ZombieLoz: Homecoming, Part Six
Part Six, in which there is action, study, and angst.
Chapter Six (Walk Like a Zombie)
Their first duty as Marisu's bodyguards, it seemed, was to escort her back to her house. She kept talking as Kadaj led the way out into the hall - something about there being some sort of school sports game the next night, and a dance the night after that, the night of the full moon.
Yazoo hung back, then moved toward Loz, who was still staring out the window. He hadn't been on watch at all - he was staring at the near-full moon in the sky, eyes wide and unblinking and... dead.
It wasn't the first time Yazoo had seen this happen to his older brother since his death. The moon seemed to be entrancing to him, somehow.
"Loz?" He swallowed, then reached out to touch Loz's shoulder, leaning closer out of instinct before he remembered that he probably shouldn't.
Loz blinked, the strange fog seeming to lift from his eyes. He looked miserably at Yazoo, then down, giving a low, quiet moan that could only mean that he was growing hungry.
"Already?" Brow furrowed, Yazoo patted at Loz's back. "It's all right. We're going out now; we'll find you something."
Loz grunted in acknowledgement, and they moved to follow their younger brother.
The air outside was cooler than Yazoo expected, the streets empty and silent. There weren't even any animals to be seen, which was odd, considering how humans seemed to enjoy their presence.
Marisu led the way down silent streets and into a residential area, then further, toward the larger houses. By the time they reached that point, they began to notice sounds and movement in the shadows down side-streets. The girl became increasingly nervous.
"We'll have to announce ourselves to the police," she explained, taking off the hat she'd been wearing. "They won't be expecting us, you see. They'll be expecting the zombies. We don't want them to shoot us."
"Whatever," Kadaj mumbled. The girl talked too much, so far as he was concerned. He looked over his shoulder; Yazoo was close behind him, and Loz stumbling slowly after, hanging back. His eyes narrowed and he looked at Yazoo, who nodded. Loz would have to feed again soon.
Down the street, beyond Loz, several other figures were clumsily following as well.
They were passing a tree-shrouded alley that gave access to the backs of houses when there was a clattering sound, far more close than was desirable. Someone - something - was slowly extricating itself from the trash cans it had just wandered into and fallen over, and three more were lurching toward them from further down the alley.
"Move," Kadaj ordered, shoving at Marisu. She seemed to be momentarily rooted to the spot, eyes wide, the color drained from her face.
She lifted a hand toward one of the creatures. "I know him..."
"No you don't," Yazoo snapped, burying all thoughts of Loz. These undead were behaving the way Loz did when he was most hungry, and they'd no one to make sure that they fed; they were liable to attack indiscriminately. "Keep moving."
"But that's Lieutenant Schaeffer!" The girl cried, waving her arm at the creature. "He's the one that let me sneak out to see you - Ow!"
Kadaj had grabbed her by the arm and was now pulling her roughly along. "Which house," he snapped.
"Th-there -"
He set about dragging her again, but two more of the undead stumbled out into their path at the last cross-street before the large white-sided house that Marisu had indicated.
Yazoo casually walked up to the late Lieutenant Schaeffer, tilted his head in thought, and then moved around behind the slow creature. It couldn't turn to face him again before Yazoo had taken its head in his hands and twisted it around until the spine snapped.
The creature gave a last vacant moan, its body going limp, before Yazoo let it fall to the ground. It certainly seemed to be... more dead, now. Apparently the brain still controlled the rest of the body in these things.
...Though it wasn't reliant on breathing or having its heart beat for its locomotion. Why would severing the spinal cord -
As if on cue, Lieutenant Schaeffer gave another groan, teeth gnashing.
Taking a barely startled step back, Yazoo drew his gunblade and shot the thing in the head.
Destroying the brain definitely seemed to work better.
Kadaj seemed to have discovered the same thing. Despite Marisu's shrieking, he'd successfully decapitated their opposition and avoided doing the same to the girl. He looked over at his brother, but Yazoo waved him off.
