TDRP: The Last of X - Log 2: The Hunters
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xp_logsThe group now seeks shelter, clues to what has happened to the world, and where exactly they are. Another question that looms large is why Natasha has a note indicating they need to go to Baltimore.
Natasha still clutched the note she'd dug out of a pocket of the winter jacket she had on. It said "Baltimore" and a street address. She had no idea what it meant other than they were supposed to go there. She was less than pleased with their current situation because she had no idea what had happened or why she was suddenly in the physical body of her fourteen year old self but with all her adult memories still intact. She was also dressed for the season and had a satchel full of survival supplies. The readjustment to her body's limitations would be annoying. She looked at the others around her. "We might consider hunkering down for the night and finding some clues to what happened."
"Aye, that sounds like a good idea," Rahne responded, looking uneasy. "Something doesn't smell quite right here, like too much nature? Which doesn't make any sense but it's like old, abandoned woods that have been left to decay?" She stopped talking, frustrated at her inability to explain what her nose was trying to tell her. It smelled like decay and death - though how her body knew it was death she was smelling was beyond her - but not in any of the ways she would have thought.
"Dead city. Cool," Felicia replied dryly in the responding silence as the group tried to puzzle that out, resting her hand on Rahne's shoulder.
Xavin nodded soberly. "This is some fucked up shit and it's getting dark." Given everything else that was going on, dark was going to be a problem. Probably a lot of a problem, actually. "We should try to find some food, too. I don't know if we should go with what's in your bag, Natasha." There were apartment buildings around them. "Do we try here?"
Jean eyed the apartment complex. "Maybe. But we should definitely scout the area first. We don't know what happened to cause this amount of mass desertion or how long things have been like this," she said.
"We should also try to pool our supplies to see what kind of inventory we already have. What else does everyone have on them?"
“I’ve got a first aid kit, bandages and it looks like some antibiotics but I can’t be sure they’re not expired. Has anybody found anything with a date on it?” Laurie had inventoried what was in her satchel after she’d first awoken. “Or recognize exactly where we are currently?”
Directions to head to Baltimore were all well and good but without a map or a starting location, it seemed an impossible ask.
Xavin looked around. Empty road. Leaf litter, trash, broken glass and frost and apartments and buildings all around. A street sign nearby pointed toward the Naval Academy and if you closed your eyes and pretended you could almost imagine that this Annapolis. They hadn't been there since they were in freshman year of high school on US History Camp but... "Are there like, multiple Naval Academies around? I think we might be in Annapolis which is crazy. Like, really super crazy."
"The stuff in my bag doesn't look like it was meant to support more than me. It's also mostly military rations, which implies last resort to me." Natasha shifted on her feet, being out in the open like this was making her skin crawl. "No, there's just the one Naval Academy. That might explain where my supplies came from."
"Okay, if this is Annapolis, that means we're thirty one miles from Baltimore, or a half hour drive if we can find a car that's still got gas and is working." Laurie looked around, wondering where they'd find such a thing in this place. "Otherwise, a standard brisk walk is usually 4 miles an hour, and given the time of day, we possibly only have another three to four hours before sunset. We'd make sixteen miles but I don't think we should push ourselves in case there's other dangers. Maybe, hmm, I think we should start walking now, and in about an hour we can see if there's any good places for shelter. I have a feeling that we shouldn't be out after dark."
Felicia shrugged, then nodded. "That was find shelter before dark then in the morning march a weirdly specific distance, for anyone who tuned out. Let's go, I can scout-"
Footsteps were heard, but not with a consistent stride. It was more of a shuffle really. They crunched against the snow as someone rounded the corner. A gargled clicking noise echoed out before they got closer to reveal their body. It was a woman, emphasis on was. She was not dressed for the cold, her clothing tattered, bloody, nearly falling off. Her face was nearly gone, swallowed up by tendrils and what looked like mishmash of mushrooms made of flesh and tumors. The tendrils had started to come from her eyes, which were bloodshot. Her mouth hung open, parts of her teeth cracked and missing. She was also covered in gashes and cuts that had given way to rotting flesh.
Upon seeing the group, her shuffle soon turned into a run. And she was pretty damn fast.
"What the fuck is that," Natasha said flatly. It was the reason they hadn't encountered more people and why everything around them was deserted and desolate. There were no other words to describe it but a zombie and it looked like it had stepped out of the most genre of genre movies. That is aside from the speed it was coming at them.
