What's A Better Way To Go?
Who: Baz and Quinn What: Finding something When: Morning Where: North woods Rating: PG (dead bodies and drugs?)
Quinn was up early on day fourteen, out of the tree almost as soon as possible. It was getting easier to move around and while he wasn't very fast and he didn't have a lot of staying power, there was a notable difference. The bruising on his face was almost entirely gone now and the stitches in his lip has dissolved and he'd tugged the rest out. He still wore the tight binding around his ribs but it was filthy. Stained with pig blood, sweat and dirt. Flakes of bark and leaves and other bits clung to it despite a chilly early morning dip in the spring. By the time he'd taken care of his morning business and cleaned himself up, he caught a glimpse of Helena and Cross heading off down the eastern path. He paused and watched them go, bedrolls lashed to their backs, for a long moment. When he turned back to the camp he saw most people were still in bed. It had been a loud night as per usual. Plenty of people took full advantage of the lull to pill pillows over their heads and catch another hour or two of mostly uninterrupted sleep.
Not Bazzer, though. Quinn noticed the gangly guy poking around the fire sulkily. He'd had a right good brood on for the past couple of days. Quinn had noticed that, as he usually noticed things like that. The reason for it hadn't really drifted back to him since he'd wandered off to use the gentleman's restroom while Baz and Ryan had their little conversation by the fire the other day. Now, though, they seemed to be the only two standing, so Quinn ambled over, rubbing his scruffy chin with one hand. "Mornin' Bazzer," he said as the younger man added a bit of dry grass to the coals that he'd stirred up. "Sleep alright?" Aaaah, small talk. It was a beautiful, somewhat chaotic thing without caffiene.
Grunting in response, Bazzer gave a short nod. He wasn't as snippy and pissed off as he had been the past few days, anger like that took energy that he just didn't have, and anyways, it was childish and petty and stupid given everything else. Kenneth had made sense the day before. "Not awake," he finally muttered despite moving around with his eyes open. Wandering towards the stream Bazzer came back a few minutes later looking more awake and blinked at Quinn as if seeing him for the first time. His stomach rumbled loudly. "Can't find food," he said, it had been increasingly harder and harder to find anything to eat and while he hadn't searched for long or very far, only as long as it took for him to go take care of his morning needs, the utter lack of ANYTHING was disturbing. "Slept as well as possible," he replied, remembering the man's earlier question. "Yourself?" He hadn't really spoken much with Quinn, but he seemed alright.
Quinn shook his head and patted the bindings ever so lightly. "Sleeping curled up is sort of agonizing. Unless we invent single malt scotch, I don't think I'll ever sleep at night." He'd picked up a long stick and used it to poke the new logs deeper into the fire. He tilted a little sideway glance up at Baz, a grin tugging up the corners of his lips. "So it looks like Helena has taken off with Cross." He jacked a thumb back over his shoulder to the east. "Know where they were goin'?" There was a little bit of envy in his tone. Quinn would love to just strap on a pair of boots and hit the road. Who knew what was out there? While he wasn't adverse to the idea that they might be on an alien planet he did have a hard time with the idea that there was no civilization here. If not an alien city than at least another human village. Alas, his woeful lack of lung power held him back still. Oh that, and the lack of boots.
Bazzer was right along with him in the lack of shoes department. He'd arrived in socks and they were now ripped, his big toe sticking out of one and his heels almost completely gone. "Not sure. I've been..." what? He'd been what? Ignoring everyone? Had his head up his ass? "working on tanning the skins we have," he finished, though it sounded lame to his ears, despite being the truth. "If we stay or if we go, we're going to need...supplies. Shelter. Stuff. And leather will help...if I can figure it out," the skins were coming along, but they weren't leather yet.
