thearena | I Sleep Beneath the Golden Hill [Open]

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I Sleep Beneath the Golden Hill [Open]

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.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

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.

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.

Edited 2013-03-20 00:29 (UTC)

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?"

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.

Howard's usually not big on people invading his personal space, but R moves so slowly that Howard can see him coming, and he lets R prod at his bony shoulder. He doesn't immediately respond to R's compliment, instead mulling it over. He doesn't feel like a good friend. He feels like someone who hasn't even gone out looking for Eponine yet, who's put Orc out of his mind, who suspected R of wanting to eat him and then asked for his rat.

But is it so unreasonable that R's as lonely as he is - possibly even as scared? It can't be easy being a zombie out here, moving more slowly than everyone else, unable to beg for your life if it comes to it.

And Howard finds that at least having something to do, patching R up, will help him focus on something besides every bump and noise outside. It'll make him feel useful. And he likes that; Howard clings to the idea of being useful, of being indispensable, like a child to a security blanket or a koala to a branch.

He looks back up, resisting the way his stomach flips when his eyes come back to the mess of R's face and the eyeball hanging like fruit from a sick vine. "Okay, hold still." He reaches forward - his hand is shaking, he holds it out for a moment and takes a breath until it isn't. He's never liked gore, never liked dead bodies. Back in the FAYZ he dealt with dead bodies, looting from their clothing, pulling the corpses of toddlers out of vehicles where they'd baked alive when he was salvaging from glove compartments and seat pockets. Those memories come rushing back to him now, humid and suffocating, and for a moment he has to close his eyes and swallow.

Then he reaches forward and grabs the eye. His other hand reaches behind R's head to hold him steady, and Howard shoves the eye back in. It doesn't really pop in; Howard was expecting it to snap in like a leg of an action figure back into the hip socket. It sort of smushes in and isn't entirely round once it's fit back. Howard wipes grime from his fingers onto his pants and sits back. R's already easier on the eyes (no pun intended).

"There, how's that?" Then he follows R's eyes to the rifle, and scoots it behind himself, out of view. "It's okay, dude, it's a prop. I stole it from the fake shooting range. Figure from a distance it's hard to tell that it's not real and..."

He shrugs. "I'm an easy target. Always will be."

By some miracle R hangs tight.

The touch of Howard's hand against his head almost sets him off into that haze again, like that hunger has to point out all he has to do is jerk forward and he could snap off every single of Howard’s fingers in one shot. Instead the urge paces uselessly in the back of his mind as R struggles to keep it together, his good eye fixed on Howard's as they come almost face to face.

He gnaws down on his tongue so he doesn't get ~~too~~ tempted.

Being close enough to see Howard's pores and feeling his stale breath tickling against his face isn't helping. What he should do is - what, tell him to stop breathing, really? Stop looking so delicious? Way to freak out one of the few friends he has. R defaults to an unblinking, dusty stare, which feels much much safer than saying what’s on his mind. He uses the time to commit Howard’s face to memory, every one of those pores and imperfections because he has no idea where Howard will be tomorrow. The Living aren’t exactly known for being reliable like that.

The eye goes in. While R doesn’t have vision suddenly flooding back in that side, at least it’s not flopping around all over the place like some rotting yo-yo. It’s a start. The zombie brings up a hand and touches his face, smushing his shattered eye-socket to test it. The eye rolls a bit in there but doesn’t fall out. So far, so good. Howard does good work. Didn’t even squish it. Kid should grow up to be a doctor.

“Good as…new,” R would give Howard a thumbs up if he could manage one.

The rifle gets blocked off from view as Howard explains. Easy target? R wants to comfort Howard, tell him that he’ll make it through the next couple of days. It’d be lying, though, because if he of all people could get up here, than another Tribute could too and what then? R tries to picture something happening to Howard. Imagination isn’t his strong point anymore, if it ever was – R tries anyway. He pictures Howard face down in his own blood, red and going sticky. Maybe swinging in one of Eva’s competently tight nooses.

The surge of sheer dislike welling in his chest cavity surprises him. It pushes back at his hunger as R gives a slow shudder.

“Keep…hiding.” R insists. He tries to give Howard a stern I’m the adult here look. It’s not too effective when he has a case of lazy eye rolling around his skull. “Try. Invis…” R pauses, then starts again. “Find you…food. You…stay. Hide.”

