ArchivedLogs:Vignette - The Jones Boys

Vignette - The Jones Boys
Dramatis Personae Trib	2013-11-29 Trib goes to check on his dad. Warning: Possible feels. (Part of Infected TP.)
Location Frank Jones' house, Passaic, New Jersey
Something was wrong at the Jones spread. Trib could sense it, even before he passed through the rickety arc of the split-rail fence and walked up the stone path to the ramshackle porch. The door to his dad's house was cracked open, and the house seemed...still. Too still, even for Frank Jones. He cursed internally as he stood on the porch, staring at that space where the door separated from the jamb. He should have come out to Pasaic before shit got locked down, and gotten his dad to someplace safe. His aunt Sonia's, maybe. Or Uncle Tommy's. The one brief conversation he'd had with the latter had made it sound like it was unnecessary; that his uncle was on top of things. Clearly, the door told him, that had not been the case. And that made him curse himself again for being so fucking stupid as to rely on his goddamned /family/. Even his grandmother's brother. None of them really knew how to handle Pa. Hell, /he/ couldn't do it. Only his grandparents had ever managed successfully. Trib fished in his pocket, drawing out one of the titanium nuts that he'd started carrying. They were a hell of a lot cheaper than the rings that Cage was insistent on, and less flashy. They also had the added benefit of not coming with all the weird awkwardness of accepting jewelry from his boss. He tossed the nut into his mouth and chewed on it as he put his shoulder to the door and eased it open. He resisted the urge to call out to his father, in case the elder Jones was merely napping and had forgotten (again) to lock the front door. When he entered the living room, he knew immediately that wasn't the case. Furniture lay scattered about the living room, knocked over in some sort of scuffle. His mother's china plate with the flowers that Pa had never managed to put away lay shattered against the stone of the hearth, the inscription of his father's love on the back now nothing more than fancy alphabet soup. The kitchen proved no better, when he walked in there. Whatever had transpired in the living room had boiled into this room, and scattered tin cups and plates all over. The pot of coffee that his father kept on the stove lay on its side, the brown stain beneath it long-dried. Trib closed his eyes against the cold stab of dread in his gut, and took a deep breath as he pressed further into the house. His bedroom door was shut, and he paused there to ease the door open and verify that it was unoccupied, as well. His hokey cowboy furniture – upgraded in his senior year to an actual cot, complete with straw tick – seemed almost cheery compared to the quiet of the house. Something fell, then, further in the house, followed by a slow scrape that put the boxer on alert. His skin tingled as he transmuted his hands into titanium, a slow burn that was more painful than he would ever let show. He let it show now, though, grimacing as the flesh burned into the dull gray of unpolished metal. Trib exhaled a shaky breath, and moved on down the hall towards his father's bedroom-slash-office. The door was closed, but the edge was smeared with a dark brown substance that Trib's nose immediately identified as blood. The cold stab in his gut from earlier became a dull, residing ache as he reached for the doorknob and turned it. As soon as the knob turned and he pushed the door forward an inch, it was wrested from his grip by two pairs of claw-like hands. Dead, judging by the pallor of the skin he saw before he lost the door and they were upon him. Trib silently thanked his lucky stars that Cage was such a fucking busybody and always getting into these kinds of scrapes. By association, the boxer had plenty of experience with these weird-ass donnybrooks. He jumped back as the pair leaped forward, holding up a steely forearm to catch the first's clamping teeth harmlessly as he swung his fist at the second. He grunted as he made a solid connection, bone giving way under his fist with a satisfying crunch. As he watched the corpse slide to the floor, he realized with a pang of guilt that it was Missy Anderson, the teenager from across the street. She'd been head cheerleader, according to the woman next door, and apparently talkative enough that she couldn't escape the plague. A perverse part of Trib's brain wondered how many other Jersey women had suffered similar trouble. Maybe even the woman next door. Which, he realized as he studied the second biter, was exactly who was trying to gnaw down titanium. Her makeup was smeared and ghoulish against the pallor of her skin, but there was no mistaking that curly red hair and flowery house dress she always wore. She had pretty good teeth, too, a fact that surprised Trib – he'd always assumed they were dentures. She'd been a gossipy pain in the ass when she'd been alive, but Trib took no pleasure in what he had to do. He did it quickly, though, and caught her body to ease it to the floor. She'd been kind to Pa, in life. There was no need to treat her like just another dead fucker. He stood in the hallway, studying their faces for a long time. Or what was left of them, anyway. He felt a pang of guilt as he looked down on the lifeless bodies, and he frowned deeply. It reminded him of the way he'd felt after Julio.... He bit that thought off with a bitter snort. This was going to fucking suck enough without thinking about stuff long gone. Besides, there'd been a /little/ good to come from all of that. He smiled even as he realized that he was stalling. He knew what he was going to find when he got in there, and he wasn't sure he was ready for it. He lingered in the hallway, looking into the dim portal of his father's room. Well, ready or not, here he came. Trib took a deep breath, and stepped over the corpse of Mrs....what the fuck was her last name? Pa just called her the woman next door. He eased into the bedroom, and took in the disarray. His father's typewriter dumped on the floor. Papers scattered all over the bed and floor, smeared with dried blood. The mangled, chewed body lying on the floor, one leg turned at an impossible angle and missing its shoe. Someone started screaming, then. Trib could hear them like they were in the small connected bathroom that stood open and empty. But he could hear them. They were right there. It wasn't until the cops came rushing down the hall, guns drawn, and found him on his knees that Trib realized it had been him. The last of the Jones Boys.