ArchivedLogs:In Which Some Students Make Poor Life Choices And Some Zombies Make Poor Unlife Ones

In Which Some Students Make Poor Life Choices And Some Zombies Make Poor Unlife Ones
Warning: Gore
Dramatis Personae Anole, Derek, Nick, Taylor, Julie	2015-12-03 "What are we waiting for then?" (Part of Flu Season TP.)
Location <WES> Salem Center
This town is a small hamlet, one of the last few working to preserve its historical identity in Westchester County. The cobbled streets are neatly upkept, and the quaint storefronts have been largely unchanged for ages -- in their facades, at least, even if the businesses inside them here and there have kept pace with the times. Here and there. Many, though, have been owned by the same families for generations. The business district is a single drag through the center of town, with houses branching off of the main street; in this small town, it's as common to see horses as cars making their way down the road. Though its living residents have fled, Salem Center is far from abandoned. There are more broken windows than in tact ones now, and quite a few doors stand wide open. The streets are cluttered with debris, and zombies wander through them aimlessly. At a casual glance from a distance, no more than fifty can be seen on mainstreet right now, but it's a good bet there are plenty of others lurking nearby. Every once in a great while, small groups of them congregate around some newly discovered meal: pets or unlucky wildlife, probably. /Probably./ The approach of the small knot of teenagers coming up from the distant school is all but silent -- mostly, thanks to the short dark-haired girl creeping along at Taylor's side. She has a pair of crowbars across her back, warm fleece-lined jacket, heavy jeans; as they head nearer, any sounds from their footsteps or the occasional squeak of the bicycle she is wheeling get projected -- elsewhere. Bounced far down the street well ahead of their approach. Taylor, for his part, has /several/ knives (if many of them are bone, well, they're on loan from Anole and the Morlocks) at his waist, a good solid baseball bat in one clubbed arm. And a bow in his /hands/, quiver of arrows at his back. His teeth clench up as they near the town, mind feeling ahead of them for the distinctive hungry-angry mental signature of the dead. Not really knowing what to expect but needing to get out of the mansion and have /something/ to take his aggression out on, Derek agreed to go on this dangerous mission. Nervous fear fueling his adrenaline for the time being. He's dressed in just a jean jacket over a t-shirt and a pair of jeans - a wooden baseball bat gripped tightly in one hand, a three wood golf club in the other, a meat cleaver at his side and his lighter tucked in his pocket. Derek stays several paces behind Taylor, his eyes darting around the area, doing his best to stay alert. On Taylor's other side, Nick walks with a gait that suggests stalking. His long digitigrade legs begin to carry him ahead of the other students every so often before he remembers to slow down again. He wears a blue denim jacket over a dark green t-shirt and black cargo pants, with a steel bowie knife strapped to one hip, a long knife of bone strapped to the other, and a sturdy tire iron in one clawed hand. His nose twitches and his lips draw back slightly to expose sharp with teeth as they approach the town proper, and the very faint growl that rises in his throat is lost down the street along with the other noises generated by the small party of well-armed teens. Anole wouldn't be making much by way of footsteps even if not for their audiokinetic assistance. Skittering (and occasionally swinging with a noisesless thwp of webshooter) along from tree-trunk to lamp-post, he's not so much walking with the others as venturing high up above and a bit ahead of them. At the moment, he's perched atop a streetlight, frowning down the block. Fidgeting with the handle of the long bone-knife at his side. A crowbar at his back, too. 