Night 42: Wicker Street

[whos_da_man]

[from here]Junpei burst out of the Twin Pines, dragging his chair along with him. Wide eyed, with sweat dripping down his face (he was so not crying), the teen stared at the hordes of zombies in the street. What was he going to do? He could still feel Chidori's presence, so she had to be alright. She had to be - right? RIGHT

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[whohitreset]

Matt and Sen had just been leaving the toy store when everything turned into Doyleton of the Dead. Matt had a grip on Sen's hand and it tightened automatically, the palm sweating up. This couldn't be real. "Shit..." his voice was shaky. "Shit shit shit..."

They could run back into the building, but the employees had become zombies too, from the looks of it, and there was another group of patients in there still. They couldn't stand out on the curb very long either. He at least couldn't fight well enough to take these things out, and he still didn't know the extent of Sen's skills. If he panicked, they'd be screwed as well. He had to keep a clear head. There had to be some way out of...

There. On the side of the road not too far down was a car. As long as it had gas, he could get that thing going. It wouldn't be that much safer, but at least it would afford them some protection as they tried to find somewhere that was. "This way." He moved quickly, testing the doors once he got there and of course finding them locked. With no time to worry about picking the locks, he shoved a fist through what he'd meant to be the passenger side window but ended up being the driver's side. Stupid Americans and their backwards ways. That was fine. He could drive on this side too. Taking only a moment to brush bits of glass off the seat once he'd unlocked his own door, he reached over and unlocked the other for Sen. "Get in!"

Now this next part was going to be difficult without any tools like a screwdriver, but he was a professional. He'd manage. Matt could feel the car shake under pressure he knew Sen couldn't have caused and had to swallow hard as it became difficult to maintain focus. At last the engine revved - just in time for a rotting arm to reach through the broken window and go for Matt's neck. With a not at all girly scream, he slammed his foot on the pedal and sent the car lurching forward, ripping the arm from the zombie as it pulled away.

"Oh god..." Matt shuddered, knocking the offending object back out onto the street.

[tostepforward]

Though she wasn't quite sure what had alerted her -- a breath of cold air, the first whiff of rot and decay, or rust creeping up what had just been bright metal -- Ayumu had never been one to ignore her instincts when they warned of danger. This was no longer time for pretense, even if Robin had been paying that much attention to her and not the walking corpses suddenly infesting the streets, and she shifted her posture to a mix of relaxed tension that meant she was ready to move at any time.

The two of them were entirely unarmed, and he likely wouldn't be of much help against the creatures, but Robin at least seemed to have an idea. Ayumu followed readily enough, dodging reaching hands as they ran by a pair of the once-human, but then found herself backed against one of the metal carriages as more of them approached.

There were far too many of them to even consider fighting, even if she and Robin had been well-armed. What they needed was shelter of some kind, and this didn't seem like much, especially given how easily Robin had been able to break one of the glass windows. For the moment, though, she was forced to trust him, as his knowledge of this time would be an advantage she did not possess.

She spared a few moments to strike at the closest of the approaching creatures; with no idea how one killed those already dead, she instead aimed for vulnerable knees to at least slow their advances, and indeed they seemed hardly to notice what she was doing. There was no indication of pain, even when she felt bone crack at one impact.

At Robin's shout she quickly turned back and pulled at the door handle, mildly startled at how easily it opened, then dropped into the seat and slammed the door behind her again. As she'd expected it wasn't much of a deterrent against what they faced, and she cast a quick glance at Robin (what was he doing?) before rummaging through the vehicle in search of something useful. The compartment in front of her yielded nothing but papers, though, and she dropped the useless packet to the floor, tensing up as she watched the corpses trying to climb onto the top of their tiny shelter.

As it roared to life, then, she couldn't help but feel a rush of relief, though it was mingled with mild disgust at the sight of the disembodied arm Robin was dumping out the window. "Is there anywhere likely to be safe?" she asked, thinking aloud as she glanced around at their surroundings. "Or can this out-race...whatever those are?"

