A fan fic
This is a fan fic
There is a town filled with cured
There is a landlord and four new tennets.
There is conflict
There is people
It starts at his apartment
The Landlord part one
The building yawns over the road. Blackened asphalt and blackened blood in the shadow of it. Five stories tall and a block wide, him at the top floor. Nervous pokes of light stutter through the man’s window, warped into ugliness on his face. He had fallen asleep with the shotgun pointed to the door in stiffened hands. When he wakes he would open his eyes slowly. He waits for the door to open. Nothing opens. Are you still scared? Are you? His breath comes in shudders and shakes. Bad habits are hard to outlive.
He moves and when he does stale crumbs and dead skin fall off him. Flakes of sound rising from the street, community officers and volunteers shuffling into action. If he closed his eyes he could imagine the walking dead paling into the morning. Shambling cripples drowned in shattered flesh and broken bone. He remembered watching an infected cross the street with its handlers and when it did small trails of blood and shit and urine could be seen behind it. Pus ran down pocked out pits in the body it occupied. Soulless and heartless it slumped across the street. Fluids and bare bone exposed in the American sunlight. Not me he thought. Not me. Never me.
They came to him and his abused building two weeks ago. A scratchy group of people clothed in green and wearing tired faces. They had kind eyes but they were dragged into bags. Breaths had fogged out from their face masks. Soon to follow were their voices. They told him they had to house four of the cured and as landlord of the current residence he had the right to know this. They said they were sorry but these were tough times. Always tough times.
He had said pardon. He remembered his voice without inflection and without interest. But when he said pardon he slowly lifted the barrel of his shotgun up. There was a stifled silence in the grey coldness. They had guns but they were pistols and left in holsters. One of them said please then reached into a bag. Shotgun shells, food stamps and notes were placed in his hand. Please. More stillness and silent pleading. Please. He had said okay and stuffed his payment in pockets. They had said in two weeks the cured would be here.
So he stared out at the street and watched late morning late spill outwards. Dried out blood faded on the road in streaks of crimson. The smell of disinfectant stacked on to the morning. Three shapes moving somewhere in the horizon. Blotchy darkness torn across their face’s scars, glints reflected in eyes sunken. Dead. They carried a single box between them. A hunter, a smoker a charger and a jockey. The jockey curled around the charger’s shoulders.
He hears their voices and it’s the voice of demons. His pen moving furiously on paper. He tacks paper to the key and would throw them down. It flew then there was a clunk. The four cured languished in the outside. Morning slowly yellowing into an early day. After three minutes they opened the front door and he knew this because he counted under his breath, his whole body shaking. He sat in his chair and he pointed the shotgun to the door while the four cured thundered downstairs. Anonymous thuds and tremors beaten out of the walls and floors. Dust dejectedly floating in the coarse air. He said “cured” quietly for himself. He couldn’t get the word cured out of his head. The more it’s said, the more it sounds like something else. Like meat that’s dead or rotting.
**************************
A man wearing a confused green sweater with jumbles and creases settled on it. His legs shrouded in blue denim and tapered out into brown boots above his ankles. He had cold stew in a jar. One hand with a spoonful of it and the other holding the shotgun. Eyes pinned to the door and unmoved.
It has been a week and he had enough food for two months. He had fixed the gas, water and electricity in this flat. The wire and pipes in the apartment poked out like veins. He could live for a month like this, sleeping eating and starring at the door. If he wasn’t starring at the door he was on all fours with ears held to the ground. The sounds of the monsters underneath him, the sound of them rising out and bleeding from the floorboards. The sound diminished into tinny clumps of low and high voices. Even if he felt like an animal lying there on the ground he still stayed there. Ready for the monsters.
The cold stew was finished. He would throw the can in a bag and the door engulfed his vision. Reaching out and smothering this room he could only bare to live in. His hands white knuckled around the shotgun he cradled. Gnarled skin on a hand and all its crevices and scars fused to the barrel and trigger of the gun. Sweat slicked out on his face and groin. Are you scared? Are you?
Yes I’m scared.