If Howard wants food, then R thinks he can hunt up all the rats he can for him. Food shouldn't be a problem.

"Eh, almost good as new. You might need glasses," Howard says, with a strange little chuckle that makes it sound as if he's trying to make the joke funnier after it's said than it actually was. He brings his knees up and drapes his arms over them, linking his hands together over his shins.

And then he gives R an incredulous look, like R's offered to pay for everything he ever wants for the rest of his life or something equally unbelievably generous. "Wait, wait, are you offering to protect me?"

Well, it's not quite the same thing, but it may as well be. Offering Howard the protection of the shadows and seclusion without having to leave them for food is a big deal. Howard lays the rat down on the ground in front of him and starts to pull it apart, tearing off a leg first and chewing on it, making sure to suck the flesh off the bones rather than swallowing whole.

He doesn't know if he wants to accept it or not. The last person he allied with stabbed him, in the back, in the stomach, in the chest. Aunamee kicked him in the back of the head and pinned him down while he choked on his own blood from his severed tongue. He'd plunged the knife between his ribs and said it was a kindness, and Howard believed it, because the escape of death was so much better than continuing to be cut up on the ice, than bleeding out from being run through. But when he'd woken up he was no better; free from physical pain, perhaps, but racked through and through by fear that was even worse.

He tries to look into R's eyes, tries to ignore the way one of them is slightly wall-eyed and unfocused, tries to see if he thinks R's going to turn on him too. He had two allies flip on him last Arena, lost a third to suicide. Every logical part of him is saying 'don't trust a zombie, don't trust anyone, you have to do this on your own'. Every logical part of himself says to look out for number one.

But R's face is, of course, inscrutable. The same zoned-out half-surprised gaze as there was last time.

"And what happens when you go out for rats and don't come back?"

The zombie only grunts at the idea of him with glasses. R’s amused. Showing he is, though, is another story.

“Hide,” R says again, this time topping it off with a shrug. He’d rather not die for real if he has any say in it, but he can’t deny it’s a possibility. He knows it could take one lucky headshot. Light’s out. “Hide…better. They can’t…”

R pauses, trying to work out how he wants to put this. Something diplomatic. He can do diplomatic. There’s got to be a diplomatic bone in his body somewhere. To stall for time, R pushes air through the hole in his lungs, his eyeball shifting in its shattered socket like a few more seconds will make any difference in the end. The key here is to keep Howard flatlined, not panicking, not anything but safe and alive.

The zombie lines up his words carefully like tin soldiers, double and triple-checking them before he starts pushing them out his blackened lips.

“Can’t…hunt if…they…don’t…don’t know.”

Reviewing what he just said, R gives himself a mental stamp of approval and a gold star because he can. There’s something relaxing about hanging out with a friend over food, R’s head lolling to the side and taking in the fact Howard is digging into the rat like a seasoned pro. The zombie reaches out and rips off the tail, more to be polite than because he actually has a craving for rat. It’s the least furry part, the Dead equivalent of shoving his broccoli around on his plate. R absently chews on the tail, half of it bobbling out of his mouth like spaghetti as he studies Howard for a moment longer and then turns back to looking at the rest of the park, his eye wandering as the other sits there looking pretty.

From here they have a sprawling view of the swamp between them and the Haunted Mansion, the waters brackish and lapping up against a dock.

(R remembers canoes. He doesn’t remember who he was with, when, or even why. Just the canoes).

Something’s in there, R realizes, because every now and then something ripples under the swamp’s surface. He spots what looks like a duck in the distance vanishing under the water and not coming back up again. He wonders if Howard saw the same thing. Maybe the kid better not go down there. All the more reason he should hole up here and sit tight.

“I…should…go,” R suddenly announces around the rat tail. His head swivels back to Howard. “...More rats. Stay?”

He’s worried about Howard all over again. Maybe the other Tribute’s paranoia is rubbing off on him. R thinks of Howard sitting there with his skinny knees to his chest and his fake gun and…yeah.

Well, can't argue with logic like that. Howard holds the rat out, so R can have the tender strip of stomach if he so desires. It's a sacred ritual, sharing food. It's like pinkie promises or blood oaths. Howard doesn't expect R realizes that, but it's important to him, deep down. It's something he doesn't do for just anyone.

"Can't argue with logic like that." He nods. "I'll help you out."

