thearena | [Closed]

Who| The Creature and Joel
What| Death log! Possibly for both of them.
Where| The rubble underneath what used to be the third floor.
When| Week 6
Warnings/Notes| Graphic descriptions of injuries. Violence and death.

For the past several days, his thoughts had been consumed by hunger and pain.

Oh, he was well enough to keep moving. Keep surviving. The nitrogen burns on his skull, neck and hands had bubbled and popped and begun to scab; their pain was now more of an ever-present ache and itch than what it had been, although mild infection had crept into a few places, causing those spots to sting. There was still water to be found, and although what food he'd had was gone, he'd become accustomed to going without in the frozen North. That much was familiar, though unpleasant.

And it was so very unpleasant. Cogent thoughts, when he was able to string them together, were rambling and feverish. When he couldn't think, he filled his mind with poetry, those verses of Milton he'd long since memorized, but they were often nothing more than a stream of sounds. More than once he thought of those tar pits, the only things that remained of the third floor, and of what might happen if he stepped into one.

The thought of how it would feel to have the flesh burned away from his bones was enough to keep him from going through with it. It was the only thing that seemed worse than what he felt now.

He had woken from his rest feeling slightly stronger than yesterday, and so he was making use of his motivation: scavenging through the wreckage of the second floor, picking through the rubble in search of scraps of food. He hefted aside a rather large piece with a wordless grunt.

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Joel had been mostly avoiding the lower floors since the volcano erupted, since his hands had been injured so badly, but after a while, desperation sent him back. Food was something he was sorely in need of - he didn't relish the thought of starving to death, so he took a calculated risk.

The rubble was... cooler, than he expected it to be, even after a week or two. Then again, he wouldn't have expected the building to hold up with a volcano erupting in the middle of it, either, so that must've just been one more thing the damn Capitol was using to mess with them.

On approach, however, he heard scuffling and shifting from within the rubble, and ducked low automatically, to try and figure out who - or what - was poking around.

Infected. That's what it looked like, like a runner, recently infected, the blotchy skin, still mostly human but clearly wrong, and Joel immediately went into a stance that would allow him to try and sneak around, maybe get behind it, take it out before it bit someone.

It was probably no good. Even when he found loose pieces, whatever lay underneath had been covered over by black, hardened lava. But trying, searching, was better than keeping still and dying for certain.

He kept on digging, in the faint hope that something would turn up. And then he heard shifting. Footsteps?

He paused. He'd lost the piece of bone he'd been using as a weapon earlier, but he still had the small knife, safe in his pocket. And -- his hand closed tight around a smaller piece of rubble -- there was potential weaponry all around him.

He stood still and listened, ready to strike if he sensed an oncoming attack.

He couldn't risk it. This thing was infected, or near enough as made no difference. Joel didn't want to die just yet, and he also didn't want to get infected, or start having other people get infected. That shit spread like wildfire - he knew from experience.

So he didn't bother trying to talk to it, to get its attention. Just sprang up behind it, intending to get his arm around its neck, the classic chokehold he'd perfected over twenty years of dealing with runners and hunters and other things that intended to kill him.

There was an arm around his neck, solid and tightening, and the Creature reacted on instinct, dropping the piece of rubble so both hands could reach behind his head, grasping at clothes.

He took a staggering step backward, tried to speak -- but the man's bones were pressing against his windpipe. So instead, he went to his knees and pulled with his hands, aiming to duck his head through the man's arm and roll him over a shoulder.

What Joel expected was what he got, at first - the usual dull struggling of someone recently infected, arms flailing at him, trying to get at his face. He'd done this so many times, he knew how to counter that.

What he didn't expect, was for the thing to suddenly drop to its knees before he'd finished taking it out - and his grip loosened, just a bit, in surprise.

His wounds scraped and bled as he squeezed his head down through the loop of the man's arm, struggling to pull him by the shirt as he rolled. A moment's struggle later, the man was on the ground under him, although his hold on the upper hand was tenuous.

He'd only have a second to study the man's face before the next thing happened. The Creature looked down at him, yellow eyes wide. He didn't know the man, though he might have seen him at the Cornucopia. Who was he -- someone bent on winning the games, or another scavenger?

Fuck, was all Joel could think for a moment - he was underneath it, and his arm went up immediately to keep the thing's mouth away from himself, to protect himself from bites as much as he could --

But the attempt at biting never came, and for a moment, it was like the world was holding its breath. Was that - intelligence in the thing's eyes?

But it didn't matter. None of it mattered, now, except making sure this thing - intelligent or not - didn't kill him. He flung a hand out, groping for something - anything - and finally comes into contact with a chunk of cement. Which he swung with all the force he could muster at the thing's head.

He got the sense that the man was studying him just as much, but then -- it was too late to think any further than that. The cement caught him in the side of the head, and he cried out wordlessly at the sharp, rattling pain. His hands scrabbled as well: one attempting to close around the man's throat, the other reaching into his pocket for the knife.

The piece of debris was still mostly together - and in his hand. Struggling hard now, with all his considerable strength, Joel slammed it up, aiming for the Creature's head again - it was his go-to for infected, at least, since the fungus made the skulls more fragile. He didn't know if that was the case here, but either way, enough blows to the head would kill it.

Technically true -- even if the Creature wasn't so soft-skulled. The piece of debris slammed into his nose, and he shouted again in pain and anger.

He could crush the man's throat, easily -- if he could get a solid hold from the right angle. This was not the right angle, and even that might have worked if he wasn't repeatedly getting smashed in the head. So instead, he moved to block the man's swinging arm, pin it to the floor while his other hand brought out the knife, flicked it open. He held it to the man's throat, growled in his face:

"I have nothing you want."

When it spoke, it was like someone had just thrown a bucket of cold water in Joel's face. The sock of it made him lose his grip on the piece of debris, his eyes going wide as he jerked back automatically - a bad, bad mistake to make with a knife at his throat.

"- the hell?"

[Closed]

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