bonetown | (no subject)

(no subject)

This is bad, this is bad, this is so bad.

"Oh my god, I'm gonna die," Alex whimpers, pressed up against the wall of a building twenty feet away from her magic door as she winces, trying not to call attention to the fact that she's paralyzed with fear and can't even force herself to move because there is a parade of slow-walking zombies between her and the door and oh my god, this is so not what Jane and Max had her believing.

She's gonna be a zombie. And not a Dave zombie who doesn't find any kind of joy in his life and wanders aimlessly through his meat-soaked days, but an actual zombie. Does that mean she'll never eat ribs again? Or, ew, does that mean she has to eat human ribs? "So lean," she whispers, distressed as she hits the wall a little harder, clapping a hand over her mouth so she doesn't call attention to herself.

Why did she think she should come in here? Why did she think seeing giant signs advertising 'abandon all hope' meant there was a cool, trendy new restaurant opening up?

Seriously, if she gets out of this alive, she really needs to start getting second opinions before doing ... well, anything.

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Bella paused as she walked past the seemingly normal door. It wasn't unusual for her to hear sound behind the doors as she passed them. Considering at home she could hear music from cars passing on a highway a good two miles away, listening through walls was really not that big of a thing. Learning to tune it out was becoming the next task she intended to conquer.

This was different, though. What she heard wasn't speaking, or even fighting. It wasn't even a romantic evening. She heard a single human heart beating faster than a frightened bunny and a distinct comment about not wanting to die. That wasn't something she could just walk past.

Still, she wasn't about to be rude, so she knocked first.

"Hello? Is anyone in there?"

Breathing is a dangerous thing given that a zombie might come and eat her tiny face if she even so much as breathes the wrong way, but there's a knock at the door and Alex's panic surges to new, unforeseen levels as she tries to get them to shut up, tiny little whimpers coming out because this is the kind of situation she needs a really big tire iron or a gun or Jane for because she is genuinely scared, okay?

"I'm gonna die," she says, staring upwards and thinking about all the amazing ribs she'll never get to eat when she becomes a zombie.

Yeah, she is, Bella thought when the pulse went into overdrive. Granted, she wasn't a doctor or anything, but she knew (or suspected) that a human heart just couldn't beat that fast for long. She had to do something, even if it was just scooping whomever it was up and running them until she found a doctor. There were a few of them here, she was pretty sure.

Course set, Bella tried the door and pushed it open when she found it unlocked. It was dark when she closed it behind her and...and it looked nothing like the inside of a hotel room. The smell was wrong, too. Way, way wrong.

"Want to give me a hint about where you are?" she called out.

Alex could kind of make out some little heaving panicked sounds, which might have been 'here' in a calmer world, but she can barely hold it together when there's a spider in her sight, not talking about zombies. Seriously, why? Why did she get zombies when all she wanted was an acceptable amount of food for one?

Bella turned in the direction of the voice and moved at vampire speed towards it. She saw the blonde before she got to her and came to a stop right next to her.

"Are you hurt?" she asked when she came to a stop. Better to find that out first, see if she needed to be running out of here...or... Bella risked a sniff of the air. It still smelled wrong, but nothing that set her throat to burning.

Why is there sniffing going on? What's with the sniffing? Alex seriously doesn't know what the hell is going on, but there's definitely sniffing going on to a degree she doesn't like because that means she's back on the menu for dinner. "I'm...I'm..." She hauls in a deep, cleansing, long breath and pushes it out like she's in labor. "I'm in a zombie heathen hell and I wore my really nice perfume that has hints of cinnamon in it, so do you think they're going to think I'm pie?" she hisses out, all in one breath. "What's the zombie equivalent of whipped cream? Oh my god," she says, horrified. "Is it fingernails? I bet it's fingernails."

"Zombies and pie? What the hell are you talking about?" Bella asked, grabbing hold of the woman's upper arm in a squeeze hard enough to get her attention but not bruise or break anything.

"Take a breath, okay? I can't hear anything moving around right now but us, and I would, so you're not in imminent danger of being any kind of dessert, with or without whipped cream."

"Zombies totally would eat pie," Alex insists, because maybe it's her heart and her heart is gonna be in the pie. Why does she keep thinking about pie? And why does she really, really want pie right now? Seriously, there is such a thing as an acceptable time for pie and okay, so usually it's always, but priorities!

She takes a breath after being ordered, staring at her saviour with a look of confusion. "Are you a zombie?" she asks warily.

"Wow, do I look that bad today?" Bella tried for a laugh, but she was pretty sure it fell flat, so she kept going without pause. "No, I'm not a zombie. I"m not...well, okay, I'm technically dead and could kill people if I wanted to, but your brain is safe from me."

"Maybe you're a sleeper zombie and they'll activate you when you least suspect it," she says, eyes wide and then she remembers that she's still talking out loud and wow, she needs to stop because they are going to kill them. "Oh my god," Alex says, whimpering. "I can hear shuffling and I don't think they're playing shuffleboard!"

This wasn't Erik's first trip through a door that didn't lead where he'd expected, but it was the first time he'd been attacked (since he supposed the mob who'd tried to drape him in feather boas and Mardi Gras beads on New Year's Eve in Las Vegas didn't technically count). The creature had looked human, but... rotted, somehow, as if wasted by some disease that had devoured it from the inside.

Then it had tried to bite him, and Erik had done the only rational thing he could think of: stripped a nearby road sign off its post and used it to cut off the creature's head.