More footsteps could be heard turning into a hurried run and soon more of them came into view. Natasha started scanning for some place quick and easy to retreat to. Her powers were going to be useless right now. "Guys, we have houses a couple hundred yards behind us that we can retreat to, but how the hell do we keep them from following us?"
"Oh my fucking god." Xavin stared and then stripped out of sneakers, jeans and sweater, leaving themself dressed only in stretchy AF Xavier's bike shorts and shirt. They shifted, growing hard, rocky skin, everything larger than it had been. They bundled their abandoned clothes up and looked around wildly. "Someone take these?" How easy were clothes going to be to replace here? Xavin picked up a piece of rubble the size of a basketball and threw it. Not subtle. Possibly effective, though. They could throw shit all day. "Jean, if I throw stuff, can you make a -- an I don't know, a shield? Something like that? Around us?"
"Temporarily? Yes," Jean said as the watched the piece of rubble bounce off a zombie's head. It staggered but continued the pursuit. To demonstrate, she threw up a shield that a couple of the zombies slammed into.
"Forever? No. The only way I can think of to keep them from following us is to stop them, permanently."
The doctor and scientist in her hated this idea. Even if they looked too far gone. She couldn't even detect a mental pattern. It was like trying to read the mind of an animal.
That. That was the cause of the scent that had been in Rahne's nose ever since they'd been dropped into wherever they were. The smell crowded out everything else until she was swimming in it. Growling, she snapped at it even in human form, teeth clacking together out of pure instinct. This was death.
She didn't hesitate where she once would have. She stripped completely, following Xavin's lead and tossing her clothes near theirs as she shifted, dropping to all fours and stalking to the front of the group, ready to lunge forward but not willing yet to break the shield Jean held around them.
"You're all great or whatever but why are none of you fire or boom makers?" Felicia said, trying not to jerk at the crowd slamming against Jean's shield, her throat a cord from her clenched jaw. Picking up a broken beer bottle, she snapped it towards the zombies, where it lodged in the eye of one. "I'm all for taking these things out but I don't see how, not without attracting more of them, and I don't do group activities how-"
She watched the zombie finally fall. "How do we all get out of this."
Laurie sighed and started to pull off the warm jacket she'd been using up to this point. While she'd have preferred to keep back from any fights, her value lying not in her ability to be aggressive but in the knowledge in her brain, that didn't mean she couldn't 'throw down' with the best of them. She pressed the fingertips of her real hand to several touch panels on her artificial limb, the sound of a click the only evidence of a change before she pulled each fingertip downward to reveal the hidden taser. It wasn't much, only enough for a few shots really but it had always been a weapon of last resort.
"I don't know that we can. I do believe retreat may be advised in this particular case if we are to survive."
"Really wish I had a bazooka right now about," Nastasha muttered to herself. Retreat without taking these zombies out would just lead the zombies directly to where they wanted to hide out. "No, we're going to have to take them out before we do that." She counted how many were there in front of them and there was roughly the same number of zombies as them. "Heavy stuff should take them out, right? Okay, we've got some landscaping areas full of heavy rocks to the left behind us and maybe some bricks lining the flowerbeds nearby."
Natasha scrambled back and pried several rocks and a brick out of the formerly landscaped ground then reared back and flung a rock as hard as she could. It was about the size of a large grapefruit, one of the biggest she'd found, and she watched it hit its mark smack dab in the middle of a zombie's face.
"Oh shit!" It'd actually landed! Maybe it wouldn't take her as long to adjust to this new body as she'd thought.
It seemed unfazed by the hit. Natasha rapidly threw several more rocks at it. Each hit their mark and a moment after the last one had embedded itself in the zombie's head it started to stagger then wobble. It collapsed and thrashed on the ground for several more moments before stilling.
One down.
Unfortunately, Rahne's powers meant she was more up close and personal than distance. She'd never quite regretted that fact as much as she was today as she darted forward, dodging around a slow moving, creepy looking zombie. She darted to the left and circled around it so she could snap her teeth over the baggy, dirty jeans that hung on it's hips.
Clenching tightly, she jumped sideways and dragged the zombie down hard. It hit the ground and its head slammed against the concrete.
"Shit." Xavin ran forward to back her up, screaming "Run!" at the others. Don't get bit. Don't bit. Don't get bit. They moved in, kicking and punching and knocking the zombies down. "Rahne! Rahne. We gotta run."
