ArchivedLogs:There's Too Many!

There's Too Many!
...and other zombie tropes
Dramatis Personae Cage, Shane, Tag
In Absentia	2013-11-10 A supply run gets interrupted by the shambling horde. (Part of Infected TP.)
Location <NYC> Lower East Side
Historically characterized by crime and immigrant families crammed into cramped tenement buildings, the Lower East Side is often identified with its working-class roots. Today, it plays host to many of New York's mutant poor, although even here they are still often forced into hiding. In so many stories, all is made clear in the light of day. And this day has clarified many terrible truths: an eerie quiet has descended on the mean streets of the Lower East side. A few blocks away can be heard the twinkling muted clatter of a window shattering. A few brisk human voices calling to one another. And then just calling out in alarm. They fall silent soon. One lone figure would look lost in this neighborhood in any era - a woman in a stained powersuit, her hair bound up in a tight bun and one empty sleeve hanging in shreds of gristle and bloody cloth. She shambles down the center of the street, one foot bare, the hose run and torn, the other in a sensible pump. Her head turns slowly in the direction of the commotion. Her body, rocking back and forth with each uneven step, soon follows. "Hrweeeehh..." Shane is arriving at the source of a shattering soon enough -- a smashed window in a tiny deserted corner market, once full of produce and groceries all labeled in both English and Spanish. Now full of groceries and slowly rotting produce all labeled in both English and Spanish. The teenager has swung himself down off the /roof/ of the building, descending to its front in search of food; armed with a crowbar he slams it in against glass again to widen the hole in the window and climb through, nose quivering in sniff-sniff-sniff. Blech. Rotten potatoes. Luke appears in a speeding hummer. It looks like the side windows have mostly been smashed out, but the Heroes for Hire logo is still visible on both sides. He slides around the corner, bumps up onto the sidewalk and skids to halt right in front of the zombie woman. He flings the door open in an attempt to push her away from the car, and jumps out himself, ready for whatever comes next. He's in a heavy, black sweater, cargo work pants, and boots, with a big knife tucked into a sheath on the back of his belt. Tag is laboring under the weight of a backpack designed for someone considerably larger than himself. He trots along the street, sticking close to the building, but he isn't exactly /hard/ to spot. His bright rainbow-colored hair is tied back in a ponytail and he wears a much-abused yellow softshell jacket, torn blue jeans with lightning bolts along the outseam, and neon pink sneakers. He had started /running/ when he saw the zombie, but comes up short when the Hummer pulls up, /staring/ at Luke Cage like a deer in the headlights. The woman's slow-shambling start in the direction of the farther-off disturbance slowly swivels towards the sound of the approaching car. She's managed to rotate her body towards it and begin to shuffle towards the door, the window, it doesn't seem to matter to her. One of her eyes is missing, a wet socket over a torn cheek - but the other is locked on Luke. She reaches out her hand and the stump of her other arm with equal single-minded veracity. And walks full-tilt into the door Cage shoved open, toppling comically back onto her ass. From far down the street, in the direction the HFH hummer had driven from, other shambling dead are dragging, limping, hobbling and, in a few cases, /striding/ on two good legs up from alleyways and cross streets. All of their heads are turned in the direction of the vehicle, at first, a curious single-mind amongst them that only gradually fragments as one or two turn stiff, necks to consider Tag as well. A few others, tip their heads bird-like at the nose of broken glass, seeking around for its source. Shane has been, still, in the window of the market, listening and watching for lurking dead inside before he goes /looting/ his food -- he carries a backpack on his back and /two/ messenger bags hung off at either hip, though all three are flattened, light and empty at the moment. But he sound of the hummer outside and the bright eye-catching figure of Tag draw him back /out/ the window -- "Fucking /hell/ what is wrong with you jesus," he might be saying this to Tag or Cage both. "I could've got in and out of here fine without all this /noise/ and colour and -- fuck, it's you." This -- might /also/ be to Tag or Cage, he's reaching for Tag's wrist to pull him in closer but he's /glaring/ at the hummer and the man who emerged from it. And the zombies, so prone to following the loudest noises. "God. Fucking. Dammit." Luke takes two big steps to close the distance with the woman, draws his knife in one smooth step, and kneels to put his hand on her shoulder to pin her to the ground. He grits his teeth and slips the knife up, under her chin, and pushes it into her brain. When she goes still, he picks her up gently and puts her in the back seat of the hummer. He swings the door shut and starts to backpedal slowly, gesturing to Tag, "Stay behind me, or jump in the truck!" Turning to face the shambling horde again, he starts to shout, "Hey, hey, /HEY/, over here! OVER HERE!" Cage bellows, moving around, trying to draw the crowd away from the sound of breaking glass. "They were already /on/ you kid. RUN for it." There's no mistake, this is directed right at Shane. "Shane!" Tag says this in kind of a startled stage whisper. He is not difficult to drag at his best, and he definitely does not look to be at his best. Top-heavy, he stumbles against Shane, then steadies himself. "Oh frak, where did they all come from we gotta get outta here." Even so, one of his filthy hands drops to the camping hatchet in a holster on his belt. His eyes flick up to scan the nearby buildings for reachable fire escape ladders, then at Cage, then at the Hummer. "Dude, I am /not/ getting in that, they follow it like an ice cream truck!" There's no visible change in the woman's eyes before or after Cage's knife enters her brain. Only a draining of rigid-locked /activity/ in the unnatural strength of her muscles, going slack beneath him. Up the street, however, there is only move. As the shuffling hoard draws nearer, nearer, seeming to unconsciously split open like some terrible sea to come around the side of the DELICIOUS icecream truck hummer, they arrive with a terrible smell of open wounds, bad meat and the stink of /body/ and rot. They carry a sound as well; of air rushing in and out of damaged lungs, accelerated with an undead moaning excitement that's breaking up with snarling noises, 'rast!' and 'haaagh!' All of their hands are out and reaching. Slow-moving but they /clog/ the street as more queue in behind them. "No they /weren't/, you fucking asshole, I came here from the /roofs/. Zombies don't tend to look up when you're ten stories /above/ them, I haven't touched ground since I left goddamn home /I/ was golden." Shane doesn't run. His hand is squeezing tighter against Tag's arm -- probably uncomfortably so, before he composes himself enough to drop it. And instead press a (rather aggressive) KISS to Tag's temple. "Stay alive. -- And dude there's barely any cars on the road and you're driving that fucking -- /gggh/ do all those muscles leave no room for your /brain/. Every zombie for a mile around is heading this way and I still have to feed my whole fucking family." He looks somewhat wistfully back at the smashed store window as the throng swarms around the hummer. "... moron," he mutters, but he seems more than pleased to let Cage's Hummer be buried under the throng, putting his finger to his lips as he nudges Tag closer to the open store window, farther from the flock up the street. "... we can go to the roof," he murmurs, "but back at our apartment there's going to be problems if I come home empty handed. Or don't --" It's probably not hard to finish where that statement is going, as he looks between Tag and the store and the masses of zombies incoming. Luke shoves the first few healthy walkers away from his pied piper mobile and jumps into the driver seat. He nods, accepting Tag's assessment of the truck,and then visibly bites back some choice remarks for Shane. "I'll draw them off so you two can run. I-" Luke stops himself and says instead, "Apologies. Stay safe, guys." He revs the engines loud, but instead of peeling out, drives forward just a little faster than walking speed. He has to bowl over a few dead to get started, but otherwise he's making noisy progress in an attempt to do what he said. "OK." Tag flips into the shop through the broken window as quietly as he can with a bulging backpack, then gets out of Shane's way and keeps low. His outfit has, somewhere in the interim, faded to grayscale. Any corpse that roams too close to them gets its eyes turned solid white. "If too many of them stick around for you to get stuff here, I can show the shop /I/ looted. Or just /give/ you some of this, it's way heavier