ArchivedLogs:Changing

Changing
Dramatis Personae K.C., Matt, Shane
In Absentia	2015-11-28 "{That. Unusual.}" (Following up on theories. Part of Flu Season TP.)
Location <NYC> Brooklyn
So far, it has been a tiring and only marginally productive day of trekking around Brooklyn. A whole lot of talking in a number of different languages -- all the better to have multiple people there with them for translation purposes. Some intermittent fighting of zombie in between stops. A zombie shelter in Sunset Park where one young girl talked in staccato mechanical Spanish about the way her brother had tried to hammer the door in with a brick to get at her. It was mostly all she would say, though, numb and repetitive. A pair of very suspicious teenagers in a housing project in Red Hook who /insisted/ (in sharp and defensive French) that their mother was Absolutely Not a mutant, they have no /idea/ why the police report would say that, she was just sick like everyone else and needed medicine, not a bullet. And a long list of people too far gone to make conversation very productive at all. As eveningtime approaches Shane is kind of tired and a little bit bloody as he stops in front of this building, checking the address against one on his phone with a frown. It doesn't look like much, squat and old and boarded up, and with the light fading he is getting tenser about being out in the streets. Nevertheless, he shrugs, looks it over. Raises a hand as if to knock -- but thinks better of /this/ and instead sends a text. From somewhere inside, faintly, there is a chirrup of a phone. K.C. is not watching Shane. Nor the door. Nor a phone, though undoubtedly she /has/ one. Her fingers are dancing lightly in the air in front of her, her eyes focused on some space up above Shane's shoulder. "No answer no answer no answer -- home." She is murmuring softly to herself, head bobbing once after a time. Matt is dressed in a green short-sleeve button-up shirt and khakis, an olive drab Blue Suns messenger bag hanging across his torso and a knife (quite new) sheathed at the opposite hip. His soft brown hair has grown just long enough to look shaggy about the ears, especially after a long day of trudging around the city. His arms are wrapped around his body, hugging himself. "{They cannot answer, you think? Or wont?}" he asks K.C. in quiet, crisp classical Latin, shifting from one foot to the other. Shane's brows furrow, his eyes fixed down on his screen for a moment. He shakes his head, slipping it back into his pocket when no answer comes. He tries the door without much hope, biting down at his lip and stepping back to look at the boarded-over windows. He's just stepping in to turn his shoulder to the door when it opens for him, a pair of wide dark eyes peeking out of the crack. The door pulls open wider a moment later, a young woman in threadbare old jacket, worn canvas pants, furtive expression in her dark-brown face. She beckons them inside, one finger touched against her lips. The room beyond is bare and empty, trash-strewn cement floor, shattered glass, a broken-down wall at the back leading to a space that might have once been a workshop of some kind. An office space near the entrance is still intact. There are stairs leading up from the back workshop; from up above there's a shuffling, an occasional thumping. The woman hurries them into the office -- made up like a living space, somewhat, it has mattresses, a hotplate, a couple backpacks, a cooler, a baseball bat and crowbar propped up against the wall. K.C. shakes her head in answer to Matt. "{Yes,}" her contradictory answer returns in soft terse Latin (together with another shake of her head. "{Yes. Quiet.}" But then the door is opening, and for a moment the motion of her hand halts. Freezes. She tenses, eyes wide and her breath catching. It's a posture she's affected several times today in the presence of zombies -- thankfully there don't appear to be any forthcoming, and she shuffles on ahead after Shane when they're invited in, picking her way around trash on the floor to follow the woman into the office. "Thump. Thump. Thump." She's muttering this to herself veeery softly after each thump from upstairs. "{Ask.}" Matt looks up at the thumping sounds, brows furrowing. "{The person upstairs,}" his question comes out in quiet Quebecois French, and is directed at both Shane and their silent host, "{they are still alive?}" Shane drifts back to the office doorway, nose twitching as he lingers in it. His brow furrows deeply, gills fluttering once. The woman curls her arms around her chest, then drops them. She heads back to the front door to make sure it is securely shut, then returns to the office, wrapping her arms tight around herself again. There's a distinct Haitian colour to her own French, her voice low and exhausted. "{I -- no. I don't know. I don't. I don't know.}" Her hand lifts to rub against the short nap of her tight dark curls. "{It took my whole family. I had been -- away.}" She sounds guilty about this, now. "{My brother, he got the medication. Maybe that helped, after all?}" Shane turns away from the doorway as the woman talks, interpreting her speech into sign. With an addendum of his own, afterwards: '... Smells like dead in here though.' K.C. frowns at all the talk, shaking her head as she listens. Her eyes have fixed up on the ceiling, lips moving silently. "Help. Don't think." Her muttering is quiet. Her eyes stay fixed upward. In curt Latin again: "{Now ask...