I’m scared of them
************************
Three weeks had passed since they came. He had lived longer in places not meant for him. Holes and pits strangled in concrete. Nothing but a single door and a blanket to separate the outside. He remembered gunning down the infected and forming a pile of bodies to blockade himself in. Flashes of smoke, buckshot shrieking out of the barrel. Blood stained on quaking flesh and ammunition to be loaded. He remembered staring at one shell and holding the barrel of the shotgun to his head. The stench of redness and death.
His morning was breakfast then staring at the door. His afternoon was lunch and staring at the door. His evening was dinner and staring at the door.
At eleven o clock at night he would hear a cacophony of sound climbing from the staircase. He clawed on a face mask then battered riot gear. The armour covered in dents and worn down. Hellish noises darkening into grunts and screams two floors below him, filtered out through the stair case he walked on. One of the voices would be dried and crumpled into hoarseness or crackled gasping. The other voice shrieking and high pitched punctuated with silence and burdened panting.
Shit. Shit. He would swear with every step he took down the stairs. Darker and darker, louder and louder. A shard of light from the crack of a door. Screams and moans from the room. He flicks the safety of his shotgun and stalks into the light. If he loses faith in the safety of light he’d keep his faith in the shotgun.
He would open the door. The hunter strays above the smoker paralysed, it’s hands on the smoker’s chest. It’s lips on the corner of the smoker’s mouth. Blood burnt into blushes on their faces. Heavy breathes collapsing and falling from their lungs. Their clothes half undone or piled around the room with no care. A layer of sweat on the both of them, their faces’ less than a finger width between them. Frustration, anger, grief, confusion, hope. Love and all its friend’s painted on their corrupted flesh. The smell of lust.
He would circle into the room, his steps silently placed into the shitty carpet on the second floor. Hunter moves suddenly and the man would shoot the wall. Wailing screaming teeth and clawed hands. The hunter pounces. He brings the butt of the shotgun upwards and into its chest. He trains the shotgun on the smoker. Wisps of sulphur and smoke would raise themselves out of the barrel.
“Are you doing what I think you’re doing?”
“Get that gun off smoker!”
The hunter’s words jumbled and scrambled in a rage. It comes from the back of her throat all growls and snarls rather than words. Her teeth are bared and the man’s chest is thumping. You can’t let her see that you’re scared. You can’t.
“You’re animals. Where do you think you’re living? You can’t just fuck each other like the world has ended. Surprisingly I don’t want to hear that. Not one bit”
“Stop pointing the gun on her!”
“So what? So you can pounce on me and I can shoot you? Do you want to die in this room? I’ll do it, Christ, I’ll do it”
He would walk three steps left from the door. He sits in the only chair in the room and keeps the gun trained on the smoker. The smoker coils blankets around itself. Blushing and silent. Its eyes lost in anger. He sighs. He fishes into his pocket and throws down a food stamp to the floor.
“What are you doing?”
“I’m throwing a meal on the floor. You take that to the administration office and get a free meal, or a free packaged meal. Maybe something tinned”
“Why?”
“Because you might be hungry dumbass”
“Fuck you man”
“Fuck you”
He stares at them astounded that he’s talking to a goddamn animal. His eyes furrowed into a frown when he sees the scars all over them. A diseased sheathe of cancerous flesh on the smoker. A bandage around the Hunter’s sightless eyes. If you peeled away those bandages there would be pits of crimson exposed. She can’t see. She’s half blind. Oh.
“Alright here’s what I did. I threw a food stamp on the floor. Both of you are going to take it and get a free meal”
“Do you pity us?”
“No I hate you. I hate you damned animals”
“So why the stamp?”
“Peace offering”
“So just put the gun away as well, okay?”
“Do I look like an idiot?”
Smoker has reached for an artificial voice box. All dull plastic and metal in her hand. Her voice metallic.
“Why do you want a peace offering with me and hunter?”
“Christ. Your voice”
“What about it?”
“It’s funny”
“What’s your problem?”
“I need peace with you because look at that wall I just shot”
The wall scattered with hateful holes of buckshot. Caved in and smoking in the more damaged parts.
