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Post by Eddie "The Mutt" Sillian on Apr 10, 2009 19:39:46 GMT
"If you can keep up, fine with me. Just you carry your own gear and water. 'nd I don't get bitten for anyone." He couldn't hear the dogs anymore, how long had it been, howe much would they have wolfed down? Enough to call them back to him? He sighed before taking the cigarette out of his mouth, stubbing it out carefully and tucking it behind his ear before putting mucky fingers to his lips and whistling. It was so high pitched it throbbed on his ears, most zombies wouldn't be able to hear it, but the dogs could. Time to finish up and follow it said. No doubt they would carry something back with them though. It had bothered him for a while, watching them chew on leg bones while he walked, but they all had to survive somehow. "I dun plan to live long 'ere. I just dun planned to get killed. These kill me then I'll cope." He grinned and walked on. He heard the patter of approaching paws coming behind them fast. "T'ain't safe to be wanderin' anywhere. You got me on the way back from the shops. I've booted a few zombies out of a flat a few blocks north from here. I'm gonna stay the night there." The dogs came right up behind them then walked in front, Jones going on to scout ahead as normal while Malificent stayed at their side, chewing on something that made a sickly grinding noise. "It's not been too busy along here recently. Not many people left so they've moved on. The ones you get are old enough to skirt, or take down quick."
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Liz Burke
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Post by Liz Burke on Apr 10, 2009 19:40:03 GMT
Liz was able to have a small laugh with him about the cigarettes killing him – she’d prefer they killed her too! Rather them than the zombies! But Liz didn’t smoke, maybe she should start! She watched as he finished, or rather left the fag and hid it behind his ear so he could whistle on the dogs. She dreaded them coming up from behind her, she wasn’t looking forward to seeing their blood sloshed chops.
“Don’t say that!” She snapped, she didn’t mean it in a personal or angry way, she just didn’t feel comfortable with the word. Zombie. “They aren’t z –“ She ended her sentence and gave a pause for thought, “- zombies.” The word was too far-fetched for her to even comprehend. She was a doctor, a woman of science and logic. She wasn’t into Bram Stoker and all the silly horror movies – vampires, zombies, werewolves – total garbage.
She was about to go on with her zombie talk when the dogs returned, her gut told her not to look but for some reason she did anyway. Whatever it was made her heave, it turned her – a woman who slices and dices children open to potch with their internals – surgery, and she heaved. She somehow moved forward at a quickened pace and did a rather fancy twirl into Ed’s arm. She held her one hand over her mouth, the other on his shoulder. “Oh God!” She muttered feeling sick.
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Post by Eddie "The Mutt" Sillian on Apr 10, 2009 19:40:12 GMT
"Dun say wha'?" He asked and realized what she was talking about. "Find me a better name for them, until then, they're zombies." He walked along quietly, looking at the satisfied wagging of Jones' tail. The blood on his muzzle said at least they'd eaten well, that was a relief for him. Alert to the dog ahead he turned to Liz to speak onto for her to spin away from the rottie in disgust. He looked at the dog. He hadn't bothered before. She was carrying a mauled hand, chewing the gristle of his knucles. The watch was still on his wrist. Giving a moan he made a noise like "Tsst" Between his teeth and the dog went on ahead, pacing up just behind Jones. Mutt stopped and looked at Liz, not really sure of the correct way to behave in the situation. "You awrigh'?" He asked, a frown on his face as he looked at her, his dark brows knitting together with a feeling of discomfort and misplaced anxiety. It had only just really occurred to him now that she was a woman. He had never been very good with women and this thought was slowly creeping up on him. "Won't make you feel any better, but you get used to it." He said in his slow English drawl, his gruff voice clipped and low in the open alleyway.