Because otherwise R's liable to fall through the trap track again. Howard helps him out, tying them both to the rail as they scoot along over the fraught rail until the bottom. Howard hears a sound and pauses, turning his head and then staying still like some sort of humanoid meerkat, then reaches the ground with R.

"Come back soon, okay? I'll get to work fixing that track."

He doesn't want R to go. He doesn't trust being around other people, but solitude is no easier. In solitude every bump and creak becomes a creeping footstep, every moment that passes becomes a 'where are they? They should be back by now'. He clambers back up the track with another rotting board and sits in the tunnel, deciding he should wait until dusk to start setting it up, or at least until the sun starts to set so that looking in his direction from the majority of the park will be painful to the eyes.

So he finishes the rat, and then he sleeps. He curls back up in a piece of the scaffolding, hidden to the world, with his prop gun and his stake. He gets a few hours in that way, betraying his position only by occasionally whimpering to himself and turning over in dreams. When he wakes, he can't remember what those dreams were, but the sun is starting to get lower in the sky rather than higher.

He peeks out the tunnel and sees if he can see his. R doesn't seem to have returned. And he waits for a while, maybe an hour, maybe longer, before he decides that he shouldn't just sit here waiting for rats. He might as well be waiting for mana from the sky.

He climbs back down and starts to look. He doesn't dare call for R, but he keeps his eye out. He clutches the oversized fake gun to his chest.

It takes awhile for R to even wander out of sight. Despite being a big stumbling target, he looks like he’s the only one wandering down the avenue, this lone figure bumping his way through the rubble that used to be crowded shoulder-to-shoulder generations ago. Eventually he vanishes. Howard’s alone.

With Howard gone, R finds that it’s slightly easier to dial back on the hunger. He tries to make it do the work for him, feeling it going here…here… here whenever he gets close enough to sense signs of Life, like a pinball machine rattling around his skull, lighting up all his senses. Wandering near the remains of a restaurant, the railings lining what used to be a patio rusted over, R hits pay dirt. More rats. They’re fat, fast-moving, with huge yellowed teeth that look almost as bad as his. Most of them scurry out of sight or watch him from their holes, eyes glittering. They know he can’t get them from there. A few brave ones decide to attack him and that’s when R lucks out. All he has to do is wait for them to start biting and he can reach down, squeeze until he feels their necks break. A few hours later nets him three rats.

R almost feels smug. Killing a few rats doesn’t bother him the way feeding on humans does and you know what, he did do a good job. Give the dead man a medal.

Rats clenched in hand, R decides he should start heading back. Time sneaks up while yawning into infinity and when his head comes up, mouth slightly open, the zombie is vaguely surprised to find it’s already dark outside. A few stars peek out, alien and cold, and not much different than the ones back home.

Maybe he better take a short cut.

The last time he went around the edges of the swamp. This time R cuts a straight path, the water rising up to his calves, murky with the scum floating across the surface. He’s more than halfway across the very edge of the swamp, Thunder Mountain rising up as a stark shadow against the night sky, when he feels something pecking at him. Hey now. What’s this? R lifts his leg. A pair of funny looking fish with fangs are attached to the meat of his calf. Their gills flare. Raising his head, the zombie notices the water churning closer and closer, like a whole school of them is making a beeline in his direction. So that’s what that was earlier.

Shrugging, R continues on his way. The fish follow him, tails thrashing the water to foam as they take nips out of him, some of of the school swimming away with chunks of his legs. It’s only a matter of minutes before his boots and pants are ripped to shreds.

Howard catches him as R finally wades out, the zombie scoring not only those rats, but whatever piranhas are stuck to his legs.

It’s like Howard won the lottery.

Edited 2013-03-21 22:17 (UTC)

Howard starts to get progressively more nervous as he looks for R. He tries to keep calm and remind himself that R's (probably) capable of looking out for himself, but he starts jogging more than running. This, in turn, makes him more paranoid - in the dim light every shadow cast from old wooden cutouts of Disney mascots or statues looks like a person waiting to pounce. The moon makes the street look icy slick, and gives the whole area a sort of ugly glow. Howard's breath starts to catch faster and faster in his throat, and his fingertips start getting numb along the rifle's barrel and stock.