Quinn's head came up. "Oh hey, I had a thought about that!" The grin he favored Baz with this time was much brighter. "I was lying awake really, really wishing for some booze to take the edge off the pain and I remembered a conversation I had over a card table once with one of those big wine guys from Napa Valley." As he talked, Quinn was doodling spirals in the ashes with his stick. Round and round and round about. It said a lot about how the young man thought. "I remembered him talking about how you have to get the tannins in wine just right. Went on and on about it, the tannins. Made me wonder if 'tannins' had anything to do with 'tanning'. Does it?" He looked at Bazzer expectantly. Almost as though he had designated Baz as the egghead of the group. The repository of all knowledge of their past world, was the librarian. There was trust in his dark eyes, that Baz would take his spark of brilliance and turn it into a viable answer.
"Tannins..." Bazzer repeated, running a hand through his filthy hair. He bathed every day, especially after working with the hides, but he still always felt grimy, like he couldn't get clean. He figured either he was adding germophobe to his list of crazy or it was his dirty, disgusting clothes. "Maybe...I honestly don't know a lot about them," if he'd been in the library he'd look up the uses for the word, but here, all he had was what was stored between his ears, "Namely, where to find them to try," the logic of tannins being involved in tanning wasn't too out there though, no more than a lot of other ideas and things people had had over the millenium of humanity. "I'd try though if we had some. Couldn't hurt," were they some sort of seed or grain?
"Well," Quinn continued, looking as smug and pleased as a cat inside the birdcage. "I had a thought about where to find them, too. I mean, obviously we can't be sure. But did you ever notice that roseberries resemble grabes? I mean, not in the way they look or taste but they have the same kind of skins and flesh? They also have a bit of that," he wiggled his fingertips against his lips as he searched for the right way to describe it. "Sort of that acidy taste, that after taste that grapes have. Has nothing to do with the flavor, but everything to do with the chemical reaction with our saliva, you know?" He spread his hands and shrugged. "So why not test a strip of your hide with mushed up roseberries?"
At best, Bazzer was not a wine drinker and no one would ever dream of calling him a win conossiuer. He drank wine with his parents at holidays or at the other rare official functions he had to attend and then it was rarely more than a glass and only to be polite. Perhaps it was good wine, perhaps it wasn't, but he'd never developed a taste for it. Beer was more of Bazzer's drink of choice, but not the budweisers or miller lite that most people seemed to prefer. He liked the speciality beers, the unique tastes from around the world, but even then, he knew little of alcohol prduction other than that it was fermented. "Couldn't hurt," he replied, nodding and pushing his bangs out of his face unconciously. "Might be a walk to find some here," he commented, his tone indicating that he was not opposed to searching, especially if Quinn wanted to help.
Quinn nodded. "I think it'd be worth looking for, don't you? And hey, if we find a batch big enough, we can bring some back for everyone." He pushed himself upright and went over to gather up an empty leaf pocket that had been discarded amidst the roots of the climber. He'd noticed it where when he'd climbed down. "What do you say? Feel like going to search now?" Quinn frowned as he considered where they should look. "I don't think anyone's really looked for them north of camp. Have you heard of anyone looking for them there?"
He thought about it for a minute. What else was there to do? "Sure, why not," Bazzer agreed, climbing to his feet. "Maybe we can find something to eat too," because he wasn't too interested in starving to death or otherwise. "Never formally introduced myself. Bazzer Vedder," he held his hand out for Quinn to take. Standing, the two men were close in height and Bazzer didn't look quite so childish and young as he nornally did. Most people assumed him to be much younger than his nearly 30 years.
Since Quinn himself was only twenty five, he assumed Bazzer was close to his own age. He took the offered hand and shook it. "Quinn Landry, formerly of Las Vegas. If you're hungry, I've got some of this." He handed over the cold hunk of smoked grazer. They had enough meat to last them a couple of days. The grazer was not a small kill, by any means. It was just currently hoisted well above the forest floor and it was generally too much of a hassle, especially for Quinn, to make his way to it and lower it first thing. He made a habit of trimming a little bit off at night and keeping it in his hammock with him. Something to munch on first thing without having to wander too far. "Help yourself to it." He'd already taken a few healthy bites out of the fragrantly smoked meat. He didn't mind parting with the rest.
