I Sleep Beneath the Golden Hill [Open]

[iselldrugstothecommunity]

WHO | Howard Bassem and anyone
WHAT | Howard builds himself a hidey-hole in Thunder Mountain, steals a bunch of prop guns.
WHEN | The day after the Conucopia.
WHERE | Frontierland
WARNINGS/NOTES | None yet.

Howard finds shelter in the crannies and nooks of Thunder Mountain, but he doesn't sleep for a while. Instead, he works through the night, replacing solid boards on the bridge with rotting ones from down by the water and the fake dinosaur skeleton. It's difficult work, especially without any tools, but it's manageable. He undoes screws with his hands and with broken pieces of the anamatronic wildlife and some of the remnants of the 'saloon'. He uses some of the wires scavenged from the decapitated fake goat to tie himself to the rail while he works, but even with that there are a few moments where he's convinced he's going to fall in the dark and break his back against the hard cement ground.

By morning his hands are throbbing from scrapes and splinters, but he's managed to isolate a section of Thunder Mountain for his own safety. One of the little peaks the train goes through has a rail bridge on both sides, and Howard's made sure that unless someone knows where they're stepping - someone like him, who rigged the boards - it'll crack underfoot. It's also not a terrible view. He can see that there's still work to be done, he still needs to take the good track boards and hide them so his trap isn't deducible, but he's exhausted.

He's taken all of the prop guns from the shooting gallery and thrown them in the water, except one, which he takes up with him to his hideout. Not everyone will necessarily know that it's a prop. He has a stick of dynamite, too, possibly a prop, although he refuses to sleep near it. It's left out on the track, where he can run and get it but where he doesn't have to worry about rolling onto it when he rests. And he's broken off a sharp piece of wood from a rotting crate, and it'll serve well enough as a stake.

He sleeps fitfully through the morning and wakes around mid-day. He slinks out of the hideout, standing up a good twenty feet high on his little peak, and surveys the surroundings. He knows this makes him visible, but for the moment he feels safe enough that he doesn't mind being seen if it means seeing other people first.

Once he's satisfied the coast is clear, he walks across the track like a cat on the skinny edge of a fence, both arms held out like a tightrope-walker, until he's back on solid ground, and goes to the water and drinks it with his hands.

Comments

[shambler]

Time blurs. It could've been days since his eyeball popped out. Hard to tell. It's always been hard to tell. Goes with the territory. R starts to forget what it was like to see out both eyes - it feels almost natural to have one side dark as he picks his way down through the rubble at the base of Thunder Mountain, trying to follow another lead. Sniffing the air. Getting used to his eye bobbing along for the ride against his crushed cheek. The broken nose is less than an afterthought.

Hey, at least he has all his arms and legs. That's something. A dead guy could work with that. R tries to maintain a healthy, positive outlook on un-life. It doesn't change the fact he's still hungry.

This morning he tries a rat. The rats here are stupidly big, they've been feeding well, and they squeal when he grabs them and squeezes. Then they stop. Man. Fur, again! R hates fur. He'll even say he's picky about it. The rat he clutches in his hand, dragging it at his side, is chewed up as R decides he's not that hungry. Instead he keeps moving, stumbling along on his ankle and pausing at the fallen wooden logs. Someone might be here. Hopefully not Sneezy. R wants to keep his other eye.

After a long moment of staring up at the red mountain, swaying slightly, R starts up it. Stronger smell, beckoning him closer, and maybe, just maybe, he could toss the rat. The zombie reaches some kind of wood bridge, stumbles across -

CRACK.

His broken foot goes right through. His stomach drops along with his center of gravity. Next thing he knows, R's suddenly half through the planks, squirming, moaning in frustration as he tries to lever himself back up. The rat plops a few feet away.

[iselldrugstothecommunity]

In his dream, he's growing an exoskeleton. His skin is hardening into a caramel-colored shell and a voice, maybe his own voice, is telling him "if you stay all curled up like that, you're going to get stuck there. If you keep making that face it'll stick." He keeps trying to protest that no, no, he's not planning on staying like that, he only needs a few minutes to recuperate, but the more he protests the faster he hardens. And so he hunches more into the wall of the tunnel in the peak, frowning in his sleep, until a sound reaches his ears.

Howard snaps out of his nap disorientingly fast, too fast to realize that the sound outside is his trap going off. He grabs for his gun, and for a moment forgets it's just a prop, because he moves to check the safety. If it's Aunamee outside, the rifle is more a security blanket than something to even threaten with; surely Aunamee wouldn't be stupid enough to be fooled by a fake weapon. Howard swallows hard and wraps his shaking hands over the trigger, then he remembers his stake and tucks that into his waistband.

