[Xander] Anything but that . . .

[fikgirl]

Who: Xander, Kayla
When: June 17, shortly before noon
Where: Xander, Kayla and Jonas's home
Invited: Anyone
Status: Incomplete

Comments

[Xander, Kayla]

[fikgirl]

"Full circle, right back where I started," Xander muttered, partly amused and partly relieved. People packing up and leaving town was nothing new to him, and he always had wondered why no one ever got the hell out of Sunnydale.

"Huh?" Victor asked.

Xander gave a shrug, not sure how much he wanted to reveal or how much the younger man would believe. "Let's just say that where I grew up, people burying their heads in the sand or turning tail when the weird got weirder is nothing new.

"It's too bad about the kid though," Xander continued. "There's not a whole lot of people in the world out there right now. I get that maybe Brian thinks he's man enough to do it alone," Xander raked his hands through his hair, knowing that his disapproval of Brian came out in his voice and not caring, "But sometimes you gotta depend on other people. And at least there were other kids here for his kid. Kids need that, you know, socialization?"

"Didn't help you anyway," Kayla snarked from somewhere behind him.

"You think he might have wanted to take the evil witch doctor with him though, huh?" Xander kept talking to Victor although the teasing was clearly aimed at Kayla.

"He's just all grumpy because I told him to help with the cleaning," Kayla explained. "So, who's gone? Not Jenifer and the kids?"

"And see, that's what you get when you only hear half of a conversation."

Victor cracked a smile, clearly amused by their banter. "Brian, Jason and Brian's son. Indiana saw them load up Brian's car and leave this morning."

"That's stupid," Kayla didn't hold back her opinion. "We have electricity, we have farm animals, we could actually be a real town someday. And Jason was cute."

Xander rolled his eyes, sending a silent message to Victor, Do you see what I have to put up with?

[Victor]

[sinanju]

Victor shrugged. "There's nothing to be done about it now," he said. "It's not like we could drag him back here and make him stay." And Victor at least didn't want to. The last thing their small community needed was members who didn't want to be here.

"Besides, considering how many people have shown up here in the last few days, I'm beginning to think that there are more survivors than I first thought. Brian might do better than we suppose."

[Kayla, Xander]

[fikgirl]

"To each his own, huh?" Xander asked.

Kayla wasn't sure that she agreed with that sentiment -- she was a strong proponent of the it takes a village philosophy -- but right now she wasn't about to debate it with Xander and Victor. Particularly not when there was cleaning to do.

"In answer to your question," Xander continued, "We are staying. I think that we all happen to like this little hamlet."

"How many of us does that leave?" Kayla asked. It was a rhetorical question and she plunged on, "Maybe we should do a roster. Something with names and addresses, just so we know. Especially if more and more people start to drop in, we could have our own little census.

"What about attracting people?" Now that her mind grabbed hold of a thought, she persued it. "Maybe we could set up a radio signal or a CB signal or something like that. Not that I'm technical enough to figure out the logistics. I can cut you open and put you back together, but mechanical, I'm not."

She noticed how Xander and Victor were looking at her and she shrugged self-consciously. "Sorry. Sometimes when I get an idea, I just kind of run with it."

[Victor]

[sinanju]

"No, no--it's a good idea," Victor said. "And so is the census, really. We've been sort of muddling along since we all got here. But getting a handle on who's around and what they can do would help a lot."

"Yeah, we've got, what--three doctors now?" Xander added.

"Yes," Kayla said. "Myself, Dr. Cameron and Dr. Foreman. Allison is an immunologist and allergist and Eric is a neurologist."

"See?" Xander said to Victor with a grin. "We've learned something already. I didn't know that. Did you know that?"

"Nope," Victor said. "I heard them talking shop when they first met, but it was all over my head so I tuned it out. I don't know how useful their specialties will be, though," Victor continued.

"Division of labor is all well and good when you have a population large enough to make it possible, but we don't. Probably won't have for many years to come. Your emergency room experience," Victor said to Kayla, "is probably going to be more useful to us than their ability to diagnose rare medical conditions."

(And that thought was good for bringing everyone's mood down,) Victor thought. "Anyway, finding out all the odd jobs people have had, and any useful hobbies, would be a good idea."

[Kayla]

[fikgirl]

"Great idea," Kayla agreed. She was glad that Victor and Xander were listening to her, even if she wasn't talking about medicine and medical procedures. "I should get some paper and a pen. Getting started right away is a good idea. We'll need to get an initial head count, and also it'll give a chance to mark which houses still need to be . . . um, cleaned out?"

"What happened to 'this is our home and it's filthy?'" Xander asked.