"We'll be along," Yazoo called out easily as Loz caught up to him. Kadaj nodded and headed off in the direction Marisu had indicated without actually waiting for her to follow, sword still drawn, looking about for more undead to slaughter. The girl scurried after him, casting his brothers a frightened look and almost stumbling into Kadaj before facing forward again.
Loz tilted his head, nudging the corpse with a toe. These zombies really were clearly different from him. He was... stopped, almost as though in suspended animation, but for his mobility and hunger and mind. He didn't bleed even though he'd gaping holes in his torso, but Yazoo had seen his wounds gathered since his... death... vanish as soon as he fed. He didn't starve if he didn't feed - just became more and more dangerous, his consciousness bleeding away.
Yazoo was certain that his brother hated losing himself like that. At the very least, he hated watching it happen...
These creatures were different, all wet and oozing and decaying. Lieutenant Schaeffer's clothing was half-shredded and there were entrails hanging from a gaping tear in his side, and the opposite side of his face and neck appeared to have been chewed on. One leg was gnawed down to the bone at the calf as well.
And he'd been alive a few hours ago, according to Marisu... Which meant that these dead arose more quickly than Loz had...
Something brushed clumsily at his hair from behind. Loz simply reached out and grabbed and yanked. There was a wet grating sound, and as Yazoo raised his head, Loz pulled back with a lower arm - twisted off at the elbow - that dripped thick, cold blood.
Yazoo unhurriedly stepped forward, over Lieutenant Schaeffer, and let Loz remove the head of the creature that had gotten close enough to touch him. Loz held up the head in both hands, watching the still-snapping jaws with a clearly disappointed expression, and pressed his hands together until the skull broke beneath the skin and the movement stopped.
His brother patted him on the shoulder. "Let's go see if any of the other living humans are still out here," Yazoo suggested, smiling slightly.
At the far end of the alley, when they heard the screams for help from a zombie-besieged woodshed, Yazoo's smile broadened to a grin.
Yazoo waited until Loz had finished eating before they went to look for Kadaj. Their younger brother was waiting for them on the front porch of one of the larger houses.
"Took you long enough," he called out, perched on the porch railing with Souba lying across his lap. There were five or six more corpses littering the front lawn, none of the undead having made it as far as the porch, and Kadaj had even had time to clean his sword since the last had approached. "You're a mess."
Swift and lithe, Kadaj had easily dispatched his adversaries without ever drawing nearer than the length of his double-bladed sword. Yazoo and Loz, on the other hand, hadn't had the luxury of distance, and were spattered and dripping. Most of the blood was fresh, not the congealed ichor of the undead.
Yazoo only rolled his eyes. Loz made a slight chuckling sound that said he'd happily get even more messy if opportunity presented.
Kadaj grinned and jerked his thumb over his shoulder. "Go on inside and get cleaned up. Guest room with a shower on the second floor. They said we're to stay until morning." He hopped to his feet on the edge of the porch, then jumped over the hedge to stand on the lawn with his brothers. "I get first watch. That girl's annoying. Why are we keeping her alive?" The grin slipped thoughtlessly into a pout (though not as severe as Loz's) as Kadaj fixed his gaze on Yazoo.
Yazoo's response seemed to be a little tired. "Information."
"Uh-huh." Kadaj sheathed his sword and folded his arms. "And why aren't we just torturing it out of her?"
At least Kadaj was asking instead of jumping directly to taking action. That meant that he acknowledged that Yazoo might have some insight to the matter. "She seems to have everyone we've met here so far in her thrall," Yazoo pointed out. "We'll get nothing but trouble if we harm her now."
Kadaj looked away, as though scoping the area for further zombie movement, rather than conceding the point. "Fine, but I'm killing her before we leave. She won't stop pawing at me." He made a face.