“I need to fix that”
“Smoker, who is this guy?”
Inexplicably the man springs up and moves himself to a corner of the room. The gun trained on the smoker then the door to the right of him. After thirty seconds a charger enters the room surprisingly silently. The charger is twitching. A great conflict is being thought in this giant’s body. She had to fight hard not to charge up the stairs.
“I heard a gunshot. What’s happening?”
“Me and smoker were… then this guy came and err he shot the wall to stop us from… Charger who is this guy anyway?”
“Is anyone hurt?”
“No. Charger who is this?”
“I’m not sure but I have a good guess. You’re the landlord aren’t you?”
The man shuffles listless eyes to the demon in the room. His face betrays nothing. Artificial light hazed harshly on his skin. A tight lipped scowl drawn across his face.
“Yes. I’m the landlord”
“I tried knocking on the door on the first day. I tried knocking every day for three days but figured you weren’t in”
“That note I gave you with the key told you not to knock on the room at the fifth floor”
“I just wanted to say thank you, and to iron out any rules or living arrangements”
He points to the wall all scared with holes. His attention focused on the charger.
“I need to fix my own mess. So you animals are going to clear out at of this room at twelve tomorrow. Do you understand this?”
“Yes. I’ll make sure everyone will give you your space tomorrow”
The charger struck him as a creature without a sense of humour.
“If I hear those animals fucking again I’m going to be angry. The whole reason this happened is because of those two”
“You won’t hear them”
“And you. You’re going to get everyone to write down everyone’s schedules. You slide the paper with everyone’s schedules underneath my door”
“Why?”
“Because I’ve spent three weeks pent up in my own fucking home waiting for you animals to kill me. When I see you’re schedules I can see you abominations as little as possible”
He shoulders past the charger nearly running. He has to get out of this damn room.
“Remember I’ll be here tomorrow to fix this goddamn wall!” He spat the words out and they were lost in the tumble of cheap wallpaper and plywood doors. He sprints up to his room and locks the door behind him. He pushes a cabinet over the door. The cabinet can’t stop the fear charging into the room. He tears at his hair then picks up the shotgun. His face torn up and crumpled, his eyes pinched and glaring. Starring at the door and counting the storm in his chest. His heart all splayed and exhausted. His pulse felt and not heard. Stale light from a single light bulb. An hour of this.
He crossed the room and laid down semi dead on his mattress. Calm down and count the imaginary numbers. Calm down. His restless mind drifts. His world of cheap wallpaper and damp mattress turns hushed.
He thought of the hunter and the smoker. He thought of the hunter’s lips kissing the corner of the smoker’s mouth. Intimacy and spirit dancing in the small space between them. He thought he could see a fire or light between them.
Maybe they were more human than him in some ways.
******************************
He woke in the night. More a ritual then a habit. Blackness inside and blackness outside. He rises to his window and turns on no lights. He opens the window and his arms hang to touch small bites of wind. He had tied a wire around his belt and to the bedpost, an old habit to stop smokers. Wasted grey hung in his hair like iron. His eyes would flutter and itch as the cold came for him. He would see American flags flutter underneath dying streetlights. He would still see some of the cured dwindling out of the dead lamplight, identical to the survivors shrouded in night. In a way all things were the same at night.
But it wasn’t.
It wasn’t.
*******************************
Eleven o clock and there was nothing to be done. He had tins of plaster, paint and dry wall set to the side of the door. He had left the cabinet across the door and would eat tinned peaches next to the window. He stared out at a world shrouded out into a dry early spring. Winter still clawed onto edges, frost still occupying cold forgotten places.
A nervous crowd of cured trudged along the sidewalk. He watched as they made their way across the street raw flesh and bone glistening on them. They wore real clothes of good quality, no more rags or dirty clothes binding them. They all had backpacks probably pilfering goods from the infected hotspots. Bandages and stitches crisscrossing and tracing through their bodies. They rubbed ointments and lotions on each other than proceeded to queue at the local administration office across the street. Towering and moaning and leaking fluids from cuts or scars. Enforcement officers watched them wearily. The man imagined throwing a molotov at the procession. Fire ploughing through their diseased flesh, then the silence and safety afterwards. He spent an hour daydreaming this.
