thearena | Everybody Dies [Closed]

Entry tags:

Everybody Dies [Closed]

Who| Howard, Alpha, R, Julie, John Watson, Tim Drake-Wayne (?)
What| Howard's last days in the Arena.
Where| Both Arenas.
When| Last few weeks.
Warnings| Zombification and gore in the thread with R and Julie.

He doesn't tell Diana where he's going. She'd laugh at him if he did, or worse, she'd believe him. I'm off to hunt down the man who tried to kill me, and then I'm going to kill him. At this point he's not certain what he is in her head, the scrawny kid who sold drugs and ran from gunfire or the killer who burned people alive, and he's also not sure why he cares.

When Diana wakes up, hair full of sticky pieces of candy, Howard just tells her he'll be back in a few hours and heads off, letting the smell of sugar and the pinkish yellow sun envelop him. He imagines walking into, and through, a horizon. One hand is at his knife, and the other over his rainbow-colored bag filled with explosives. He finds high ground and he watches for his target.

Eventually, he sees a flash of blonde hair. And he slides down the gingerbread hill, teeth gritted, eye that isn't behind the eyepatch narrowed.

Last Week

He spends more time in the tunnels. The bear traps he's dug up guard the entrances. He generally prefers the sandy, rocky side, including the little mine tracks that lead up to the end, because at least it's a nice break from the monotony of candyland. He sleeps with his knife close, his throwing stars in his pocket, some broken arrow tips tucked into his belt loops. His clothing is tattered to ribbons at the sleeves and ankles.

He told Wyatt he'd win. He promised.

He and Diana cross each other's paths less now. They spend more and more time scavenging for food as it becomes scarcer and scarcer. Soon the watering hole dries up, and most of the day is spent looking for alternate sources. They've dug a little gutter at the top of the cave, but no rain comes to fill it.

He plans on waiting out the last week.

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It's easy enough to hear Howard coming. Where he was once stealthy and quiet, now he's clunky, sluggish. Every motion is jerky, like moving in stop motion, and he can't help but think of Frankenstein's monster twitching with the aftermath of the lightning bolt darting through its stiff muscles.

There's no other sound quite like a corpse dragging itself up a hill. It's at once fleshy and dry, a rough tone like burlap with the occasional squelch of coagulating blood dripping from his knees and palms, which have been skinned all the way through by the rough terrain. The blood is bracky, almost chunky, like syrup that's been left out too long, and has the appearance of motor oil.

He smells Living, and so he heads for it. His mouth hangs slightly open, dry tongue poking around his teeth as if trying to taste a meal that isn't there yet. His hunger is excitable, and is capable of fantasizing even only hours after Howard's eaten the remnants of R and Julie. There's still a clump of blonde hair dangling from his mouth, like an ersatz Christmas ornament from a tree.

His hand, stiff and clumsy, reaches over the lip of the cave as he starts to haul his way in.

Diana turns when she hears the noise. A noise that sounds decidedly like something she does not want to meet. Grabbing her things she starts backing up between the rocks, couching down to hide, her skinny body easily slotting into the space in the shadows.

Tilting her head to peer over the top of the rock formation, she see's the figure pulling itself in the cave. Luckily she's been sat in here all day so her eyes have no trouble picking things out. She squints, recognizing the shape of Howard. But that's the only part she recognizes.

Her stomach drops and she feels her hands go weak and shake as though the blood and energy has fled from them.

She's caught between fear and anger. Stupid Howard. She knew he'd leave her by herself like this. She can't do this. Not alone. And now her lifeline is after her.

Skinny girl, Howard thinks. All bone and tendon. She's hardly worth the effort, but the hunger isn't picky, and it's not exactly like he's at a buffet line here. He closes dried, stuff fingers around a clump of rock, dragging himself up and losing a whole strip of skin from around his abdomen with him. He registers it, but he doesn't really feel it as it plasters the edge of the cave like wet toilet paper.

"Stay..." he wheezes, "there." He doesn't want to go to so much effort for such a meager prize. There's no recognition in his face, no trace of their former alliance. It's all gone.

He even sounds wrong.

She's shaking. Rooted by some force she doesn't even have a name for at this moment. She's so busy trying to think that she can't think.

It's when her eyes meet those of a stranger that her feet suddenly seem to hit the ground again. She sucks in some air, unaware that she'd stopped breathing for a brief moment.