Where's R? Couldn't the zombie budget time? Howard finds himself getting irate in addition to anxious. He's hungry and dehydrated and tired, and putting himself at risk for someone who, for all he knows, might as well just eat him when he turns his back. A little war wages on in his head as he's torn between wanting to rebut those distrustful thoughts with the notion of friendship and between wanting to be 'smart' and stay isolated. Let R come back when he does. Stop running around towards Adventureland unarmed, with someone out there following him.

Howard tells himself there should be fireworks, and it would make him laugh, if he weren't so afraid of making noise. There should be a parade. There should be people dressed up as cartoon characters and autograph books and light sabers and churros being sold in overpriced stands. But instead he's holding a fake gun as he slips from shadow to shadow, looking for the dead guy who promised to feed him rats. Never would have expected that.

He sees something emerge from the lake and jumps back into the brushes, hoping he hasn't made enough noise to drag its attention. It seems to be a person, which doesn't calm him down any until he sees the moonlight catching on that supernaturally pale face.

"Rob?"

He grabs his stake and steps forward, eyes darting down to the fluttering, slippering motion around R's ankles. When he recognizes that it is, indeed, R, he lets his hand fall and even lowers the gun a little bit.

"Whoo, where were you? I was looking all over..." The sigh of relief is palpable. He'd thought he was all alone. He'd figured his one tether from loneliness was dead, or had abandoned him, or, given that he doesn't entirely know how fast R's brain works or how much it retains, forgotten him. Now he feels as if he's been unfair.

But he jumps again as he sees something silver falling from the sky. He points and takes a few steps back, squinting through the night to try and discern if it's something he needs to run from.

Where was he? R flaps his hand over his shoulder. Doing what he said he'd do, what else? He tries to be a corpse of his word.

He's about to hand over his booty and then start pulling piranhas off his legs when he notices Howard is fidgeting (again!) and pointing and looking ready to bolt in the opposite direction or hop back in that bush, forget the free food. R decides maybe he better look up too. Shakily following Howard's finger, R stares up at the night sky and at first he doesn't see it: a gleam of metallic silver across the clouds, a light flashing that for a moment reminds him of an airliner's wings as it taxis down the runway. Used to taxi. Planes don't do any flying these days.

It takes him a long moment, long enough for them to drop closer, for him to recognize what they actually are. Parachutes, with containers dangling off the ends, which is where the flashing lights are. There are two of them, one small, the other large enough to require a two-handed catch.

R watches with interest as they fall. In his head, he reaches up and catches it out of the air easily like hand-eye coordination is natural and fluid, hands it over to Howard to let the little guy do the honors like Christmas exists. The reality is his container bumps off his chest and lands on the pavement. The parachute pools between them, Howard's care package not far behind.

"Mmgh?" The zombie leans forward as he shoots his friend a questioning glance. He'd raise his eyebrow if he could but he's afraid if he even tries, his eyeball will pop back out again. Better not push it. "...Yours?"

Because it's natural to see things falling from the sky and assume it's probably Howard's. Yup. R stares at his parachute as if he can't read the single letter across the surface, his deathly pale face looking both bored and somehow interested at the same time. It's a zombie thing.

Since R's got a handle - roughly speaking - on this one, Howard goes and grabs the other parachute package and brings it over. He reads the note attached to it. "Nah, this one's for you."

For a moment he just holds the package out for R, then realizes that he's provably going to be better at opening it than R is, so he tucks the gun under his arm and starts to rip away the parachute cords. It's a folding knife, and he instantly feels a swell of jealousy. He could use one of these. "Make it quick, and it's from a chick named Eva. Doesn't ring any bells for me, but she must think you're pretty cute."

He takes his package from R - it has no note except for a name attached - and rips that open too. It's like Christmas, only instead of Transformers and Pokémon it's knives and survival kits. His package has no knife, unfortunately, but he does get a rope and firestarting materials, and a can of food. Howard grins, actually grins, and the expression is ghastly on his face and in this lighting. It's the expression of a desperate survivalist and not a teenage kid.

And on the note of food, one of the piranhas detaches from R's legs and starts to wriggle and flop towards the water. Howard traps it with his foot. Waste not, want not.

"I thought there was something fishy about how long you were taking," he says to R, giggling to himself. The presence of the gifts, and what they signify, has cast him in a much better mood. "You make pretty good living fishbait."

