Los Angeles, Tuesday

[spin_kick_snap]

Banzai had patrolled for two days without seeing a single zombie. By day, she hung out on rooftops, peering down into dim alleys in the worst sections of town, looking for any of the signs that Stealth and Barry--Zzzap--had mentioned: pale skin, a lack of coordination and language skills, high resistance to damage, a degree of aggression, the scent

Comments

[vdistinctive]

"Kathy?" Eliot answered. "You're not patchin' up another bullet wound, are ya?"

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"Not this time!" Kathy said, slightly more cheered by the start of this conversation than she'd been. Because at least she wasn't doing that. "But I do have a really weird question for you. But it's actually a serious one."

She inhaled, then asked in a rush, "Do you have any experience fighting zombies?"

If anyone did, she was guessing it would be Eliot.

[vdistinctive]

". . . Actually, no." Aliens, ghosts, even a little bit of werewolf fighting, but no zombies. "I've got some theories, though."

Because frankly you never knew.

[spin_kick_snap]

"Can I hear those theories?" Kathy asked. "At this point, vague hunches will do. We're mostly running on guesses and Romero."

Oh. Hmm. She might have skipped over some important intel there.

"Uhh, so I don't think I mentioned this before, but I'm in LA fighting zombies. How're you?"

[vdistinctive]

"I'm -- doin' alright. Nothin' to take out around here, just now." Eliot supposed he shouldn't be surprised that a world that made teenage superballs also made zombies.

Also, why was this vaguely familiar? Something about a mayor of LA? He shook it off.

"Main thing seems to be to take out the head," he said. "So I figure a good blunt weapon with some reach is best, so you can hold 'em back while you take 'em out. Movies like shotguns, but if the infection's blood borne, you don't want that sprayin' all over the place." Weren't you glad you asked, Kathy? "A good bo staff should do ya. Or your bokken. You might want to swap that gi out for somethin' more like body armor, too, so it's harder for 'em to break the skin if they bite ya. Assumin' one of your techie buddies hasn't already souped your gi up for you."

[spin_kick_snap]

"Techie buddy already souped up my gi," Kathy reported, smiling a bit. How well Eliot knew her, even though this had happened long before he'd shown up on the island. "I shrugged off a bullet last weekend--well, sort of. I should be okay."

She paused before adding, "Are there any non-lethal methods of taking them down? I--I don't kill. Not if I don't have to. And not if there's any way we can get them back to being people."

[vdistinctive]

"Zombies are already dead, darlin'," Eliot said, not unkindly. "And no, not that I've found. Whole point of 'em are that they keep on comin' no matter what you do -- unless you can take 'em out wholesale. S'pose you might be able to trap 'em, but containment'll be a problem pretty quick." The other thing about zombies: they multiplied. Fast.

[spin_kick_snap]

At least someone got that! That was why she was staying--to help wipe them out before their numbers grew too large.

"I guess I'm just waiting on confirmation of that," Kathy said. "I managed to catch two today. Regenerator's going to examine them, see if his power can fix them. If so, then they're victims we can cure. If not...and if they're really dead...I'll bring myself to do what I have to do, I guess."

[vdistinctive]

Yeah, well, Eliot was a pragmatist. And when he decided he needed to research something in case he'd have to take it out, he did so thoroughly.

"It ain't gonna be easy either way, sounds like," he said. "Good luck and stay safe, you hear me? They start gettin' overwhelmin', you get out of there. Let the army nuke it from orbit if they have to. There's a point where ground forces start just bein' cannon fodder."

[spin_kick_snap]

"We're trying to stop it from getting to the point where the army's involved at all," Kathy said. "The current plan is to get in front of this thing, stop t from spreading, and be home for prom."

If Wendy the Werewolf Stalker could do it, so could Kathy!

[vdistinctive]

Eliot was pretty sure that was a terrible idea. Now he had to worry about Kathy until prom.

"How fast is it spreading?"

[spin_kick_snap]

"Uncertain," Kathy admitted. "But it's been something close to a week now and nobody's really noticed. Except for, like, the homeless people and the junkies, and stuff. They're getting thin on the ground. We think--we hope--most of them are running."

[vdistinctive]

"It's a good bet some of them are," Eliot said. "But most of 'em probably don't have anywhere to run to. You can't plan on that. What kind of sweepin' technique you using?"

[spin_kick_snap]

"Not much of one," Kathy admitted. "Stealth's trying, but people have day jobs and zombies are mobile and we can't really spot people who are infected, just those who've...progressed past a certain point. I'm open to ideas."

[vdistinctive]

"Get the hell out and let the army take care of it," Eliot said. "Or the CDC. I know you don't wanna hear it, darlin', but it sounds to me like right now you're set up to fight a losin' battle."

[spin_kick_snap]

"Nobody even knows about it yet," Kathy said. "Zzzap hacked the CDC and put information about the zombies into the system and they thought it was some kind of joke by the IT department. Getting people involved is going to take too long and by that point, we'll probably lose the city."

Why was everyone so insistent on trying to make her run away? Didn't they get that this was LA's only hope for survival?

"We can get ahead of this," Kathy said. "We can. We just need a little more time."