He pokes his head out of the tunnel, expecting to see the worst, and instead sees Rob struggling with the broken track. Howard's jaw drops for a moment - this is a strange turn of events - and then he yells "hold still, hold still" to R and starts to walk out on the safe spots of the track.

"What the hell, man? Were you just sneaking up to eat me in my sleep?" Howard can't help but be accusatory. He's tired, confused, and hungry. It brings out the snappish side of him. He glances down and sees the rat. "Or...wait, were you bringing me dinner?"

He reaches where R is and crouches down, grabbing the zombie by the shoulder so he can help R lever himself up.

[shambler]

The voice makes R jerk his head up, the eye dangling out his skull giving a little bounce. For a moment he only stares without recognition at Howard, his other eye unfocused as he sees a meal on two legs, hearing a voice that isn't groaning but slinging around words and sentences and therefore he's fair game. R's mouth starts to pull back in a snarl.

Then it sinks in. Howard. He knows him. Howard isn't food. He's off the menu, no cheating, no sneaking in nips like a midnight snack. Friends aren't edible.

R realizes he was simply gaping at the other boy and snaps his mouth shut. The awkward part is Howard is more right than he knows: R really was coming up here to do just that, although he had no idea Howard was the one up here. Fighting through the hunger and doing his best to stomp it down, R manages to grab at Howard's arm, trying to help push himself up so the little guy isn't doing all the work. By some miracle the smaller Tribute gets him back to solid(ish) ground, R slumping down next to him and staring at the new hole in the tracks. Pretty long drop there. You could break your neck falling that high.

It doesn't occur to him that's precisely what Howard was banking on.

This is probably the part he should lie. Nod and say he really was a corpse bearing gifts. Too bad he sucks at lying.

"Thu-thanks," R wheezes, stumbling over speaking again. They're the first words he's said since before the Arena, the zombie's voice coming out with a weird, faint whistling sound from his chest - probably from where Sneezy stabbed him during his get away. "Curious. Wanted...see what's up...here?"

R's words are more halting as usual as he waves a hand at Thunder Mountain. If Howard wants some mutilated, chewed-up rat, then he's welcome to knock himself out. R had enough junk food for today. Reaching over, he grabs the rat - it's literally a hunk of meat and fur with legs sticking out, the head gone - and drops it in Howard's lap like a housewarming gift.

As soon as he thinks Howard's distracted, R turns to the side and scrubs any blood and fur off his mouth again, trying to sneakily pick out any meat chunks. For some reason he wants to look presentable. What Howard thinks is important.

[iselldrugstothecommunity]

The task of getting R up onto solid ground takes pretty much all of Howard's strength, and at one point he has to tie himself with the wires to the rail. Zombies just don't have great balance; Howard wonders if R's inner ear has decomposed. But they eventually manage it, and both make it to the little tunnel Howard's calling home for the time-being. Howard lays on his back, panting for breath from the exertion, but keeps his heels on the ground in case he needs to jump up, should R attack. Friends or not, paranoia is a serious factor.

"Thanks," he wheezes as he takes the rat and sits back up, thinking R's not unlike a dog dropping a felled duck at its master's feet. He's not going to eat it yet - he'll cut it into pieces first, rather than gnaw on it and maybe choke on a bone - but he does fully intend on making it his meal for the day. He received some food last Arena, but doesn't like relying on gifts from the sky.

Then he takes a good look at R.

R's attempts at cleaning himself up haven't done any good. Firstly, Howard doesn't care about a little messy eating, and secondly, there's the issue of the missing eye.

"Oh my God..." It's not the worst thing Howard's ever seen, but it's close. R's eye socket gazes back at him like a puckered mouth suckling at his terrors. The eyeball itself hangs from a semi-dried pinkish string, swinging a little whenever R moves his head. It swings like a pendulum, almost hypnotic in its grotesque presentation. Howard can't help the way his lip curls, the way his forehead turns into a furrow of disgust and horror.

"Oh my God," he repeats. "Oh, oh my God. Okay. Okay, wow, okay. Jeez. Wow." Meaningless words come spilling out his mouth to fill the space, to fill the air that he'd love to just fill with screaming right now, except he's too smart, too jaded. The part of him that wants to shriek and cry is much too small to outwrestle the part of him that knows he shouldn't draw any attention to them.