[whohitreset]

"Out-race them? Definitely. But they're everywhere!" They were, in fact, being knocked over the hood of the car and run over as they spoke. Matt winced every time he heard the sickening crunch of bone beneath the wheels. "I have no clue where we're going, to be honest. It's probably not going to be any safer outside town, and I don't even want to think about what might happen to us if we try to take that road through the woods on a night like this. At least here we have some time to look around and get rid of some of these nasties in the process."

Thud. Crunch. Squelch. Shudder.

"If you, ah... If you have any better ideas, I'm all ears." There would be patients mixed in with the zombies, no doubt. If they were smart, they'd see him coming and move out of the way. It wasn't as though he could go terribly fast through this mess.

[tostepforward]

Ayumu wasn't entirely certain just what was normal for a conveyance of this sort, but she was still fairly certain the noises it made upon striking the creatures weren't. How long could they keep moving, and fast enough that the apparently-undwindling hordes didn't overwhelm them? If they stopped the broken window on Robin's side was already proven to be a liability, and if they didn't stop then where would they go?

This was somewhat (all right, quite a bit) outside of the possibilities she'd been trained to deal with. The oversized monstrous bats the other night had been one thing, but things that had once been human? And rather dead humans, from the look and smell of them. "We'd need weapons of some kind," she replied, staring out the windows with a frown of concentration. Something had to give her a clue or an idea. "And somewhere defensible. A building sturdy enough that we would only need to block the entrances so they couldn't get inside, perhaps."

She glanced in Robin's direction, turning her thoughtful scrutiny on him for a moment. "Moving seems to be keeping them away from us for now, at the least. But how long can you continue? I'm...unfamiliar with the capabilities of something like this."

[whohitreset]

"I doubt we'll get too far through this crowd..." Matt gave another shriek suddenly as there was a zombie face directly in front of him on the windshield, the creature having clambered over the hood of the car. He frantically turned on the windshield wipers in the hopes of annoying the thing enough that it would go away, but this only resulted in breaking the devices and sending streaks of unmentionable zombie goo across the glass.

The car swerved dangerously as Matt undid his seatbelt, sat up, and reached out to grab the zombie by the collar of its tattered shirt in an effort to dislodge it. It almost pulled him out of the window instead, managing to tear free some of his shirt sleeve and dig its teeth into his arm. With a cry, Matt jerked the steering wheel and sent the car spinning sideways, finally causing the zombie to fall off to the ground.

As he stopped to catch his breath and regain his bearings, they were already being surrounded by more of the undead. He knocked the vehicle into reverse and straightened out their course.

[wearsthehakama]

Kaoru winced, Kenshin's grip was so tight now that the girl could feel the bones in her wrist grinding together. Bruise-worthy tight, even. The smell was worse outside, and as they ran, Kaoru kept her hand over her nose, dodging out of the way of lurching, lunging zombies.

It wasn't easy, not with the skirt. "They're going to come after us!" she hissed in his ear.

[tostepforward]

Well, this was certainly getting...interesting.

Ayumu was starting to like this idea less and less as time went on and as more pieces of the creatures ended up splattered across the windows. When Robin almost lost control of the vehicle while wrestling with one of them she ended up grabbing hold of a handle that seemed conveniently located for the purpose (did people in the future often drive like this when they weren't trying to escape from bizarre monsters?) and holding on as tight as she could.

There was little else that she could do at the moment, after all - there was nothing of use inside the compartment, and she wasn't about to open the door and breach what little barrier stood between her and them. She just hoped that Robin really did know what he was doing and wouldn't end up running into something a little more solid than a half-rotted corpse.

She heard the sound of Himura's voice, but rather hoped her companion hadn't, seeing as how she didn't particularly relish the idea of spending time with the man or his lady friend in this or any other situation. As such she didn't glance around toward the sound, only stared out the windows and flinched somewhat dramatically every time one of the things got too near.