He would finish the peaches and take up his toolkit and all the tins and cans needed. He placed them in a backpack to keep his hands ready. He slotted on his old riot armour and strapped it on. A hardened second skin, more comfort mentally then physically. He hefted the bag then took his shotgun. He loaded it to full capacity and left the safety on. He crossed the gulf between him and the stairs. He lifted the cabinet from across the door. He descended the stairs slowly. Shapes of hunters and spitters haunting the edges of his vision. He tells himself it’s safe, but is still graced by the half dreamt horrors of all things lived through.
He worked quickly on the wall he shot at. He felt for fragments he could pull out. The rest he covered in dry wall and plaster. He waited for an hour while it dried, watching the hallways for any movement. He never sang or hummed and he was always looking over his back. Always unsafe. He painted over the plaster and dry wall, silently praying for no ambushes. Light protrudes from the window like a spectre of things forgotten.
“Are you the landlord?”
He slowly rises and turns. The barrel of shotgun gapes outwards at the insignificant figure. She stands hunched over the open door. Twitching and shuddering, her whole body rocking and trembling. Dirty blonde hair falling into filthy strands on her face. He eyes pale blue, the face of her smoothed into white skin glowing frail and beautiful in the light. Finally her jaws brutalised into a mangled mishmash of flesh teeth and bone. Pseudo lips stretched into the colour of crimson. While she stares at him she’s mouthing silent words and mumbling.
Insane.
“Yes I’m the landlord”
“My name is Jockey”
“So?”
“Trying to be friendly”
“Stop muttering your words. Slowdown”
“I’m trying to be friendly”
“Well don’t. Who told you about me?”
“Charger”
“Well she also told you I didn’t want to be talked to didn’t she? Didn’t she? Speak!”
“Yes. I’m sorry, yes”
“I’m going you damn animal”
“Okay. Sorry. I’m sorry”
“No you’re not”
He would pedal up the stairs, muscles pumping up and down. He left her muttering and whispering to herself, almost like the demented laughing of jockeys. Or crying. He sprinted fast enough to leave his conscience and guilt at the bottom of the stairs with the jockey. But he made the choice to sit on the steps of the fourth floor. He could hear broken gulping wailing. The sound of it ragged and rising. With it his guilt catches up to the fourth floor and settles into him. Guilt underneath his skin and in his bones.
He can’t think with the screeching coming below him. Screaming and crying coming from the tiny bag of bent limbs and twisted spine. Tortured sobbing. Then hideous laughing then crying again. You’re crazy jockey. You’re goddamn crazy. Slowly descending the steps and when he’s in the presence of her she doesn’t stop and doesn’t look up. The man tense with the shotgun, the jockey sniffing and laughing and crying.
Blustered words are tossed from her voice. They flutter and settle around the empty house. Her cacophony echoes in the tiny walls of his mind. He tries hard to master the act of apathy but can’t seem to; he can only stand next to the creature staggering under the weight of unknown feelings. The pain is a visible thing and the creature wears it across its shuddering shoulders like wet clothes.
His knees bend as his back leans on the wall. He sits there silent and the creature looks up at him. But it’s a she isn’t it? She had soft curves on her face, cheekbones, large eyes. He was aware he could be staring at something beautiful. But its only a lie. The jaw of her stands out in sickening rawness. Her limbs deranged and ravaged.
“I can’t think if you keep up that damn racket”
His words are said softly and slowly to the decrepit thing, unforced noises a reflection of his conjured empathy.
“You’ve got to stop. You have to stop”
“I’m sorry. I’m really sorry. Sorry. I’m sorry”
Her words crowded next to her shouting and wailing.
“No. Don’t say sorry. It’s just something that needs to be done. You shouldn’t be sorry”
“Okay”
“Why are you shaking? Christ why are you shaking?
“Am I doing something wrong?”
