Realistic or Modern Hello? Is anyone out there? [Main]

Ejaz watched grimly as Arthur went up to the door and opened it.
No matter how much he mentally prepared himself for it, the sight of one of those creatures still set off a strong sensation of terror inside him, a primal, deadly fear.
Arthur went to town on it, beating it with that trusty old axe he'd used back in the camp, too. That didn't make seeing it being hacked into the thing's flesh any easier.
He felt nauseous, and if his stomach hadn't been so empty, he might even have puked.
"Oh God", he muttered underneath his breath.
Then he felt something heavy hit his leg and he almost screamed, but he held it back when he saw that it was only the dog, running past the group and outside.
He never thought he'd think such a thing, only a dog, but his fear of the animals seemed to pale in comparison to the thing that was actually threatening their lives right now.
Arthur had to hold the animal back and he seemed to be overwhelmed by the creature that was mangled and wounded, but still going on with inhuman strength.
Ejaz looked to the others, not knowing what to do, but next thing he knew, Anna jumped into the battle, which didn't surprise him one bit.
She came at the monster like a madman, landing one brutal attack after the other.
He wanted to look away, but he couldn't take his eyes off of Anna beating that thing to a pulp.
But for some reason nothing she did could make it go down and stay down, it's like it wasn't even bothered by most of the bows she dealt.
Anna seemed overwhelmed and just as Ejaz struggled to will himself to step in and help her out, she took out a gun and shot at it.
The sound of the gunshot being fired in such a close proximity to all of them made his ears ring, the ringing drowning out any other sounds for a few moments.
He was baffled when the bastard just stood back up after being shot in the shoulder. That thing wasn't human anymore, it couldn't be. It was something else, something that couldn't be brought down by even the most lethal of attacks.
Can it even be killed at all?, he asked himself, his stomach turning for the second time in a few minutes. What if it was some sort of superior, invincible being? How could they survive this, then?
His question would be answered shortly after as Erika lunged at the creature and promptly sliced its head off with a machete.
He dropped the weapon in his own hand out of shock at the ghastly scene.
It was like his muscles had gone weak, his knees were soft too, like they were about to give in.
He slowly bended over and picked it back up and then looked back at the creature lying there, headless. It didn't move or get back up. It was over.
Erika stormed outside and into the open field outside the house.
He felt bad for her, he couldn't even take the sight of the monster being killed, he couldn't begin to imagine what it must have felt like to do the deed yourself.
She had saved their lives, but he felt that that wasn't such a great condolence to her right now.
He jogged after her, as fast as he could with his still-hurting wounds, until he reached the spot where she had sat down.
He didn't say anything for a while, he just sat down next to her, looking into the distance into the same direction as her.
The branches of the trees were swaying in a light breeze, birds were chirping.
It was almost like there hadn't been a carnage in the garden of the farmhouse just now, like all was well in the world and there were no monsters that were out for human flesh.
He only shot a couple short glances at her out of the corner of his eye.
"You okay?", he then asked softly, ripping a handful of grass out of the ground and dropping it again.
He felt bad for her, he really did.
But he knew she would get over this eventually. She was strong, both physically and mentally.

Once the dust had settled, Matthew hesitantly made his way from the kitchen to the outside. His heart was jumping out of his chest. It felt almost like one of those cartoons he'd watched as a kid. He didn't want to see the rotter's fate, though part of him was morbidly curious. He swallowed hard as he reached the doorway.

He pushed carefully through the crowd standing by the door, knife still in hand. Something didn't feel right. Well, nothing did anymore really, but Matthew had a horrible feeling about the rotter that had just been slain on the front lawn of this beautiful home. The family who used to live here was probably sad to leave it behind, if they were even still alive. Ugh. Why was he still thinking about it?

He took a deep breath before pressing forward any further. He had to get used to all of this, he reminded himself. The least he could do was brace for it. He stepped outside, jogging over to Ejaz and Erika. Nothing could have prepared him for what came next.

"Hey, is everything-" He stopped mid sentence once he saw the full scene. His blue eyes, dulled by the apocalypse looming over them, widened and his pulse caught in his throat.

A head lay only feet away from his own. Matthew scanned the barely bleeding corpse with his eyes. He refused to believe what he was seeing. His lungs started to rapidly expand and contract in a whirlwind of emotions; fear, grief, shock, all of it. He looked to Erika and Ejaz as if to silently ask for an explanation.

"Scott.." he mumbled. He tore his gaze away from the two and back to his dead friend on the ground. "That's Scott. What the fuck?"

Scott. It was a simple name, really. He could've been anybody to anybody.

That was the calm before the storm that would follow. Matthew's hands curled into fists and he began to shake wildly. Everything pent up was coming out; tears flowed down his cheeks and his breaths were out of control. He was red with a building rage that was bound to explode at any moment.

