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ATTEN____

FIFTY FO___ PLUNGE AHEAD

_______H MOUNTAIN IS A TURBULENT FLUME ADVENTURE WITH HIGH SPEEDS, HEIGHTS, SUD____ DROPS AN___ STOPS!

IF YOU CHOOSE TO RIDE, YOU MUST REMAIN SEATED DURIN__________

Katurian liked the mountain because it was dark. The lights had been broken for ages, rendering the entire inside pitch black and damp like the inside of a whale's stomach. The animatronics (or what Katurian assumed had been animatronics) were also long since broken, and when he illuminated the cavern with his fire, he was greeted by their fallen forms, strewn and scattered along the ground as though they were corpses. There was an smiling bird with feathers stained brown and green, its arms poised as though it were once holding something between them. A fishing pole. A rope. There was what Katurian assumed to be an alligator, its snout cracked in two, one part down in the grime and the other protruded from its chapped and pealing face like some perverse, elongated smile. Katurian found it all appealing in an aesthetic sense (this is inspiring, this is beautiful, this could be a story) but his stomach lurched and twisted, and when the fire burned out, he couldn't help but feel the stare of all those dead eyes.

(Murderer. Psychopath. Piece of shit.)

The sponsors were giving him attention once more. Katurian curled up under a grinning fox and feasted upon toast, cake, ice cold water. Around him, a bizarre sound flittered in through sagging speakers, something that once might have been music but now sounded more like jangling, rattling moans. This was good. This would hide any of the sounds he made.

(Murderer. Psychopath. Piece of shit.)

He slept feverishly and infrequently. He kept his promise and didn't cry, but it was nearly impossible to keep the food down. He retched and choked.

(Murderer. Psychopath. Piece of shit.)

He liked the darkness because he could pretend he didn't see the person he had become.

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Katurian thought it was part of the music at first -- the crunch of plastic, the clickity-click of boots. Even when he heard R speak, he didn't immediately recognize the voice as coming from a person. After all, it was so slow, so unsteady, and he had been listening to slow and unsteady sounds all day. But then the sounds got closer. And closer.

He held his breath.

He flipped open his knife.

He was crouched beneath a fallen tree and some large, brown animal that was no longer identifiable. He was hidden from the main path, but he still glanced up, he still looked with his head exposed for just a second, believing that the all encompassing dark would keep him safe. He saw those yellow eyes glowing in the darkness (spiders had eyes like that, bright red eyes that stood out like pinpricks at night) and then he sunk down once more, his head pounding, his hands shaking.

"R...?" Karis turned. Yeah, it was the other zombie. She glanced back into the darkness and then crouched, beckoning him closer. If there was someone in there, it might be nice to have backup.

"I think there's someone in here. Wanna help me root him out?"

Her mouth split into one of her hideous grins.

"It'll be fun. I promise."

R came shuffling closer, not trying very hard - or at all - to be quiet. He blundered his way toward Karis's voice, telling himself he would put his foot down on the "fun" subject this time, for real.

"No...fun. We eat and...eat only," R mumbles. "Okay?"

Note he didn't refuse helping Karis out. R's not starving but he could go for a bite or two or three and with Karis here, being her usual beautiful personality, it was hard saying no. R started to sway in place, tilting his face up as he sniffed loudly. Mold and decay and broken machinery; all stuff he got used to smelling back home. Death, and not just of things like him. There was something else there, faintly threaded in among the dark and the ruins, a smell of Living that made R stand up just a little straighter.

Maybe Karis was right about someone being in here.

Katurian recognized that voice. He would recognize it anywhere. It had been stamped in his mind -- aggressively stamped in his mind -- since their encounter at the Cornucopia. He had come away from the situation with a sort of gratefulness, a sort of awe that someone had risked their health to protect him, but he had also come out of it with nightmares, vivid dreams about eyeballs and claws and ruby red blood. The physiological response was immediate, his shoulders tensing, his breath catching in his throat. His palms sweat around the knife.

At least, he thought, the person with her sounded clumsy. Wounded. Katurian hoped that he was not the only one the sponsors had ignored (until he killed, until he proved to them that he was worth it) and that his visitor was dying from infection, blood loss, anything --

He heard the word 'eat' above everything else.