“No. I just need to know why you’re shaking”
“Well I’ve always been shaking. Ever since I could remember”
“I see”
“Why are you really asking?”
“Because, well I like fixing things”
“Am I broken?”
“I guess. But so is everyone else. Everything is broken”
He wondered what memories lie stacked and forgotten behind her blue eyes. A world vanished in her dreams and nightmares. The two strangers are set apart from each other silent, while the man dresses the creature with thoughts of humanity and empathy. He imagines the jockey as a damaged young woman.
***************************
In the end he stayed for a long while. Misted light slid through the only window in the room. Outside the troubled humming and whining of engines and survivors. Her muscles still stuttering and she was perched atop him because she asked him and he agreed. He had slumped cross legged with the chattering women on his shoulders. His armour and helmet stopped her from breaking his neck and yanking him around the room.
He had spent the most of the time silent. When the silence got to him he talked about how much everything had changed. The small things like hot pockets, coffee jugs and how his daughter always managed to annoy him. He told jockey that his daughter always managed to cheat in the card games they played, that she had a crooked smile she stole from her mother. So the desolate man and the diseased young woman sat together cradling small parts of his past.
She would hum a meaningless song and the sound of it fumbled around the room waking something lost in him.
“Why are you sad jockey?”
“I’m not just sad. I’m angry. I’m happy”
“Why, why are you?
“I don’t know. It’s what I am. I don’t know”
He withdraws to the quiet and she withdraws to her craziness. In ways his silence was different to others. The others listened very closely to what she said in the silence. Afterwards they often gestured with their arms and their voices for her to be stable. But his silence could swallow anything she said and anything she did; he had no care for her stability. As if his soul was cannibalized by the need to survive. Yet he was here with her handing her words and kindness.
“Thank you. Thanks for the seat. Whoever you are”
“John. My names john. Don’t thank me. You shouldn’t”
“What should I do?”
“Get off me”
He untangles jockey off his head. Next he untangles all his mercy and kindness. Leaves them both there on the hewn out carpet and drifts of dust. John takes out a food stamp. He doesn’t throw it down, but places it into her jittering hands. For a moment he can feel talons clipped and blunted around her fingers.
Another thing is exchanged between them. Not pity and hate like the survivors or worry like her friends. An understanding as equals is shared between them.
Both of them alive.
Both of them broken.
He took two lefts and went to the fifth floor. His face clouded. Jockey fingers the food stamp in her hand. But she wouldn’t break it. Doesn’t tear it.
************************************
He finally entered the administration office after three weeks. A group of soldiers dressed in black and gasmasks. Their sterilised gazes follow him. Violence promised in the long stare of their barrels. Survivors and cured bustle through the office and wither when they pass the soldiers.
He throws in a single stamp and a tray is passed over. The smell of cooking and sweat is etched into the air. The cook eyes him over through blooms of steam, a wall of smoke. Her left side is covered in scars and growths, her hair is tied into a bun. He nods but she remains motionless.
A shaky pair of medium sized loaves, a bowl of rice and minced pork with sweet corn. A questionable block of cheese and an untrustworthy tin of spam. Finally a nervous looking cup of coffee in the midst of it all. Why all this food? A lot of food and not a lot of people left to eat it he guessed. The tin of spam had a European Union logo and the coffee cup had Asian looking lines scrawled to the side of it. He figured a lot of countries felt sorry and America was the only victim. Well apparently it wasn’t the only victim. But that’s only a rumour. A bad one.
He finishes his meal in a pokey silence. He looks around and like him everyone else has chosen their own allotment in the meal hall. Tense silence and empty stares separate them.
“John”
The woman sits across him. She’d hold a loaf in one hand and a notepad in the other. She takes a bite then sets them all down on the table. She has no hair and a scar pressed from her cheekbone to the ridge of her eyebrows. An ugly burn is stained on her flesh above the collar bone. She dresses well because she tries hard to draw attention from her shortcomings.