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Liz Burke
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Post by Liz Burke on Apr 10, 2009 19:40:50 GMT
She stared for a few seconds at his shoulder, well his coat was covering it, but it was the general area. It wasn’t like she was even looking at his shoulder, she was staring into space. Seeing her former friend’s mauled hand made her feel sick. Disturbing. “Get used to it? Eleven years. I have been operating on children for eleven years. Trust me, I’m used to most things, I’ve seen children come and go, live and die on my operating table with their little eyes flickering as I turn off the machine – I got used to it.” She stared up at him, her green eyes meeting his. “This - that hand in your damned dog’s mouth, that I won’t ever, ever, get used to!”
Hearing his whistle, or tut at the dog made her look, this time she caught the back end of the dog, and not the mauled hand of James. “Son of a –“ She muttered, under her breath. Out of fidgeting or nerves, she didn’t know what it was, but she begun to potch with her hair pin, twirling it around to the left to tighten it. Not that it mattered, her hair was dirty, knotty and broken, but she had to do something with it.
"Where did you get them?” She asked quietly, it was just a question to pass the time, to take her mind off the mauled hand. “The dogs.”
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Post by Eddie "The Mutt" Sillian on Apr 10, 2009 19:40:56 GMT
He listened, simply standing there and looking now, not at her but at the wall of a building feeling nervy that they were standing still, not that he would say it, not yet. "Well, if you've killed by accident or no', a child, this is no worse. He was worse th'n dead." Ed gritted his teeth feeling the sharp edges rasp together. The worst of it was, even while he knew his dog was chewing on a human hand no more than a few meters ahead, he was hungry. He wanted to get back and open one of the cans he'd grabbed and eat. He was scranny by all accounts. "After watchin' people you work with turnin' and bitin' off the face of their best friend, that's nothin'." He muttered. He had seen gruesome things in the last few days, enough to turn his stomach but he was alive and he wasn't gonna let it ruin his day. He watched the dogs trot away and sit together, waiting for the humans, Jones making a playful lunge for the hand and the pair of them tugging at it and growling. That wasn't going to help her. He made a snarling noise, not deep in his throat but lighter, just at the back. Short and sharp it was an obvious warning. The two dogs dropped the hand and looked at him, the ears of the Shepherd lying down a little. He didn't like being told off. Mal picked up the hand and arm again and lay down to finish it, allowing her compadre to share this time. "They're mine, well... I nicked 'em. Trained 'em from pups. I'm in the dog section, well I was in the dog section. Now I'm just a bloke wandering around with a couple of dogs." He rolled his eyes. "Had 'em a few years now 'n they've always looked after me." He grinned at the pair of them, a look of compassion in his eye that just wasn't there on regular days. "Not easy buggers to train, I'll tell ya that." He loosened a button on the cuff of his sleeve and drew the arm up showing his bare forearm. Where there should have been light brown hair there was a network of bites, slashes and cuts, all scars, all healed over long ago. His arm would probably have looked better if it had been through a mincer. It was obvious these couldn't have been the only two dogs he's trained, and not the only ones he'd fought either.
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Liz Burke
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Post by Liz Burke on Apr 10, 2009 19:41:34 GMT
Liz thought back to her very first procedure on the operating table with a little boy, Joey. He was no older than 6, she recalled. He had leukemia and she had to give him a bone marrow transplant. It was her first ever procedure, it hadn’t been a success. Liz had informed the parents about the risks, the boy was too weak to be operated on. But they wanted her to press on. Out of their selfish act of haste the child had died. Although she could get close to the children, Liz never got too close, she knew her limits. Liz never got attached, and never used the word ‘promise’.
“My husband.” She mumbled trying to find the right words. “He became – infected.” She took a long deep breath, this was hard to talk about, she didn’t know Ed from Adam, so it was hard. “He – became infected and killed my boys, twins.” But she didn’t know that the two had perished for fact, Callum’s body was in the house, but Michael’s had gone. “I think.” She finally added.
Water formed around her eyes. The thought of seeing Callum’s body sprawled around the house made her sick, the blood; she could imagine his yelps and screams. She could imagine the pleas for his mother, shouting out for her as his father ripped into him. “I don’t know where Michael is.” Liz knew what she was talking about, but she hadn’t mentioned who Michael was to Ed. “But he’s still alive.”