than I thought." There's an eddying of undead as the two parties of living meat split up. The forefront dead at the front of the mob make exaggerated turns of head and body, gnashing their teeth as they try to make complicated /decisions/ about whether they want meals on wheels, or want to pick up their stack at the corner store. Those stuck in the back of the ground are restless and branching off to mill, hungry and riled up but aimless without a visible target. Many end up following the Hummer as it pulls away, the two young men no longer in a direct line of sight while the vehicle so dearly /is/. But the light in the shop is dimmed, in the fading sunset red of the dying day, but other upright figures clustered around the window. Rarlging and moaning and breathing hard, as they try less to climb in than they do, slowly, reach in and try to /drag/ themselves through the broken makeshift entrance. From deeper in the store, beyond a few aisles, is the sound of something shifting o a shelf. A bag of chips, maybe. A second later, the soft 'pat' of a lightweight box, possibly a box of bandaids, also hitting the ground. "-- fuck." Shane has climbed through the window after Tag, but he's snagged /back via one of the bags strapped around him, too close now to the grasping hands coming in through the window. "-- fuck fuck Tag -- ffff." He /yanks/ himself away, turning to /smash/ the pointier end of crowbar down through the temple of the zombie who has him. But his attention is distracted by the noise at the back of the store. His growl is very low, hands /shoving/ at the oncoming zombies with his rather considerable strength to try and push them back for now. "Tag," he says in a low whisper, offering the crowbar out to the older man. "I'll keep the window clear, go check that -- noise. Be careful.” Tag blinds the few zombies he can see through the window. He nods at Shane, but quirks one magenta eyebrow at the word 'careful' and accepts the crowbar before stalking off into the darkness, his breath short and fast. He thumbs the tiny LED flashlight hanging from a cord around his neck, keying it to the dimmest flood mode. His steps are quiet, but not silent, and he pauses once or twice to listen as he makes his way toward the source of the noises, crowbar raised and ready, if quivering a little. Batter up. "Hey...anybody alive here?" he whispers. "Please don't shoot or stab me or anything." The zombie latched onto the back of Shane's bag, trying to climb UP Shane's bag to reach him, may lose a finger or two when the yanked strap tangles up in its hand. Because it is an 'it' now - nevermind it was a woman once, with graceful cheekbones, full lips. Her hair is a tousled mess, her blouse hanging off off a shoulder to expose her stained white bra beneath. She crumbles when her skull collapses, and three others - a man in a lumberjack flannel, a bald skater-kid, a man in a suite - all climb right past her. They rock back off their balance when Shane pushes at them. And bend at the waist to latch onto him with hands grasping to seize onto his arms, his shoulders, the back of his head. Their heads bow too - to bite onto whatever surface is nearest. Further back in the store, nothing answers Tag. His flashlight zings and jumps over pound bags of sugar and flour, canisters of oatmeal, sinister and somehow ancient in the faded light. The first movement is only a sneakered foot - a powder blue converse - slowly stepping down from around a corner. Then weight bears down on it, and a second foot follows. A young girl, her big hair up in pigtails, a pair of black hipster darkrim glasses resting on her nose, steps partways around the corner, shadows falling halfway over her face. One huge, shiny brown eye stares heavily at Tag. Then light finds the rest of her face. Where the flesh has been ripped back, baring the eyesocket and wasting tendrils of sinew still connected to the roving semi-crushed eyeball in it. She opens her mouth in a silent wail, and with sudden urgency is throwing out her hands for Tag. "/Gan!