He points a shaking hand at the dangling eyeball. "Okay. Can that...do you want me to help you pop that back in, or just rip it off? I mean, can you see with it?"

[shambler]

At first R thinks it's not a bad way to spend the afternoon: almost break your neck, meet a friend, hand him dinner and above all else, don't eat him. He was bobbing his head in a silent "you're welcome" gesture when Howard thanks him, thinking things are pretty decent if not actually good, when the human suddenly starts babbling up a storm.

When he shifts to the side, he sees Howard staring. His expression is horrified, mouth parted in a disgusted "o". Uh oh. Frowning, R paws again at his face, convinced he has a hunk of rat - or, worse, another Tribute - stuck in his teeth. What if Howard was friends with those people he bit? This could be Julie all over again, except maybe worse: R would have to explain that those people might be well on their way to corpsehood. It's worse than being normal dead.

R suffers the next closest thing to stage fright a zombie can get. Clams up, goes even more stiff, every smooth explanation flying out his head. Is he going to kill this friendship already? Finally Howard says what the problem is. R actually sags in relief, his shoulders flopping down from an almost defensive hunched position. Compared to what he'd been thinking, his eye doesn't seem all that bad.

"Put...back in. My...good...side," R tries to smooth things over with a joke. "Can't see."

He pauses, thinking that's not enough, I want to give him more, and then reaches over with a hand, going so slow that it's a snail's crawl even for a zombie (he lets the Living boy next to him see it coming from a mile away). R nudges against Howard's shoulder with his fingers.

"You're a...good friend...Howard."

R means it. Really, he does. Howard keeps pleasantly surprising him at every turn with something he says or does, like music or offering to get his hands dirty in zombie parts. Most people aren't like Howard, fast on their feet, smart, open-minded. R starts to feel that warm glow from before trying to crowd out his usual hunger. His hand flops back down as R finally bothers to look around; cramped fake rock walls, red like the outside, paint peeling in places, in others missing entirely. Part of the scaffolding is exposed, giving even more hiding spots for those who can fit.

His eyes fall on the rifle next to Howard. Oh. Well, awkward, but okay, it makes sense. It's probably not there because of only him, R suddenly has a wave of insight wash over him. Howard is small, not exactly a muscle-head. Maybe he would present an easy target to the other Tributes out there...and he knows it.

[the_marshal]

Wyatt knew he had to circle back 'round to the Cornucopia - he'd promised Maximus - but there was still time for that yet. He needed to find Neeshka, but knew she could manage well enough on her own for a bit longer.

There was something he wanted to see.

In the shadow of the great, fake mountain, he loitered at a post, studying one of the strange, but helpful, little maps he'd found posted along the paths.

You are here, it told him, a faded star for emphasis. Thunder Mountain. Frontierland.

Brow furrowed, one eyebrow raised, he looked around, shifting the bag upon his shoulder idly as he took in his surroundings.

Didn't much look like the frontier as he remembered it.

[iselldrugstothecommunity]

Outside the Arena, Howard's been avoiding Wyatt. It's not that he holds anything against him - far from - but the memory of death was too fresh, too painful, and Howard was trying to separate himself from anything that pulled him back into those painful moments, sheriff included.

But inside the Arena, it's a different matter. Howard doesn't have time to be scared of the past when the present is so terrifying. So when he sees Wyatt below him, not thirty feet away, looking at the signpost, he reaches out to him.

"Hey," he says, in a whisper he hopes carries that far. "Wyatt. Wyatt. Up here."

[the_marshal]

It sounded like the buzzing of bees of first, hissing in his ears, and he turned quickly, taking a wary step back just as it came again. Just as he finally heard it - his name.

His brow furrowed - up here - and his head tipped back obiendently, blue eyes scanning, sliding across the face of the mountain....

"Howard?" His head ducked, a hand coming up to shield his face.

He was aware that the boy had been avoiding him; he had tried to see him after the last arena, had wanted see that he was alright (to apologize), but whenever he'd managed to spot him, Howard had slipped off. Like smoke into the night.

He'd tried not to take it personally.

"That you?"

[iselldrugstothecommunity]

"The one and only." Howard breathes a sigh of relief that Wyatt sees him without him having to raise his voice any higher. There's regret in his face, too. He knows it wasn't polite to hide from Wyatt, but he just couldn't face what had happened yet. Now, as he looks at Wyatt, he's still not sure he can.

He tries to shove it out of mind. "Don't come up here, I'll come down to you. The track is rigged."