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Post by Eddie "The Mutt" Sillian on Apr 10, 2009 19:41:37 GMT
Come on, we can't stay 'ere." He said gruffly, and made a nod to move on, still listening to her as she spoke. "You've seen 'em, you know what they're like. Dun hold back, they ain't people no more." He could say anything relating to her children, he was a cynisist and knew the likelihood of finding the kid, even if he was alive, was next to zero. Human's weren't made well for finding each other, dogs were different. They would howl and could hear each other, they could mark where they had gone and they'd smell each other and they seemed to instinctively know where the pack was. Humans were made to be alone compared to those standards. "You know best..." Was his only answer. Of course the boy wasn't alive... he was probably in his father's rotting belly. But he couldn't say that, he wasn't that cruel. He couldn't give her false hope, that would be cruel, but was it as cruel as making her survive without any hope at all. He'd never really cared about many people, but he had lost someone... he had lost his woman. She wasn't wonderful or particularly beautiful or all too kind or amazing in any way, but they had worked well together and she had understood him. When she died, well, it was a loss but he picked himself up and moved on. Besides, he'd given her the best he could, the chance to lie in peace. Shot and burned. Once she got the bite there was no hope, he knew that. Kinder to kill her before she became that vague empty monster, he knew there was no hope, she hadn't. She had refused to let go of him, even while she started to change. He'd burned her body at least, for two reasons really, one to make sure she wouldn't come back and two, to keep her from feeding anything else. His flat had gone up in flames with her. He knew loss, but not like this woman it seemed. She really was hurting, and she was in denial. He couldn't give her the hard slap of a wake up call that he had taken himself, no, too cruel. "Look, I ain't gunna promise nothin' but if ya got somethin' o' 'is, well dependin' on the weather an' all tha'... the dogs might sniff 'im out." If he got away. Likely the only thing they would come across is a rotting zombie wandering around whichever suburb they had started in. "Not promisin' they can, not promisin' they'll find anythin' but if I'm headin' near there soon, an' you're still taggin' along, well, I'll send 'em in for a look about." He muttered, more to the floor than to her. He looked up at his dogs, his best friends. He wouldn't risk them, not if he could help it but it could be useful having a doctor, and keeping her sweet would be a good idea. Besides, finding a kid was the perfect way to keep her around, if she thought she needed help...
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Liz Burke
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Post by Liz Burke on Apr 10, 2009 19:42:03 GMT
Liz smiled. She would find Michael, call it woman’s instinct, or ‘mother knows best’, but she knew for sure he was alive. She could feel it. But even though she was determined to find Mikey, she had her doubts. The doubt came from seeing her other son’s mauled body. The promises from Ed didn’t fill her with that much hope, she didn’t expect it would.
Liz wasn’t too keen on the idea of wandering the streets right now, especially with the smell of blood on her, there were still traces on her hands on some on her blouse – but it had to be expected she had just performed minor surgery! With James, they travelled in the night, keeping quiet and keeping still when the ‘walkers’ were around. It seemed logical, but whether they could see in the dark or not was to be found out. She had assumed they were like humans, but in their very basic form.
From her observations of them, which was very little so far, and only noted in her rugged journal, but she could see that they were very much human like, returning to their very basic instincts, hunger. They fed. They didn’t kill for sport or for no reason, they killed to feed. “What do you know about them, the – zombies.”