Making a face at it, Bazzer took it and took a bite before handing it back. Chewing thoughtfully, he shook his head, "Still doesn't taste like coffee. I keep hoping," he commented, through it was a joke. He would lower the grazer, but he didn't have a knife to cut with. What he had though was enough to quiet his stomach at least. "Las Vegas. I'm from Kansas City. Helena's from New York, the priest is from Boston," there was no mistaking that accent, "We're a motely crew, that's for sure." He blinked for a moment at the unintentional pun. "What did you do there then?"
Quinn shrugged, accepting his food back. "Gamble, mostly. Race bikes." Of the motor variety. "So want to just roll out? Or should we tell someone? The doctor or the marine?" The tree was slowly starting to move with other waking people. Quinn caught sight of Ryan edging carefully down the tree.
"Kenneth!" Bazzer called, knowing the man wasn't too far off, they had slept together the previous night. Not like together like he had with Thorne, Bazzer and the older man had certainly not hooked up for so many reasons, including that Kenneth was straight, but Bazzer hadn't had bedding and wasn't sleeping with Thorne anymore. And he wasn't going to call to Thorne right now, anyways, "Quinn and I are going to look for something useful!" There was no response, but even if Kenneth hadn't heard specifically, someone had and the message would filter through as needed. They wouldn't be gone for more than a few hours at most. Turning to Quinn, Bazzer nodded, "Ready then?" he asked, heading off.
Quinn fell in behind Bazzer. "Yeah, but we can't push too hard. I can't make it that far going too fast." Also talking and walking? Tough. He tucked the leftover meat into the leaf pocket and concentrated on breathing and keeping up. It wasn't long before he noticed that the northern part of the woods had much fewer animal paths through it. The birds and pesks were still noisy in the trees and the early morning sunlight was weak and seemed watery by the time it hit the forest floor. "Think it's gonna...rain again." He wheezed it out as they walked.
Looking up, to check the clouds, it was hard for Bazzer to tell, "Why do you think that?" he asked. It wasn't really the humid, stickiness the last rain had brought. He knew that rain was good, it meant water, but he really hadn't cared for those torrential downpours. They were walking at what Bazzer considered to be a reasonable pace, which was something slower than what Kenneth and Jasper probably preferred. Much slower, actually. Bazzer never once claimed to be the athlete of the group. He left that to Jasper and the priest and the others. Nor did he claim to be the bad ass either. Nope, he was the brain and that was fine.
Quinn gave a bit of a coughing laugh. "Doesn't rain much in Vegas, you know. But you learn to recognize the smell when it happens." He drew in another breath, shallow in comparison to the depth of his chest and nodded. "Not yet, but I think it'll probably rain today." He didn't mind sounding a little bit like a wackjob. From what he'd heard around the campfire Baz was a little bit of a nutter himself, not that Quinn would ever suggest it to his face. "I'm trying to focus on breathing anyways, as much as it hurts, it the best way to find those roseberries." The scent of roses was pretty strong around the bushes that were carrying a lot of fruit.
"I hope it's only a little rain then," Bazzer replied, keeping his pace to match Quinn's letting the other man set the pace, "Not like the torrential rains we had a little while ago," those had been bad. Really bad. As good as rain was...that had not been a good day or not for so many reasons, "Are you even up for this then?" he didn't want Quinn to hurt himself just to find roseberries. He should heal, "We don't have to do this now."
Quinn quirked a smile that was almost a wince. "If I spend another day sitting there tending the fire I'm gonna start bashing my head offa trees." He stopped talking as they hiked up a steeper incline. There was no missing the fact that the ground rose not too far away from camp. That must have been why their area around the field had flooded so badly during the storm Baz had mentioned. Not only did the monsoon sweep in from the west, but all the rain that fell north of them had run back down the hill toward them. "Know what I mean?" he asked once they were cruising over relatively level land again.
"Yeah, I do," Bazzer nodded, a look on his face that indicated he knew all too well, but he didn't elaborate. They stopped talking for a while as they worked their way up the now hilly and uneven terrain. After what seemed like forever, but couldn't've been more than perhaps an hour, there was no mistaking the smell, though it wasn't of roseberries. Pausing, Bazzer looked around sniffing audibly as if that might make him a bloodhound or something. "Smells like rotting fruit," he said to Quinn, "Lots of rotting fruit." It smelled absolutely gross and he wondered if he might be sick. Thankfully, there wasn't much in his stomach.
