thearena | Another Pilot Down [Closed]

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Another Pilot Down [Closed]

Who| Javert, R and Maximus
What| Javert meets his demise.
Where| New Orleans Square
When| Week 4 before the fireworks.
Warnings/Notes| Zombies and death.

Javert is not an easy zombie to please. Now that the hunger is, for the moment at least, sated, he's spent the last few days 'patrolling' (a word which took about forty minutes to come up with the first time, and which Javert has repeated no less than eighteen times whenever R suggests they do something else). This has mostly meant going over the same patch of New Orleans Square endlessly - given that zombies move very slowly, what would take a normal person a fifteen-minute walk can take the pair of Deaders a whole evening, and by then, Javert surmises, the other side of the square could have fallen into disrepair or chaos.

He only occasionally stops to be distracted by how disorderly he and R both seems. It takes him a while, but he eventually finds the right word, fishing it out of the stew of his brain like meat from the bottom of a garbage disposal. 'Unprofessional'. They're a disgrace to their uniforms, unorthodox as this attire is, with pieces of splattered Beck all over their clothing. Javert found a towel, which he insisted on scrubbing both his and R's faces with to get the blood off, up until he accidentally scraped off some of the skin on his chin while trying to fix that 'drooling' business. Now a pinkish-white piece of jaw bone pokes out from under his flesh like submerged treasure for archaeology types.

There. They're at the northeast corner of New Orleans Square. Javert turns himself a full three hundred and sixty degrees so he can see all around him and determine that their little patch of familiarity here is free from intruders. In the dark, his zombie eyes can see that they're alone at the moment, except-

-except there's something moving through the shadows on the southwest end, and the scent of Living comes wafting on the wind in their direction. Javert points to R, telling they should circle around and try to flank their new prey, and starts to shuffle towards where Maximus is.

They're about four hundred yards away. This could take them all night.

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Patrolling. R suspects they're doing something like patrolling and not aimless shuffling and it's starting to occur to him he doesn't like it. It's...not his thing. He probably wasn't a fan of it when he was alive.

Still. He got Air into this. He bit him, he needs to man up and take responsibility. In a way, R feels like he should humor his need to go over the same spot back and forth, like they're a squad of two marching in lockstep only they're Dead and that means there's no marching anymore. Just rocking and staggering and stares. (R's pretty sure Air would march if he could, though. He probably had insane posture when he was breathing). R even keeps his groaning to a minimum as Air sets the pace.

R lifts his head, following Air’s point, the two zombies inhaling at almost the same time. He can hear the breath whistling though the slit slashed across Air’s neck, black and withered at the edges where the flesh has curled. The scent of more Living changes R’s mind about all this patrolling and not-marching: maybe it’s not a such a bad idea after all. It’s like…like a bonding experience, he tells himself. Kill together, eat together, patrol together, and maybe, just maybe it’s like they’re buddies all of a sudden. Maybe if either of them dies again, they’ll actually feel something. Do something aside from dumb staring and then forgetting. Or maybe he’s just being optimistic.

Somehow he has the feeling this isn’t how it used to go before the apocalypse.

R starts forward, dragging his twisted, broken ankle, and leaving the flanking and fancy stuff to Air.

Edited 2013-04-15 04:04 (UTC)

Maximus, though new to the entire concept of 'zombie', has already had quite enough of them, thank you very much. He's wiped off most of Wesker's dark blood from his pickaxe, but a glossy sheen just at the edge of the handle is still there - a dark streak to remind him.

Javert pulling himself up after having his neck slashed open is an image he'll never quite forget. There's an instinctual fear when dealing with the reanimated that even a hardened soldier like Maximus can't quite shake.

Death is the only sure thing, in the world.

Or it was.

Before Zombies. Before the Games. Before death matches where the dead wake up again in the city...

Part of him longed for true death - for the grassy plains of Elysium. For his wife's arms. For his son's.

Another part hoped when he woke he'd find Morrigan again in a city full of light.

Neither would help with the strange, shuffling figure that was slowly moving across the empty square. A strange, shuffling figure that he almost recognized...

