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.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Howard doesn't know what's been bitten, doesn't know where to plunge into the mass of tangled images in his head to retrieve the information he read about jugulars and arteries. The wet skin under his hand is shredded, and blood spills down between his knuckles and seeps into the cuff of his battered red hoodie.

"R, R, stop, it's me, it's-" He can breathe, he tells himself. He can talk. He presses back against the wall, feeling a waft of R's smell cut through the copper of blood in the air. R's fingers clip his nose, and Howard gets a good impression of how dry they are, like chalk and paper, while his body goes through an instinctual motion he doesn't even think through. The knife comes up again, and he jabs at the silhouette of shaggy hair in the dark; the blade gets stuck like a tack in a corkboard, and there's no blood, just a thunk! of metal driving through cheekbone. Howard brings his foot up again and slams it against R's pelvis, pushing him back. Distance, distance. It's the only way to protect himself.

He starts edging along the wall of the cave sideways, steadying himself from a sudden wave of dizziness with his hand. He picks his way over where he knows the jaws of the steel traps are, the ones that killed John not so long ago. He feels as if the memory, as if the idea of what he's doing now, forces the blood to run faster, like tears or puke. He's leading another friend into a trap.

Because that's what R is, a friend. The crater gushing blood in Howard's neck doesn't change any of that. Hunger makes people do horrible things, and Howard never demanded loyalty when anyone's stomach was concerned. He knows better. He slides in his own blood and topples to the floor, cracking his head against the rock wall, sucking air in through his nose. The traps lay a fairy ring around him, a moat between him and the monster.

It's already too late once R realizes he recognizes that voice. Another friend. Another person he screwed. He opens his mouth to gasp. The name's on the tip of his tongue. Howa -

A knife slams into his face out of the dark. The blade punches through his cheek and out the other side. It doesn't hurt, but the jolt sends him careening to the side and it's enough to forget what fragile thread he'd had starting to form in his mind. Food! There! snaps into place. Go!

The hunger drives him forward. R can't help it. It gets him back to his feet, his tongue barely attached - so much for talking - another wheeze forcing its way out of his dusty lungs. The blood sparks in his mouth, cooling fast until he gets another bite in. Another bite. That's what drives him forward, R staggering his way through the dark with his useless eyes staring forward, his hands up and clawing, groping around for the walls, a body. Scrambling footsteps ahead, uneven, but not that shuffle-drag of another zombie. The pitiful sound of weak breathing. The trail of blood on the floor snaps and dances across his corpse as he trails after it.

R blunders into the first bear trap.

It snaps shut around his calf with a deafening clang. It takes R a second to realize he's suddenly face down on the floor, his teeth clamped down on something that's what, his tongue? Spitting it out, R struggles up. Something rips. Black ooze drools out his leg as he tears it free at the calf, tibia and fibula brittle from long desert days and nights. He gets a few more feet crawling on his stomach toward the breathing before he hits the next one chest-first.

"Guh," R moans. In retrospect it was a bad idea to chew his tongue off - now he couldn't even groan properly. "Ggh..."

Only a few feet away he could hear that breathing, shallow and gasping. A weak pulse that fluttered those last few feet he couldn't cover, no thanks to the bear traps, R moaning again sadly and trying to drag himself free. It rattles with its teeth sunk in deep into his rib cage, pinning him to the cave floor.

Howard tries to get up once, just once. It's only when he hears the traps going off, when he hears R moan for him, that he feels safe doing so. He soon realize that this is a foolish decision, because he can't feel his feet, or his fingertips, or his lips. It's as if the circulation has been cut off to those places, as if the feeling has been sucked right out, as if the shooting pain across his neck is so intense that it's taken up all his nerve endings in a zero-sum game.

He's dying, he realizes. He's already dead, for all that struggling is worth. The blood pools under him, sticks his clothing to his back, like wetting the bed, warm coming out and cooling in the air. He keeps forgetting this part, that blood is hot when it comes out. That it leaves coldness in its wake.

And dying isn't so bad, he tells himself. Dying is something he's getting used to, like anything else. He can learn to put up with anything that used to shock him - with hunger, with betrayal. With bleeding out. The part of him that thought it would never happen to him is long gone, framed in some snapshot of the past along with the smile that made dimples and that the dreams of being an astronaut someday.