Kayla looked around. The house really could use a good cleaning, but the town could use a good organization. Or the start of one at least. She gave a sigh and a reluctant shrug, "The house does need to be cleaned. You two handle the consensus."

A quick look around the attached family room produced a spiral bound notebook and a pen. She thrust it into Xander's hands, "That will do for now. There aren't that many people or that many occupied houses. I'll handle the cleaning end of things."

"My heart breaks," Xander teased.

"And I'll make a grocery list," Kayla continued as though she hadn't heard him. "We need a meet n' greet or street party or something to that everyone can meet everyone else.

"Where's your girlfriend?" Kayla asked Victor, "Do you think she'd like to help?"

[Victor]

[sinanju]

Victor grinned at Kayla's use of the word 'girlfriend.' He supposed that Ami was his girlfriend, but he didn't really think of it that way. She was just...Ami.

"What's so funny?" Kayla asked at the same time that Xander laughed and said, "Oh, he's got it bad."

Ostentatiously ignoring Xander, Victor addressed Kayla. "I'm sure Ami would think it was a good idea. I'll ask her about it. We got kind of a late start this morning, and it appears that we're not the only ones. How'd it go yesterday? You went to check out the hospital, didn't you?"

Kayla and Xander exchanged a meaningful glance. Kayla didn't seem to know quite what to say, which made Victor wonder just what had happened.

"It was...interesting," Xander said at last. "Especially when we ran into zombies."

Victor laughed. "Yes, I'm sure it was--" he said. Then he noticed their responses. It wasn't their expressions so much as the body language. Maintaining a straight face while pulling someone's leg wasn't all that difficult usually, but body language was another thing. "Wait--you're serious?"

Kayla nodded. "As a heart attack," Xander said.

Victor sighed and rubbed his temples. "That's all we need...."

"What's all we need?" someone asked from the open door behind Victor.

[Umpisa/Jenifer]

[fikgirl]

Umpisa was heading back home from the park when she saw Victor headed into Xander, Kayla and Jonas's house. The kids rode happily in the wagon, and were even happier to chase a ball around the deserted street while she wandered up the walk ... anything to delay the arrival back home.

Besides, she liked Xander. He was amusing and kind-hearted, and most importantly, he took her seriously in a way that she'd learned most adults didn't. Most of them might pretend, but with Xander it was sincere. Umpisa didn't really know about Jonas, but Kayla seemed pretty decent too.

As she grew closer, she heard Victor mumble, "That's all we need. . ."

A quick glance back assured her that Elise and Marcus were safe with no danger lurking, so she asked the most logical question, "What's all we need?"

The startled looks told her that no one had seen her coming.

"Well, it's just -" Kayla began.

"Zombies," Xander said promptly.

Kayla gave him a horrified look, and even Victor raised his eyebrows.

"No, really, what don't we need?"

"No, really, zombies," Xander replied.

"You're not shitting me?" Actually, Umpisa had seen and heard some pretty strange things in her years, like the rumor that cropped up occassionally about a teenage girl who was 'chosen by fate' to kill vampires, demons and things that go bump in the night.

Of course, she'd heard more than she'd seen, with the exception of a werewolf and a ghost, but people didn't tend to look upon you with an eye toward the sane if you spouted stories like that.

Xander rolled his eyes, "Why does everyone think I make this stuff up?"

[Victor]

[sinanju]

Victor frowned briefly at Jenifer's choice of words. Then he caught himself. (You're acting like an old man,) Victor thought. Yes, he'd grown up in a time when respectable people, at least, didn't swear--and certainly not so casually. But that was a lifetime ago. Times change.

"Because it sounds preposterous," Victor said to Xander. "If I hadn't had personal experience of just how bizarre the world can be, and how many unexpected things are lurking around corners, I'd think you were nuts."

"Unfortunately, I know better now," Victor said. He paused, then plunged on. "So--what's the scoop on these zombies? And are we going to have to deal with a lot of them?"

[Xander]

[fikgirl]

"There were only a few at the hospital," Xander explained. On impulse, he looked over Victor's shoulder to Marcus and Elise. For some reason, he felt protective of those kids - Jenifer included, although something about her pinged on his weirdness radar. Not a 'bad' ping, and nothing to make him feel the need to subject her to an inquisition, but he did feel that there was more there than met the eye.

It was her eyes. Most of the time, she looked and acted like a normal teenage girl, but every now and then Xander caught her in a 'moment.' A moment when she wasn't a teenager, but had old eyes, heavy with knowledge and wisdom. It could have been the Deluge and what came after, but Xander didn't think so.