Quinn's own nose twitched and he stopped, turning in a full circle. "Yeah, I smell it," he said as his brows drew together. "Think it's coming from that way." He nodded off of their path toward the west. Direction indicated he arched a brow at Bazzer. It wasn't a pleasant smell and he hadn't encountered anything else that had smelled anything li,ke that...except perhaps the eleboar after a few days... "Do you think we should have a look?" Craning his neck to look in that direction without leaving the clear path they were on, he thought he caught sight of something bright - red and purple flowers, he thought. Something that flowered often had fruit, right? Just...not usually at the same time, or so he understood it.
"Yeah," What could he say, Bazzer was the curious sort. Curiosity may have killed the cat, but satisfaction brought him back. Changing directions he headed towards the smell, picking his path carefully through tree roots and bushes. It didn't take too long before they came to a small clearing of trees where the stench had become increasingly worse. Towards one side was a pile that seemed to be where the stench was coming from. Covering his mouth and nose with his shirt, he crept closer. It wasn't until he was right on the pile that he realized what it was. Turning he took a few stumbling steps away and retched, bile coming up from his stomach and making his mouth sour. Oh. So that was the smell. It was like giant rotting fruit. But it wasn't fruit.
Quinn staggered to a stop against a tree several feet away, horror dawning as he recognized Jeri's yoga pants. That pile of rotting fruit wasn't fruit at all, but rather the same woman he had arrived in this place with, the pretty doctor-to-be. Bright lights were bursting like fireworks on the edges of his vision as he sucked in particulate laiden air in the little grove. With perfect, dazzling clarity he saw the bright crimson blooms open near Bazzer, just to the right of Jeri's body. Their petals spread gracefully and an errant weak sunbeam struck the dancing pollen as it was expelled from the flower. "Baz....shit...shit, Baz, come away..." Why did he feel so incredibly far away as he sagged to the forest floor, as his eyes fixed on the strands of blue hair - Annie's hair - beyond Jeri. They were all here. They'd all died here.
Ugh, sometimes curiosity did not lead to satisfaction at all. Once he was done heaving, Bazzer turned to go back to Quinn, but he spied the bodies and began retching again, nothing coming up but dry heaves. Stumbling back, he grabbed Quinn's shoulders with his fingers for support, "Oh God," he rasped, "They're dead...all dead..." of course they were. They knew the girl's must've died, they couldn't survive on their own and the laughers liked people, but still. To see them...to see them dead like this..."Oh God..." Bazzer closed his eyes tightly as if to erase the image from his mind.
"Why..." Quinn was in a daze, his dark eyes locked onto the lumps that were the shape of human women. Women who seemed to have just fallen down and died. There was the scent of the flowers in the air and those bright dancing lights in the corners of his vision. Quinn reached up to try to bat the buzzing little lights out of his field of vision. "Why didn't the laughers eat them?" He knew for a fact that the carnivores weren't that picky. Their prey didn't have to be alive and kicking for them to chow down on it, it's just the way they preferred things. He'd gone back to see if they had cleaned up what was left of Payne's eleboar and they had, every bit of it. So why would they have left these four women untouched? "Poison?" He turned to look at Bazzer's face. Baz was smart, his shocked mind told him, much more booksmart than Quinn was. He should know, right?
That...was a damn good question. And a damn good distraction from what his body was attempting to do in response to the shock. Straightening, Bazzer walked a little ways away and sat down, his back to the girls. "Laughers..." he mused for a moment. Perhaps his behaviour was odd, but he was odd. And he had a problem to solve which he loved and solving the problem overrode almost everything else. "Maybe poison..." he rolled up his sleeves and pants, then stood to go check them out. Something that made even the laughers stayed away from...that nagged at him, tickling the back of his brain. Something wasn't right. Walking towards Quinn, intending to go check the girls out from much closer, he stopped at the other man, the pieces clicked into place. He didn't know what it was specifically, but this was Not Right. "We need to go now," he stated, grabbing at Quinn and trying to drag him as he ran. He didn't care how much Quinn hurt, they had to go. Now.