It doesn't strike him as a grotesque death, but only because there's no light for him to see himself, only because there's a ringing in his ears that blocks out the way his breathing gets labored. There's a strange whistle to each gasp, a sound like a door hinge creaking to open between this world and the next, a sticky, jammed door that needs to be pushed open a bit at a time.

He has no last thoughts, no realization for the bite on his neck, no concern for the corpse struggling with the bear traps next to him. He coughs quietly, unable to actually push that last breath out into a death rattle, and a small teardrop of saliva drips from the corner of his mouth into the pool of blood on the ground.

Edited 2013-08-20 06:29 (UTC)

He can’t see wherever Howard’s crawled off to. The guy’s breath echoes off the cave walls, shaky and wet. There’s just this sense of a body lying there filling up space a few feet away (maybe) and that metallic tang of blood cooling gives R a general sense of where he is. Was? Maybe not “is”: R inhales, pressing his tongue’s stump against the roof of his mouth out of old habit. Life still fills the tunnel, but it’s fading fast. Already growing stale, a little less electric, the lavender wilting. He must’ve hit an artery. M would’ve slapped him on the back for zombie-efficiency if he was here.

R loses track of time in that cave. Eventually Howard stops breathing. The hunger sighs in disappointment. R rattles the bear-trap sunk deep into his chest, metal clanking against stone. His thoughts blur together. Can’t remember Howard’s face. His name smears at the edges

It’s lonely in here.

Eventually he hears footsteps – light, with a tread he recognizes at the same time he gets that one-of-kind scent. Julie. She must’ve followed him in here. R starts to groan “I’m over here”, trips up on his amputated tongue; all that comes out is a gurgle, starting from his chest and oozing up his throat. He struggles up, still pinned to the floor, the bear-trap tap-tap-tapping like Morse code. It’s not planned, but it seems to work because he perks up when Julie changes directions and starts heading for him, her steps sure but careful. Wondering what that sound is. Probably also wondering if he’s going to pop out of the shadows and take a chunk out her leg.

R wishes she’d turn around.

Maybe he should stop moving around so much. It’s tipping Julie off that he’s in here, only it’s too late. She sounds closer now and it’s too late to pretend he’s not in here, he’s a regular corpse lying there, he’s only a part of the scenery. Now it’s him, Howard to trip over, and blood smeared all across the floor.

“Guggh,” R moans unhappily.

Maybe it's stupid for Julie to let him go. Zombie or not, potential cannibal-death or not, he's all she has right now. Literally, pretty much. A bag devoid of food and a bat didn't account for much. Problem is, she needs the space. It's hard to look at him and even worse when he talks. The whole teeth thing freaks her out, unnerving her. Her nerves are already strapped for strength as it is.

After a few cannon explosions, the sun beating down, she doesn't trust him not to fuck himself up with the way he is now. So she follows.

A bad decision in a short lifetime of them. What's one more when you've got a whole barrel?

When she comes across the cave, it's more selfish thinking on her part than the continuing search for her rotting zombie friend. After days and days of the sun beating down on her and now sand rubbing her toes raw, a wet little cave is like a slice of heaven. Seriously, why'd they think shoving her in sandals was a good idea? She flips the back of her poncho over her head, probably the only thing that's kept her from sunburning on every part of her skin, and ducks in.

For someone her size, it's spacious. And wet. Not just with water, but with blood. The acrid, metal smell of blood. Used to practically be her perfume back before the stadium --

The gurgle makes her stop. Familiar? Shit, it's a gurgle. Not exactly tinged with personality. Here she is following it, because over the gurgle is a metallic clang. The bat slips through fingers suddenly slick with sweat. It's already bent to hell because of the mutant rabbit things, but it's better than nothing. Except a gun.

Still never found a gun anywhere. That'd be too easy, right?

Julie feels his name on her tongue but doesn't let it roll out like a red carpet. It could be anyone. How many tributes are left, anyway? Ten? Twenty? Somehow it's easier to follow the smell of blood rather than the sound.

