You had some excellent lines in your continuation this time, especially the one about trying to breathe through her ears! The warning message is a nice touch too, and I've taken what I think you were hinting at and made it a little more explicit. If I got it wrong... I hope you can fix it back the way it should be :) Three months left: I reckon we can get an ending, though only of the local arc and not the whole story. What say you?
Mine "That's not reassuring," he said, and I knew he was thinking about the three we'd left on the roof. They sure as hell looked dead, but if this message was to be believed... I shivered, hoping that we wouldn't find out that the message was to be taken literally. I mean, what kind of thing can't be killed? Other than the Marvel franchise? "It's someone terrified and probably dying," I said, trying to sound confidant. "Nothing exists that doesn't die." "Except maybe mushrooms," he said, nodding. "But I'd say we've got an actual zombie outbreak going on here, and if you'd told me that at the start of our hike I'd have laughed at you and told you to get out of my way." He looked over his shoulder at me and grinned. "Not you, obviously, but anyone else, of course." "Me too," I said, wondering that the hike had really only been a couple of days ago. The normalcy of trekking through the hills and along narrow trails better suited to goats than people seemed a lifetime away. "But where's the writer gone?" he asked, and I immediately wished he hadn't. If they'd been left for dead, why would anyone pick them up later on and take them away. "Dragged themselves into the room?" I suggested. It did make a sort of sense; scrawl a warning and then try and hide in case someon-- something came back and realised you weren't as dead as you were pretending to be. He shivered now. "Wish you hadn't said that," he said casually. "I didn't really want to go and look in there. It's not like it smells good already." We were in agreement on that, and so, without words, we approached the doorway quietly, weapons at the ready, and peered through it together.
The floor of the room was covered in blood and it was churned up as well. At first I struggled to make sense of it, but slowly I realised it was as though a giant artist had spilled paint down on a canvas and then drawn their brush through it repeatedly, pulling it this way and that, smearing it around without adding any more paint, just mixing it up and about repeatedly. The furniture -- pretty much a formica-topped table and some steel-legged chairs that looked like they could come from any government canteen in the province, had been pushed to the side and there was a blood-spattered flip-chart against the other way. The flickering light was coming from a projector that had been knocked to the floor and was pointing into a corner. "It's like a slaughterhouse," I said. "Maybe we know where all the blood went," he said sounding thoughtful again. "There must be... there has to be... several bodies must have been emptied to get this much blood." "Emptied?!" My surprise turned my word into a near shout. He looked at me and shrugged. "Who the hell tries to empty a body of blood?" I said. "That's ridiculous!" "You said it yourself," he said. "The shamblers up on the roof; they didn't bleed enough. They barely bled at all. And there's a lot of blood in here. How many people are likely to have been here at any one time? Six or seven maybe? It's a small station." I nodded, though I didn't like his line of thought. "Let's go back and check the roof," I said. "I don't think I'll feel safe until I see that they're still there and still dead." "Yeah," he said. "Maybe we can throw the bits off the roof too." "Burn them," I said. "If they really won't stay dead let's see them try and come back from being burned to ash." He chuckled, which, I suddenly realised, was a sound I really needed to hear in all this chaos and mess, and we backed out of the doorway and turned round and headed back up the stairs. As we neared the roof it was a huge relief to have the smell finally dissipate and be able to breath normally again and I relaxed a little. There were no sounds coming from the roof, but even so we were quiet and stealthy as we reached the last few steps, and we stepped out cautiously and looking in every direction. In front of us the shamblers were still lying on the ground, but the smears of the small amount of blood they'd bled showed that they had moved. And the one that I'd decapitated wasn't headless anymore: the head had reattached itself somehow. I felt freezing cold as the room below suddenly sprang into a new relief in my mind: the churning of the blood was body parts crawling blindly through the mess to reassemble. Someone had tried, repeatedly, to kill all the shamblers, dismember them and keep them apart, but they'd just kept putting themselves back together. "Fire, was it?" he said grimly.
We descended the stairs, leaving the remains of the shamblers to burn on the rooftop. In a couple hours we would come back to check on things, but for now we felt no great need to keep watch.
As we returned to the safety of our quarters, locking the door and triple checking the lock, I realized a thought had been nagging at me ever since our discovery of the reassembled body on the roof. In the relative calm and quiet it finally broke through.
"Who do you think left that message on the wall," I asked, speaking slowly as my thoughts came together not unlike the decapitated body, "and... do you think... is there any way they could... still be alive?"
"That's a good question," he replied from the bathroom, where he was scrubbing his hands vigorously in the sink. A few minutes later he turned the tap off and emerged, drying his hands on a small, rough looking towel. "Whoever it was, if they are hiding out somewhere, I would assume they've gone completely insane."
"Fair point," I said, unable to stop myself from wondering how far we were from losing our own sanity. A little closer after the day's events, surely.
"Hey, we've got each other to keep us going," he said as though he could read my thoughts. "I won't completely lose my shit until you do, okay?"
"Deal," I said. A wave of renewed gratitude for his company washed over me as I took my turn at the sink. There was no chance I'd have made it this far without him.
And any chance of getting much further was quite likely to be entirely dependent on the two of us working together.
"Hey," I began but then stopped. I was finding it difficult to find the words to express something I didn't know how to say.
"Yeah?"
"I... what was that?" I asked, shutting off the taps.
"I thought that was you," he said, reaching for the weapons he had set aside for cleaning after we had secured ourselves in the room. Then, in what seemed to be more for his benefit than mine, he muttered, "No one can get in here unless we let them in."
Then the noise came again. A distant thud. Like a heavy weight hitting the floor in another room. A shambler falling off the roof, perhaps, or...
