ArchivedLogs:Cleanup

Cleanup
Dramatis Personae Elliott, Eric
In Absentia	2013-11-17 '
Location <NYC> Harlem
Harlem's gritty reputation has become less and less earned over the past decade or so as gentrification has set in. Its reputation as a hub of jazz and culture, however, is still very much earned -- throughout the years Harlem has been renowned for its contributions to music, from its swing dancing and jazz culture back when speakeasies were prevalent to the many hip-hop artists with Harlem roots in modern day. It's an ugly day in the city, but most days lately have been. There's a very faint mist, not enough to wash the streets clean but enough to turn much of their intermittent mess into a slimy sticky goop. The city smells like unclaimed trash, like rotting flesh, like burning plastic and burning meat. Its usual sounds of traffic are all but gone, but the shuffling and groans of the dead are everywhere. Right now, that shuffling is flocking towards a block of subsidized apartments in Harlem, the building itself largely overrun save for a few families still huddled inside. The streets outside are not much better. But there's a /team/ of people, dressed in shades of grey in urban camo. Helmets, boots; they carry some sort of weapon that looks like a hybrid between a sharply spaded shovel and a battle axe and are each armed with compact submachine guns. None of them have drawn these, though. In front of this group is one woman who looks like all the rest. Uniform, helmet, boots; she holds up a hand to stop her team behind her as they round the side of the building to look towards its door. She waits, quiet, as one of the zombies crowding into the building detaches, ambling their way only to be dispatched quick and quiet with a hard CHUNK of axe blades. The tip of her shovel comes down through the decapitated neck afterwards, slicing the disembodied skull nearly in half. The soft hum of a Prius comes around the corner, outfitted with the blue lights of the NYPD Traffic Enforcement division - an oddly popular vehicle for the remaining members of the NYPD due to its quiet electric engine that attracts much less attention from wandering herds. The blood-stained cow-catcher hastily welded on the front is probably not a factory option. The driver is alone, carrying a heavy Halligan bar in one hand, its aze sharpened to a lethal edge. He looks over the soldiers for a moment before he closes the door and steps towards the team, riot uniform crunching and shield held protectively in front. When he speaks, his voice is low and hushed. "Sutton. How's it going?" he asks, jamming the fork of his Halligan through an approaching zombie's eye socket with a sickening crunch made no less awful for its familiarity. From behind her helmet's visor, Elliott's dark eyes look out at Eric for a long moment. Narrowing. But in the end all she says is: "Four occupied units in here. Maybe more. Got to escort them to the shelter on 135th." She waits for the tail end of the group outside the building to /enter/ it before sending her people forward. Around. Eric is gestured on with them -- he's carrying a weapon and in riot gear, that's evidently good /enough/ to include him into the surge forward. Her team pours in through the broken doorway, leaving firearms at their backs and instead weilding the shovel-axes in their sudden wave of skull-crunching. With the zombies all moving forward, it takes a good many deaths before the pack even starts to notice they're being picked off. Eric nods and steps forward. The shield strapped on one arm is as much a weapon as it is a tool for defense, shoving the dead forward before the heavy metal bar comes forward to stab through snarling faces, or bash skulls open with the side of the pick. It is bloody work, certainly, if nothing else, taking the crowd apart piece by piece to get towards the door, but Eric doesn't seem to tire even after the exertion mounts. "Watch your left," he calls across to one of the soldiers as a zombie swings around to try and flank the side of the team. Elliott's soldiers stick together in a tight formation on their approach to the building, packed back-to-back so that zombies cannot approach without meeting quick ends on their blades. Only once they've mowed their way through to the building does the formation break. In the smaller confines here they form a line instead, spreading out to hack their way into the lobby. It's here, too, that Elliott breaks her team up into smaller clusters, dispatching these three to the first floor, these three to the second, these three to the third. Herself and another man for the top. She gestures Eric along, too, towards the stairwell. "You're with me." "Aye, ma'rm." Eric's accent drags out the syllable, and he gives Elliot a rakish smile before following after her and towards the stairs. When he reaches the door to the stairwell, he pauses to listen and check that Elliot is ready before he reaches to the handle and pulls the door open. Using his (bloody but otherwise clear) shield to block the doorway, he carefully edges out onto the landing. Eyes flick