Rahne's head snapped up and she let the zombie leg go at the sound of Xavin's yelling. It was a mistake, one she realized instantly as the fallen zombie turned supernaturally fast, even on the ground, and sank rotting teeth into one of her front legs. The screaming sound she made was a purely animalistic one and, in shock, she reared backwards, trying to shake it off of her.
Xavin whirled and hit the zombie with a tackle, shaking it off Rahne. Scrambling upright, Xavin moved into one of the judo throws they'd covered in training and sent it flying. The other zombies moved past them toward the others as Xavin helped Rahne up, slinging the wolf into a fireman's carry.
Powers were on display all around her and Natasha had nothing but her wits and whatever was handy in the environment. She darted forward to provide Rahne and Xavin cover, letting the others with more useful powers and larger ranges deal with the swarming zombies. From the sounds of it, while it wasn't pretty, they were making significant dents in mowing down the zombies through sheer force of will.
Natasha had a large brick in hand as she charged toward a zombie that was looking in Rahne and Xavin's direction. She wielded it with both hands, striking the zombie in the chest and taking it off its intended course. However, she was now grappling one on one with said zombie. The stench of rotting and putrid flesh were revolting. She pulled back the brick and swung again. The zombie, using more speed than she realized it had, managed to dodge her swing and grab her by the arms, bringing its head down to bite into her arm. She yelled in rage and disgust as she kicked out and swung the brick directly at its head this time, yanking it back to swing again and again, until it released her. It slumped to the ground as Natasha made sure it wouldn't come after them again.
Fuck, she hoped nothing was transferred by body fluids. She panted as she stared down at the bite on her arm then shook herself out of it as Xavin came up with Rahne and they moved toward the others.
Everything had gone to hell. Jean saw the small decomposing army that was coming toward them. Luckily, however, they seemed to be clustered together, which gave her group some small advantage.
"Everyone back up!" she said.
Just when it seemed like the zombies were going to get closer again, a nearby wall started to rumble. Jean let out a cry of effort and the wall suddenly toppled over onto the zombies with a sickening crunch, sending bricks and body parts scattering everywhere.
When she caught sight of a zombie she missed, Jean narrowed her eyes and sent two bricks careening toward its head, causing it to pop like a melon upon impact.
Jean sighed.
"Let's get going. There might be more on the way."
Natasha still clutched the note she'd dug out of a pocket of the winter jacket she had on. It said "Baltimore" and a street address. She had no idea what it meant other than they were supposed to go there. She was less than pleased with their current situation because she had no idea what had happened or why she was suddenly in the physical body of her fourteen year old self but with all her adult memories still intact. She was also dressed for the season and had a satchel full of survival supplies. The readjustment to her body's limitations would be annoying. She looked at the others around her. "We might consider hunkering down for the night and finding some clues to what happened."
"Aye, that sounds like a good idea," Rahne responded, looking uneasy. "Something doesn't smell quite right here, like too much nature? Which doesn't make any sense but it's like old, abandoned woods that have been left to decay?" She stopped talking, frustrated at her inability to explain what her nose was trying to tell her. It smelled like decay and death - though how her body knew it was death she was smelling was beyond her - but not in any of the ways she would have thought.
"Dead city. Cool," Felicia replied dryly in the responding silence as the group tried to puzzle that out, resting her hand on Rahne's shoulder.
Xavin nodded soberly. "This is some fucked up shit and it's getting dark." Given everything else that was going on, dark was going to be a problem. Probably a lot of a problem, actually. "We should try to find some food, too. I don't know if we should go with what's in your bag, Natasha." There were apartment buildings around them. "Do we try here?"
Jean eyed the apartment complex. "Maybe. But we should definitely scout the area first. We don't know what happened to cause this amount of mass desertion or how long things have been like this," she said.
"We should also try to pool our supplies to see what kind of inventory we already have. What else does everyone have on them?"
“I’ve got a first aid kit, bandages and it looks like some antibiotics but I can’t be sure they’re not expired. Has anybody found anything with a date on it?” Laurie had inventoried what was in her satchel after she’d first awoken. “Or recognize exactly where we are currently?”
Directions to head to Baltimore were all well and good but without a map or a starting location, it seemed an impossible ask.
