log: carriage house - michael and atticus Who: Michael and Atticus What: Taking a look at some photos. Where: The Carriage House When: This evening Warnings/Rating: N/A
It was hours before Michael finally made it out from under the watchful eye of the doctors outside the facility. They must have checked every square inch of his body for contamination, and his blood, too. Personally, he was just glad that the security cameras had cut out for most of the disaster, or there might be footage of the dead wandering past him like he didn't exist.
In the moment it had felt eerie, but there had been no time to come up with a logical explanation. He was in hiding for most of the disaster, scrounging together food, trying to figure out what kept the zombies on their feet, and listening to the chatter on the comms. The few times he did make a run for it, he pretended to himself that he was just good at keeping the nightmares off his back, too fast and stealthy for them to catch him. It wasn't that simple, though, of course, since he wasn't actually that fast or that sneaky.
He almost stopped somewhere for a drink to steady his nerves, and glanced out the window at the Cat as he passed it. That wasn't him at all - that was a thing people in movies did, get a shot of whiskey to calm themselves down.
It was just a lot. Casper going down, seeing half the people he worked with in the lab turned into monstrosities. Jules, the girl who had the lunchbox with little anime rabbits on it. Scott, who always made coffee. It reminded him too much of the bad old days, toward the end of the high school gang, when the people he cared about started to be hurt and become something other than they were. Now it seemed like almost none of them were as normal as they tried to bill themselves when they were anxious teenagers. Not him, either.
But Clem. That was a different kind of thing.
He pulled up at the carriage house with the resignation of someone expecting bad news. He didn't want to look at the pictures. He kind of wanted to be anywhere but sitting here in the gathering dusk in the front seat of his eco-conscious navy blue hybrid.
He got out and shut the door loud enough to announce his presence to Atticus inside. He knocked anyway, a few short raps. "Hey, it's me."