, and she no longer possessed any of that added bulk. Or any bulk whatsoever. Either way, she growled when he sent her tumbling into the dirt, and no matter how fast she was she wasn’t quick enough to lunge at him again before he was scrambling into the vehicle. “Run, run, as fast as you can!” she called after him, knowing he likely wouldn’t hear her over the roar of his motor. Her ribs screamed in agony with each breath, and her jaw would be a terrible color come morning, but she could have done this all night. She’d remember him. Oh, she’d remember. |