And there you have it. The exact reason why she shouldn't follow anything anymore. She takes in the blood, the two corpses. She's drained. Once she'd seen R again, that was it. No more shock or disgust or emotion left in her. Pretty sure she's broken, and it feels pretty good.

She's called God's name so many times she's gonna be stuck in her own little corner of hell, but the word still slips out. Julie puts every bit of effort she has into not looking at the second corpse's face. She doesn't want to know. That's her downfall, she knows. It seems worth it to not care this time.

When she kneels beside the zombie, it's only a second before her hands are slicked up with tar-like dead blood. "This is the last time, R. I swear to god." What a stupid thing to say, she thinks. Then she grips the bear trap,, trying to remember. Grigio had one before. Used them for the Dead, of course. Didn't kill them, but slowed them down. Made them louder. He'd showed her how to use one, how to release if they caught a different animal, but somehow she can't drag up that memory.

Not like it matters much.

And...she's already here. It's too late to play dead (like actually dead, not his brand of Dead). R's head rises up from where he'd been resting his chin, put out, against the cool cave floor. Thank God she didn't trip on Howard on her way in here. How far did Howard crawl off to? Will he come back a zombie, too, like Javert and Shion?

He should warn her. R's chin comes up off the floor as he hears Julie dropping down on her knees next to him, inhaling and taking in her individual life-scent out of reflex. It's sweeter than Howard's is - was - cutting even through the stench of fear and blood filling the cave in red clouds he doesn't need functioning eyes to see. It's so strong it feels like it's coating him in a film from the inside, buzzing and rattling impatiently. R makes a pitiful gurgling in the back of his throat as Julie scolds him. You weren't supposed to follow me to a kill-site! he wants to groan.

"Igh..." It's occurring to him he needed his tongue after all. Maybe he wasn't supposed to bite it off when he hit that trap. "Jgg....jggh...."

Julie, go away! Go home! Be safe! doesn't make it out the door. R stares helplessly toward where he thinks Julie is. She fills up space in a different way than anyone else he knows. He'd love her to be closer, holding his hand, and at the same time he wants to summon up the words to tell Julie to get out of here before Howard revived. When he feels her hands jiggling the bear-trap stuck in his chest, R resumes his struggling all over again, flopping like a fish and tearing the trap away from her hands with a warning grunt. Julie, look, that's not coming out. Leave it. Come back for him later. He can out-wait Howard and the little guy would probably wander away in a few days. R would still be here.

He tries talking again, only gets out a thick wet sound, and gives up again. How long do they have? A few minutes? Hours? Not everyone takes the same length of time to turn, so who knows? R jangles the bear-trap again, the metal skittering against the stone and echoing off the walls.

The person who revives is not Howard Bassem. There's a soul clawing, struggling up to the surface like a butterfly from a chrysalis, sodden, slimy, malformed and cramped, and it's hauling and twisting its way up to the surface of a brain that's starting to light up again after the outage, but it's not Howard. It's some infant being without a name, without words, a lump of clay with pieces of detritus from some other life lodged into its sticky core, mats of hair and dead leaves and smears of dirt.

He's staring at a wall when he wakes up. It takes a little while for him to realize that. His brain's finding its sea legs, and it's dark in here, and he has no depth perception. It takes a few minutes for him to realize it's because there's blood covering one of his eyes, slithering down from his neck in slow, jelly-ish rivulets now that it's coagulating. It gets stuck in his lashes and crusts like sleep; a heavy glob drags at his eyelid. It takes another minute still for him to lift a hand and try to rub it away, smearing his body's war paint around on the inside corner of his nose.

He can't recall how it is that he ended up in this violent pool. His hand explores a divot in the side of his neck, a crater with a strange Stonehenge of punctures at the rim. It's still bleeding, even though his heart isn't pumping anymore; his body is like a smashed fruit leaking and deflating onto the earth.

The curiosity is an afterthought, though, as soon as the first emotion hits: hunger. The riveting, pungent stink of Life is filling this tunnel, and it's the equivalent of every hamburger, Oreo cookie milkshake, fresh-baked bread, T-bone steak and mom's mac and cheese being waved in front of someone who's spent their week subsisting on chick peas and Saltines. It's heaven just to smell, and for a moment all he does is pull unnecessary air into his lungs to heave in the taste on his tongue. To smell it alone is a privilege. To wrap his teeth and lips around it would be...