R's surprise on his face at Eva's name isn't the same shade as his usual expression. Somehow she was the last person on his mind, despite her taking the time to show him the ropes (okay, that's almost as bad as Howard's attempt at a joke) and...yeah. Huh. The zombie takes in the knife, light glinting off that brand new edge that's never drawn blood and it doesn't ping anything in his chest like the other stuff back in his 747. It's just there. More scenery.

"Gone...fish...ing," R says with a rasp, humoring Howard and finally giving up on that knife. He starts to reach for the note, remembers not to spook the human which starts by not pawing at him, and instead holds out his hand. "Note? You...keep...knife."

R can't even read the note but knowing what it says is good enough. He can make an extra effort to remember what it's supposed to say. That pings all the places the folding knife doesn't. It's new, personalized to him, and that makes R want to take those three words and keep them close where he can tear into them and figure out what they mean on his own time. Make what fast? Is this a trick question? A pop quiz? (Un)-life advice? R almost wants to ask Howard if he knows what it means except nah, this note's addressed to him, and it'd be kinda like cheating asking around.

As far as R's concerned, the knife is way more than a fair trade for those three words.

The relief Howard reeks of now is infectious even to a dead boy. Listening to a giggle that's slightly high-pitched and hysterical in relief, R feels the urge to smile himself tugging at the corners of his mouth, those stiff muscles giving slight spasms as if being near Howard makes him want to loosen up too. It's a good feeling.

R stumbles back onto business. "Enough...food? ...More?"

He can totally kill more rats for him. If piranha tickles Howard's fancy, than apparently he can get that too. It's almost enough for R to forget how hungry he is.

Karis, as Karis is wont to do, has been prowling all over the park, looking for people to kill. Maybe eat, too. You know, little form column A, little from column B. As it is, she's been a bit frustrated. She's been in fights, but no one has died at her hands. At least not yet. This whole lake thing seems fake to her (just like everything else in this damn arena). The shoreline is interesting enough though - that and the island perched in the middle of it. Fortunately for her, she can see extremely well in the dark (and even if she couldn't, the lights on parachutes attracted her attention a little). She peers across the lake and then slips into the water, wading across through the scummy muck. Well, right up until she notices something nipping at her legs.

She curses out loud and then starts floundering toward the island as fast as she can through the water. She might be a zombie, but that doesn't mean she likes having chunks taken out of her.

As a bonus, she's making quite a bit of noise.

"For real?"

Howard takes the knife, looking at it with a sort of reverence reserved for holy objects, then up at R's face. R's so much taller than him, he realizes. Most people are, but R's tall even for 'most people'. "Thank you," he says softly, almost tenderly. R might not even realize what an opportunity he's given to Howard. He's given Howard a legitimate tool, a way to defend himself and a way to work with his environment.

He takes the note, folds it up, and slips it into R's pocket for him. No need to let R fumble with it. Then he stops, pauses as he hears someone cursing in the water. He stumbles backwards and then slips behind R, using the zombie's tall, gangly bulk as a shield to hide himself. He hopes R doesn't hold it against him.

Maybe she won't see them in the dark, but it seems that in her effort to get away from the piranhas she's coming right in their direction.

R nods. For real. As real as you can get.

The zombie bobs a nod at the thank you. It's what friends do. The zombie's hand comes up to touch the pocket, feeling that note there and imagining it has its very own heartbeat. Of course it doesn't - it's just a piece of paper, pulped, dead wood - but he's something of a romantic and it makes him feel better.

R doesn't hear the splashing at first. Doesn't register it the same way Howard does. What he does see is Howard's reaction, the Living boy suddenly behind him and close, inches away, almost as close as when he popped his eye back in. Something about this lack of distance doesn't feel the same.

Eventually he hears the splashing, too loud to be more of those fish with the fangs.

"Stay. I'll...look," R moans at Howard. One pale hand reaches back and pushes him back a step, maybe a bit more hard than he means to. Then he's slouching forward to meet that splashing sound, a determined hunch to his shoulders.

Karis can see two people on the bank as she sloshes closer, but she can't make out details. She's also too busy cussing at the little fish that seem to love biting her. She finally steps onto the bank and starts tugging fished off of her. She vindictively bites the head off of one and then spits it aside wit ha low growl of irritation.

So much for stealth.

Right about then she realizes that there's someone coming toward in a somewhat familiar lurch. She narrows her eyes as he gets closer.