It's unfortunate, but coordinating anything with zombies is pretty much impossible. Even between just him and R, Javert's finding it frustrating to do anything more complicated than just 'stumble around in Maximus' direction'. He tries to gesture with his arms to R to go around, but it's a limp flop, and he couldn't raise his voice enough to talk to R from more than twenty feet away even if he could string words together easily.

So stumbling forward it is. His shoes make a 'kssh' sound against the tiles of New Orleans Square. He can smell the Living, and it's comforting, to let the instinct take over. He doesn't like the law of hunger until it's like this, overwhelming, powerful beyond reproach. Normally it sits at odds with some internal compass he can't find the pointer of, but when the scent of Living is so powerful all qualms are tossed to the wind. He knows just yards away is flesh with a pulse, skin that can still sweat, lungs that can still exhale, unputrefied, warm, calling to him...

He pauses twenty feet from Maximus. He recognizes this Living. The man with the knife.

He holds a hand to the brown, dripped stain down his front. He turns and tries to signal R that there's something wrong. Some impulse tells Javert not to attack this one, perhaps self-preservation, perhaps because Maximus holds the key to why Javert's dead now.

The problem with signaling is it's not really effective with zombies. A little too subtle, you know? Using a feather light touch instead of a tacky Vegas sign. R stares at the hand flap, mouth open, his face blank. What's up now? Are they patrolling in the wrong direction? Is R not standing straight enough? Because he's down to one eye and even he can see the figure up ahead moving like he's Living and breathing and that makes him worth checking out. He isn't blind. Jesus, they're zombies, it's not exactly rocket science figuring out what to do next.

He better take point on this one. They outnumber the Tribute two to one and while that’s nothing compared to having a swarm of Dead at your back, it’s still better odds than one-on-one. It’s not impossible. He tricks to think of it as more of a bonding exercise and not what it really is, which is murder.

R groans as he lurches toward the man’s shadow, inhaling that Living scent and letting that tug him forward like a leash. He bumps against Air’s drooping shoulder and brushes past. The man’s armed with what looks like a pickaxe: he’s also holding it like he’s used it before. This could get hairy. He’ll probably fight back.

This would probably be one of those times they could’ve used Karis and her gung-ho, can-do attitude.

A second one. He saw it almost immediately after the first, watching it grow closer than--

Than Javert. He knows the man now, and by extension the other. Tall, dark, strange - the one who bit Javert. The one who turned him into this.

Maximus' face hardens, his feet coming to a stop and planting securely on the ground. He turns the pickaxe over in his hand - once, twice - feeling the satisfying weight as it swung in an arc.

He considered simply waiting, simply killing them - a blow to the chest for each and then perhaps to the head (as the neck didn't seem to have an effect, but maybe if he beat them to a pulp...?) - but something stayed him, for just a few seconds.

"Javert!" He called out across the square. One last attempt. Perhaps the man he knew was still in there...

Javert doesn't stop R from moving forward, but he does stay where he is, eyes not on the axe but fixed on Maximus' face.

The rule of hunger is compelling. It's nearly strong enough to make Javert ignore the axe and the strange feeling in his dried, rotting guts that something about this is wrong. It's a strange feeling, a nagging sensation that Javert doesn't know how to handle; he's not comfortable with doubt, and right now it floods him more violently than even the compulsion to feed. Doubt.

There was comfort in the idea that the world was simple enough to be predator and prey, those that ate and those that were eaten, but it was not a comfort he could avail himself to. It's built for someone else. His soul is promised to a different code, one he can't reach now but that shines in the distance, like a lighthouse through fog.

It's then that Javert decides to pull back from the clearness and move back towards that beckoning, far-off call of some greater cause. He makes a little cough sound as some black slime burbles out of the slit in his neck, as it comes up and laces the cleaves in his teeth, drips down over the exposed bone on his chin. He holds a hand forward, not to grab but to request.

"Maaaaax...mus?"

Wait, they know each other?

R finally shuffles to a stop, not sure what to do, his head lolling from Air back to Maxmus and back again as if he's watching the slowest tennis game ever. He tries to think if this ever happened before, thinks back to all the Dead he's known and bumped shoulders with and he can say without a doubt that this is a first. So what's going on now? Is this a reunion, the first R's ever seen go down like this, or are they gonna eat the guy?