Her hand curls around one of the looser rocks. "Make me."

"'Kay..."

That's the point when he reaches out and wraps his bony fingers, made more shriveled by the desert around them and death and weeks of dehydration, around her ankle, and tugs. It's not a light tug either - not a jerk, but strong, all muscle that tenses because it can't really go slack.

Diana can't help letting out a shriek. It's pointless. It's stupid. It's attention grabbing.

It's impluse.

She brings the rock in her hand smashing against not-Howards face.

At the same time, he fully yanks her ankle. He may be slow, but he isn't weak, and with the leverage it should throw her off balance. Once she's on the ground, he can sink his teeth into her throat, kill her quickly - he's not the cruel type - and go straight to the brain. He wonders if she has interesting memories.

He's strong. She can't pull her leg out of his grip. He's got her.

She tries to run. She pulls, she struggles. She claws at the rock beside her.

In a desperate attempt she flings her whole body in the opposite direction. Something goes wrong. She feels herself go down. Her leg turns. Her foot doesn't. It's still stuck in Howards hand.

There's a sharp sound. Pain explodes in her ankle. She smashes to the ground. Her knee crashes against hard rock. She doesn't know what happened. She can't bend her leg anymore. She's in agony.

Her whole side throbs in pain. Her leg feels like it's on fire. White hot. It feels wrong. There's only a painful thing that used to be a limb attached to her now.

She can vaguely hear herself sobbing. "Let go. Let go."

She should lay down. She should let it happen. Just less than a minute and it'll all be over.

No. No. It can't happen this way. She doesn't want to die. She can't die. Every part of her body denies it. It must keep trying. She must keep trying.

Diana sucks in a shuddering breath through her gritted teeth and screams. "I said let go!"

She pulls her working knee up and her foot comes down to collide violently with Howards jaw.

Edited 2013-08-26 21:24 (UTC)

The sound that comes from Howard's mouth isn't a yelp so much as a strange 'whufff' of air from his drying, shriveling lungs, accompanied by the crack of Diana's book against his head. His hand twitches as if electrocuted, and he loses hold of her ankle.

"Hnnngry," he offers her, as if it's an explanation. As if it's a plea, one that he no longer recognizes from his past. The sickness is merciful in that it erased everything, all the horror that is now only stamped on Howard's body, on his slight frame and the health problems that are miniscule compared to the ghost of starving.

He starts to rise to his feet.

She's already started to try and crawl away. Her leg nothing more than dead weight.

She can feel how wet her face is, probably from all the crying she must be doing. She still can't hear herself though, can't focus on the loud sobbing escaping her throat in large, shoulder shaking bursts.

Diana's not sure what part of her even has enough wits about it to notice but she's aware of movement behind her. He's still coming after her. She needs to move quicker.

Her body clenching and twitching in agony, she grasps at the cave wall, clinging to rock, clawing herself up. Her weight pressed against it, she tries to head for the cave mouth, but every step bring fresh pain.

Howard moves like a combination of a drunk and a puppet. He less takes steps than jerks his legs into places ahead of where he is, and twice he slumps sideways, only keeping from falling by the mercy of the wall. But he presses on.

She smells so alive, so tantalizing, and with whatever happened to her leg he can tell she's injured. Howard has no interest in cruelty, and if he were capable of speech he might tell her he'll make it quick, that he'll just bite her neck. She'll die in a minute, just a minute, all she'll have to suffer is less than sixty seconds of being gnawed at and ripped apart.

Once she's at the mouth of the cave she's suddenly hit with how helpless this is. How was she supposed to climb down? And even if she did, the first people to find her would kill her on the spot, right? This was all for nothing.

She couldn't feel her leg anymore. Pain, yes. Not a leg. Just something weighing her down. If she tried to get down the rocks like this she'd just end up breaking her neck.

She takes one last look over her shoulder and starts heading down.

It's exactly 5 seconds before her working leg struggles to hold her up and she falls. The world's a blur of cutting and thumping pain as she rolls down the hillside.

Howard stumbles after her to the edge of the cave mouth, making wheezing, grunting noises from lungs that no longer process air. And he watches her go over the edge, thumping and tumbling down, dislodging pieces of rock.

Go, says the hunger. Follow her.

But some part of Howard likes to preserve himself, likes to turn away when things get hard. And so he lets her fall away, and dropping to his knees again, crawls deeper into the cave.

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Everybody Dies [Closed]

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