Quinn gets some help after finding the dead girls.
Who: Quinn and Kenneth and Thorne When: Late Afternoon What: Quinn's not doing so well, Kenneth reacts strongly and Thorne finds his booklet isn't so helpful. Where: Near the stream at the camp tree Rating: PG-13-mention of dead girls.
As the sun was setting, Quinn was flat on his back on his favourite rock beside the stream. For a long while now he'd been focusing on the auditory hallucinations that had taken over for the visual ones once he threw his arm over his eyes. Blocking out all light seemed to be the only way to block out the visual fireworks. The sound of the stream and the coolness next to the water had been a relief but now he was hearing things in the burbling water. It wasn't anything as dramatic as animals or people talking to him, it was just a lengthening or distorting of the usual burbles.
The sound of footsteps around him echoed like boots on a hardwood floor across an empty room. It was fascinating and annoying at the same time. Heaving a sigh, Quinn ignored the protestations of his gut. He'd eaten very little all day, like everyone else. Unlike everyone else all of the motion in his vision had made him so sick to his stomach that he'd upchucked all of the food he'd managed to get his hands on. Underneath the normal sounds of the camp life and the weird time distortions to the audio hallucinations there was a strange sussurus which he was trying really hard to focus on. It was almost a whispering and from moment to moment he was sure it was the world around him trying to communicate or it was Jeri and the other girls chastising him for not laying down with them. Sweat stood out on his skin as he strained to hear more clearly. He was so intent on what he was experiencing that he didn't even hear the marine approach.
Kenneth had been busy trying to plan wagons or carts of some sort. He'd sort of gotten an idea for wheels by taking a smooth, round rock and wrapping thick climber tree vines around it several times. When it hardened, he could take it off, coat it with resin and it should work. He hoped. It would take him four to eight days to get them to harden since he could only do one at a time, so he was hoping to find a climber tree trunk or something else cylindrical and longer so that he could do four or more wheels at a time.
When he saw Quinn, curiosity and worry got the best of him and he walked over and squatted down, "You okay, Sharp?"
He flinched when Ken addressed him but relaxed again right away. His arm was still cast over his eyes and he didn't make a move to change that. "Not really," he said in a typical moment of frank honesty. "I don't think I'm o.ding on killer plant but it sure isn't fun anymore." There was more than a hint of misery in his voice. He hesitated for a second and then sighed. He lifted his forearm away from his eyes and peered up at the marine out of one dark eye with pinheaded pupil. He'd just had to check that he was actually speaking to someone who was really there. The last thing he wanted was to be talking to himself right in plain view of everyone else.
It appeared that Bazzer was right, eventually people were going to find some sort of plant that recreated drugs. He reached down and felt Quinn's cheek then laid two fingers on his throat to check his pulse. "What kind of 'killer' plant and did anyone else partake or were you alone in your...explorations?" Maybe he should go get Thorne? Then again, what would a naturopath know about overdoses? Not that Kenneth was knocking the boy's skills or anything, okay, so he was a bit, but he was fairly sure there was nothing Doc could do.
Quinn didn't sit still for these attentions. The feel of another person's skin on his was unpleasant, almost...slimy. "Ugh, you sound like my high school guidance councilor." He dropped his arm from his face and pushed himself upright, swaying a little as he felt the world dip and shuffle beneath him. Taking a couple of deep breaths, he closed his eyes again so that he could talk. "Where the hell is Bazzer? Didn't he tell everyone what we found?" Quinn was sort of under the impression that Helena had left Kenneth in charge. If he'd been in any state to tell anyone anything when they had arrived, Ken would have been the first person that Quinn had informed.
Kenneth felt a chill at that, "Yeah, well, blame it on me being an old fart and what do you mean where's Bazzer? Was he with you? Did he take anything?" Fuck fuck fuck..where had that boy gotten off too? "When was the last time you saw him?" And who could Ken get into doing a search. Looked like he was going to have to turn Quinn over to Thorne anyhow so he could go find the wayward Baz.