Xavin looked around. Empty road. Leaf litter, trash, broken glass and frost and apartments and buildings all around. A street sign nearby pointed toward the Naval Academy and if you closed your eyes and pretended you could almost imagine that this Annapolis. They hadn't been there since they were in freshman year of high school on US History Camp but... "Are there like, multiple Naval Academies around? I think we might be in Annapolis which is crazy. Like, really super crazy."
"The stuff in my bag doesn't look like it was meant to support more than me. It's also mostly military rations, which implies last resort to me." Natasha shifted on her feet, being out in the open like this was making her skin crawl. "No, there's just the one Naval Academy. That might explain where my supplies came from."
"Okay, if this is Annapolis, that means we're thirty one miles from Baltimore, or a half hour drive if we can find a car that's still got gas and is working." Laurie looked around, wondering where they'd find such a thing in this place. "Otherwise, a standard brisk walk is usually 4 miles an hour, and given the time of day, we possibly only have another three to four hours before sunset. We'd make sixteen miles but I don't think we should push ourselves in case there's other dangers. Maybe, hmm, I think we should start walking now, and in about an hour we can see if there's any good places for shelter. I have a feeling that we shouldn't be out after dark."
Felicia shrugged, then nodded. "That was find shelter before dark then in the morning march a weirdly specific distance, for anyone who tuned out. Let's go, I can scout-"
Footsteps were heard, but not with a consistent stride. It was more of a shuffle really. They crunched against the snow as someone rounded the corner. A gargled clicking noise echoed out before they got closer to reveal their body. It was a woman, emphasis on was. She was not dressed for the cold, her clothing tattered, bloody, nearly falling off. Her face was nearly gone, swallowed up by tendrils and what looked like mishmash of mushrooms made of flesh and tumors. The tendrils had started to come from her eyes, which were bloodshot. Her mouth hung open, parts of her teeth cracked and missing. She was also covered in gashes and cuts that had given way to rotting flesh.
Upon seeing the group, her shuffle soon turned into a run. And she was pretty damn fast.
"What the fuck is that," Natasha said flatly. It was the reason they hadn't encountered more people and why everything around them was deserted and desolate. There were no other words to describe it but a zombie and it looked like it had stepped out of the most genre of genre movies. That is aside from the speed it was coming at them.
More footsteps could be heard turning into a hurried run and soon more of them came into view. Natasha started scanning for some place quick and easy to retreat to. Her powers were going to be useless right now. "Guys, we have houses a couple hundred yards behind us that we can retreat to, but how the hell do we keep them from following us?"
"Oh my fucking god." Xavin stared and then stripped out of sneakers, jeans and sweater, leaving themself dressed only in stretchy AF Xavier's bike shorts and shirt. They shifted, growing hard, rocky skin, everything larger than it had been. They bundled their abandoned clothes up and looked around wildly. "Someone take these?" How easy were clothes going to be to replace here? Xavin picked up a piece of rubble the size of a basketball and threw it. Not subtle. Possibly effective, though. They could throw shit all day. "Jean, if I throw stuff, can you make a -- an I don't know, a shield? Something like that? Around us?"
"Temporarily? Yes," Jean said as the watched the piece of rubble bounce off a zombie's head. It staggered but continued the pursuit. To demonstrate, she threw up a shield that a couple of the zombies slammed into.
"Forever? No. The only way I can think of to keep them from following us is to stop them, permanently."
The doctor and scientist in her hated this idea. Even if they looked too far gone. She couldn't even detect a mental pattern. It was like trying to read the mind of an animal.
That. That was the cause of the scent that had been in Rahne's nose ever since they'd been dropped into wherever they were. The smell crowded out everything else until she was swimming in it. Growling, she snapped at it even in human form, teeth clacking together out of pure instinct. This was death.
She didn't hesitate where she once would have. She stripped completely, following Xavin's lead and tossing her clothes near theirs as she shifted, dropping to all fours and stalking to the front of the group, ready to lunge forward but not willing yet to break the shield Jean held around them.
"You're all great or whatever but why are none of you fire or boom makers?" Felicia said, trying not to jerk at the crowd slamming against Jean's shield, her throat a cord from her clenched jaw. Picking up a broken beer bottle, she snapped it towards the zombies, where it lodged in the eye of one. "I'm all for taking these things out but I don't see how, not without attracting more of them, and I don't do group activities how-"
She watched the zombie finally fall. "How do we all get out of this."