He rolls over and reaches an arm forward as fast as he can, grabbing at a pale foot in a sandal.

Edited 2013-09-02 05:46 (UTC)

All Julie sees is a lot of moaning and groaning. Knowing R, it's some stupid warning to head off, that he's fine, who needs a rib cage, anyway? She pulls at a spring experimentally, carefully. If she loses a finger trying to help him, she's gonna catch hell. From him, from a Sponsor. Someone.

She comes close when she gets some leverage and R flops the wrong way, the inch she got snapping shut.

"Would you stop?" she snaps with irritation, dropping her next attempt to run a shaking hand through her hair. It's tangled to hell and dirty enough it doesn't seem blonde anymore. How the fuck did she get here? She's starting to think it's a hell of a lot easier just to die that first week. Or go nuts, Rambo-style, kill everyone she meets and take every piece of supply they had. Because she bets whoever wins this Arena wasn't kneeling in a goddamn cave trying to pry a bear trap off of someone's torso. Someone who's recently eaten another person, blood all bearded around their mouth, a corpse a few feet off. "You keep this up, I'll just drag you out with this thing still here."

That'd sure catch attention. Like a fish caught on a hook. Her words echo, cutting off just in time to hear the shift.

It sets her every instinct on guard even if her body's been running on fumes so long it can't do much about it. Julie turns to catch the hand -- sliding out of reach as the nails catch sand and dirt. Her back hits R's leg as she mutters a string of profanities to herself. Her brain's so fucked she can't even be afraid. She's pissed. R has one goddamn job as a zombie with a conscience and he can't even manage to kill someone outright.

-- The bat. Where the hell did she put the bat. Julie slams her hands on the dirt as far as she can reach, grasping blindly. The familiar Dead sputters and squelches make her wince; home all over again. You don't go in the dark. Caverns, basements, wine cellars. Never go in the dark.

He's so focused on Julie that he doesn't register Howard waking up Dead. R's got his teeth bared at Julie's voice, his mouth froze in a panicked snarl like he wants to gurgle at her to stop it for a change. Stop hanging around a corpse, stop trying to see the person stuck behind these flat gray eyes. Put herself first.

And because she's Julie, because she's everything he thinks he must've loved, she doesn't. She stays.

Julie's still at his side, barking at him to hold still as he rattles the bear-trap away, when she suddenly stops trying to free him. The trap stops tugging at his chest. R's head turns toward the scrabbling sound, a curious grunt working itself around his tongue's stump. Something backs into him - Julie, warm - and she trades scolding for cursing, dropping a string of them so impressive some of the soldiers he ate would've been impressed. The wet sound of something moving in the dark finally drags R to the logical conclusion: not alone. The third person. Former person. Howard. He's revived. He's back but not really.

Jesus, why didn't he let Julie free him?

R struggles with a new second wind, trying to wheel around while that damn trap's teeth are stuck in his chest. His hand slaps out against something thin and bony and still slimy with cold blood. Howard, stop! Leave Julie alone! Not for eating! R screams in his head. What comes out of his mouth is an urgent choking sound, the remnants of his tongue flopping uselessly around his mouth. His fingers tighten around Howard's ankle, slip against the blood and - and Jesus, Jesus he's losing him!

He tries to get a better hold on that skinny ankle but it's too late. His reflexes are too shot by death. The new corpse's already slithering away after Julie as R's hand claws at air.

Edited 2013-09-03 06:23 (UTC)

[OOC: Sorry I've been so slow lately. Law school is eating me alive.]

She topples onto R - onto the other zombie, whom Howard knows by some base instinct deep in that nub of a functioning brain stem to be an ally. Zombies work better in groups, better as a sort of fungus clinging to the Living as they try to crawl away. They really aren't built to be attack dogs, or even piranhas. They're the mold of the afterlife, come to infect the Living with toxic spores. And then she's off, moving towards the entrance of the cave.