"R...? That you?"

"Don't go far," Howard says, cringing a little as R shuffles away from him. He feels exposed and small, helpless, weak. He opens the folding knife and holds it in his hands, the fake gun by the trigger in the other, and sways a little on his feet, light like a boxer in the ring.

Then he hears a coarse, rattly voice come from the water through the splashing as the figure lumbers towards them. It sounds like someone who just smoked, maybe even ate a pack of cigarettes. The voice is crackled and dirty like paper that's been soaked in a puddle and dried up again. Someone who knows R.

He doesn't say anything. He waits. He hears a growl in the water and wonders what sorts of alliances it is that R makes.

R isn't thinking of alliances or the interesting, different ways he could backstab Howard.

Right now he's purely focused on following that voice, realizing he recognizes it, and feeling that letter burning in his pocket. That's about all the multi-tasking he's up to right now.

"Yeah," R says with a grunt, stumbling closer on his broken ankle. "Me. Kar..is?"

Now he can see a shadow at the very edge of the swamp, a silhouette that doesn't look human even to a zombie. The urge to attack dies down almost immediately, R suddenly aware of Howard behind him in the dark. Karis has made it very, very clear what she thinks of breathers like him. Suddenly R starts to think it wouldn't be a bad idea for the kid to beat it.

"One and only," Karis mutters. There's dried blood on her hands and staining the sleeves and chest of her clothes. She doesn't seem to mind. She's also got a bag in one hand and a coil of roped looped over one shoulder. Her eerie, glowing eyes flicker from R to a point past his shoulder and she sniffs the air suspiciously for a moment.

"I thought I saw someone else out here. You know where they are?"

The effect of her eyes glowing acid-yellow is shocking in the dark - it's the first thing R sees of her, the rest of her a ghostly outline in the moonlight, all hard sharp angles in a dress. Huh. Last time he met Karis, she'd also been in a dress, and it'd looked just as wrong on her then as it does now. (The drape on her bones is terrible). It's hard to tell where she's looking when all he sees is a general glow and he can't tell if she's looking at him or over his shoulder.

R hurries to distract Karis, stumbling over his lie.

"Probably...Tribute. No - no...one," R wants to wince even before he's finished moaning. That's literally the best he could do on such short notice, and he knows she won't nod and pat him on the head for getting a few words choked out. "You...eat?"

R raises a hand limply, trying to point at the bloody patches all over her claws and the dress. Why should he be even surprised? She obviously did better out there than he did, even on something as basic as feeding. R tries to ignore his own hunger pulling at him, telling him to shuffle around on his heel and lead Karis back to Howard because he's also had enough trying to hunt alone. R lets the hand drop to his side, stubbornly keeping his mouth shut before he tries lying again. Silence for now feels safer. Let her do the talking.

Karis' eyes narrow. Isn't the whole point of this to kill other tributes? Probably eat them too, in their case. That's neither here nor there, of course. She's a bit glad that she found him. At the same time, she's incredibly irritated by all the shit she's had to put up with.

"...nah. Not yet. Unless you count the chunk I took outta someone's eye back at the beginning. Oh, and their eye."

Karis snickers darkly and then cocks her head - R is so much like the undead she knows and so.. not at the same time. It's strange.

"But if there's another Tribute here, why don't we go take care of them?"

R doesn't laugh. Even if he could, he doesn't think maiming someone is funny - just because he's in the same boat and just as willing to shove his face into someone's intestines as Karis doesn't mean he'll start laughing about it, either. The face Karis gets back is the usual vague "how'd I get here?" corpse's face, the only thing betraying him is the slightest clenching of his jaw as he stares back at the other Dead.

The zombie struggles not to think about how nice it would be to party up, even if they form a herd of two. It's not much of a herd. "Pro...bably armed. Find...easier?"

Edited 2013-03-24 03:06 (UTC)

"R, buddy ol' pal, since when do people like you and me care about a few more bullet holes? He can't get both of us. And I'm starving!" She slaps him on the shower with another low, gravelly laugh.

"Not like he can just deal with the fish like we did, right? Where's he gonna run to?"

She seems to be enjoying the prospect of running someone down and killing them far too much.

Edited 2013-03-24 03:09 (UTC)

I Sleep Beneath the Golden Hill [Open]

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warning: dead baby talk

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