Eyes still closed, Quinn lifted a hand and mimed that he was pushing an invisible object down. "Bring it down a notch. I'm almost one hundred percent sure that he didn't go too far after what we saw." He paused to swallow thickly as bile rose in his throat. It wasn't the memory, he told himself. It was the movement. "He's probably over there and poking at his skins." He gestured across the stream toward the area Baz had claimed to be his tannery. Taking a deep breath to steady his stomach he went on in explanation. "We went for a walk in the north woods this morning looking for roseberries. Instead, we found the missing girls. They're all dead, all grouped up together on the ground. There was a plant there with bright red and orange flowers. We figure the plant killed them. Baz is ok because he covered his mouth and nose with his shirt when he got close. I didn't cover up so whatever it was that knocked them out and killed them, I got a lungful of it. It's...pretty fuckin' wild, let me tell you." As he talked, Quinn gradually grew paler with a faint green tinge.
Well that explained it. Kenneth's stomach turned, he hadn't meant killer plant as in cool, but killer plant as in..killed...that was different.
"Bright red and orange flowers," he repeated as if that would help. Well, Alex was definitely going to want to retrieve the bodies and apparently whatever the poison was it couldn't get through Bazzer's t-shirt. Which meant with some precautions they should be able too. It didn't occur to him that seeing death would be upsetting Quinn, partly because he was used to it and partly because there'd been a pretty fair share since they arrived. He'd get directions from Bazzer and fetch the Padre. "Okay, you're looking a little ill, what effects is the plant having? Pain anywhere?" He kept his voice down and low, but he was no kind of medic. Sure, he could stop bleeding and splint wounds. Knew how to counter nerve gas and all that, but he didn't have any adrenaline here and he wasn't even sure that would work. "I should fetch the doc."
"Hallucinations, mostly." He shook his head, slowly, eyes still closed. "It's a lot of movement and colour bursts. When I close my eyes it switches to auditory hallucinations and I guess physical ones too because when you touched my cheek I swear to God it felt slimy." He cracked his eyes open again and zeroed in on the marine's hands, which appeared to be clean and dry as far as he could tell. "Numbness in my feet and hands. It spread a little bit but over the past few hours it's gotten better. Now it just feels like they are full of pins and needles."
Ken thought that getting better was good, numbness to pins and needles was improvement, well, he thought at least. Didn't that mean return of feeling? He was shit at medical stuff. Seriously. He looked down at his hand, but it was dry and what was he supposed to do about hallucinations? This was completely outside of his area of expertise and it wasn't like Quinn was just fucking around trying to get high, in which case, Kenneth would have been more than willing to just let him work out his own stupidity. "Okay, I have no clue what to do. I'm going to go fetch the doc and then I'll see if I can find Bazzer and the Padre and take care of the girls. You going go to be okay if I leave you here for a bit?" What the hell had Bazzer been thinking leaving Quinn alone to go putter anyway?
"Yeah," Quinn said as he made every attempt to curb his urge to nod. "I'm just going to wait it out." He heaved a sigh. "You probably should go talk to Baz. He got a much closer look than I did. He's probably really upset." It was nice that the marine was so concerned about Bazzer. Then again, maybe Baz had been exposed and Quinn just hadn't noticed. It was probably good to bring him back to camp to be checked out. "Sure, send the doc my way. Baker will probably be all kinds of fascinated by all of this." He wasn't sure sure that Thorne could do anything for him, but he'd certainly tell the doctor all about his experience. "Make sure if anyone goes out to look for them, they stay covered up. I'm pretty sure the poison is in the pollen of the flowers. I saw them open up and spit the stuff out when we got close."
Deadly pollen spitting flowers. Lovely. Well, one more trap on this planet that they were now aware of and Kenneth had to admit that he preferred the enemy he knew to the one in hiding. He also felt better knowing what had happened to the girls. Not that he felt better they were gone, just that he know knew they weren't lost somewhere. Kenneth sighed softly. "I'll go find Thorne and send him to you, then get Bazzer and the Padre and see if he can't give the girl's some peace." He patted Quinn's shoulder awkwardly then stood up and went in search of the doctor.
Quinn managed a thin smile for the other man but he was pretty grateful when he left. It seemed like movement and conversation just made everything that he was experiencing worse. It seemed almost as though he'd barely had time to take a breath before he sensed someone was homing in on him once again. That was more than passing odd and he added a vague time distortion to his list of symptoms. As a shadow passed over him he cracked his eyes open again and peered, red eyed, up at Thorne. "Doc," he said. "The marine find you?"