"What the FUCK?" He repeated, his voice slightly raised. A nervous laugh came crackling from his mouth. He glared harshly at the girl with the machete. If looks could kill, she would be dead, as the old adage goes.

"What did you do to him?" It was almost a primal scream. One that couls only be expected out of an animal. Matthew couldn't think straight in that very moment. His knuckles went stark white with the knife in his hand. He was almost tempted to lunge at her with it. Almost. The severed head aspect of the whole thing likely didn't help.

He looked to Scott's body once more. The whole thing was completely fucked up. A once powerful frontman on the stage was reduced to what looked like the shadow of a human being. He couldn't bear to look at it.

"Why?" He asked simply, voice shaking once more. "Why?"

Despite her dramatic expectations, there was not a horde of ravenous half-rotten cannibals at their door. From the kitchen, where she had a white-knuckled grip on the knife she'd grabbed, every shout and bang accosted her ears. After a couple painfully long seconds, the noise became muffled as the fighting group moved outside. Once the fictional mob of beasts failed to storm the kitchen, Sadie came to her senses. Of course there wasn't so many people there. Thoughts from the cramped quarantine still clung to her with needle-sharp claws, feeding the idea that there was never just one of anybody out there. People moved in gangs. Outside the walls, in the freedom of the world, those unfounded worries could eventually be left behind.

Just as she set down the silver-colored knife, a deafening gunshot pierced the air. Jumping, she tried to think of who might have had a firearm. She didn't remember anyone having one, and firearms were valuable and hard to come by for regular citizens after Bloody Tuesday, and it was strange to think any ordinary person might still have one. Moments later, harsh screams could be heard from outside, where the shot was fired. "What did you do to him? " the voice shrieked. It was unrecognizable, unbearably raw and broken. "Why? " it asked. What had happened? Worried, Sadie rushed through the front room, stepping out of the still-open door.

A gristly sight met her, a human body on the lawn. I looked so, so human. The head had been severed from the body, exposing the dark, red flesh of the neck. Unable to look any longer, Sadie held up a hand to block it from her sight. She was happy to notice that everyone seemed unharmed, though some more shaken than others. Most of all Matthew, who held his body rigid. It looked painful, the way his muscles tensed. She didn't understand what had upset him so much. Originally she thought someone had been shot, but the only one who appeared harmed was the dead rotter on the grass.

To double-check, she glanced back over everybody. Arthur, with Griff at his side, was certainly fine. She noted that his axe had torn into the torso of the corpse, and remained stuck there. Anna, in a powerful stance, held a gun in one hand, and her usual bat in the other. That answered Sadie's question of who fired the gun, at least. Anna didn't seem like the kind of girl to shoot without reason, especially not at a team member. Erika and Ejaz seemed more disturbed, sitting on the grass side by side, looking into the distance. As she'd thought, all was well with every living person in front of the house.

"Matthew, what's wrong?" She called, descending from the wooden porch. A glint hit her eye as the sun's reflection passed over what Matthew held in his hand. A knife. Veins and tendons stood out sharply against his wrist from how tightly he held the little knife.

A gun went off, causing Arthur to jerk in surprise before Erika called out. The bullet missed its intended mark yet Erika’s machete did not. With surprising ease the head came off, rolling across the ground like a grotesque football. Jaw heavy and lolling open, oozing coagulate as its eyes drowsily remained half-lidded. It didn’t move, not anymore. Arthur was almost surprised it hadn’t sat up again. The group fell quiet in those moments, a collective relief perhaps as the body now sprawled itself as if a martyr on the green, overgrown lawns. He released the poor canine from his embrace, Griff returning to his unfamiliar investigation of the infected until the big man sternly sent him off.

Matthew had pushed through the group lingering on the porch to see the corpse, beheaded and brutalised, recognising the pale, splotchy face now staring up from the ground. The boy put a name to it, he knew it. Or the kid it used to be. Still, the drummer’s grief became anger and it was pointed toward the woman who had dispatched the creature. A knife tightly gripped in his hand and a head full of anguish was something that clearly needed to be dealt with before he started launching himself at Erika or worse. It wouldn’t do well to have the group split so early on and it wasn’t going to be a fair fight.

Arthur moved forward, grasping Matthew by the shoulder and tugging the younger man to face him,
“Matthew, please. You know it had to be done, that thing ain’t Scott. We’ll bury him though, huh? Give him a send-off he shoulda gotten. But son, it ain’t Erika’s fault, it was her killin’ him or it woulda killed us.” He arched his brows and looked Matt in the eyes.
“I’ll pray for him, there's nothin’ more we can do. Nothin’ you coulda done. Sometimes we lose people we didn’t expect and it happens real fast, too fast for us to think ‘bout. Nobody is prepared. So we take solace in puttin’ ‘em to rest.”

