Nightshift 49: Bath and Beauty Shop

[promisedawhale]

[from here]The sickening feeling, the small bit of head-spinning and Brook was able to take things in. He might start getting used to the weird sensation sooner or later depending on how many times they kept playing chance with the doorways. This time though, Brook found himself more interested in the area they'd found themselves in than in making

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[fourstonewalls]

[from here]

Thunder crashed, and the whole world seemed to spin, as Lana stepped into the room.  No, building, again. They were back in the town, and this time, the place didn't look as preserved and as quiet as the antiques the first shop had housed.  Broken glass was all over the floor, and the stench of decaying flesh.  Lana instinctively tried to pull up a scarf she wasn't wearing to cover her nose.

Keep alert, she wanted to say, but warning the man who'd taught her how to proceed into dangerous situations seemed redundant, at best.  Intentionally mocking, at worst, and they couldn't afford to do this now.  She did stretch an arm out in a keep-back gesture; for as much as he barged into situations without a seeming care when it benefitted him, She knew how quietly he could move.

Despite her best efforts, a floorboard creaked, and her foot nudged something.  A severed hand, the cut fresh but the hand itself little more than bone and sinew -- at least ten days dead, probably more like two weeks, in the absence of scavenging animals.  She shone the flashlight directly on it and held it for Gant to look.  He needed to know she hadn't been playing an elaborate joke when she'd spoken of monsters.

The floor creaked again, but this time, neither of them was moving.

[gargantuanlaugh]

It was getting harder not to believe that what Lana said was true when they found themselves in town again. He realized how pathetic it was to wish he was just hallucinating, that this was all just in his mind. What an amazing nightmare this would all make but that would have been too easy.

After the initial dizziness, the odor hit him hard. Gritting his teeth he forced down the urge to gag. Having spent decades as a detective working on homicide cases had dulled death in Damon's sight. Murders done in the heat of the moment were never that impressive. However, serial killers could leave an especially bloody trail and some were so meticulous when it came to hiding corpses the investigation teams wouldn't find the bodies for months or maybe even years. The Chief had seen plenty of death, yes, but nothing had ever gotten him used to the smell rotting flesh.

He froze when his eyes landed on the hand Lana's flashlight illuminated. Then a moment later he was on the alert. Delusional or not, he wasn't going to go down without a fight. He began to assess the situation: a window was broken across the way, rainwater and glass had pooled around the window, the shelves looked a bit ransacked, and something or someone else was in the store though he hadn't spotted them yet.

Looking to Lana, he gave his ex-partner a significant glance, gesturing with a quick jerk of his chin for her to follow him. He began to back towards the door, keeping his flashlight moving, hoping to catch a glimpse of whatever it was before it attacked. If it attacked.

Outside a flash of lightning illuminated a few shambling shapes through the rain, followed by a deafening crack of thunder. Something fell against a shelf somewhere in the store, knocking some bottles to the ground. Whatever it was, it was getting closer.

[fourstonewalls]

Lana was only too happy to follow Gant to the door; as rattled as he was, his instincts were still the same as hers: the finely-honed caution (some would say paranoia) of the professional investigator.  She backed towards the door, keeping an eye -- and a flashlight -- trained in the direction where she'd last seen movement.

She moved quickly, as fas as she could without tripping over the bottles and canisters that littered the floor.  It was almost fast enough.  A form lurched out of the darkness, arms extended.  Her flashlight was pointing directly at what would have been its face if it had had enough of one left to be called that.  Oh, God, they're real.  And moving fast.  What do I...dammit, we weren't trained for this.  Damon had the door open -- all they needed was an extra few seconds.  One single shot.

"Go.  Find her."  He knew who she meant.  She stopped, and stood her ground.  As soon as she did, calm settled on her shoulders like a favorite coat.  She breathed from her stomach, like they'd learned in basic, and struck.  Take that!  She wasn't quite as composed as she would have claimed; she lashed out with the flashlight, not the candlestick, dropping her effective reach.  It connected with a sickening crunch across the forearm of the thing.  Both bones snapped, but the claws still moved, and raked across her own arm as sinew whipped around metal.  The zombie did, however, stumble back a pace, whimpering.  So did Lana, stumbling backwards through the door.

[to here]