Thorne nodded and sat cross-legged on the ground close to Quinn, but not touching him. "He said that you had gotten into some sort of pollen that seemed to be having an acid like effect?" Kenneth had also told him that Quinn and Bazzer had found the four missing women dead. Thorne was trying to remain professional, despite being a doctor, he wasn't exactly the kind that was used to dealing with death. He chewed on his lower lip, "This might be a great time to check out my new find..." he pulled out the book that has been bound with frayed and decaying ribbons through simple notebook paper. "I think this is a listing of plants and their purposes, but I can't figure out what they're referring too and the pictures are sort of faded."
Quinn closed his eyes again with a sigh. "Yeah, it's more than a little intense. It's close to sundown now, right? Because this is a long shelf life for intense hallucination." He groaned and ground the heels of his palms into the hollows of his eyes. If it was close to sundown now, then he'd likely been experiencing extreme hallucinations for nearly eight hours. That would impress any lifetime drug user, which Quinn was not. "Does your book say anything about remedies?" Ordinarily, Quinn would have been intrigued by the book's puzzles and would have jumped at the chance to help Thorne figure out which of flora and fauna the passages were referring to, but not today.
Thorne glanced at the sky, "Wow...yeah, guess it is getting close to sundown. I hope that Ken isn't planning on dragging Alex and Baz out there now." That would be stupid and well, Ken wasn't stupid. A bit overbearing at times, yeah. He started turning the pages carefully, "So what did it look like? And how long ago did you find it? Can you tell if the effects are decreasing?" Thorne hoped they were decreasing, a hallucinating man up in a tree with man eating beasts below just didn't seem like a very good idea at all.
Quinn didn't pull his hands away from his eyes. If he was going to have to talk, he was going to stay in the dark. "I don't think Bazzer would let anyone push him into going back there. He was pretty freaked out." There was no need to mention that his own knees had completely turned to jell-o as well. "Um...it was a bush, or maybe a vine that was growing on a bush. It was in a clearing but the clearing was odd. No grass growing there but there was green on the ground. Sort of like roots?" He remembered that when he'd sat down the ground had felt sort of like funnel cake under his hands. "The flowers are what caught my eye because they were bright red and orange. There isn't too much plant life here that are those colours, right?" A few of the yarnballs he saw Helena fussing with had been orange, but not nearly as vibrant as the flowers on this plant. "The smell made us check it out. Baz put his shirt over his mouth and nose to get close enough to confirm it had been Annie and the other girls. I saw that when he walked closer the blooms opened and there was this beam of light just right, so I saw the particles sort of..float in the sun I guess. I don't know, maybe I was hallucinating by that time."
Quinn took a breath. "It had to be midmorning when we found it and yeah, I think the physical effects are decreasing. The numbness is shrinking." Hopefully a description like shrinking would make sense to a doctor like Thorne. It was the best way he knew how to describe what he was feeling.
That...was a long time for a inhaled hallucinogen. Thorne wondered what it would do if a higher dosage or lower dosage was inhaled, could it be used as a sedative? Or maybe an anesthetic? Already he and Rowan had found a more localized anesthetic, like novacaine. Thorne nodded and made mental notes. He wondered if anyone had a pen. It would be so great to be able to add onto his little booklet. "So..they like took over the entire floor with vines? Was it like in that Harry Potter movie...but without the movement?" He kept flipping pages looking for anything with bright red flowers.
Quinn frowned behind his hands. "Never seen those movies. Have you ever had funnel cake? It was like the bastard child of funnel cake and astroturf." He heaved a sigh. "The visual hallucinations aren't scary. It's not like...showing me things. At least, not the amount that I took. It's just like I constantly have fireworks going off in my peripheral vision, and it's long past the time where it's made me motion sick. There's auditory hallucinations too. Like sounds get distorted and there's an underlying whispering..." he trailed off as though he was listening to that same whispering he'd mentioned. Clearing his throat, he continued on. "And my skin feels weird. When Ken touched me I thought they felt slimey but his hands were dry." He dropped his hands from his eyes and opened them, blinking at Thorne a couple of times. "I asked Bazzer if the girls looked like they'd suffered or been in pain. He said he wasn't sure but he didn't think so. I haven't been feeling any pains either, just pins and needles in my hands and feet but it's slowly going away."