The zombie sways slightly where he's stopped, looking lost and confused and Dead as usual, and hoping Air knows what he's doing.

Maximus almost breathed a heavy sigh of relief as he heard Javert mangle his name, the pickaxe lowering slightly. He kept an eye on R but he, too, seemed to be wavering, confused. Dangerous, obviously. Needing to be dealt with? Yes. But in good time.

"Maximus, yes," he said a little too slowly and a little too loudly, a chill running up his spine as he watches the black slime gurgle from Javert's open throat. His grip on the pickaxe tightened even as it was lowered.

Somehow, he knew that they were dead. Despite walking, despite moving. Even without a knowledge of the concept of zombies, he could smell the death from them - a smell he knew all too well. But even the dead deserved respect. They simply didn't belong with the living. Especially not here, where true death would bring rebirth in the Capitol.

Javert stays where he is, swaying slightly, and then looks down at himself and gestures to the blood, the gore that stains his front, then the slit up at his neck, as if asking Maximus what to make of this. What to make of this open wound, still oozing slightly, like a second mouth that gapes above his shoulders. He turns to R, and then back to Maximus, and he's slightly wall-eyed because Beck kicked him in the head earlier, and the muscles that line vision up are a little stuff now.

The hunger that formerly drove him now repels him. He places a hand over his heart and seems to realize for the first time that there's no beat there, no familiar thumping. He truly is dead. And some feeling slips in under the doors of his mind to say that not only can this not be, but it should not be.

The hunger is not just a fact. It is a fate. It is the future and the state of being now, and something inside Javert recoils, disgusted at this thing he's become. This thing he's been reduced to, he realizes. He doesn't know who he was before, but it must have been something better than this. Not something happier, because that doesn't really factor into his thoughts, but something less abominable. Something truer.

His eyes line up and seem to focus on Maximus' face. He moves a limp hand to his temple. "Hhhh."

He tries again. "Hhhh..hhead."

He doesn't understand, at first. The word sounds more like a groan or a moan - a noise without meaning. He despairs, at first, before it dawns on him what Javert is saying.

And then, only a moment later, it dawns on him what it means.

His eyes flicker to the limp hand at Javert's temple, his own grip tightening around the pickaxe. The wound across Javert's neck is still oozing, still visible, and that is what makes the connection. Javert's last wish, still waiting to be fulfilled.

He takes a breath, narrows his eyes. "You want death," he says, almost a question.

"Ppppl." Black tar and spittle dribble and burble from Javert's mouth as he tries to talk again. "Pl. Pleeease."

He doesn't know what he should do if Maximus denies him. He doesn't think he can hold onto this lucidity for very long; even now, it seems to be getting overwhelmed by the hunger, by the devastatingly powerful impulse to lurch forward and sink his teeth into Maximus' neck. What he wants, what he truly, deeply wants, is like a message written in sand on the beach, getting obscured and pulled away with each thrust of the tide.

He makes a groaning sound and forces himself to his knees, to slow the progress of his attack if he loses his resolve to the desire to feast.

It's selfishness that pushes R into action.

He did this. The decent thing to do is let Javert get his wish and get re-killed. It'll mean losing one of the few zombies here. R will be alone again. He stares at Javert, his mouth open like he wants to say something to tell him it won't be that bad and somehow it'll work out. He'd be lying. As the zombie here with the most hours clocked in Dead, he knows better.

He still doesn't want to be left alone. Two voices groaning is better than one.

R breaks into a fast shuffle, his shoulder dropping down as the zombie lurches at Maximus. His groan sounds more like a desperate snarl as he closes in.

He hadn't made a move - not yet - the thought of Javert's death (again) heavily on his mind. But a man's last need is a thing to heed, so he had finally managed to resolve himself as R came stumbling towards him. Startled, Maximus moved a little quicker than he meant, lunging towards Javert and swinging his pickaxe with all the force he could muster.

SLAPCRACKSPLASH!