Bazzer managed to pull Quinn to his feet and get him moving in a vaguely away direction but it didn't last too long. His breath huffed out of him and a pain jabbed him in the side like a punch. Quinn marvelled at the fact that he couldn't quite feel his feet or the ground as he stumbled after Bazzer through the underbrush. "Ah, fuck, stop!" Quinn coughed as he wrenched his arm out of the librarian's vice-like grasp and stumbled against a tree trunk. Fireworks were still exploding in his vision and no amount of shaking his head would clear them. "I can barely see and I feel my fuckin' feet." He doubled over, trying to suck air back in to his recalcitrant chest.
Breathing heavily, Bazzer let Quinn go, trying to help him sit as he adjusted his glasses and looked around. They were far away enough that the smell was almost gone. Good. "You okay?" he asked, knowing the other man wasn't, but asking anyways. Sitting down himself he tried to catch his breath, Bazzer was not used to running like that, nor pulling someone after him. "There was something...something there. Poison, something. You hit the nail on the head, the laughers wouldn't go near them. Something was there, whatever killed them, that is bad enough to make the laughers stay away. Means we should too," he gasped out, managing one or two words as he tried to catch his breath. "We go near them, we die too."
Quinn shook his head, trying desperately to clear those bursting lights from his vision or the strange numbness in his fingers and toes. "You did," he finally croaked out. "You got right up close to them." His dark eyes locked on Bazzer's face. "Why aren't you dead? Do you feel ok?" The funny thing was that he, himself, didn't feel ok but they could get to that when they got to that. For now, there was just blessed oxygen as he sucked it into his lungs, slightly hitched by the stabbing pain in his side.
"I was only there for a second before running off to hurl," Bazzer was not ashamed to admit it at all, it was his first time seeing a dead body like that. Bodies. Decomposing. It was disgusting. "Maybe I wasn't there long enough? Or whatever it was wasn't there right now, but will be back? I don't know. I just know if the laughers are avoiding that spot then we should too. If they could, they'd eat them. No doubt," he thought back to the horrible screams of the people who had been taken in the field after arriving too early before the laughers went to their hiding places. "That they didn't says a lot to me. Those bastards are cunning."
Quinn frowned as he tried to think backward. His usual clarity of insight was evading him, ducking and weaving like a prizefighter and it was pissing him off. "It was still there," he said. "I can feel it. I...can see it." He reached out into the space that rested in his peripheral vision as though he was trying to grasp something that was hovering here or there in the air. "Lights, like little fireworks." Yes, the man was definitely stoned. His pupils had shrunk to the size of pin heads and he got distracted for a moment as he tested the numbness in his fingertips by touching them in order to the pad of his thumb. It came to him as he watched his hand in a daze and he stopped what he was doing to point at Bazzer. "You had your shirt over your mouth and nose when you walked up to them."
"What the....?" Bazzer set a hand on Quinn's head and looked deep into his eyes. It wasn't quite the soulful experience in the movies, more like a check for being stoned and yup. He was stoned. That was...bizarre. How did he get stoned? He hadn't done anything except...yeah. Breathe. That was how the girls had died. They had inhaled something. "How much do you hurt? Scale of one to ten," he asked, releasing Quinn's head. He'd seen that look before, that not quite with it attempt at logic. It was not something he was okay with, but he let it go for now. This wasn't intentional on his part or anyone elses, therefore, it wasn't quite the same as being in the hospital. They needed to get back to camp though. As soon as they could.
Frowning fuzzily, Quinn considered his level of pain. He was amazed that such a simple question could stump him. "Umm..." he trailed the single note on much longer than it had to be and shook his head slightly. "Maybe a three? No, no, four. It's not awful now that we aren't running." Clinically in some room in the back of his mind, Quinn was studying this experience. His speech wasn't slurred but it sounded slower to him. His tongue felt a little bit thick in his mouth but it wasn't that bad. The weirdest thing was the tingling in his digits, like they weren't there. Phantom limb syndrome. That though made the corners of his mouth quirk in a surprised and amused smile.