/" Tag clumsily attempts to sidestep the grasping hands, but dead fingers close around the hem of his jacket. A tsunami of white rolls up the floor and onto the girl, over the torn face and one good eye. Now it just looks like a tiny zombie who has been dipped in paint. Even the insides of her mouth, or its mouth, has has gone white as it chomps at him. Tag's hands move on their own, bringing the crowbar down squarely on top of the zombie's head. He staggers back a step, hyperventilating, before rushing back to Shane. "Get back. We can push a shelf or two against the window. Find another way out while they chew on /that./" "Ghhhhh," Shane /hisses/, sharp and furious at the initial bite. Bites. His arms jerk back with a new semicircle of blood gouged out of his forearms, and his head rocks back and then /slams/ forward into the nearest biting mouth, though not without another bit of skin flapped open on his cheek. He yanks an arm away, throws an elbow hard at whatever flesh he can find in his sudden backwards scramble. "Fff notimegetback." And then he's throwing arms out desperately, fingers tapping down rapidly against the webshooters he wears to spew thick globs of binding glue outwards in hasty succession. Glue feet to floor, glue arms to wall, glue FACE closed, he's not picky. Seeing, blind, the dead are not so particular as the living to lose their facilities. The pigtailed deadgirl tightens up muscles that were never built for the terrible insistent /force/ they exert to try and drag herself towards Tag, or Tag towards herself she wouldn't be picky. Biting for - her skull caves in with a visceral wet crunch. An egg being crushed in a leather sack. She drops. As does the biteyface undead that Shane headbutts, though only temporarily. Skull for skull, bone is harder than cartilage. And the undead begin to drag, slither, topples in through the open window. The three that had cluttered it are joined by a few stragglers that had fallen in, initially to chase the Hummer. Until they forgot there was a Hummer. They /do/ hear voices, however muffled, and while slow, while only those few in the forefront that can /see/ Tag and Shane are worked up to a fine froth of swiping and gnashing, there is only more shapes cluttering in the window now. One or two zombies try to /bite/ at the webgoo striking them, some stagger back when it throws off their equilibrium. Mostly, the glue manages to cause a developing chaos to their locomotion. Moving as close together as they are, legs get glued to the floor, other legs get semi-glued together. Arms get stuck to faces, knees find themselves restricted by stringy, sticky binding fastened to other knees, other feet, floor, shelving -- the front row of undead toppled forward in a single moaning undead faceplant. It makes a barrier the undead behind them then need to try and climb /over/. Undead do not moan in frustration. But you could almost guess these moans might be. "Right, right, c'mon." Tag ushers Shane away from the mass of zombie, glue, and casement. He grabs boxes of crackers and cereal and pass them back to Shane as he goes. "Can sort out other supplies when we get up to the roof. I haven't seen many dead walkin' up that high." He leads the way to the back of the shop and tries not to look at the heap of white and red he had left there. "Your family...are they--" His breath catches in his throat and he mops his eyes roughly with the back of a sleeve. "Nevermind. Just." He pauses at the first door he finds and listens, hefting the crowbar. Glances back at Shane. "There's a few. Not many, though. Every so often I run into one on the roofs." Shane is still webbing at the growing /pile/ of zombie, lifting his shots higher to gum up the top of the accumulating pile as other zombies try to press in from behind, but there's a fiercer almost feral look in his eyes as he does. A hungry growl in his throat -- that rises sharper when he looks at /Tag/, teeth baring. And he /lunges/ for the older man -- though only to snatch that crowbar from his hands. To start taking it to the writing pile, picking heads out of the pile of limbs to /bash/ with a sudden fiercer /vim/. The writhing undeadpile is getting stranger, messier, /louder/ as more and more of the dead SEE delicious walking meat. Arms and knees and heads and backs all twist and writher where they're fastened together, long strands of semi-stretchy glue dragging out into strings, others stuck tight, so that it's difficult to see which limb belongs to which body belongs to which head. Open mouths strain upward, towards Shane as he approaches, then cave in under his bashing. Teeth rattle cross the floor, blood spatter. Bones crunch and shatter. They make no attempt to avoid the blows that rain down. And still more come. Tag jumps back, startled. "Shane, we gotta /go!