He never afforded that to his brother. What was it he’d done? Wrapped the bodies in sheets down to the smallest corpses and lain them in the main bedroom. Like the family they used to be. In some strange, human sentimentality he placed the picture album on their still, cotton swaddled chests. Perhaps to remind them in another life, perhaps to remind others what was lost. He didn’t quite know.

There was something inherently tribal about the ceremony one put into the flesh of their kin or close allies. It’d gone on since the dawn of time and it simply felt right. Arthur had lost his faith a long time ago, he’d never been interested in church nor Christ, no heavenly father. Still, it was funny how he sent up prayers in those desperate moments just like every atheist who disproved the man in the sky and still had time to bow their heads. The woodsman wasn’t even sure it was to God anymore. It was to anything that’d listen. So desperate mankind was to be heard, they’d even sent robots beyond the stars.

He blocked Erika from Matthew’s view, doing what was in his power to avoid conflict. They’d pick up shovels, he’d recall a verse from the bible and it would be finished. Their tribal ritual would have been completed, they would weep and soon they would heal -- or they would suffer.

dmgink Seabourne BELIAL. Colorless Spectrum girmu nevermind. PolikShadowbliss

Anna was never much for emotional outbursts. Well, actually that was a lie. She was the goddess of emotional outbursts, she just wasn't one when others had emotional outbursts. So, despite the upheaval of the morning, despite the possibility of near-death at their door, what she wasn't prepared for. What she didn't expect. Was pure, unaduterated pain! Mat was the one that was screaming bloody murder, screaming profanities at the sight of the dead headless body before him, yelling and screaming so much that Anna thought for a moment that he had gone insane. No, though, this couldn't be insanity. It couldn't be. This was grief. That was all this could be.

Anna looked at the corpse, and at Matt, then down at her fired gun and her blood-strained bat. She was going to say something to Matt in an an attempt to calm him down, anything at all when Arthur beat her to it. She stood back and listened as Arthur attempted to calm the griefing man down. And frowned at the mention of prayer. What was prayer going to do now? The man was dead, doubly dead now. Anna wasn't even sure there was a God, or even if there was a fucking afterlife. It sure didn't feel like there was an afterlife. And what would the point be anyway? Everyone is going to be a sinner now. What is God going to do? Send everyone from one hell to another hell? A bit adundant, if you asked her. Then again, no one asked her. She might as well be a mindless thug.

She put the gun away and walked to Erika.

"Come on," she said to her, "let's go before ..... something bad happens." Anna looked from Mat to Erika and didn't like the way he was looking at her, nor the way he was gribbing his knife. Her grip of the bat tightened. She was ready to swing if nessecary, not to kill, but certianly to knock out.

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[/div][div class=statusText]Location: Farmhomeee
Status: sympathetic and terrified
Tags: dmgink [/div][/div][div class=title]Fiona Grace Furlow[/div][div class=text]
Ever looking between the radio and the door, once the others had headed out, Fiona was filled with tiny beads of fear. She felt useless, staying behind and fiddling with the radio. Were she anyone else, she would have flown out with the rest. One of the walkers was out there, and although it appeared to only be one, she still owed it to these people to try and keep them alive. She wasn't as much of a leader as Arthur, nor was she as bold as Erika, but she was damn good at the meticulous stuff. Lithe fingers made for quick work on the radio, her other hand scribbling down what she heard.

She'd learned how to be good with minutia from her years as a photographer. It required a steady hand and a focused grip to focus and turn all the knobs and settings on some cameras. Even in the dark room, there was a certain hand needed in order to print the right photo, and do it well. She didn't mind staying behind to do this, even if the guilt ate her up a bit inside. They needed to move on, and this message on the radio was their only hope.

Once she determined a full message, the blast of gunshots. Fiona jumped in her seat and froze, hoping that that meant that everything was over. She bit her lip, tracing the table with her fingers as she made her way out. She followed after Matt, and opened her mouth to say something, but kept it shut instead. They headed out and were presented with a fairly brutal scene. Gore of viscera were sprinkled on the lawn (though there wasn't much there other than a rolling head), and the rest of their group staring down and breathing hard down at the walker.

"Scott.. " Matt said, and Fiona wrinkled her brows. Did he know this... things? Fiona looked around, trying to search for an answer in the others eyes. Matt began to freak out, quickly, and Fiona's jaw dropped as she watched him scream and stare daggers into Erika. Her heart ached for the kid, and she made a movement to reach out. Arthur and Anna had moved to stand in front of Erika, clearly afraid that Matt would do something.