Laurie sighed and started to pull off the warm jacket she'd been using up to this point. While she'd have preferred to keep back from any fights, her value lying not in her ability to be aggressive but in the knowledge in her brain, that didn't mean she couldn't 'throw down' with the best of them. She pressed the fingertips of her real hand to several touch panels on her artificial limb, the sound of a click the only evidence of a change before she pulled each fingertip downward to reveal the hidden taser. It wasn't much, only enough for a few shots really but it had always been a weapon of last resort.
"I don't know that we can. I do believe retreat may be advised in this particular case if we are to survive."
"Really wish I had a bazooka right now about," Nastasha muttered to herself. Retreat without taking these zombies out would just lead the zombies directly to where they wanted to hide out. "No, we're going to have to take them out before we do that." She counted how many were there in front of them and there was roughly the same number of zombies as them. "Heavy stuff should take them out, right? Okay, we've got some landscaping areas full of heavy rocks to the left behind us and maybe some bricks lining the flowerbeds nearby."
Natasha scrambled back and pried several rocks and a brick out of the formerly landscaped ground then reared back and flung a rock as hard as she could. It was about the size of a large grapefruit, one of the biggest she'd found, and she watched it hit its mark smack dab in the middle of a zombie's face.
"Oh shit!" It'd actually landed! Maybe it wouldn't take her as long to adjust to this new body as she'd thought.
It seemed unfazed by the hit. Natasha rapidly threw several more rocks at it. Each hit their mark and a moment after the last one had embedded itself in the zombie's head it started to stagger then wobble. It collapsed and thrashed on the ground for several more moments before stilling.
One down.
Unfortunately, Rahne's powers meant she was more up close and personal than distance. She'd never quite regretted that fact as much as she was today as she darted forward, dodging around a slow moving, creepy looking zombie. She darted to the left and circled around it so she could snap her teeth over the baggy, dirty jeans that hung on it's hips.
Clenching tightly, she jumped sideways and dragged the zombie down hard. It hit the ground and its head slammed against the concrete.
"Shit." Xavin ran forward to back her up, screaming "Run!" at the others. Don't get bit. Don't bit. Don't get bit. They moved in, kicking and punching and knocking the zombies down. "Rahne! Rahne. We gotta run."
Rahne's head snapped up and she let the zombie leg go at the sound of Xavin's yelling. It was a mistake, one she realized instantly as the fallen zombie turned supernaturally fast, even on the ground, and sank rotting teeth into one of her front legs. The screaming sound she made was a purely animalistic one and, in shock, she reared backwards, trying to shake it off of her.
Xavin whirled and hit the zombie with a tackle, shaking it off Rahne. Scrambling upright, Xavin moved into one of the judo throws they'd covered in training and sent it flying. The other zombies moved past them toward the others as Xavin helped Rahne up, slinging the wolf into a fireman's carry.
Powers were on display all around her and Natasha had nothing but her wits and whatever was handy in the environment. She darted forward to provide Rahne and Xavin cover, letting the others with more useful powers and larger ranges deal with the swarming zombies. From the sounds of it, while it wasn't pretty, they were making significant dents in mowing down the zombies through sheer force of will.
Natasha had a large brick in hand as she charged toward a zombie that was looking in Rahne and Xavin's direction. She wielded it with both hands, striking the zombie in the chest and taking it off its intended course. However, she was now grappling one on one with said zombie. The stench of rotting and putrid flesh were revolting. She pulled back the brick and swung again. The zombie, using more speed than she realized it had, managed to dodge her swing and grab her by the arms, bringing its head down to bite into her arm. She yelled in rage and disgust as she kicked out and swung the brick directly at its head this time, yanking it back to swing again and again, until it released her. It slumped to the ground as Natasha made sure it wouldn't come after them again.
Fuck, she hoped nothing was transferred by body fluids. She panted as she stared down at the bite on her arm then shook herself out of it as Xavin came up with Rahne and they moved toward the others.
Everything had gone to hell. Jean saw the small decomposing army that was coming toward them. Luckily, however, they seemed to be clustered together, which gave her group some small advantage.
"Everyone back up!" she said.
Just when it seemed like the zombies were going to get closer again, a nearby wall started to rumble. Jean let out a cry of effort and the wall suddenly toppled over onto the zombies with a sickening crunch, sending bricks and body parts scattering everywhere.
When she caught sight of a zombie she missed, Jean narrowed her eyes and sent two bricks careening toward its head, causing it to pop like a melon upon impact.
Jean sighed.
"Let's get going. There might be more on the way."