“John, the others are still cleaning that building on 44th street. They need to clear out the asbestos, mould and dust. They’re going to acid clean the bathroom then you can move in. You know. Do your stuff”
“Why”
“Refuges keep coming up from the south. The Russians or the Canadians or the UN want to do another airlift somewhere nearby us. But they’ve been coming in less and dropping in basically no stuff. Keep an attic free to store it. Probably just a room by this rate. Less refugees as well so they’ll probably only need one floor. Do it all up anyway.”
“Can you get me the copper wiring and fuses I need for this job?”
“Pass the job to one of the cured”
“So you can’t get the stuff?”
“No. These are tough times. Always tough times”
“I need some more paint for the fourth floor of the place I’m in”
“Why? Its only you there isn’t? No one likes your place”
“Nah load of your guys came in wanting to do the place up for cured”
“Yeah we got plenty of them. Too many. I thought you hated them?”
“Your guys had money and food stamps. And these are tough times”
“At least they aren’t there yet”
“I’ve got four of them now. In there with me”
“Ouch”
“So, can I have the paint?”
“Yeah take it from storage. Good to see you john. You haven’t been around for a while. I missed you”
“Yeah”
He would put the tin of spam in his pocket then filter through the scatterings of tables and chairs. When he reaches the dinner lady he asks for another cup of coffee. He steps into storage taking a packet of instant noodles and a tin of paint. He leaves storage then ascends a sweep of clean steps. He exits administration into stabs of sunlight and hushed wind.
*************************
For the first time in a month he spent the morning away from his room. He rose early and resumed painting the fourth floor. He had leaned out the fourth floor window and heard planes in a heaven above him. The sky ripped in half by grey blurs that exploded across the sky.
He heard footsteps and he had the shotgun in his hand again. He still had his armour on. Treads of heavy sound growing on the textured wood of steps. The intent of murder stamped in the empty space of the barrel.
Charger would be halfway through the stairs to the fifth floor when he called out. He let out a small hey that made the place seem emptier. She walked in on a floor converged in sheets of canvas and the stench of paint. The shotgun softened into scarred palms. A gun held but not pointed at her.
A satchel’s strap was tangled around chunks of fingers. Her fingers like gravestones.
“The papers”
“Papers of what?”
“Our schedules”
“Good”
He takes the satchel from her. He opens it to see four sheets of paper, he takes it then hands back the satchel. She struggles with the strap while he rolls on paint to the wall. The colour white drips downwards on to canvas.
“Jockey told me about you”
“Pardon?”
“Jockey told me about you”
“I see”
“We used her food stamp and got ourselves a meal”
“Okay”
“She said you were nice”
“Why are telling me this?”
His question is simple. No feeling contained in his words. Better than the edged hostility he used on them before.
“Fine. Knock on our door or leave a message if you need us”
She knows she pushed her luck by talking to him. She’s a behemoth to the small man smouldering in Kevlar. She leaves the room and descends the stairs gradually. He picks up Jockey’s schedule and paints with his other hand. He thrusts his voice down the stairs to charger.
“Jockey doesn’t have a job does she?”
“Not yet”
“Charger, does she know how to paint?”
“I don’t know”
“Okay”
He eyes jockey’s schedule while paint coagulates like blood on the old ruptured walls.
*************************************
She must have been working for a long while because work had taken her eyes and strained them into tired lines. She would light up a cigarette, her rattled breath inhaling. She stands around smoking and itching the corrupted side of her. The stench of grease and sweat hounded her from the kitchens and kept her company. Smoker takes an ashy lungful. She stays suspended in harsh hued out light.
Few pass her and she doesn’t move her heavy lidded eyes to follow them. The administration office abandoned for the night and waiting for day.
Hunter rooted to the roof she’s landed on. She could feel smoker’s heartbeat, could hear as each tremor echoed around through her bones. Bloomed out through her flesh leaving imprints on the softness of it. A low dull thud from a chest and its faint and fragile and beautiful because it’s smoker’s heartbeat. Truth be told, hunter waited there for a longer time then necessary. She would listen to each shaky tremble smoker’s heart gave out.