'Do we just --' The rapid forward /thrust/ of his 'RUN' suggests, instead, 'charge'. The way he is /eying/ the zombies in the street suggests he is Not Liking That idea. All along mainstreet, the wandering dead have heard the projected sounds of their approach and started congregating on...nothing. If zombies could be disappointed, these certainly must be. They mill around in the middle of the street, shouldering past each other and trying to zero in on the noises originating from thin air. Even without excited rattling calls for prey, though, the number of visible zombies has increased almost half again in just a few minutes. The scent of decay is noticeable but not completely overwhelming, thanks to the cold weather. Amongst the clumsy, shambling bodies, a very few can be seen to move with noticeably greater facility. Not that they are the epitome of tremendous grace and athleticism, but from a distance one might almost mistake them for the living. At least the ones who are not mutilated /too/ conspicuously. To Taylor's telepathic senses, however, their thoughts are definitely comprised of the hungry static that marks them as the undead. One or two of them, however, are also thinking other thoughts--nothing identifiable as abstract reasoning, but some distant attempt to connect cause and effect. Failing, in this case, as they try and fail to determine the source of the audiokinetically projected noises. Taylor tips his head, listening. Eying Julie as she continues to project sound outward. Eying the zombies down the street. He shakes his head after a moment, though, poking a tentacle towards one of the nearer buildings to the edge of town -- as it happens, also a high school! Not /the/ high school, though, this one smaller, private, a local Catholic school. 'Lots of them in there. Don't want to go down the street and get surrounded by them coming from all sides. Should start on the edge, clear from the outside in.' Julie leaves her bike propped up against Anole's lamppost. Follows Taylor to the building, drawing her crowbars as they approach the front door. Which isn't locked, actually; it just pushes /in/ rather than out, evidently good enough to trap some zombies, at least. Doorknobs: hard. Taylor shoves at it, /several/ of his arms drawing their weapons as he opens it. The audiokinetic concentrates. Her expression now is more deeply furrowed as she focuses -- warping sound so that it /doesn't/ travel down the street. Just rattles through the school, her voice, footsteps, flitting through the halls and zeroing /back/ in on the door. "Alright, biters," she mutters, low -- and echoing, "come on out and play." Derek adjusts his grip on the bat and golf club in his hands, in anticipation of whatever is behind door number one. He follows Taylor's lead but keeps looking behind the group, to make sure they're not going to become surrounded. Every shadow gets a double take just to make sure. When the door is pushed in, Derek takes a deep breath and unconsciously holds it in anticipation for what's about to come. Nick's ears press back and his hackles rise visibly as they approach the edge of town. His nose wrinkles at the smell, and his tail swings in short, fast strokes. He grips the tire iron tighter and raises it, picking the right-forward arc as Taylor pushes the doors open in front of them. THWP-thump. Anole slings his way down to drop to the ground -- kiiind of behind Taylor. But after a pause he scurries towards the building, and then straight /up/ it, positioning himself on the wall over the open doorway. The foyer of the building contains only ten zombies, and half of them turn toward the doors as they open, rattling excitedly as they spot fresh meat and shuffling toward the new arrivals with hands outstretched to grasp. The nearest two are only a few steps away, and lunge toward Taylor and Nick, respectively. Throughout the school, classrooms empty as zombies come out into the hallways to follow Julie's voice and their comrades' calls. Taylor's jaw sets harder as he sees the approaching dead. One of his longest tentacles is snaking tight around the neck of the zombie that lunges at him, shooting up into the air. Many of his other arms are bristling with weapons; one of the other extra-long ones shoots in past the door to slam the baseball bat against an approaching zombie's skull, even as his other arm is crashing back down. Bringing its cargo in against the side of the wall, skull-first. Derek drops the bat in favour of getting a better two handed grip on the golf club. He closes quarters with a nearby zombie, not waiting for it to lunge at him. Letting out an angry grunt, he swings the three wood with as much force as he can muster, aiming right for the zombie's head. Nick snarls and shoves the lunging zombie back. Then he lifts the tire iron even higher, smashes down at its skull with probably more force than entirely necessary. He starts pushing past it, moving on to the next target before it has a chance to see him out, while his ears swivel to track the progress of incoming zombies. Anole skitters head-first down the wall, pausing at the very top of the doorway. He cringes flat against the wall, the green of his skin fading into the grey of the stone when Taylor's zombie smashes against