up the stairs and down before he gestures Elliot after him. "Awful glad to have y'all in to help us clean up this mess. Ain't 'xactly what we're trained for. You neither, I suppose, but...." Eric's voice is soft so as not to carry too far and attract attention, butit carries a tone of relief in it even still. "Definitely not been trained for this. Hell of OJT, though." There is shambling from the stairwell, too, but the teams that go ahead of them clear it at least up to the floors they get off at. Quick and quiet. Up on the fourth floor, though, there's still a large /cluster/ of zombies, grouped in the hallway to pound ceaselessly at one of the apartment doors. Many of the other doors have been broken open, smashed on the floor or hanging off their hinges. Elliott is very quiet as she eases the stairwell door inwards, looking down the hall. "Back to back," she murmurs to the other two. "Just remember, they're dumb as rocks." Eric nods, once, coming in to stand next to Elliot, almost shoulder to shoulder. "Watch the doors." he warns, voice low and almost to a hiss. "Don't want any surprises." He rolls his head back and forth, cracking out the muscles in his neck. "Ready," he says, as he brings the iron bar up, as a fencer brings their foil en garde. "On it," murmurs the last man, coming into place to round out their triangle from behind. Keeping an eye on the doors as Elliott starts leading the way towards the zombies trying to break their way into the apartment. She turns to put Eric a little more on point, murmuring, "-- Shield up," very low. And then /stabbing/ her shovel blade out towards the nearest zombie, its tip smashing straight through an eye. More of them turn from the door as the first body thunks down. Behind her mask, Elliott's teeth bare in something that might be a grimace or might be a /grin/. CHUNK. Another skull crushes inward, and now the mass, a dozen zombies or more, is starting towards them. Eric, too, shoves the spike of his bar into the face of one of the zombies, but as the crowd approaches, he foregoes stabbing to concentrate on shoving the crowd back bodily with the shield. He reserves the bar for an extra incentive for hiitting back the few trying to pass his shield in the narrow corridor. Eric's teeth are definitely curled into a grimace, grunting with the effort of holding so many pushing, jostling bodies back from the rest of the team. Staying out of the way of way of Eliott's swings is a task in itself. Elliott is methodical. She reaches around Eric's shield, stabbing up from below to shove her long-handled weapon through chins, towards brains. Chunk, chunk, quietly grunting with each effort. There's a rasping rattly breath behind them, a zombie that's little more than shoulders, head, arms, dragging along the ground towards them from a darkened doorway as another shambles out too, but Elliott doesn't even look at these, trusting her soldier to dispatch of threats from behind as Eric holds the crowd at bay and she takes them out. The pushing starts to lessen as two bodies then four then six hit the ground. As the crowd thins, Eric switches back to an offensive role, firefighter's tool lashing out to stab through an eye here, to push a zombie back to hold it while Elliot lances forward to finish it off. With the increase in dead zombies also comes a pressing forward, moving the team steadily closer to the unbroken door to the apartment. When they get close, Eric's fist pounds into the door in a quick, distinctly rhythmic noise - a quick drumming, with pauses structured in. "NYPD." Elliot finishes off the last two in the hall once they've gotten close to the door, and uses her shovel to /shove/ some of the bodies back. She moves to one empty doorway and then another, tapping her tool slowly against them and waiting to see what responds. In one she finishes off a stumbling child with only one leg. In another there are only flies buzzing around the mostly-eaten bodies of the family that lived inside. She returns to the door. "We're here to get you out. There's space down at the Y for your whole family. Food there. Medicine." She repeats this statement again in Spanish, only after which the door tentatively slides open. Two parents, three children. Already packed up but looking rather terrified. Eric smiles warmly at the children, crouching down a little bit and giving them a reassuring look. "We're going to get you out safe, even though its going to be a little bit scary, alright? We just need you to stay close and follow our instructions." He straightens back up, turning his attention back to Elliott. "Same way we came?" he asks, glancing in the direction of the stairs. "Or do you want to try going around back, see if its less populated that way?" "{Stay close to us,}" Elliott repeats in Spanish, "{We'll get you to the shelter safely.}" She looks towards the stairs, shaking her head. "Go the other way. Make sure the back stairs are clean, too." And with that, she gestures the others onward, taking point while her other soldier brings up the rear to head -- over the pile of corpses and towards the exit.