And yet the other zombie's hand is suddenly on his ankle, and Howard wrests it away with a strange sort of jerk, pushing post-mortem impulses through muscles already going stiff with death. The other corpse is bigger than him, twice his size, maybe - Howard gets the feeling just from moving around, from pulling his slick, bloody leg free that he wasn't exactly a heavyweight even before he got all his bodily fluids drained.

He less lunges at Julie and more falls onto her legs as she escapes. He grabs onto the first thing he can get a hold of, her knee, and she struggles enough that she drags him a few feet over rock and dirt made greasy with blood. The dust is mixing with the fluid like cake batter, making a squelch under her sandal.

He tries to say something to make it better. An apology, maybe. An explanation. Hey, zombie's gotta eat, no hard feelings. He wants her to know it isn't personal and he'll make it as fast as he can. Maybe he'll go for her neck, maybe chomp down on that one artery his medical...something, book? told him is in the leg, would bleed someone out in minutes. But all that comes out is a froth of black liquid, made grey and foamy in the corners of his mouth, bile going sour and mixing with the blood that drained as much down his throat as out of it.

Somewhere in the dark, there's the snap of another beartrap. Howard can't tell if it caught Julie, or the other zombie, or himself.

Sometimes Julie wishes she was new to this. That should could feel that sick, growing shock in her when she turns to see a former ally dragging along by her ankle, his eyes Dead-grey, his throat covered in blood. She wishes she was the kind of person who could scramble to cry out his name and really believe that maybe he'll recognize her, maybe if she says, "Howard, it's Julie, remember? I'm sorry, I'm sorry about the knife," maybe if she repeats it over and over he'll wake up and recognize her.

But she knows better. She knows what it's like to be looked at literally as a piece of meat. She knows that when they Turn, there's nothing left. (There's not supposed to be anything left.)

R aside, she knows better. Knows that there aren't zombies like him.

Her heartbeat's on her tongue, practically choking her with the thrumming. Another way the body betrays her -- because it's like a goddamn dinner bell. She hits the ground with his weight throwing her off balance, flipping on the ground and scrambling for anything. Rock, her bat. Why the hell did she leave her dagger in the bag? It's by R. There's no way she'll make it before he snaps his jaws around her kneecap.

She'll feel horror later. Right now it's all flashbacks to every time a zombie's charged her with their mouth gaping open and that dead blood spilling out. She kicks him in the face, but the sandal is flimsy and thin, hardly any energy behind it.

She's an exhausted gazelle and he's new with fresh hunger. It's tempting to give in, but instinct won't let her. The need to live, arguably as strong as their need to feed, keeps her going. If she could just get to the light, have him distracted by the open sky --

There's no chance. Julie gasps in surprise at the first loud metallic snap, clamping onto Howard's leg -- traps, how many? Why didn't I look? -- and then she screams as her hand lands on a second one, the giant jaws closing around her arm.

The pain blinds her. She loses everything except the animal need to pull it off, blood squeezing out so thickly she can't even get a hold on the metal. There's no way to take it off. If she ever remembered, she can't now.]

Edited 2013-09-12 02:16 (UTC)

Howard didn't know it was possible to stoke the hunger to even greater heights, but the spray of blood from Julie's arm manages to drive it from highly desired to absolutely vital. He lunges for her again, oblivious to the tug of the bear trap on his leg.

The teeth of the trap slough off strips of Howard's calf, skin and muscle peeling back like earth under the spikes of a hoe, flesh peeling and piling under the metal tips like wet pencil shavings. He horks up more of the dead blood as his body adjusts to death, as reanimation rushing back to his brain makes him dizzy and nauseated, as his stomach makes room for the new flesh by expelling the useless fluid filling it. It has the consistency of milk that's been left to congeal, the color of gasoline.

He would have been as kind as possible before, when he had any semblance of thought, but the hunger is a blow that smashes his fragile thoughts to pieces. Nothing else matters but getting that warm body in his mouth. Julie's heartbeat fills the cave, echoing off the walls in a clamor that sounds to Howard's ears like cheers of triumph. Yes. Yes. Yes yes yes yesyesyesyes...