Yazoo, all too familiar with overly-attracted humans, twitched. "By all means." He brushed at some of the drying blood on his sleeve. "Second floor, you said? Come on, Loz." He pulled at his elder brother's arm; Loz had been staring at the moon again, and it took him a moment to blink and focus once more, but he nodded to Kadaj and followed Yazoo without a word.
The first-floor windows were all barricaded; only the front door was accessible, and a man with a shotgun opened it when Yazoo and Loz approached. "I'm Roland, Marisu's father," he announced, stepping aside for them to enter - though upon seeing their gory state, he didn't extend a hand in greeting. "I, uh... Thank you gentlemen for protecting my daughter."
Yazoo looked up the stairs, and down the hall to the well-lit kitchen, and finally met the man's eyes. "Upstairs?"
"What?" The man blinked in confusion, before his eyes widened. "Oh! Yeah, end of the hall."
Giving the man a curt nod, Yazoo immediately headed for the stairs. Loz followed, looking over his shoulder to favor Roland with a slightly frightening smile, the light catching the red reflection in his eyes.
Roland shuddered and returned to guarding the front door. Bounty hunters were dangerous business.
The guest bedroom was wallpapered in a bright yellow floral print, with matching golden carpet and bed linens so laden with satin and lace that it seemed impossible that anyone might fit into the bed. At least there were enough pillows visible that it would be easy to extract one and sleep on the floor in relative comfort. He'd even predicted this, he realized, when he'd been thankful for the Inn. He couldn't quite bring himself to laugh about it.
The adjacent bathroom was equally as atrocious. With the bedroom door shut - it didn't lock, Yazoo noted with irritation - he led Loz into the appallingly sunshine-colored washroom and set about cleaning him off.
He reflected, as he wiped the blood from Loz's coat with a damp towel, that this should be a far more entertaining activity. They'd done this sort of thing before - irreparably stained some poor Inn's towels with the remains of whatever they'd killed... and then proceeded to make a mess of the washroom, and gone to sleep for a few hours, together. Happy.
Yazoo tried to stop thinking.
When their clothes were mostly wiped down, they shucked their coats to work at skin instead. Inside, in a well-lit area, the blood around Loz's mouth would be obvious...
Though of course without his repaired coat, there could be no mistaking Loz for alive, with that damage.
Yazoo managed to hold off until he got to Loz's back, rubbing away dried blood that had gotten under his collar and smeared down his shoulder, before he had to close his eyes for a moment. He ducked his head, taking a deep, slow breath.
"'Zoo," Loz murmured, looking over his shoulder.
It took Yazoo two tries before he could speak. "Can't... do this," he muttered. "Can't stand remembering - I mean - I miss you and you're right here..."
He let his hands fall away, unconsciously wringing the stained yellow towel he held, as Loz turned around. His older brother stood close, lay heavy hand on his shoulder, then raised both hands to hold either side of Yazoo's head the same way he'd held the severed but still gnashing head earlier.
Yazoo found himself hoping that Loz would simply crush his skull as well and put an end to this.
Instead, Loz leaned forward a little and touched his cold forehead to his brother's, eyes closed. He made a strangled whimpering sound - he'd be crying if he still had tears.
Yazoo lay his hands on Loz's chest, ignoring the unevenness on the right side. The dead wound wasn't so noticeable if he kept his eyes closed. "Don't cry, Loz," he said with a half-laugh that might've been hysterical if it weren't so bitter.
Loz pulled him a little closer and nuzzled at his hair - without biting - and then stepped back, letting go entirely. The elder kept his strange eyes averted as he stepped around Yazoo. "Wash," he suggested quietly, moving out into the bedroom. "I'll be here."
Yazoo went through all the motions of calmly undressing and starting the shower before sliding to the floor of the shower stall and hiding his face in his hands.
...I swapped this chapter title with that of chapter 5. ¬_¬
Title is from a song by The Horror Pops that I put on last year's Zombie Mix. If more of that group's songs sounded like that, I'd be buying their albums.