Fear fell into terror. Just like that. His mind was not his own. His hands were not his hands. Freeze. Run. Freeze. Run. They were both just words and neither of them had any bearing on his tangled, mangled thoughts. He remained hidden under the debris, so frightened that he didn't even shake.

Edited 2013-04-13 20:56 (UTC)

"Where's your sense of adventure, kiddo? I swear, you take half the fun outta being a zombie sometimes..." Karis is in a good mood, though, so it's mostly just her poking fun at him. She's either blatantly ignoring or just doesn't pick up on his discomfort and with Karis, it could be either. She sniffs the air again - she can smell someone in here, she thinks. Someone alive. She gestures to R as she starts to pick her way forward again.

"C'mon, let's go."

She steps over a tumbled, animatronic animal; in the gloom it looks horrendously misshapen and twisted, like a rotting corpse, with the skeleton exposed. She starts to hum under her breath, growing a bit louder as she shuffles through the debris and decay, gaze sweeping the darkened tunnel.

"Come out, come out where ever you are... I promise it'll only hurt for a second."

Her mouth gapes in another grin as she checks underneath a tumbled, hollowed out log. Or at least it looks like one - it feels artificial to the touch.

"I know you're in here. And you wanna know something? I can see in the dark."

R almost wants to point out that if Karis can see so awesomely in the dark, then how come she hasn't found their food yet? Instead he keeps his mouth shut as he shuffles after her and a few yards to the left, sniffing, groaning every now and then to see if that'll spook out the Living person hiding in here. He thinks he can stop her from playing with their food one they hit paydirt, go for the jugular or some other artery as fast as he can, get it over with. The same can't be said for moaning for Karis to give it a rest with the threats.

The zombie spots Karis's eyes glaring in the dark, bobbing as she checks out a few hiding places. They're both going in more or less the same direction like a unit, R tripping on debris every now and then, stubbing toes he barely feels, shambling on instead of swearing up a storm, and he has the vague sense that they're closing on the scent.

R can almost taste it already.

Then he realizes he's so close that he isn't imagining it - the taste of Life is electrifying the dry roof of his mouth, so close he wants to drool. R lurches at what looks to him like nothing more than a pile of debris, shouldering into it more than sweeping it aside with an "ah-ha" like a normal person.

Found you. R lets rip a blood-curdling moan as he grabs at the man.

While the two of them approach him with calm and less-than-careful steps, Katurian's panic ebbs, fades, dissipates.

-- Or maybe it's less to do with panic and more to do with numbness, acceptance, the realization that if he dies, he'll be all right. He'll be in agony for a little while, like the monster said ('zombies,' he's familiar with that as a concept, people that aren't dead but should be dead), but then everything will be great, everything will be good as new. Pain is temporary. What isn't temporary, however, is his reputation. If he dies frozen and small, cowering and begging, the Capitol will replay it again and again, and if he never comes back, it would be his final legacy. If he does come back, his (minimal) support would dissolve. He remembers how he died last arena, stuttering and pleading, not even taking the defensive until it was too late. He needs to be better than this. He will be better than this.

(’Torture me as much as you’d like,’ Katurian told the detectives back home, after all the begging wore out, after all the tears had dried, ‘because I ain’t saying a fucking word.’)

He slowly, so slowly reaches for his fire starting materials and the branch he so recently used as a torch. When R kicks the debris away, he lights it up and the fire surges and burns like a flare. He swings it wildly at his attacker.

Karis whips her head around when she hears R's loud moan, just in time to watch the torch flare into light and she has to raise a hand to block out the sudden flare. She hisses as it throws the blackened gloom into stark relief, orange and yellow light flickering off of the walls. She can just make out the figure behind the torch and she thinks she recognizes him. From the first melee, where she'd taken some poor bastard's eye out. Her mouth splits in a low snarl and she starts to bound across the cavern, vaulting debris as she heads straight for him, claws and teeth bared.

She's going to try and do what she always does: grapple, then bring him down to her level so she can use her teeth and claws.

The last thing R expected is fire out of nowhere. It burns bright in the dark, the flames leaping and crackling so close to his face that he catches the smell of his hair curling from the heat and smoldering, his eyebrows dangerously close to scorching right off his corpse's face.

The zombie stumbles back without realizing what he's doing, his teeth bared against the fire.