He starts to descend, balancing carefully, until he's down near Wyatt. He's got the same twitchy posture, but he seems to grow a bit in the Arena. The skulking and shying seems more focused, like being hidden is a goal now rather than a compulsion. He peeks around one of the cement rocks at Wyatt. "You made it out of the Cornucopia without decorating your face this time."

[the_marshal]

An eyebrow raised, Wyatt watched him scamper down, as nimble as a cat. It settled as Howard drew close, and an amused curl of his mouth took its place.

If he was at all surprised to find Howard willingly approaching him - and he was - he kept it to himself.

"I could say the same 'bout you," he said, remembering the wash of red that had stained Howard's face and clothes last arena. "Lady Luck musta been smilin'."

[pieceofcake]

Gaius, still in the midst of his initial explorations, spotted the rail and saw it as a challenge. He leapt easily upon its skinny little edge, recovering his balance with an acrobat's practiced ease -- and why shouldn't he? You had to be pretty limber to be in the snatch-and-grab business.

Hell, it was actually pretty fun. Old Gaius the Nimble-Fingered still had it in him. Buoying his mood were the berries lining his pockets, and the improvised cloth sack slung across his shoulder. All he needed now was a good sword, and he'd be set.

[iselldrugstothecommunity]

Throughout the day, Thunder Mountain makes noise. Wind whistles through the tunnels. The tracks creak and whine. Some speaker left over in Frontierland plays the same one-hour banjo song loop over and over again. It's almost relaxing, and helps Howard block out the sounds from far off. It also helps lull him into a false sense of security, and rather than keeping an eye on both sides of the tunnel, he falls asleep facing one and hoping he hears if anyone approaches from the other he'll just hear them.

Howard startles awake when he hears a particularly loud creak, that illusion of safety of shattered. He leaps up and grabs his prop gun, popping his head out the entrance to be met by the worst possible sight - another person, and not only that, someone who easily bypassed the rigged security system, who is now halfway up the track to the tunnel.

"Back off," he hisses at the stranger, a soft-haired guy with apparent acrobatic skill, from the way he's walking the rail. He holds the gun up. "Get away from me."

[pieceofcake]

Gaius didn't even know what a gun was, so the prop didn't instill fear in him so much as call attention to the fact that Howard seemed to think it was a weapon. In fact, Howard seemed really on edge in general. Even more so, in fact, than that lot back at the Cornucopia.

He did back off a little, though. "Relax, kid. I'm not here to steal your stuff."

Unless Howard's stuff involved treasure.

[iselldrugstothecommunity]

Howard relaxes ever so slightly when Gaius backs off. It's good, to have someone take a threat seriously. At least if Gaius has pegged him as easy prey, he's being courteous enough not to show it.

"And what about kill me, are you here to do that?" Howard doesn't lower the prop gun, however. It's a valid question, out here in the Arena. He glances back over his shoulder quickly, at the small collection of things he has - some pieces of the anamatronic wildlife, a broken piece of the dinosaur skeleton, a few sticks. "I don't have anything worth stealing anyway. I swear. Just broken stuff from around the mountain."

[pieceofcake]

"I guess that depends on what you're planning on using that thing for," said Gaius, meaning the gun. He didn't want to hurt anyone if he didn't have to, but if he had to? He'd do it without a second thought.

"Believe it or not, I'm not all that crazy about offing kids."

[originalgaangster]

Sokka's been hiding out in Frontierland for the night, huddled in the ruins of the supposed fort that guards the entrance of this section of the arena. There's not much to use around here, but he's scrapped together a crude club from a chair leg and a one the faux antlers that decorate the buildings here. He'd had to scramble up the side of the building and risk the rotting walkway along the walls to get it, but he'd come away with some scrapes and bruises. But at least he had a weapon. Now, this looming 'mountain' beckoned, especially the thought of water. He gauges the rickety looking bridge that spans the darkness below him and carefully puts a foot out. The first board seems alright, at least. Then the next breaks with a creaking groan and only the fact that he can feel it start to give before it finally snaps saves him. Startled, he drops back with a yelp and a flail, almost landing on on his improvised weapon.

This looks dangerous.

[iselldrugstothecommunity]

Howard's napping in the tunnel when he hears the snap and audibly human yelp. He grabs the prop gun and tucks the stake in the waist of his pants and pokes his head out to see a teenager, not much older than him if at all, carrying a rather creative weapon. Howard totally gives points for creativity.