Chapter Six (Walk Like a Zombie)
Their first duty as Marisu's bodyguards, it seemed, was to escort her back to her house. She kept talking as Kadaj led the way out into the hall - something about there being some sort of school sports game the next night, and a dance the night after that, the night of the full moon.
Yazoo hung back, then moved toward Loz, who was still staring out the window. He hadn't been on watch at all - he was staring at the near-full moon in the sky, eyes wide and unblinking and... dead.
It wasn't the first time Yazoo had seen this happen to his older brother since his death. The moon seemed to be entrancing to him, somehow.
"Loz?" He swallowed, then reached out to touch Loz's shoulder, leaning closer out of instinct before he remembered that he probably shouldn't.
Loz blinked, the strange fog seeming to lift from his eyes. He looked miserably at Yazoo, then down, giving a low, quiet moan that could only mean that he was growing hungry.
"Already?" Brow furrowed, Yazoo patted at Loz's back. "It's all right. We're going out now; we'll find you something."
Loz grunted in acknowledgement, and they moved to follow their younger brother.
The air outside was cooler than Yazoo expected, the streets empty and silent. There weren't even any animals to be seen, which was odd, considering how humans seemed to enjoy their presence.
Marisu led the way down silent streets and into a residential area, then further, toward the larger houses. By the time they reached that point, they began to notice sounds and movement in the shadows down side-streets. The girl became increasingly nervous.
"We'll have to announce ourselves to the police," she explained, taking off the hat she'd been wearing. "They won't be expecting us, you see. They'll be expecting the zombies. We don't want them to shoot us."
"Whatever," Kadaj mumbled. The girl talked too much, so far as he was concerned. He looked over his shoulder; Yazoo was close behind him, and Loz stumbling slowly after, hanging back. His eyes narrowed and he looked at Yazoo, who nodded. Loz would have to feed again soon.
Down the street, beyond Loz, several other figures were clumsily following as well.
They were passing a tree-shrouded alley that gave access to the backs of houses when there was a clattering sound, far more close than was desirable. Someone - something - was slowly extricating itself from the trash cans it had just wandered into and fallen over, and three more were lurching toward them from further down the alley.
"Move," Kadaj ordered, shoving at Marisu. She seemed to be momentarily rooted to the spot, eyes wide, the color drained from her face.
She lifted a hand toward one of the creatures. "I know him..."
"No you don't," Yazoo snapped, burying all thoughts of Loz. These undead were behaving the way Loz did when he was most hungry, and they'd no one to make sure that they fed; they were liable to attack indiscriminately. "Keep moving."
"But that's Lieutenant Schaeffer!" The girl cried, waving her arm at the creature. "He's the one that let me sneak out to see you - Ow!"
Kadaj had grabbed her by the arm and was now pulling her roughly along. "Which house," he snapped.
"Th-there -"
He set about dragging her again, but two more of the undead stumbled out into their path at the last cross-street before the large white-sided house that Marisu had indicated.
Yazoo casually walked up to the late Lieutenant Schaeffer, tilted his head in thought, and then moved around behind the slow creature. It couldn't turn to face him again before Yazoo had taken its head in his hands and twisted it around until the spine snapped.
The creature gave a last vacant moan, its body going limp, before Yazoo let it fall to the ground. It certainly seemed to be... more dead, now. Apparently the brain still controlled the rest of the body in these things.
...Though it wasn't reliant on breathing or having its heart beat for its locomotion. Why would severing the spinal cord -
As if on cue, Lieutenant Schaeffer gave another groan, teeth gnashing.
Taking a barely startled step back, Yazoo drew his gunblade and shot the thing in the head.
Destroying the brain definitely seemed to work better.
Kadaj seemed to have discovered the same thing. Despite Marisu's shrieking, he'd successfully decapitated their opposition and avoided doing the same to the girl. He looked over at his brother, but Yazoo waved him off.