Now he was trying to make his way back to the building containing the door that had brought him here, but kept getting sidetracked by more of the monsters. Cutting off their heads seemed the most effective way of dispatching them; he'd divided his impromptu weapon into two angular blades and was walking warily with one in each hand. He couldn't have been more surprised to round the corner of a building and find Bella talking in hushed tones with a blonde woman he didn't recognize.

"You need to get out of here," Erik said without preamble. "Which way to the door?"

"It's back behind us," Bella explained with a slight frown. "Is she right? Are there really zombies here? I mean, I knew it smelled off, like really, really off, but it wasn't anything I recognized."

Something caught her attention at the edge of her vision. "Crap. Be right back. Watch her," she said.

If she'd had a pulse, Bella knew it would be skyrocketing from both remnants of her human fear to some degree, but mostly she was excited to do something with the vampire strength for once. Something besides standing around shielding the fighters.

She zipped straight for three lumbering once-human looking things. Curious, she let one take hold of her arm and laughed at the reaction. Who knew zombies could look confused? A minute or so later, she'd managed to de-head the three zombies and went back over to Erik and the woman. "Okay. That was really gross."

Alex can't keep up. First there are zombies and then there was the woman doing some weird stuff after the hot guy did some weird stuff. And did she mention the really hot guy? Alex is pretty much staring at the both of them with wide eyes, not sure who she should be more frightened of. "Oh my god," she gets out. "Is this some kind of apocalypse? Oh my god, Max was right, global warming triggered a zombie apocalypse. Gore was an evil zombie puppet," she said, high-strung and panicky. "Can we go back to the getting me out of here part!"

"You've seen these things before?" Erik directed his question to Bella, since she seemed to be the saner of the two. "These... zombies?" He didn't like admitting to ignorance, but if they were going to have to fight off more of the things, it was best he get informed, fast. "They're not fast, but they are vicious. One of them tried to bite me."

From their horrified reaction, he gathered that that was a bad sign.

"Yeah, I've seen them before. I mean, not for real, just in movies, but the whole rotting flesh thing seems to be pretty consistent and they've got that to spare." As if to make her point, Bella wiped at her jeans which, yuck, still had something nasty stuck to the denim.

"I think determined is more the word for it. They have to eat brains to keep...well, not keep alive, but keep going. That's pretty standard, too. And if they smell someone human and living? It's like a dinner bell being rung."

Alex's gaze is flipping between the guy and the girl frantically, wondering if she's the only one who's going to die in this crazy zombie world and she is really not okay with that. "Can we maybe go back to a place that doesn't want to eat me like I'm a giant twinkie?" she whispers eagerly, trying not to look at Hottie McHot-Saviourson too long.

Erik could tell his disgust was showing on his face. "Brains? That's revolting," he told Bella frankly, before glancing at the blonde woman and attempting to sound reassuring. "You're going to be fine. The two of us are more than a match for anything out there."

As if offering him a chance to illustrate his point, a zombie shuffled into view several yards away by the corner of the building. Before it had even registered their presence, Erik sent one of his blades flying. It arrowed down the alley, guided by his power, and sheared through the thing's neck with a horrible squelching sound. Its head toppled one way, its body another, and the blade sailed neatly back into Erik's outstretched hand.

He shook it to get rid of some of the grey matter still clinging to it, and addressed Bella again. "You said the door was behind us-- that way?" He pointed away from the street, where the alley disappeared into almost total darkness.

"It is," Bella agreed a second before her mouth twisted into a wry smile. "But I probably shouldn't be throwing too many stones considering my diet."

She watched as Erik did a pretty clean slice job on an oncoming zombie and nodded her approval with an off-hand, "impressive job." Then she nodded in answer to his question about the door and turned to Alex.

"See? You're in good hands. You're not in any danger of being zombie chow, okay?" Alex's adrenaline was high, though, and her heart was racing...and Bella was a vampire. "Let's not dawdle though."

She looked down the alley, her vision clear even in the murky darkness, and she could see the disgusting thing by the dumpster, too. "I can see the door, just keep going straight. I'll take care of that one."

A second later, she was covered in zombie slime again, and the zombie was minus its head.

Alex is pretty sure she's managed to stumble into the kind of zombie film where she's the only one who doesn't have a cool superhuman power. Her only supernatural ability is the amount of pie she can eat in one serving after a three (six) course meal. "What are you two?" she demands, because this is getting crazy.

Actually, this is almost crazy enough that there ought to be a book written about this.

Erik bristled. It was a question he'd heard often, and wasn't terribly fond of— what are you, as if by having powers you were somehow a thing instead of a person— though usually the people that asked him that were people he was actively trying to kill, rather than save, so that might have made a difference.

"I'm a mutant," he said coolly. "I control metal." He didn't say anything else; he'd seen people's reactions before, and even if Bella didn't seem too concerned with keeping her powers a secret, he wasn't going to speak for her.

"Yeah, his sounds a lot cooler than mine," Bella commented as they herded Alex through to the door. "I'm just a vampire and since I'm technically dead, I don't think the zombies even register me on their brain-hungry radar."

She looked back at the other girl. "Not much further now. You hanging in there?"

Alex feels supremely uncool now and she slouches, trying to give off the aura that she's totally cool and she's totally as cool as a mutant or a vampire or a vampire mutant. "Well, I...have a hula hoop dance," she counters as they're hustling along, with her cool shoulder slouch and her awesome ability to escape zombies along with her rescuers. "This is so an awesome young adult novel in the making," she whispers excitedly, when the door is in sight.

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