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Post by Eddie "The Mutt" Sillian on Apr 10, 2009 19:42:07 GMT
Her silence was enough to know that she didn't hold much hope for the lad. Well, at least she was realistic. He walked on, watching his dogs and realizing they they had consumed the rest of the mangled hand. A bone lay a little way away, chewed and cracked. Mal's huge, powerful jaws had splintered it to get the marrow. A scent wafted through the air, that often came in the city, decaying flesh. The dogs showed no sign of alarm and they were bound to have smelled it already, it must just be decomposing normally. A normal corpse. "Hah." The laugh slipped out, it was a relief to come across the smell of decay that didn't relate to something running after you. That was one of the worst things with them, they stank, and he with his very good noise happened to smell them awfully. "I know they stink, older ones shuffle, can't run I don't think..." He paused and ran a grimy hand across his pale face feeling the slight stubble that had grown. He hadn't been paying attention lately. Not that it mattered to him. "They can't smell well, I dun think anyway. But they've got good hearin', the fresh ones 'n they can see as well as we can." Well, probably better than he could, he had slight tunnel vision in one eye. Probably one of the reasons he was a shit shot. He had to close it to get a decent aim. "They eat anythin' dead an' anythin' they can catch alive. Whatever they got, it dun affect animals. Or at least not my dogs." That had worried him so much, but after they helped themselves to the dead flesh, he sat watching them for hours, gun trained waiting for them to turn. When nothing had happened, well he assumed himself safe and didn't stop them. "They hang around together too." The way he pronounced together was odd, it didn't really match the rest of his accent, and it certainly wasn't American. Sounded more like tuh-gevvaar, suddenly a lot of emphasis on the fact his th-es were odd. Sometimes it wasn't as obvious but this seemed to be a work he had trouble with.
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Liz Burke
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Post by Liz Burke on Apr 10, 2009 19:42:40 GMT
Liz took a mental note of the bits he had learned about the ‘walkers’. She still didn’t want to call them zombies really, it was too commercialised, and it was a movie term. “Well, from what I could see, I mean with James after they bit him,” she had set her mind in place that he would turn eventually, but she would let him live until that time, then she would put him out of his misery, “was that it seemed to work in the blood. It slowed the organs down.” She couldn’t be sure without studying one of them up close, and that she really didn’t fancy.
“Have you been walking around alone – dogs aside.” She didn’t want to talk about the walkers right now, it was killing her mood, and she just wanted to have a normal conversation again. She wanted to know if there were others, if she was going to be safe. “I’ve seen small convoys of people, if you can call them convoys, they seem to be mounting up and acting as a small dictatorship. One leads, the others follow... and scavenge.” Civilisation around Williamsburg had taken a jolt back in history, it was a past history set up. One leader, the others struggling to find food for the group, other finding weapons, others providing other things that may have been needed. It was like the stoneage all over again.
“There was four of us.” She recalled, taking a quick glance at Ed. “James, myself and a couple.” She couldn’t remember the man’s name, but she recalled the woman’s name was Jess. “Jess and –“ She thought. “Andrew I think it was.” Her tone softened.”They – they didn’t make it.”
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Post by Eddie "The Mutt" Sillian on Apr 10, 2009 19:42:52 GMT
"For all I know it could be the fuckin' devil..." He scratched his chin making a slight rasping noise. "I'll trust you." He watched the bobbing of the dogs, occasionally snapping or snorting at one another, more for reassurance from the other than anything else. The dogs were just as close to each other as to him, but they happened to be equals in the pack. Technically Mal should be alpha female but lacking any other female, she was content to be beta for now. It didn't bother her. "I've met others. Never stick too long." He failed to mention that some of them had been killed and others, well others just weren't around anymore. Zombies and what not, of course. "People are... stupid out 'ere, take stupid risks. Not worth stickin' with." He grabbed the canteen of water and took another drink, making sure to leave some just in case. There was another one in his pack, but he wanted to keep that for the dogs. "Four, three down, just you left... damn shame. 'appens a lot. Seen a lot of people lost like tha'." He trudged along, seeing the street widen ahead of them, not too far and they would be back in the mass of parked cars and corpses.