"We'll be along," Yazoo called out easily as Loz caught up to him. Kadaj nodded and headed off in the direction Marisu had indicated without actually waiting for her to follow, sword still drawn, looking about for more undead to slaughter. The girl scurried after him, casting his brothers a frightened look and almost stumbling into Kadaj before facing forward again.
Loz tilted his head, nudging the corpse with a toe. These zombies really were clearly different from him. He was... stopped, almost as though in suspended animation, but for his mobility and hunger and mind. He didn't bleed even though he'd gaping holes in his torso, but Yazoo had seen his wounds gathered since his... death... vanish as soon as he fed. He didn't starve if he didn't feed - just became more and more dangerous, his consciousness bleeding away.
Yazoo was certain that his brother hated losing himself like that. At the very least, he hated watching it happen...
These creatures were different, all wet and oozing and decaying. Lieutenant Schaeffer's clothing was half-shredded and there were entrails hanging from a gaping tear in his side, and the opposite side of his face and neck appeared to have been chewed on. One leg was gnawed down to the bone at the calf as well.
And he'd been alive a few hours ago, according to Marisu... Which meant that these dead arose more quickly than Loz had...
Something brushed clumsily at his hair from behind. Loz simply reached out and grabbed and yanked. There was a wet grating sound, and as Yazoo raised his head, Loz pulled back with a lower arm - twisted off at the elbow - that dripped thick, cold blood.
Yazoo unhurriedly stepped forward, over Lieutenant Schaeffer, and let Loz remove the head of the creature that had gotten close enough to touch him. Loz held up the head in both hands, watching the still-snapping jaws with a clearly disappointed expression, and pressed his hands together until the skull broke beneath the skin and the movement stopped.
His brother patted him on the shoulder. "Let's go see if any of the other living humans are still out here," Yazoo suggested, smiling slightly.
At the far end of the alley, when they heard the screams for help from a zombie-besieged woodshed, Yazoo's smile broadened to a grin.
Yazoo waited until Loz had finished eating before they went to look for Kadaj. Their younger brother was waiting for them on the front porch of one of the larger houses.
"Took you long enough," he called out, perched on the porch railing with Souba lying across his lap. There were five or six more corpses littering the front lawn, none of the undead having made it as far as the porch, and Kadaj had even had time to clean his sword since the last had approached. "You're a mess."
Swift and lithe, Kadaj had easily dispatched his adversaries without ever drawing nearer than the length of his double-bladed sword. Yazoo and Loz, on the other hand, hadn't had the luxury of distance, and were spattered and dripping. Most of the blood was fresh, not the congealed ichor of the undead.
Yazoo only rolled his eyes. Loz made a slight chuckling sound that said he'd happily get even more messy if opportunity presented.
Kadaj grinned and jerked his thumb over his shoulder. "Go on inside and get cleaned up. Guest room with a shower on the second floor. They said we're to stay until morning." He hopped to his feet on the edge of the porch, then jumped over the hedge to stand on the lawn with his brothers. "I get first watch. That girl's annoying. Why are we keeping her alive?" The grin slipped thoughtlessly into a pout (though not as severe as Loz's) as Kadaj fixed his gaze on Yazoo.
Yazoo's response seemed to be a little tired. "Information."
"Uh-huh." Kadaj sheathed his sword and folded his arms. "And why aren't we just torturing it out of her?"
At least Kadaj was asking instead of jumping directly to taking action. That meant that he acknowledged that Yazoo might have some insight to the matter. "She seems to have everyone we've met here so far in her thrall," Yazoo pointed out. "We'll get nothing but trouble if we harm her now."
Kadaj looked away, as though scoping the area for further zombie movement, rather than conceding the point. "Fine, but I'm killing her before we leave. She won't stop pawing at me." He made a face.