3 comments:
You had some excellent lines in your continuation this time, especially the one about trying to breathe through her ears! The warning message is a nice touch too, and I've taken what I think you were hinting at and made it a little more explicit. If I got it wrong... I hope you can fix it back the way it should be :)
Three months left: I reckon we can get an ending, though only of the local arc and not the whole story. What say you?
Mine
"That's not reassuring," he said, and I knew he was thinking about the three we'd left on the roof. They sure as hell looked dead, but if this message was to be believed... I shivered, hoping that we wouldn't find out that the message was to be taken literally. I mean, what kind of thing can't be killed? Other than the Marvel franchise?
"It's someone terrified and probably dying," I said, trying to sound confidant. "Nothing exists that doesn't die."
"Except maybe mushrooms," he said, nodding. "But I'd say we've got an actual zombie outbreak going on here, and if you'd told me that at the start of our hike I'd have laughed at you and told you to get out of my way." He looked over his shoulder at me and grinned. "Not you, obviously, but anyone else, of course."
"Me too," I said, wondering that the hike had really only been a couple of days ago. The normalcy of trekking through the hills and along narrow trails better suited to goats than people seemed a lifetime away.
"But where's the writer gone?" he asked, and I immediately wished he hadn't. If they'd been left for dead, why would anyone pick them up later on and take them away.
"Dragged themselves into the room?" I suggested. It did make a sort of sense; scrawl a warning and then try and hide in case someon-- something came back and realised you weren't as dead as you were pretending to be.
He shivered now. "Wish you hadn't said that," he said casually. "I didn't really want to go and look in there. It's not like it smells good already."
We were in agreement on that, and so, without words, we approached the doorway quietly, weapons at the ready, and peered through it together.
The floor of the room was covered in blood and it was churned up as well. At first I struggled to make sense of it, but slowly I realised it was as though a giant artist had spilled paint down on a canvas and then drawn their brush through it repeatedly, pulling it this way and that, smearing it around without adding any more paint, just mixing it up and about repeatedly. The furniture -- pretty much a formica-topped table and some steel-legged chairs that looked like they could come from any government canteen in the province, had been pushed to the side and there was a blood-spattered flip-chart against the other way. The flickering light was coming from a projector that had been knocked to the floor and was pointing into a corner.
"It's like a slaughterhouse," I said.
"Maybe we know where all the blood went," he said sounding thoughtful again. "There must be... there has to be... several bodies must have been emptied to get this much blood."
"Emptied?!" My surprise turned my word into a near shout. He looked at me and shrugged. "Who the hell tries to empty a body of blood?" I said. "That's ridiculous!"
"You said it yourself," he said. "The shamblers up on the roof; they didn't bleed enough. They barely bled at all. And there's a lot of blood in here. How many people are likely to have been here at any one time? Six or seven maybe? It's a small station."
I nodded, though I didn't like his line of thought. "Let's go back and check the roof," I said. "I don't think I'll feel safe until I see that they're still there and still dead."
"Yeah," he said. "Maybe we can throw the bits off the roof too."
"Burn them," I said. "If they really won't stay dead let's see them try and come back from being burned to ash."
He chuckled, which, I suddenly realised, was a sound I really needed to hear in all this chaos and mess, and we backed out of the doorway and turned round and headed back up the stairs.
As we neared the roof it was a huge relief to have the smell finally dissipate and be able to breath normally again and I relaxed a little. There were no sounds coming from the roof, but even so we were quiet and stealthy as we reached the last few steps, and we stepped out cautiously and looking in every direction.
In front of us the shamblers were still lying on the ground, but the smears of the small amount of blood they'd bled showed that they had moved. And the one that I'd decapitated wasn't headless anymore: the head had reattached itself somehow. I felt freezing cold as the room below suddenly sprang into a new relief in my mind: the churning of the blood was body parts crawling blindly through the mess to reassemble. Someone had tried, repeatedly, to kill all the shamblers, dismember them and keep them apart, but they'd just kept putting themselves back together.
"Fire, was it?" he said grimly.
Mine:
We descended the stairs, leaving the remains of the shamblers to burn on the rooftop. In a couple hours we would come back to check on things, but for now we felt no great need to keep watch.
As we returned to the safety of our quarters, locking the door and triple checking the lock, I realized a thought had been nagging at me ever since our discovery of the reassembled body on the roof. In the relative calm and quiet it finally broke through.
"Who do you think left that message on the wall," I asked, speaking slowly as my thoughts came together not unlike the decapitated body, "and... do you think... is there any way they could... still be alive?"
"That's a good question," he replied from the bathroom, where he was scrubbing his hands vigorously in the sink. A few minutes later he turned the tap off and emerged, drying his hands on a small, rough looking towel. "Whoever it was, if they are hiding out somewhere, I would assume they've gone completely insane."
"Fair point," I said, unable to stop myself from wondering how far we were from losing our own sanity. A little closer after the day's events, surely.
"Hey, we've got each other to keep us going," he said as though he could read my thoughts. "I won't completely lose my shit until you do, okay?"
"Deal," I said. A wave of renewed gratitude for his company washed over me as I took my turn at the sink. There was no chance I'd have made it this far without him.
And any chance of getting much further was quite likely to be entirely dependent on the two of us working together.
"Hey," I began but then stopped. I was finding it difficult to find the words to express something I didn't know how to say.
"Yeah?"
"I... what was that?" I asked, shutting off the taps.
"I thought that was you," he said, reaching for the weapons he had set aside for cleaning after we had secured ourselves in the room. Then, in what seemed to be more for his benefit than mine, he muttered, "No one can get in here unless we let them in."
Then the noise came again. A distant thud. Like a heavy weight hitting the floor in another room. A shambler falling off the roof, perhaps, or...
"Did you hear that?" he asked sharply.
I had. Or at least I thought I had.
A voice.
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