/" He looks like he has half a mind to just grab the boy and go. "There's just gonna be more n' more of 'em, and there's folks still waiting for our supplies..." Gray eyes cast a desperate glance around. "Please. I need your help. I'm really not a fighter." Shane's smashing continues, for a moment, slamming new heads as they /appear/ to add to the glued-stuck pile. But Tag's words eventually break through to him; he turns with one feral /snarl/, at first, lifting the crowbar again like he might bring it down on /Tag/. But he lowers his hand slowly, gills fluttering. "... you find another exit?" he asks, almost casually now splatting the pile with glue again as more zombies seek to come over it. Gluing them firmly to the others. "I can carry you. With these things I can practically fly. But you gotta find us a new store before I eat my fucking brother." THWP again, and then finally he turns to follow after Tag. The stirred up pile gets worse; but the larger it is, the more complicated the surface area that needs to be covered. Those that try to climb or drag themselves over the top of the pile find themselves stuck, and then simply keep trying themselves free. In one case, what may have at one time been a knife wound on what was once a young shirtless man - whether received before or after death isn't clear - is ripped open in the undead's singleminded /determination/ to tear free to get Shane and Tag. A spool of brown intestines topple loose to be dragged along behind him. Tag flinches when Shane turns the weapon on him. "Yeah, I--there's a door." Tag gestures in the direction whence he has just returned and starts that way. "Was one walker there, but now it's dead-dead. Shop I hit earlier, Ji Siang Xiao Pu, still had plenty a'stuff. Two blocks south." Glancing back and seeing the disembowelled zombie, emits a faint panicky sound and breaks into a run. He isn't so careful to stop and check at the door this time. Shane gloops the pile a little bit more for good measure, aiming at the sides of the open window now to form a kind of glue TRAP for those still coming in. Splurt. And then running after Tag -- he's at least listening, crowbar at the ready as they head for the back door. "I might web you to me," he says in a low voice, "we're going to need to head /up/ as quick as we can." Spiders might catch more flies if they learned to more effectively use /bait/ - as this cornerstore is demonstrating. The undead outside are flat-out walking /into/ the gluetrap web, getting bound up the worse they struggle. Their wide rolling eyes follow Shane and Tag's movements in an eerie unison even if their bodies are unable to move. But eventually, this is forming a strange sort of barricaded defense. Those outside can no longer see inside, nor do they know there is a pair of fleshy treats indoors. The throaty 'laalgh' snarls and ratcheting breathing can be heard outside shuffling past, restless and hungry. But they're desire to get into the store is waning. "Sure, webbing is fine, yeah." Tag's trembling hands wrestle with the stiff handle of the back door momentarily before opening it out onto a filthy alleyway. He pauses in the doorway to look left and right. Somewhere along the way, his outfit and hair have faded almost to white, which makes his hands and face look even dirtier by contrast. "We're gonna have to get up to like a fire escape first, right?" He is already scaling the nearest dumpster, more clumsily perhaps than usual." "Dude get the fuck back here dumpsters make /hella/ noise you moron." Shane says this in a very low hiss-snarl of voice, hurrying out into the alleyway -- and then just webbing straight at Tag's back without waiting for trivialities like /consent/; his posture is tense and his teeth still bared. To yank him down off the dumpster -- though he's here now to /catch/ Tag, too, rather effortlessly for all his diminutive size. And thwip-thwip-thwip to secure the other man none too comfortably over top of his half-full backpack. Tagpack now. He doesn't bother /climbing/ the fire escape, he reaches up to /thwip/ up to it. And then to one across the alley, and then back -- swinging higher with each climb to leave the milling zombies behind them and take to the sky. Shane's departure couldn't have been better timed. A few questing undead have absently been strolling past the alleyway to take a hopeful peek in? At the sound of quiet voices and dumpster-clanging? A few will notice the two young men taking to the rooftops, and their aggressive moans will likely attract a small pack to come adventuring with them down the way, pawing up the side of the building with outstretched fingers. And then they're being left behind, left below. The city from above will be no reward; the setting sun casts a dim pall over the city, where sparse packs of the dead drift in listless disorganized packs in the streets below below.