Yazoo, all too familiar with overly-attracted humans, twitched. "By all means." He brushed at some of the drying blood on his sleeve. "Second floor, you said? Come on, Loz." He pulled at his elder brother's arm; Loz had been staring at the moon again, and it took him a moment to blink and focus once more, but he nodded to Kadaj and followed Yazoo without a word.
The first-floor windows were all barricaded; only the front door was accessible, and a man with a shotgun opened it when Yazoo and Loz approached. "I'm Roland, Marisu's father," he announced, stepping aside for them to enter - though upon seeing their gory state, he didn't extend a hand in greeting. "I, uh... Thank you gentlemen for protecting my daughter."
Yazoo looked up the stairs, and down the hall to the well-lit kitchen, and finally met the man's eyes. "Upstairs?"
"What?" The man blinked in confusion, before his eyes widened. "Oh! Yeah, end of the hall."
Giving the man a curt nod, Yazoo immediately headed for the stairs. Loz followed, looking over his shoulder to favor Roland with a slightly frightening smile, the light catching the red reflection in his eyes.
Roland shuddered and returned to guarding the front door. Bounty hunters were dangerous business.
The guest bedroom was wallpapered in a bright yellow floral print, with matching golden carpet and bed linens so laden with satin and lace that it seemed impossible that anyone might fit into the bed. At least there were enough pillows visible that it would be easy to extract one and sleep on the floor in relative comfort. He'd even predicted this, he realized, when he'd been thankful for the Inn. He couldn't quite bring himself to laugh about it.
The adjacent bathroom was equally as atrocious. With the bedroom door shut - it didn't lock, Yazoo noted with irritation - he led Loz into the appallingly sunshine-colored washroom and set about cleaning him off.
He reflected, as he wiped the blood from Loz's coat with a damp towel, that this should be a far more entertaining activity. They'd done this sort of thing before - irreparably stained some poor Inn's towels with the remains of whatever they'd killed... and then proceeded to make a mess of the washroom, and gone to sleep for a few hours, together. Happy.
Yazoo tried to stop thinking.
When their clothes were mostly wiped down, they shucked their coats to work at skin instead. Inside, in a well-lit area, the blood around Loz's mouth would be obvious...
Though of course without his repaired coat, there could be no mistaking Loz for alive, with that damage.
Yazoo managed to hold off until he got to Loz's back, rubbing away dried blood that had gotten under his collar and smeared down his shoulder, before he had to close his eyes for a moment. He ducked his head, taking a deep, slow breath.
"'Zoo," Loz murmured, looking over his shoulder.
It took Yazoo two tries before he could speak. "Can't... do this," he muttered. "Can't stand remembering - I mean - I miss you and you're right here..."
He let his hands fall away, unconsciously wringing the stained yellow towel he held, as Loz turned around. His older brother stood close, lay heavy hand on his shoulder, then raised both hands to hold either side of Yazoo's head the same way he'd held the severed but still gnashing head earlier.
Yazoo found himself hoping that Loz would simply crush his skull as well and put an end to this.
Instead, Loz leaned forward a little and touched his cold forehead to his brother's, eyes closed. He made a strangled whimpering sound - he'd be crying if he still had tears.
Yazoo lay his hands on Loz's chest, ignoring the unevenness on the right side. The dead wound wasn't so noticeable if he kept his eyes closed. "Don't cry, Loz," he said with a half-laugh that might've been hysterical if it weren't so bitter.
Loz pulled him a little closer and nuzzled at his hair - without biting - and then stepped back, letting go entirely. The elder kept his strange eyes averted as he stepped around Yazoo. "Wash," he suggested quietly, moving out into the bedroom. "I'll be here."
Yazoo went through all the motions of calmly undressing and starting the shower before sliding to the floor of the shower stall and hiding his face in his hands.
...I swapped this chapter title with that of chapter 5. ¬_¬
Title is from a song by The Horror Pops that I put on last year's Zombie Mix. If more of that group's songs sounded like that, I'd be buying their albums.