R doesn't see Karis closing in on the man trying to light him on fire. It doesn't even occur to him that she could be coming to the rescue - the Dead usually don't step in to save each other's sorry butts and he doesn't expect any different from her. All R sees it the fire in his face, feel his already dry skin pulling against his skull, starting to crack like dried leather. He reaches out blindly to swat at the fire, grabbing where he thinks the man is, and all he gets for his trouble is an ugly burn on his arm.

The tatters of his clothes are already smoldering as R continues to snatch blindly at whatever he can get.

Edited (added a little bit more, typo correction) 2013-04-17 11:34 (UTC)

He can’t fight them both at once — it’s as simple as that. Every time he flings the torch towards one of them, it leaves a space for the other to attack. One swipe, one opening. One swipe, one opening. He feels R’s fingers tight around his arm first, and the words rigor mortis pop into his head. This close, he can see his monstrous face, the sagging eyeball, the blood in his teeth, the burned skin, everything.

This is the nightmare. This is the monster under his bed.

He jerks his arm backwards, breathing harsh gasps through his teeth. He keeps swinging the torch. Desperately. Hopelessly. He stumbles backwards, his feet kicking up little pebbles of debris, but there is only a wall behind him. Why won’t they back away?

Karis doesn't particularly like fire, but it's not as if she's afraid of it. What she doesn't like is seeing another zombie (another undead, another Forsaken) getting hurt by it. She goes in, teeth bared and ready to take the little bastard on all by herself, if she has to. Of course, she doesn't have to, but she still gives R a shoulder-barge - he's slow, he's not used to this and she doesn't want him turning into an unliving torch - to get him away from flailing torch and then she turns to try and pounce on the breather as he stumbles backward.

It isn't hard - he has nowhere else to go and all she has to do is duck under the torch and go for his arms with her claws.

They're slowly getting there, although R's convinced that before they do, the Tribute will luck out and light either Karis or him on fire first. The man's swinging that brand like it's his last line of defense - which it is, to be fair - and he can hear him panting these ragged gasps even over the hiss of the flame searing through the dark.

R's about to reach out for another grab attempt, working on the idea that you can't ever go wrong with the frontal approach, when Karis suddenly shoulders him aside. He goes stumbling to the side in surprise, staggering into the wall behind him.

Edited 2013-04-17 22:41 (UTC)

He doesn't have a prayer of dodging. Karis is right, he has nowhere to go, and when her weight connects with his (and her claws sink into his arms), he feels the impact more than he feels the pain. His feet slip out from underneath him, his head and shoulders collide with the plastic rocks. The only thing that keeps him upright is his proximity to the wall and the single elbow he uses to steady himself.

He drops the branch, the wood hitting the ground and then spinning, the flames still flick-flick-flickering on its end.

Edited 2013-04-18 00:34 (UTC)

She lets her claws sink in to his flesh and pins him back against the wall. She's a quite a sight in the flickering yellow light of the torch - all rotted and corpse-like. For such a gangly, spindly looking thing, she has an iron grip. For a long moment, those glowing yellow eyes bore into him. She wants to take her time with this - wishes she could, really - but she doesn't want him squirming away like he did last time.

"Looks like I get you to myself after all," she grins mockingly. A moment later she lungs forward, trying to sink her teeth into his neck.

Give him a second - maybe more than a second, like, two or three - to get back on his feet, R struggling and flailing and slapping his arm into robotic animals and knocking few heads off here and there. They rolled and skittered, some of them disintegrating into rust, before he got back on his feet.

Just in time to see Karis nail the guy, single-handed. She was hanging on him, her can-opener claws going at it and R wasn't even sure why she needed the help in the first place. She was at least as good as five zombies all by her lonesome.

(Also, it kinda helped the guy lost his torch.)

There was blood in the air, though. That got his attention. R sniffed, his chin tilting up, and he shoved away from the wall and came tottering back into the fray. The zombie lunged for the closest body part he could reach, aiming to grab onto an arm.

He screams.

It's a high-pitched, uneven sound like glass scraping against rocks, and it fills the entire cavern, echoes, reverberates until it chokes out into a series of wet, rattling gasps. His blood is thick inside his throat like wet concrete, and every time he tries to inhale, the muscles in his neck spasm and rebel against him.