}" A long hesitation. "{Help how.}" Matt keeps his eyes on the woman, nodding occasionally as she speaks. "{I'm very sorry for your loss.}" His sympathy looks and sounds quite genuine, tinged with some fear of his own, shoulders hunched in. "{How do you think it helped him?}" Shane stays quiet, though his sign interpretation continues. For a time the thumping upstairs has settled down. His brows furrow; he stays close to the door to the room, posture quite tensed. "{He's not -- he's not a --}" The woman clenches her teeth, frowns, doesn't say the word. "{He's not like the others. It /helped/ him. It helped. Come -- come. Come, you'll /see/. He's -- we're trying. I don't know what to do, but he's --}" She starts for the door, stopping by the cooler on the way to open it. Take out a newspaper-wrapped package. K.C. tenses up again. Freezing. Stiff and for a long moment silent. There is a distinct pause where she looks -- decidedly like she is nooot going to follow the other woman out of the room, just staring up at the ceiling instead. One forefinger tap-tap-taps at the air, head bobbing in a slow repetitive nod. It is very slow when she turns, shuffling towards the door with a heavy gradual step. "... don't eat us." Matt licks his lips nervously, glancing at the parcel in the woman's hands. Licks his lips again, more /hungrily/. All the same, he follows her, though his hand drops to the hilt of his knife and he glances at Shane uncertainly. Shane presses his lips together, holding up a hand to Matt when he licks his lips. He lets the woman go first, his hand on his own sword as he paces after her. The woman leads them up the stairs, the shuffling growing louder as they head up. There is a door, closed, a number of pieces of furniture wedged beneath its handle. The thumping begins again in earnest as she starts to move them aside to push the door open. She is tense as she slips into the room, gripping her package tightly. "{David. David, I have brought some people. You need to be calm, yes? I've brought you food as well --}" She's unwrapping the newspaper, holding the wad of ground beef out on her hand. Across the room, there is a young man -- it's hard to tell whether he's older than the woman or younger; his features warped with clear decay. His arms are bound together with heavy cable that has been tied to a radiator by a boarded-over window; there's a mattress on the floor by where he is tied, dirty balled up blankets and a pillow on it. A bandana has been tied into his mouth like a gag. When he sees people at the door he lunges -- with a fair bit more coordination than the average stumbling zombie -- towards the end of his cable, straining at it until the woman speaks. Even then there is a bit of tugging. A quiet grunt. Shane's hand clenches tighter around the hilt of his sword. But releases long enough to sign: 'Don't think the medicine helped.' 'Not help,' K.C. agrees, wide-eyed and definitively Not Entering the room. She hangs back in the hallway, staring first into the room but then up at the ceiling again. Then into the room. Then up at the ceiling. 'Pet zombie?' she finally ventures. Still wide-eyed. "{Pet zombie,}" this time in Latin. "{Ask.}" Then: "{No. Fast. Why fast.}" Hanging back behind Shane, Matt does not initially even notice the zombie. He's busy staring at the meat in their host's hand. But he shakes his head clear, green eyes refocusing at last on the figure tied to the radiator. He covers his mouth with the hand *not* clutching his knife, and almost assuredly misses everything that Shane and K.C. signed. His eyes shoot to K.C. He hesitates a moment, then nods. Lowers his hand reluctantly. "{Your brother moves...quickly. Not like the others. Did this happen over time, or has he been able to do this since...since he was taking the medicine?} At first the woman doesn't answer, rather busy with approaching her brother. She sets the meat down first, just out of the reach of his outstretched cable. Points to it. "{Food. See? I brought you food. But you have to relax for me to let you have it. Okay?}" She holds up a hand. Gradually the straining -- eases. Fractionally. Carefully, cautiously, the woman circles around to reach up and undo the bandana around the man's mouth, hastening back out of reach as she tugs it off. There is a quick snap from him -- but then he stops, moving instead to the end of his rope. One foot quests outwards. Steps on the end of the newspaper. Drags the meat towards himself so that he can kneel down and start eating it. Shane's brows -- hike up. The woman backs towards the group again. "{No. No, he -- he took the medicine. But it didn't -- they say it didn't work. That he kept sickening. And died, and --}" She is looking at him -- then not looking at him, as he shoves his face into the meat to eat it, hands still bound tightly together. "{But he was not /like/ the others. When I found him, he was -- there was a difference, you see that? You see that. When they came for him he turned away. The dead, they do not run. They are not /scared/. For a week I used rope to tie him. One night he was tied by a broken piece of cement and tried to --}" She mimes rubbing her wrists on something. "{Wear through it.}" Out in the hall, K.C.'s finger is still tapping at the air. Tap, tap, tap. Her weight is rocking soooo slightly back and forth, now. "{That,}" she tells Matt in slow and uncertain Latin, "{unusual.}"