"Alright," Bazzer sat there for a minute, debating if he could carry Quinn or not if he needed it. Probably not. At least for now then, they'd sit here and wait and not move until Quinn could feel at least a little better. "You're stoned. Downers. They increase the GABA neurotransmitters in your brain and slows brain function. Too much can slow your heart rate, which slows blood flow and can cause death. You probably don't care, I guess. You won't die though, I promise. Not from this anyways," he couldn't really say never, now could he?
Quinn still seemed to be focusing on something internally. "There's hallucinations too. Just...lights and colours. It's not bad, when I'm just sitting." This had to be the strongest hallucinegene he'd ever heard of. Just a few particles breathed in worked incredibly fast. "What did it...look like? That was Jeri you walked up to, right?" Maybe it wasn't appropriate at ask Bazzer to recount what he'd seen, especially so soon but a part of Quinn was curious. He'd liked Jeri and had come to terms with the fact that death had likely been her fate days ago. "Does it look like she suffered or just laid down and died?" He hoped it was the latter.
"I...I don't know..." he hadn't really looked at them that closely. He hadn't wanted to remember, "Yeah. Blue hair and orange sweatshirt. Blonde hair...they were all there. Together. Just like they laid down. Nothing had touched them," they were bloated and discoloured and disgusting, but not gnawed on or eaten at at all. "I think yeah. What almost got you, got them," almost being the key word though. They hadn't known. Not at all. "Those poor girls..." he shuddered unconsciously, "How horrible."
Quinn looked Bazzer dead in the eye and quirked a small smile. "Better than laughers. Better than being trampled by an angry eleboar. All things considered..." He heaved a sigh, suddenly feeling the urge to return and report. Groaning, he pushed himself upright and swayed for a moment. He hadn't liked the thought that maybe they were hurt. Maybe they had laid out here in pain, unable to return due to being injured. Now he knew they had just gone to sleep. Maybe dreamed of all of these fireworks he was seeing. That wasn't so bad. Quinn could sleep well with that knowledge, as sad as that fact was.
"I think, if given a choice between being eaten and that...I'd get eaten," Bazzer said softly. Hallucinating to death? Dreaming things that weren't his own? No. No, he couldn't do that. Not again. Closing his eyes, he pulled his glasses off and squeezed his eyes shut as if blocking out the images. He wasn't pushing away the images of the girls though, but of his own inner demons. The ones he couldn't run away from, "This...we need to go back to camp," he stood suddenly, putting his glasses back on. "You can walk?"
Quinn nodded. "Yeah, let's just take it easy though." His feet were pretty much numb and he was worried about tripping and doing his ribs in even worse. Slow and easy, that was the way to manage it. "We should really tell people...you know, about those flowers. It was the flowers, right? Did you see those blossoms open up when you got close?" Quinn had seen it. They were such a vivid red and orange, colours that you don't often see in this world of purple. He could see how the women had been drawn to inspect them. With one last sigh and a shake of his head, Quinn pointed himself toward the home camp.
"I didn't notice them at first, but yeah," Bazzer helped Quinn as best he could as they headed back empty handed. "I saw them when I looked the second time. Don't bright coloured things mean 'danger' sometimes?" he asked, it was mostly a rhetorical question, but that sounded like something he had seen on the discovery channel about insects and things. He didn't know if it applied to plants too, but it seemed like a reasonable theory right now. "We'll be back soon and tell everyone. This is...there aren't too many day-dangers here, it's easy to get complacent. This is important."
Quinn nodded, his mouth setting into a grim line. He was trying like hell to ignore the rampant movement of light and colour in his peripheral vision. It was enough to almost make him feel sea sick. The walking movement only made it worse. It dawned on him that people would probably pay a hefty price on the street back in Vegas for this kind of experience. "Yeah, let's just get back there," he said with a determined set to his jaw. He'd honestly not embarked on this walk today with the thought that all he wanted to do was get back to his nice cool stream but that was exactly what he was wishing for. Served him right for being adventurous.