the corner nearby him, spattering him with -- you know, he's not even looking, /ugh/. Instead he is holding on to the doorframe with one hand, stretching his other hand down towards the emerging zombies. Splt. Splt. Splt. Globs of sticky-white webbing shoot out from the cuff around his wrist, aimed for the feet of some of the zombies heading out towards his friends, thick web-glue that holds fast where it globs. The first two zombie casualies come in rapid succession, both at Taylor's hands (or assorted limbs). The head of the one he smashes into the wall explodes in a shower of pulpy blood, grey matter, and wet bone shards. The three whose skulls get caved in by various smaller implements expire less spectacularly, and Anole's webshooters afix the feet of three others to the floor. One more looks briefly held in place as well, but then simply loses the shoe that got stuck in place. The rest continue shuffling forward, and beyond them five more are shuffling in from the hallway. And one not so much shuffling as just walking, hanging back behind its fellows. Cautiously. Julie is still hanging back behind the others. She has her crowbars held in her hands, but is -- not leaping into the fray so much as still concentrating. Taylor, on the other hand, shakes the tip of his arm with a grimace, flinging the body from it. He is looking briefly apologetically up at Anole. Briefly. At least until his arm that is still stretched through the doorway finds itself chomped at by the zombie that has just come dislodged from its trapping of glue. He lets out a small yip, another limb whipping inward. Bone knife gripped in it to stab the zombie through the temple, even while its teeth are still clamped onto his tentacle. Derek jerks the golf club from the head of the dead zombie and uses the momentum to turn towards one of the zombies that Anole pinned to the floor with webbing. Figuring it's an easy target he sweeps the golf club up to catch one of the zombies under the chin. Derek looks over at Taylor with concern, after hearing the small yip, but not seeing anything serious, he brings the golf club around for a second swing at the same zombie's head. Moving onto the next nearest zombie (stuck to the floor and sort of comically flailing its arms in slow motion in an attempt to dislodge its one immobilized foot), Nick swings the tire iron at its temple. His angle is wrong, though, not quite enough to split open any skulls, only giving a sound cracking. He was probably going to line up and try again, but a (non-glued) zombie is already reaching for him from around its fellow, and more are pouring into the room behind that one. He turns the tire iron and shoves its sharp, chiseled end into the second zombie's mouth, leaving himself partially open for the stuck zombie he had failed to brain. "-- Ohno." This is Anole's tiny squeak as more zombies pour in. Wide-eyed, he drops from his perch, racing to drive the knife in and finish off the zombie Nick didn't /quite/ manage. His eyes -- are no less wide as he sees the others pouring in behind, though. He takes the crowbar in his clawed hand, backing up nearer Nick. The one-shoed zombie collapses as the knife breaks through its skull and into its brain, its jaws slacking around Taylor's tentacle. Only one zombie remains glued to the floor rattling eagerly and without much effect, but the reinforcements are pouring in around it. One is grasping at Taylor's tentacle to chomp it--the /same/ tentacle that just got bitten (proven to be tasty!). Another two close in on Derek even as the zombie he just closed is crumbling at his feet. The zombies Nick and Anole dispatch sort of fall against each other like best buds exhausted after a day of flesheating, but three others are coming in behind them. The last one in from that pack just lingers at the threshold, calling...and waiting. Those with keen or additional senses can probably discern other zombies farther down the hall. Most are still trying to follow the noises Julie projects there, but one are two are peeling off to investigate the one hanging back. "Guys, why is that one..." Julie's voice sounds not from where she stands outside the door, but from somewhere /past/ the others in the foyer. She's eying the zombie in the back with a little uncertainty, though only for a moment. Eying the /pack/ with a lot more trepidation. Taylor doesn't have time for trepid, he is getting /chomped/. He sucks in his breath sharply, at the moment simply /ignoring/ the biting of his arm to reach out, instead, and snatch one of the two away from Derek and throw it into the wall. His teeth are gritted, thick blue blood welling