Fiona's heart was racing when she saw the knife in his hand, but she pushed past her debilitating fear and placed a gentle hand on his shoulder. "Matt. Matt, are you okay? Put the knife down, we'll... we'll talk about it. This... disease is awful, and it's taken your friend... we can only mourn. Please, listen to Arthur." She squeezed his shoulder, hoping he wouldn't lash out with that knife. She wanted to steer him inside and talk about it, because she wanted to be able to share the grief that they all had with each other. Everyone was in this for each other at this point, as there was no point in going solo or attacking. Groups survived and thrived better than being alone. Being alone left you to the demons of your mind... and she wouldn't wish that on even her worst enemy. Matt deserved no less sympathy.

"Come on, please," she whispered.
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"Matthew, what's wrong?"

He heard the former elementary school teacher ask the question, and with that, he only spiraled further. This had to be his worst day since the infection even made its way to the States and ruined everything. He never expected to see Scott again, or anyone else he knew. Let alone see them die within minutes of his arrival. He could've been doing something with that time. He could've made a case for Scott with that time. Or, so he hoped. He had to know deep down that his fellow long haired friend was too far gone.

"What's wrong?" Matthew asked Sadie, a twinge of painful sarcasm lacing his words. He defeatedly gestured to the dead rotter with his hands, a weak sob coming from his throat. "..He was my friend."

His voice was a faint whisper until Arthur came over and saw what was going on. He talked of prayer. Of burial. Of a proper send off. Of the fact that Scott was no longer who he appeared to be. Matthew refused to accept that.

"No. It didn't have to be that way. It didn't have to fucking be that way!" he told Arthur, voice cracking slightly as he spoke. And again, he refused to accept that. One of his best friends was gone and he did nothing to save him, and it was all his fault. His mind was on overload with the feelings of anger and guilt, all bunched into a fucked up marriage with each other that could only end with a release. His breathing picked up more and his pale skin turned red with the rage building up inside. All but his knuckles; his veins popped out of his hands and his knuckles were bone white with the intense grip he held. "Fuck."

Matthew looked down at his feet, refusing to meet Arthur's gaze. He refused to listen to what he was saying.

"Matt, are you okay?"

No, he thought, shaking his head. He didn't say anything. Not a goddamn word. Not yet.

"Put the knife down. Come on, we'll talk about it."

"The time for talking is over." Matthew said in an almost growl, and he looked up at last. The look in his blue eyes was like no other; cold and filled with hatred. He tried to look past the much taller Arthur to meet his gaze with Erika's. He rolled his shoulder away from Fiona's hand just as quickly. He didn't hear the last of her words about how terrible the disease was and how they could only mourn before he sprung into action.

Within a matter of seconds the sprig of a man launched himself forward, trying to shove his way through Arthur's mass and in the direction of Erika, knife still firmly in hand. He worked himself into a frenzy over the events of the past several minutes. He attempted to writhe his way past Arthur and even lunged knife first, and though a stabbing or a grazing at the very least would likely be an accidental complication, it wouldn't be one he came to regret. He was back into the decision making mind set of his doped up days. Just as impulsive and just as inconsiderate of consequences as he was back then. In the moment, he didn't give a single fuck about the group and didn't seem to care that he could seriously hurt somebody.

He was hellbent at avenging the now completely dead, rotting singer at their feet.

She held still, locked into place by her unwilling limbs. Matthew was broken. "What's wrong?" he said, holding his hands to the half-rotten corpse on the grass "..He was my friend." he choked. She crept down from the porch, pity and sympathy pooling in her eyes. A terrible fate, to watch a loved one die. Although, the thing had been dead long before it got here. Its skin was dried and cracked, discolored by pallor and sun. The little blood that seeped from its wound was thick and dark, like syrup. She wondered if Matthew saw its sunken eyes, or the lips that had pulled back over its teeth. Or did his departed friend still look as he had in life to him?

Many consolations were given, hands of support on his shoulder, promises of a burial. She had only taken a handful of steps before Matthew's despair hardened and grew hot. He hung his head and closed himself off, letting the words from those around him fall to the dirt. Sadie watched the red rise in his face, sensing from his outbursts that this couldn't be fixed by gentle words and kind offers. She stopped walking. "The time for talking is over." He growled.

Time slowed down as Matthew lunged, knife in hand. The bodies crowded around him blocked her sight, leaving her unsure of if the knife hit its mark. The grieving boy was unhinged, leaving behind his voice of reason. "Matthew!" She called. In her experience, some fights could be broken if you can manage to interrupt the heat of the moment. Sometimes it works, sometimes not. Nonetheless, in the midst of emerging into a new world without medical care, stab wounds are good to avoid. "Matthew, stop!"