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

[iselldrugstothecommunity]

"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.

[shambler]

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.

[teethofneedles]

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?"

[iselldrugstothecommunity]

"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.

[shambler]

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.

[teethofneedles]

"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?"

[shambler]

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.

[teethofneedles]

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?"

[shambler]

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?"

[teethofneedles]

"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.

[shambler]

The slap doesn't bowl him over - he's too tall, even hunched - and the zombie gives her a decidedly delayed reaction, gray eyes staring at her.

"Good...point," R says, hating that he's even agreeing in the first place. It's the hunger and Karis agreeing; it's not him, not really him, but who's he to say who he really is? It's not like he remembers. R struggles not to buy into the urging tempting him right in the face, reeking out of Karis in a heavy cloud. She's a driven Dead. Very driven. The kind other zombies back home would shuffle off to form a hunting party around without even thinking about it. She's motivated.

That, too, pulls at him. The letter in his pocket, the few minutes spent with Howard? They start to seem less and less important than eating, than stuffing his face with flesh until he can't eat anymore and going on anyway, bumping shoulders with Karis like they're best friends.

He's been starving all this time. The fact he made it this far is a miracle.

R doesn't know what to do, swaying in indecision, shoulders hunching over defensively as if he can turtle-up and wait for it all to figure itself out. He doesn't realize he's groaning hungrily until he registers it a few seconds later, sounding like it's coming from someone else, and that he's already taken a step so he can stand closer to Karis's shoulder, a silent lead on the Dead understand without actually speaking.

He hopes Howard's spooked. Hopped back in that bush. Booked it anywhere else but here.

[teethofneedles]

Oh, she remembers this. There's a little thrill of familiarity as R falls in next to her. He might not be from the same world as she is, but there's something that tends to link zombies together. It's the sense of being together, of strength in numbers. She can remember that feeling from when she was newly arisen, one body in a mass of hundreds as they overran Lordaeron at the command of their master. She doesn't savor being a puppet of the Lich King, but she does have a certain nostalgia for when times were simpler and all she had to worry about was exchanging unpleasant witticisms with the rest of her little group and killing whomever the Master decided needed to die.

She gives him a friendly nudge with her shoulder, eyes searching the darkness in front of her. She takes a step forward and the another, "Come out, come out where ever you are..."

She pauses and then adds in a slightly louder voice, "If you run and I catch you, I'm gonna make it hurt more. And I'll enjoy it."

[iselldrugstothecommunity]

What...?

In the dark, Howard trembles and cowers and feels the knife slide slightly in his sweating palm. The muscles around his eyes tighten. He feels his breath struggle in and out of his throat. He tries to move, to scream for help, to cry, but he knows that for this moment, staying still is the only thing keeping him from giving away his location.

How could he be so stupid...?

He'd thought he'd found an ally. In a zombie. Because they listened to music and did karaoke together. But of course, and he should know this better than anyone, hunger is a more motivating force than any sort of bond. He honestly thought that the rats would sustain R, and now he just feels gobsmacked by his own stupidity.

He doesn't make a noise as he slips away, a good hundred yards before he starts to desperately pelt in the direction of Thunder Mountain, barely heeding the chance of running into other Tributes. He scrambles up the rail to his hideout, clutching the knife in his teeth and the fake gun down the back of his shirt. He pulls the gun out and tosses it aside, clinging to the folding knife as he hides in the scaffolding, shaking.

Stupid, stupid, stupid. Stupid to be so easily tricked. Stupid to trust.

He cries into the night.