Once upon a time, back in the FAYZ, Howard thought it would be funny to skim Dante's Inferno. He wasn't much of a reader, but with electricity a distant memory and bodies made lethargic by starvation and dehydration, slowly picking through pages before using them for firewood was enough entertainment as any. He thought it fitting. They were in Hell, after all, and the examples of windswept sinners and gold-lined lead cloaks seemed rosy compared to the horrors outside his doorsteps.

There's a flash of a memory, a page ripped out and crumpled and thrown into the fire, illustrated with an image of the Cannibal Count devouring his betrayer's brain. It blows by without context or meaning as Howard clamps his teeth down on the back of Julie's head, where her skull meets the nape of her neck, as his jaw puts pressure down enough to crack bone and grind nerves to putty.

Dying once hasn't made it easier. In the seconds she spends with tears leaking out of her eyes, the pain as hot and wild as teeth of fire crawling up her arm, she keeps remembering all the things death is supposed to do to her. She doesn't get a flash of her life -- there's not much there, just a bunch of hazy nights surrounded by clouds of smoke from desperate roaches and clearer days with bullets and corpses -- but a memory. Just a single remembered image of the car, and Dad driving, his eyes straight forward as Mom read a book she'd salvaged and Julie stared out the window at a lumbering human form. She could tell by the head held high that it was Living, a Real Live Person, until the form collapsed to the ground and didn't get back up.

She starts to think that dying alone is peaceful. She would've preferred it.

Instead she just stares brokenly as the ashen, bloodied face of Howard crawled to her, on top of her, and by the time she feels nails digging into her back she drops her head down into the dirt and just waits for it. Thinking, begging that he goes for the brain. She won't come back. She doesn't want to, she can't. She flat out fucking refuses.

Teeth bite and blood flows, and then there's just black, the dirt tossed up into her face and her open, gaping mouth.

He twists and struggles, clawing in the dark for Julie (push her away) or Howard, dead as a doornail and still coming because he's fresh and starving.

R gets neither.

Instead he can hear the last minute or so happen in real time, every gory second ticking by because it's one of those times his brain doesn't shut off for a change no matter how much he screams in his head. Hands scrabbling in the dark. Howard's pathetic grunts. Julie's harsh breathing; her shriek cuts through the air and jerks R from the ground toward her as his own groan catches in his throat. For a second he thinks he might actually get free of the bear trap as it clatters against stone. He's got more experience being a zombie than Howard, he tells himself. He's bigger. Julie's a smart girl, she's a survivor, they'll find a way out of this.

Fresh blood fills the cave. Julie's. Instead of making his corpse vibrate in anticipation, he feels it shrivel in on itself. No!

"Uggghhhhh!" R chokes out something, anything, around his amputated tongue.

She's crying. There's a sob, wet as blood, and even if he can't see her, he can imagine it in his head.

Howard gasps again, that little desperate victory gasp R knows only too well what it sounds like because he's had it come out his mouth, too, and Howard goes in for the kill. R's still groaning away for all he's worth, clawing at the cave floor, when he hears it. The snap of bone, a strangled sound from Julie. Even if he could come to her rescue, it's too late. She's gone.

R sits there, stunned. He can hear Howard grunting and feeding less than a foot away and Julie's gone silent, so silent it aches in places he didn't think he could feel anything anymore. It takes him a long moment to pinpoint what that other sound is, creaky and pathetic; he's moaning too, his chin resting on the floor, all of him sprawled with the fight leaking out along with his words.

There's nothing to say. All he can do is listen to Howard going to town on the girl he loved.

Edited 2013-09-18 20:06 (UTC)

For a moment, he chews at the back of her neck, trying to break through the base of her skull until he dimly feels teeth cracking up to the pulp. He'll need to find a better way to get at her brain, so he rolls her over and begins with her face. Flashes of images from a life long before pop up in conjunction with the textures - eyeballs like wet grapes, nose like the skinny end of a drumstick. He moves to her throat and shakes his head as he sinks his teeth in, lazily worrying at her.