The sound echoed down the street as the pickaxe tore through skin and bone and brains, sending a good amount of all three in a cascading arc from where Javert's head once was. Maximus cringed, slightly, not really intending to do so much damage, but the petrification had made it so much easier for the pickaxe to dig into and swing out again.

He spluttered as blacked blood hit his chest and face, turning to wipe it, keep it away from his eyes, even as R barreled down upon him.

Maybe if Javert had a second longer to react before the inside of his head goes splattering across the cobblestones, he would have joined in on the swarm. But zombies aren't good at processing information, and as such he's just there on his knees as the pickaxe cleaves through his skull.

He doesn't have time to reconsider his decision. He doesn't have time to even realize the gravity of what he's asked, although he wouldn't change his mind. There's no moment where he anticipates release, or fears Hell, or even winces at the axe moving towards his head.

Javert's brains make a spattering sound against a wall, like rain kicked up from the wheel of a cart. His body crumples to the side and lays still.

R's probably close enough to get hit with some of the splatter. Unlike a Living person, Air's splatter isn't warm and fresh: it's cool. Stale.

Air could've been a maybe-friend. Now he's nothing. Make that less than nothing.

If R was any more self-aware, he would've thought he was lucky. It's over.

The zombie lurches over Air's body on the pavement. R's so close that he's within grabbing distance in seconds, his teeth exposed in an ugly, crooked snarl as he attacks clumsily, trying to grapple Maximus away from the axe so he can start tearing away chunks already.

Maximus barely had time to process before R was on him, and perhaps that was for the best. Part of what made battle so easy, so intuitive for him, was not needing to think about it while he was doing it. The Capitol and its arenas had made that slightly more difficult since he arrived (it was hard not to think about what the hell a zombie was when you were faced with one), but eventually instinct and training simply took over.

R hit him with the impact of a freight train, and it was all he could do, for the moment, to stumble backwards and attempt to rip the pickaxe from the zombie's grip. He would not be letting go.

Part of his brain knew there was a short cliff behind him, but while he was usually intensely aware of his surroundings, Javert's death and change had shaken him on some primal level and all he wanted to do was destroy the thing that had made him this way.

R was close enough to see bits of Air splattered on Maximus's face, black glistening on his cheek. The zombie snarled and tried to snap the man's nose off, the axe's handle between them stopping him from closing those few inches that would've remodeled his face. Instead his teeth click together, useless, as he keeps pushing and pushing and throwing whatever weight he died with against the man who just re-killed Air.

The struggle puts the two Tributes closer and closer to the edge of the cliff.

R surged forward in another bite attempt, his weight hitting against Maximus, one hand still hanging onto the axe handle, the other trying to reach over and swipe at his face.

It was more like fighting an animal, than a man - vicious and much faster than he expected, as if the frenzied hunt had granted the decaying body new life, new purpose. The head. He knew it had to be the head, but if he lifted his axe too high then R would surely manage to sink those teeth into him, and he had seen what that had done to Javert - had witnessed it and--

And suddenly his foot was on air instead of ground, his weight falling back upon it before he could correct himself, the world shifting suddenly and violently around him.

And he fell.

R almost went tumbling after Maximus. He had the man and suddenly he didn't, end of story.

The zombie staggered at the edge of the decline, his snarl relaxing back to his typical "what am I doing here?" expression, slack and dimly confused as he stared down after Maximus. It was too steep to try shuffling straight down, that urge to bite into his neck fading with the distance. R stood there, swaying slightly, those colorless eyes fixed on the man who killed his not-yet-friend.

After a long moment, R turned and shuffled away.

He didn't land flat. He fell and then tumbled the rest of the way down the cliff until he finally rolled to a stop at the bottom, his pickaxe a few feet away, unbroken.

He was winded, and sore, but as he lay there and looked up at the sky, regaining his breath, he took quick stock of himself. No new injuries. Good. But--

He scrambled up as quick as he could, grabbing his pickaxe. He still needed to get rid of R. If he wandered around any further - bit any more of the tributes--

He quickly looked up at the top of the ridge, but was greeted with empty silence. The creature was gone, and there was no way Maximus could quickly scale the cliff to chase him. He cursed, quietly, under his breath.

Damn.

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Another Pilot Down [Closed]

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