[whohitreset]

Unfortunately for Ayu, Matt did hear Kenshin's voice. Wasn't this lovely? They had company! He grinned in a not-all-there sort of way, like someone trying to act cheerful when they were about one step away from losing it completely. "Himura-sensei!" he greeted, knowing well how much the red-head didn't like it. "Hop in!" That said, he reached back an unlocked the back door on the driver's side before pulling the vehicle up a little closer to the curb.

The bite on his arm was disgusting looking, though not all that deep. As they stopped just long enough to let on passengers, Matt took the bottom edge of his shirt and began trying to clean up the would as best he could. It was doubtful they'd find anything as nice as clean water right now, not with the way the Institute itself was at night. Getting bitten by a zombie couldn't be a good thing. He'd played enough games to know. He'd just have to hope the usual cliches didn't apply here.

[wearsthehakama]

Kaoru made a little, undignified squeak when Kenshin threw her in the car and dove in after her. Her head whacked against the car door on the other side, and she swore she saw star-covered zombies.

"Nice to meet you," she said automatically, and then sat up quickly to glare at her 'dear friend.' "Now isn't the time for introductions! Idiot!" Only Kenshin, only Himura Kenshin, would think the middle of a horrific scene was a perfect time for introductions. Idiot! Idiot!!

[tostepforward]

Oh, good. As if they had time to stop, much less burden themselves with more passengers. Although perhaps Ayumu could throw Kenshin and his lady friend to the creatures, to distract them enough that she could get away. That might even make him useful, for once.

She glanced around to the rear seat, wide-eyed and still clinging to the handle on the door as though to a lifeline, and gave a brief nod to the new arrivals. Her attention was quickly recaptured by her surroundings, though, as the swarm outside renewed their pounding against her window.

"Maybe we should talk later," she suggested, leaning away from the door again. This really wasn't the time or place for introductions.

[whohitreset]

"Right. We'll make it a double-date." Matt jammed the car into reverse again, pulling out from under the grip of some of the zombies in front of them before jerking it forward again and running over those that had just fallen to the ground. A light giggle escaped him at this. Such a scenario wasn't nearly as awesome in real life as it was in a video game where he didn't have to worry about dying, but the fact that he was running over zombies still merited a laugh. "Don't worry about my arm. It's... just a flesh wound."

He really didn't like his chances in this scenario either. He knew how the horror movies went. Out of the group of people currently in the car, he was the odd man out - and he'd been bitten to boot. The girls wouldn't get killed off right away, and Kenshin was the shounen manga hero sort, so he'd probably end up saving them and possibly living to see the end of the night. There was the chance that he'd go down fighting to save them, but with a red-shirt like Matt driving the car would that be necessary?

The fact that he was the driver was his only saving grace right now as far as he was concerned. He didn't want to die again. "All right, let's get off this fucking road. Think we can make it to one of the parks?"

[wearsthehakama]

Kaoru was of the opinion that they were trying to escape the Institute, but she wasn't about to argue with Kenshin's logic. At least there, they had heavy metal doors to keep them secure from the dead (which, by the by, seemed so much better than the car doors and windows). The ride was bumpier than expected, though, and she found herself holding Kenshin's arm to keep from being jostled too much.

Even worse, she was starting to look a little green around the gills. Weird Western food and the shambling dead with their smell of rot did little to appease her stomach.

[tostepforward]

"Parks?" Ayumu went back to her death-grip on the door handle once the vehicle began moving again, lest Robin decide to pull another one of those maneuvers that would throw her around again, and pretended to be trying not to look at what Himura was dumping out the window. "And aren't they a little too open, too?"

As little as she liked to disagree with the man, Himura was right: the parks were likely to be only more dangerous than the street they were on right now, if those creatures were blanketing the town as they seemed to be. What they needed, in her opinion, was a place with solid walls and doors that could be barricaded. The Institute seemed a bit far away, though perhaps it would only have the more familiar kinds of nocturnal hazards.