He'd never seen Harry Potter? Seriously? That idea was so foreign to Thorne it took him a second. "Um...I have no idea what a funnel cake is," he admitted. Evidently he was just going to have to go see the thing. "It's good they aren't scary, that's at least one thing less to worry about." It was quite odd for something to cause so many differen't kinds of hallucinations while allowing the sufferer to be aware that they were hallucinations. Thorne paused on one page with a sketch that had faded, but clearly had bright red flowers at one point and held the book out. "Did it look like this?"
Squinting with one eye and a look of intense focus on his face, Quinn tried to match up the faded image on the page with his memory of the death clearing. "Funnel cakes are these squiggly masses of fried dough that you can buy at amusement parks." How could Thorne be a man of around the same age as Quinn and not have enjoyed that boyhood staple? Rollercoasters had been Quinn Landry's first indication of a life-long addiction to adrenaline. He'd spent as much time as possible at amusement parks, even to the point of hitchhiking to get to them. He'd stolen money from his mom and her johns to pay his way in. What could he say? He'd always been resourceful. After a bit more squinting, he nodded decisively. "Yes, that's it. And I don't advise anyone to go there." He frowned. "I don't think that they aren't scary is a plus. It's a very strong negative. How many of these girls we have here wouldn't wander over to pick the flowers? Or as if Payne and Clay wouldn't stumble right into one while doing whatever it is they do out there all day."
"Actually, aren't scary is a plus because it means there could be medicinal uses for the plant." He read through the description of the plant. "Apparently it lasts for close to twelve hours and they never found any use for it or how it killed. I'm not even sure who they are." Thorne sighed softly, his hopes that this book would be a miracle help turning to dust. "Ah well, at least others have survived it. I'm not sure there's much I can do really but get you back to camp where we can keep an eye on you and maybe make plans to get the bodies back? I'm sure Alex will want to bury them properly. Although, I'm not sure how much good that does since I think the laughers will just dig them up again."
That was two possible medecinals they'd discovered in one day. Now...if only he could figure out how to use them. "Can you walk? Or do you need help? I'd like to get you closer to the tree since nightfall is coming sooner and sooner lately."
Quinn sighed, his face a picture of relief. "So this is going to end, probably soon." It had to have been eight or nine hours since he'd been dosed by those plants. "I was starting to wonder." He managed a wane smile. "Maybe you'll learn something about it if you retrieve the bodies." Quinn shook his head sadly. "The laughers certainly haven't gone anywhere near them which Baz and I thought was very telling." It was gradually getting easier to have the conversation. After a day of sensory chaos, to file his thoughts into order for a conversation was a huge relief. "Means that they know how deadly the plants are, right?"
"I'd say yes, if you're guessing it's been all day, then it should wear off soon." Which was good because Thorne wasn't so sure about having hallucinating Quinn up in the tree tops while the laughers circled underneath. Thorne nodded as he offered Quinn a hand up, "They've shown signs before that they were pretty intelligent or at least capable of learning, so I'd guess the plant was just as dangerous to them. Hmm...I wonder if that means it could used as a deterrent of some sort for them. That would be one way to keep them out yeah? Make a fence and dust it with the powder. Could be problematic for us...hmm...worth thinking about an any rate." He braced himself to take most of Quinn's weight, not sure how steady the other man was going to be once they got him up. "Think you can stand? Or, should I get some help?"
Quinn had to give the doc some credit. Using the pollen as a chemical defence, that had never even crossed his mind. "Ugh," he made a slightly sick sound as the wold spun and readjusted as he stood up. "No, I'm good. I can make it. I'm just motion sick more than anything else. Weird for me. I always liked rides when I was kid. Hell, still do. I guess they just get old after the first few hours." He walked along, careful of his slightly numb feet and where he put them, at Thorne's side. "I'm sorry those girls died like they did. Even more sorry that Jeri saw them and tried to help." He shook his head, thinking of the pretty brunette he'd arrived with. She'd been a med student and it was probably second nature to her todive right in when she spotted a human crisis like three missing women passed out on the forest floor. She'd blindly jumped into death without any idea of the danger she was in. Tragic, but a good lesson for this place.