It's never enough. Howard doesn't stop even after the greasy sack he calls a stomach ruptures, and the half-chewed remains of Julie and acid gone flat spill into the flesh of his abdomen, giving him a strange, lumpy pot-belly. A series of oversized hernias in the muscles around his pelvis. He swallows fingers that tear up his esophagus as they go down, rip little furrows into the lining of his throat. With no need to really breathe, he hardly notices as strips of skin and flecks of blood decorate the inside of his lungs. He doesn't notice when he gets mouthfuls of her clothes with each bite.

Nothing matters. Nothing matters but the food moving through his body and settling in his guts like earth through a worm. For hours and hours he just keeps at it, ignoring the changing light outside the cave, ignoring the possibility of someone stumbling on them, ignoring the groaning zombie behind him. When it no longer becomes worthwhile to continue stripping her bones, he finally picks up her head and slams it into the ground a few times until he hears a crack, and then pries open the fissure with his fingers.

He stuffs her brains into his mouth with the palms of his hands, smearing and licking and gulping. His own memories were flashes, growing dimmer the further into death he falls. Hers are a full IMAX experience with 3D glasses.

Someone braids her hair, says that keeps it out of her face when it fires a gun. He can feel the grease, the way dry shampoo just doesn't leave her feeling clean but how she's used to it by now. He can feel the tug at her scalp from the weight of the blonde plait. Can feel the recoil of the gun against her shoulder, the rush of adrenalin, the disappointment at missing her glass-bottle target.

Her best friend, Nora, tries out her first set of stitches on Julie's cut ankle. He can see the slashed skin, can feel muscles in his face, her face, wincing when the needle goes in. He can see little jewels of blood drop to the ground. Can feel uncertainty that Nora knows what she's doing, and a little rush of pride.

Can feel Perry's lips on his, hers, can feel that this time it's mechanical, that this time Perry doesn't even bother to move his hand from her shoulder, that this time it lays there like a dead salmon on the shore, can feel that ache knowing he's somewhere in his head that she can't reach, that frustration building like a furnace.

Eventually, the brains are gone.

Words flash through his mind like snowflakes under a streetlamp, there and then lost to the darkness. Only one thought chains together: Eat now because you will be starving later. It blares like a siren in his head. It repeats, layering over itself into sick harmonies, eclipsing anything else.

And so he staggers, bloated and caked in blood and gore, over to R. And he feeds again.

Unlike the rest of him, R's hearing hasn't degraded much. At less than five feet away and echoing off cave walls, R can hear just fine.

He wishes he couldn't.

R registers the click of teeth in the dark, the squish of flesh mixed in with hungry grunts he knows only too well because he's heard it from too many mouths to count. M's. The eyeless girl he thought he liked one winter, up until she got herself shot. His own. Now it's Howard's ruined vocal cords, R vaguely wondering if it bubbles out the hole he ripped in the side of his neck. How long it'll take before he gets to - to...

He goes blank again, drifting off in his head where it's safe and for once he's glad sometimes he comes and goes. With Julie so silent, he doesn't want to hear the crunch of her bone, wondering if she'll come back. If any of them will.

It's hours later before Howard finishes. It shouldn't surprise R that eventually he comes crawling to him - he's trapped, technically he's still moving even without that pulse, and Howard's so new he doesn't know better. He chews just to chew. He's not smart about it like the other corpses back home. Maybe it'll hurt when Howard bites into him. In a way, R waits for it to hurt. After listening to Julie reduced to bloody shreds, his eyes burning and itching while he sits there unable to do anything for her, it seems like it should. It doesn't.

R groans once, shifting as Howard sinks his first bite into his outstretched arm, and that's it. He doesn't struggle. He's aware of the biting sensation, sure, but it doesn't hurt. It takes Howard longer to rip his own mummified flesh off: R's so desiccated by the heat he doesn't even bleed tar anymore. He closes his eyes as his body twitches with each bite, jerking a little to the side and gently rattling the bear-trap, and the worst part is how long it takes even for a guy who can't read a clock anymore. R feels dry air wheezing out of his mouth as Howard finally decides to go for his brain, almost relieved because it's over. A thought suddenly forces itself out of the daze:

What happens when a zombie eats another one's brains? Will Howard get -

Crack.

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Everybody Dies [Closed]

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gore all up ins

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