It was a question for another day. Reassured that the kids were safe, he continued, "Kayla and I did a patrol last night, checking out the most likely areas between here and the hospital that might be good zombie hiding places and we didn't find anything else. That doesn't mean that there isn't anything else, it just means that we didn't find it.

"That does scream though that their numbers are pretty low. I'm just glad it wasn't vampires. Zombies are pretty brainless and easy to kill. Vampires, not so much."

"You do know that it's really, really creepy when you talk like that, right?" Kayla asked him.

"I was going to say that it sounds really crazy," Jonas commented. Xander turned, surprised to see the man hovering on the stairs. He held up a hand to forestall Xander's objection, "I know you're not crazy, but I'm still not sure how much of what you've said that I want to believe."

"I saw a ghost once," Jenifer abruptly volunteered. When everyone looked at her, she shrugged. "As long as we're listing weird, I thought I'd add to it."

[Victor]

[sinanju]

(Zombies, vampires, ghosts,) Victor thought. (Incredible.)

Unfortunately, it was easier than he'd expected to believe in them all. Ever since the Deluge, he'd had to accept that much of what he'd thought he knew about the shape of the world was wrong.

He'd initially thought that it was simply out-of-date, that the world had changed with the Deluge, and things once consigned to storybooks had begun to roam the earth. But Xander claimed to have been dealing with such things for years.

And Victor believed him. Which made Jenifer's claim of having seen a ghost once completely plausible.

"What happened?" Victor asked her.

[Umpisa/Jenifer]

[fikgirl]

"Not a lot," Umpisa shrugged. "I mean, she wasn't evil or vengeful, just sad."

"She?" Xander prompted.

"Yeah, it was at this old farmhouse back East. A bunch of us camped there over night on a dare - the place was supposed to be haunted." Umpisa carefully edited out the fact that it had been back during the 1940s, right before the war ended. It didn't really matter; no matter what the decade, kids were still kids.

"So, three of us snuck out and snuck into the place. We were really kinda scared. It was raining and the house made all sorts of strange noises. Then, we felt it, you know, just like they do in the stories, it got really, really cold. And we saw her, this woman from the 18th century or something, coming down the stairs, crying.

She got to the bottom, saw us and then just *poof*. Disappeared." The chill that ran down her spine at the re-telling of the story surprised her. It had been a long time since Umpisa really recalled that incident. "She didn't seem scary ... just sad. But it scared the bejesus out of us."

"How do you know you didn't imagine it?" Xander asked. He didn't seem to be making fun, but asking out of genuine curiosity.

"I went back a coupla times, me and Rebecca, she was - is - was," Umpisa stumbled over the verb tense. Rebecca was an old woman now, *if* she'd survived the Deluge and Fate's Handmaiden, but even so, they hadn't been best friends for a long time. "She was my best friend. We saw her a few other places in the house, like the kitchen and in the little bedroom where we heard her crying before we saw her."

Umpisa shivered involuntarily. The thought of another Immortal wandering through town didn't unsettle her the way the memories of the 'other-worldliness' did. She'd been raised to accept it as the norm, raised to 'know' that there was an unseen world. Believing it and encountering it were two different things. Zombies seemed safer and more fanciful.

"Okay, I've totally freaked myself out, can we talk about something else?"

[Kayla, Xander]

[fikgirl]

"Good idea," Kayla readily agreed. She was a bit unnerved by Jenifer's ghost story as well. Despite clearly having a 'teenage attitude' at times, Jenifer didn't seem like the sort of kid to make things up, she'd shown that she was a bit more mature than her years, so Kayla didn't doubt her story.

(Or her sincerity about being freaked out.)

"We were talking about getting the whole town together, maybe going door to door and rounding people up. We need to do a census."

"I can get started after breakfast," Xander declared. "I want to do another search for creepy crawlies anyway. Anyone wanna go monster hunting?"

"You're serious," Jonas said very quietly.

"Dead. No pun intended."

"Why the hell not?"

"Jonas!" Kayla exclaimed. "Your arm, you're not -"

"I have my own personal doctor right under my roof," Jonas grinned. Kayla had to admit it was good to see him smile. Maybe 'hunting' with Xander would bring him out of his funk, even if he thought she and Xander were making it all up.

"Fine, do whatever," Kayla waved a hand in the air in resignation. She turned back toward the kitchen, stopping to call over her shoulder, "I'll finish up breakfast in case anyone actually wants to, I don't know, eat."

[Victor]

[sinanju]

"I'll go with you," Victor said to Xander. "Another pair of hands can't hurt--especially if you find any creepy crawlies. And besides, I'm curious to see just how many people have taken up residence here.

"At the rate we've been going, it's entirely possible that there are people we haven't met yet."

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[fikgirl]

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