up stickily on the tentacle where he is getting NOMMED. He pins the zombie against the wall with an arm, uses another to ram a knife through its eye. "Huh?" He just answers Julie with confusion. As soon as the second zombie is down, Derek turns to the next and starts swinging away at the next one, aiming for the head like he did the other two. He doesn't catch the second one so it's lucky that Taylor got to it before hand. "Thanth." He breaths out quietly, then takes a hand off the golf club to pull out the meat cleaver starts hacking at the one chewing on his roommate without much finesse and creating a bit of a gory mess. Nick is starting to backpeddle. One zombie at a time was maybe manageable, but three is clearly a bit beyond the wolf-boy's undead-slaying skills. He dispatches one overhand deathstrike style and, stooping, hooks the tire iron around another zombie's knee to knock it down. While this cuts his immediate threats down to one, that one is quicker than he perhaps expected. It swipes at him and manages to grab his arm, jagged fingernails catching on the denim and dragging him toward its eager snapping teeth. Anole's shoulders hunch, his expression screwing up as gore splatters out from Derek's cleaver. He doesn't have time for all that much cringing, though, surrounded as they are. Nick fells one of the zombies just as it starts to reach for his (admittedly armour-plated) arm, but it is still grasping hands out towards his leg once it is on the ground. Grabbing at him, chomping in against his thigh. He shoots his hand /up/, splatting out a string of webbing to pull himself towards the ceiling -- the zombie comes /with/ him, though, latched on to his leg until he shakes it off to topple back down thudding to the ground. Only /then/ does he kind of -- flail. Downwards. A frantic sort of bat-bat-/batbatbat/, whacking from above with crowbar at the zombie snapping at Nick even while the one he's just /dropped/ is trying to right itself. Derek's hacking eventually severs enough tendons and muscles in the zombie's neck that it can no longer maintain a good grip on Taylor's tentacle. Its teeth fall away, leaving a ragged, pulpy wound. Not dead by any means, though, it still /wants/ to chomp. It lumbers toward Derek now, its jaw working in slack slack and ineffective fashion while putrescent blood oozes down over its torso. Two more zombies have made it down the hallway and into the room, both heading for Taylor who, admittedly, has the most visible flesh ripe for the chomping. The zombie who grabbed Nick is happily gnashing on his shoulder now, but between the thick denim and even thicker fur underneath, the bite will not likely do much more than bruise. Anole's strikes knock its head this way and that around the mouthful of denim and fur, and eventually the crowbar catches an eye socket and rips the dying zombie free of the wolf boy. Right about then, the one zombie who has not yet attacked actually turns and...walks away. Back up the hall toward its fellows still chasing phantom noises. Its thoughts, while unclear, register a definite sense that it has somehow deemed the prey in the foyer too dangerous. Better to take its chances with the maybe-invisible prey over there. "Ohthankgod," Taylor's sigh of relief is audible when Derek's hacking gets /teeth/ off of his arm. Though he's eying its toothless mouth and pulpy face with an expression that -- would probably be greenish if his skin were not so jet-black. Two of his other arms are reaching -- coiling around the newest pair of zombies approaching down the hall. Yoinking them /closer/ -- so that a second pair can ram sharp bone knives through eyes. The bitten-on arm hangs downward at his side. "That one's --" Julie is pointing towards the one walking away. Taylor /stares/ at it, rubbing a bloodied gory tentacle against his temple. "... it. Thinks we're. Too --" He checks himself here, sounding kind of baffled even while he's saying the word. "... it /thinks/?" He shakes his head, a little disconcerted. "C'mon. We have a fucking /shit/ ton to go. Don't want to be out here after dark, that's for sure." One arm /whacks/ the still-biting zombie off of Nick as he heads back for the door. Taking a few steps back from the zombie that now wants to snack on him, Derek almost trips on a fallen zombie but catches his balance. He swings the golf club with one hand to try to put the zombie out of it's misery, trying not to think too much about what he's doing and what the zombie used to be. "You mean K.Thee. wath telling the truth?" Derek's hands tighten around his weapons and he looks down the hall. "What are we waiting for then?"