But he still fights. Every part of his body fights. He kicks at her legs and stomps at her feet and claws at her hands. He throws his back against the wall, then tries to throw himself forward to push her off of him. He fights because he doesn't want to die weak, because he doesn't have anything to lose, because he is furious that this is what life has given him, this torture after fucking torture, this series of sadistic games that only end in death.

When R grabs his arm, he can't manage anything more than a harsh groan. He tries to look into his eyes, this undead creature who didn't want to have fun with his death, who wanted things to be quick and merciful. He's still watching R when he aims another stomp at Karis' foot (she cannot be convinced, she won't stop, she wanted this), but it's clear he's already weakening.

Karis makes a muted growling sound against his throat as he spams and fights and flails. She absorbs the stomps and kicks and allows the blows to roll off of her. If anything, they make her even more determined to see this through until the bitter end. She throws her weight against him and tries to pin him back against the wall as his wet, chocking screams and gasps fill her ears.

To her, it's music. She wrenches his arm and lets R have the other one. It frees up her other hand, after all. She reaches up to try and drag her claws down the side of his face. That won't kill him, but it'll hurt. When she speaks, her teeth are stained red and her voice - her voice offers a mockery of comfort.

"Just let it happen, already. It'll be over soon..." She's taking pleasure in this and they can probably hear it in her voice.

"Shouldn't have run the first time, hmm? Didn't help you much."

Every person he's killed almost always screams.

No two screams sound alike. If R could have nightmares, he'd probably dream about those.

He's almost glad he can't dream. R can't resist biting a chunk into the poor man's arm out of sheer reflex, ripping out a small mouthful which is sparking with Life inside his mouth, swallowing without chewing, and then oh, yeah, he remembers he wanted to make this fast because he's learning how Karis rolls with her dinner and he doesn't like it.

R drags himself up the screwed guy's body and lurches for his neck, aiming for the jugular with his teeth bared. It's like this quasi sixth sense for a zombie, the whole sensing where Life is and zeroing in. At least this way, R hopes he'll die a hell of a lot faster than that other man did.

The pain is a physical entity sitting on his chest. It plugs his nostrils and grips his skull. It fills his lungs with thorns. He spits, shudders, as the claws drag down his face and leave bubbling gashes in his cheek. Even though Karis' words are mocking, a cruel facsimile of comfort, he wants to believe that she's right. It'll be over soon. When he was fourteen years old, Katurian sat at the foot of his bed and prayed for death (sweet death) if the rest of his life was going to be this awful. Dear God (who probably doesn't exist), couldn't there be a fire or a flood or a gas oven that never turned off? If his life was going to be a sad story, couldn't you end it before it began? Couldn't you be kind?

(God didn't save Michal, God didn't save him fourteen years ago, God won't save him now, hold onto this feeling, try to write something about this, try to think in metaphor, what else does dying feel like, where is his arm going, why does it feel like his toes are no longer part of his body, where is --)

When R tears a chunk out of his arm, he gives a sputtering wheeze. There is no more purpose to his kicks. No strategy. He doesn't see R's next blow coming because he's too busy watching imaginary forest fires in the corner of his eyes, tiny brown and grey puffs of trees burning like his arm is burning, like his neck is burning.

When R tears out a chunk of his neck, he opens and closes his mouth a few times like a fish. And then he doesn't.

That's all she really needed out of this. His blood is warm and sweet and she lets it roll down her throat as she starts to tear chunks out of the man with her teeth. He's still now, unconscious, probably dead, and Karis mentally pats herself on the back for making another kill. She's going places. Terrible places, but still.

She has power over the life and death of others and that is all that she needs here. Or at least that's what she tells herself.

The man dies relatively fast, R relieved in the back of his mind that's still self-aware enough to care.

Then Karis is setting the pace of the feeding frenzy, R joining her, grunting and chewing away and tearing out meat and feeling that Life buzzing in his veins. They feel slightly less withered. For as long as he steals whatever this man had, he can pretend they've swapped blood, that R has working veins and he's not a walking corpse and it'll work out instead of being the same flatlined nothing, day in and day out.

R stuffs himself until he's full, glad it's dark in here because he doesn't want to look at Karis or himself splashed in the Tribute's gore.

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