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Liz Burke
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Post by Liz Burke on Apr 10, 2009 20:03:33 GMT
Liz watched as he took another drink of water, it reminded her about the medical supplies in her backpack. “The clinic. Have you been there yet? Is it open now?” The last time she had tried to get in it was all locked up, there was no getting in there for neither love nor money. The place had been completely shut down, which she thought was very strange anyway; she didn’t understand why such a building would lock down in such a fortified way. “It was locked, or fortified when we tried last.” She didn’t really know if she wanted to go back there or not.
Liz watched the dogs. They were quite spectacular, very beautiful and very proud. It didn’t take a vet to know that they were very well looked after. “How do you kill them? The z –“ She paused. “Them.” She added with a smirk, she didn’t want to use the ‘z’ word.
James used to shoot them, or club them to death with Liz’s husband’s baseball bat. Always the head. She didn’t actually know if this was for a reason or the most convenient place to try and kill them – they never got back up anyway.
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Post by Eddie "The Mutt" Sillian on Apr 10, 2009 20:27:02 GMT
He tapped a dirty finger on his other arm, considering the likelyhood of the clinic being open. “I ain’t been there. People say it’s barred so I ain’t bothered yet.” He hadn’t really had much need of supplied. Besides, he had found them on the bodies of some people who had tried already. He wasn’t mad enough to risk his own neck.
“I dun think it’s an option. Prob’ly empty anyways.” It wasn’t like they would treat the sick, he wouldn’t, he would have stock piled it all and kept it out of the way of other people, he would probably need it, or he could have sold it on.
“I try not to get close if I dun ‘ave to. If I get cornered the dogs distract ‘em. If they’re shufflers they’ll finish ‘em off but if not I shoot ‘em, wherever I can ‘it. Preferably the ‘ead.” He spun the gun around his fingers casually and grinned. “Break a leg and they ‘obble but they keep comin’. Give ya time to get away.” He grinned at her refraining from using the word zombie.
“The dogs is useful, they trained to kill people, zombie’s ain’t much different. If they can’t kill ‘em, they pin ‘em.”
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Liz Burke
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Post by Liz Burke on Apr 10, 2009 21:58:16 GMT
Liz thought hard about the clinic, why was it so fortified? What was hiding in that place? Hiding! Exactly that was it! Maybe there were survivors there that had barred themselves in to keep safe! There would plenty of medical supplies there for emergencies, it was perfect. But was it worth the risk for them to go there?
“They return to their most primal instinct in human form. Feeding. It’s the only thing they know. They need to feed to survive; it’s our basic instinct – like your dogs.” She glanced at the dogs, “they know they had to feed to live, if not – they die.” It was easy to work out, but she just couldn’t understand the process of being infected or what the infection was.
“When you get bitten you still remain active, but your body seems to shut down bit by bit.” She thought back to James. “He got tired, felt sick – he wasn’t himself. The light affected his eyes,” She paused, “then he fell – that’s when you found us.”
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Post by Eddie "The Mutt" Sillian on Apr 10, 2009 22:07:39 GMT
“Bah.” He looked almost offended, his face hard for a moment before it softened. She didn’t know any better, she couldn’t. It wasn’t her fault. “My dogs ain’t nothin’ like ‘em. My dogs is different.” He said it like a snarl and sped up enough to put his hand on the back of Jones, feeling the thick warm fur of the Shepherd. He dog looked back and made the smallest of greetings, wagging his tail before looking ahead again, returning to he duty. He knew he had to remain responsible.
“You dun know much about animals do ya?” He said, still staring at his dogs companionably. “They would rather starve ‘en kill each other, rather die ‘en let their alpha down. It’s the group that matters, not the singular.” He sighed. “Opposite to us.” He ran his fingers through his hair again, spitting out the dog end of the fag that had been hanging from his lips.
It barely smouldered before going out, nothing left of it.
“When they get old, then dun even look for food anymore. They just stand, reaching out to anythin’ that comes close to eat it, but they dun even bother to look.” He slowed down again and dropped back to his pace beside Liz, his easy rolling gait easy to keep up for hours, even with the pack, even if it did make him look like a stray dog that had been kicked more than a few times when it was down.
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