She hits the ground with a piercing shriek following her. Smoker still smokes. Hunter pads towards her. She perceives smoker as an anarchy of smell and noise. They say nothing and both stare at the brevity of fire held in smokers hand. Lit up then drowned in darkness. Smoker walks home and Hunter follows.
Hunter takes one of smokers arms, holds it tight to her body. She tugs and pulls at smoker a wolfish grin shadowed on to her in the artificial light. Smoker would raise her arm slightly and send hunter a token resistance. Smoker was rolling her eyes of course. They walk together like old habits.
Smoker smiles because Hunter can’t see her smiling. Hunter smiles because she knows when smoker is smiling.
They would slump together to about a block from where they live. Hunter quickens her stride to match smokers. They’re tightly pressed to one another and rather predictably smokers fingers has wrapped into hunters. Bony wiry fingers folded into fingers roughened and scarred. They’ve held hands without noticing for one minute forty five seconds.
A woman steps out of the shade in to a pool of choked orange light. Jittering as if she’s sharing her body with something else. Alcohol is stamped on to her breath. Hair strangled in sweat. Tears sprint out of eyes bloodshot. She has a revolver in her hands and when she laughs its puerile and polluted with pain. Danger hovers over her brooding and immeasurable.
“Where’s Paul? Where is he?”
“Are you okay?”
“Where’ Paul?”
“I don’t know”
The woman laughs again. She’s crying and shaking, but the hand that holds the gun is rigid. Stock still and serious.
“I know where he is. I can see him in my head you see. He’s dead. He’s dead in Georgia with Jeff and Sarah. He’s lying on his damn stomach with chunks taken out of him. He doesn’t have any eyes because they tore them out while I ran away. I ran. Oh god I ran”
The broken sobbing leaks out of the woman’s mouth. Her sanity struggles in between her heaving chest. Greif mauls her face into something crumpled and wrinkled. There is a desperate intensity in her that despises life and adores death.
“How is this fair on him? That I’m living right here, that the freaks that murdered him are given food and shelter? You can’t forget these things. Not because it’s horrible but because it’s justice you see? It’s plain wrong. This right here, this town, this time this place it’s all wrong. You two standing there is wrong. I can correct that. I can do something right for him. Because I wronged him. Christ I’m sorry. I’m sorry”
Hunter and smoker stay huddled together unsure. Hunter wants to talk but the barrel of the revolver follows her.
Bird shot shatters out into the silence. Pops and pings exploded from the trail of a shotgun and all its smoke. The warning shot bounces of the asphalt and into the night. The woman looks up as if far away. The smog of a hangover in her eyes. She realises she’s drunk and realises she has a .34 Revolver in her hand. She vomits on the ground then shambles off into the night. She chants the name Paul again and again till they can’t hear her.
“Are you okay?”
Smoker nods too shook up to get her voice box. Hunter digs into her side. They clench each other’s hands.
“Oh man you were really scared aren’t you? Don’t worry you got me. You got me. Heh”
They look up to see their landlord lounging out of a window on the third story of the flat they live in. He would blow a wisp of smoke out the shotgun and watch them holding each other. His eyes are stale dead things, no measure of distaste or pleasure in them. He disappears inside the flat.
Charger opens the front door of the apartment and they all tumble in.
“Is everyone okay?”
“We’re good charger, we’re good. Don’t worry right smoker?”
“What happened?”
“There was this crazy drunk woman. She had a gun, and she was waving pointing it at us. She was raving on about her friends I think. Her dead friends. She was going to shoot us I think. But he saved us, the landlord”
“Good. That’s good, okay hunter”
“Why did he do it?”
“Just be grateful. Just be grateful”
“Maybe he feels guilty”
“Maybe he’s just a person hunter. That’s why he did it. He’s Just a person”
“Yeah. Like us”
“Like us”
It will be continued
don't hold your breathe though
the things below these lines are very quick very shabby doodles to what I think they might look like
Smoker and jockey
hunter and charger
Lots of old clothes especially military.
Not alot of people left to wear them.
The girls are spoilt for choice.
But they might have to wash out strange stains