He does not, however, give points for trying to break into 'his mountain'. He raises the prop gun at Sokka. "What are you doing here?"

[originalgaangster]

Sokka looks up at Howard, not seeming to react to the weird thing that Sokka's pointing at him. He's never seen a firearm before and even if he had he has no idea what they do. He tightens his grip on his weapon.

"...I was just checking out the 'mountain.'" Sokka raises his free hand to make quotations. A mountain this ain't!

"I don't want any trouble."

[iselldrugstothecommunity]

Howard's face cracks into a slightest smile at the finger quotations. He's scared, but he's not terrified yet. If Sokka's armed with an antler club, that means he still has to cross the bridge to attack Howard.

"Good. I don't want trouble neither." He slowly lowers the gun, but doesn't forget where the stake is. "This is my mountain. Hill. Tower-thing."

[littlebitrockandroll]

For the moment she'd left the guy she'd wandered into 'town' with behind to do his barricading and building and whatever else. They needed stuff. After all her time on the road, that was one thing she was good at. Looting. The rest? The whole actually dealing with people thing? Well, the problem with being the second act to any con was that Little Rock wasn't that great at the set up. She could sob and cry or pop out from behind a rock or back seat with a gun, sure. But for the actual setting the bait?

Ugh. She should have listened to Wichita more.

he'd spent the night making her dress well and truly tattered into something more closely resembling a mini skirt, so at least she didn't trip over that as her attention was suddenly pulled away from looking into buildings and up to strange shadow- a guy. She pivoted to the left, pressing hard against the crumbling wall of one building, hoping (without much actual hope) that she hadn't been spotted. Just because she'd found one guy who wasn't big on killing kids didn't mean she'd get lucky again.

[iselldrugstothecommunity]

Howard turns his head just in time to see a flash of purple slip behind a building. He frowns a bit, then decides that whatever he saw was small enough that it's worth an investigation; he doubts anyone will break into his hideout if he's only gone a few minutes, and perhaps this other person has food. Howard's tried his luck but has yet to catch the rats or feral cats wandering around Thunder Mountain.

Balancing on the way down the rail is significantly more difficult while holding the gun and stake, but he manages it without falling to his death, which he considers something of an accomplishment. He jumps down from the track, trying to be quiet. He holds the prop gun as if it were a real one, and then, after listening for breathing or whimpering and hearing nothing, turns the corner and comes face to face with Little Rock.

"Who are you?" He holds the prop gun with one hand, and the other rests on the stake he's tucked into the band of his pants.

[littlebitrockandroll]

Having spent the better part of a year using guns (and knives, frying pans, lawn darts) fighting zombies, Little Rock is ninety percent sure it's not a real gun being pointed at her. But there was a) that mystery ten percent chance, and b) the fact most pre-teens wouldn't know the difference. And showing off was for people who wanted to get bumped off.

So, all in all, Little Rock had no problem looking appropriately wide-eyed and terrified at a man pointing a weapon at her. It wasn't fully faked. It wasn't like she had a back up plan on this one, no gun of her own hidden to the side. Instead, all she could do was press her back against the wall and watch him.

"Don't shoot me. I didn't do anything."

[iselldrugstothecommunity]

Howard steps out a little more from behind the building. He's about Little Rock's size, not much older. The gun is evidently a little too big for him, because he has to keep the stock tucked under his armpit rather than up against his shoulder, but it does look like, theoretically, if it were a real gun, he'd know the basics of how to use it.

"I didn't say you did anything. I asked who you were." He lowers the gun slightly, but he grips the stake behind his back tighter. She's a kid - most people would discount her as a threat, but Howard's seen too many little kids turn out to be deadly.

[greymatter]

With the arrival of other tributes, Grey has fallen back and found a good place where he can hide while still getting a decent view of the mountain and Howard's movements. Though his stomach is growling, he opts to hold off on consuming any of his supply of food until it becomes necessary.

In addition to the cape, he's now torn away the sleeves of his costume, stuffing them into his bag in case they should come in handy.

[iselldrugstothecommunity]

Howard spends most of the morning asleep, only poking his head into view when he descends for water or to work on the rigged track. He's doing such a thing when he notices something out of the corner of his eye. He sets down the bolt he's pulling from the rail and looks out at the scenery. Something's moving.

He gets back into his tunnel and peeks around. His eyes narrow. He squints at the place he could have sworn he saw a man.

It's just a shadow.

Howard climbs inside the scaffolding of the mountain, hands shaking too hard to continue working on the tracks.