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University of Colorado, Colorado Springs
Topic Started: May 2 2016, 10:36 PM (278 Views)
Cambrysiel
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Once stood tall and victorious in its numerous scholar awards and football trophies, the school is nothing more now than a place to stop for food and warmth.

A group of old students have created a barricade of rubble and furniture around the main building and have a camp set up there. If you approach with your hands up and ask nicely, they may just let you join them.

campus map
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FeelsGoodMan

A huff, and a puff--Stan felt like he was going to blow the damn hall down. He wished he could blow the dorm down, but the apocalypse had made short work of that. It was full of corpses--walking and otherwise. Well, the stockpile he had amassed within his room over the years wouldn't be that hard to reach, but it was not something he could do alone; alone he was. But it had been some time since he had last slept. Bags under his eyes, severe. Would have to think about lost treasure sometime later.

He reached his locker, not offering greetings to the late-night guards (he had been offered none either). Slipped the contents of the satchel into the nooks and crannies of the vertical chest, save for the blanket which he had packed within (it eased the moving around of his pistol within, preventing too much noise from being mad). Curled up into a ball and spread it over himself. Empty-armed--that was always uncomfortable and kept him awake for longer than he would've liked, but eventually the drowsiness drowned him in overbearing slumber.

That bitch.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Morning came, and with it, the morning rituals and rites. The dirty, brownish rag (it was previously a virgin white, not too many shades from Stanislaw's tone) appeared and, with a hearty paste of Cosmoline lathered upon it, set about the SKS in fluid motions, mostly over the wooden stock and furnishing. The wood would never go to rot as long as he kept his piety and devotion to the act, the acrid stench of the perfect preservative his own reward for work. A dissassemblement shortly afterwards, but it was simple, as the SKS was, in its design, a peasant's weapon. Only the barrel needed removing--the action was to be cleaned twice a week, not today. Cleaning the rifle was cleansing--one of the only forms of cleansing he still had. Continued cleaning his rifle for some time, ignoring the somewhat-condescending looks of passerby heading out for early morning post-changes and scavenging runs. But the looks were not of condescension--there was something to be admired in his dedication. They were motivated by the disgustingly rancid odor, redolent of thick, jellied petroleum.
Edited by Cambrysiel, May 16 2016, 08:17 PM.
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Cambrysiel
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That night, like most Beth sleeps restlessy. She tosses and turns on her cot, and more than once wakes screaming for somebody named Elliot. Nobody ever asked her who Elliot was - if they didn't remember, they just knew.
_______________________________________

Did she really have to get out of bed? She really should rest. People would want her to rest. She'd only just gotten back, after all, and the gash on her head was still red and heavily bruised - not to mention the afflicted skin along her forearm, now raw and angry and stuck to the sweater she'd used to stifle the crimson flow. Bethany begins the aftercare process...

... and emerges from the tent just before noon, looking clean and refreshed. A garnet turtleneck had been thrown over her t-shirt. Skin-tight, dark-grey pants adorn her legs, her thick thighs and muscular calves showing through without meaning. Her white sneakers sat at her feet, they worn and long-since needing replacement. Her hair, usually tied up, had been left down, the beach-like waves offering Beth some security as a curtain to the world around her. She'd even dotted on a faint red lip and tinge of blush, if only to make herself feel better.

After zipping up her tent, Bethany turns and surveys the nearby crowds. In the courtyard the younger members were gathered, running around and laughing like the world wasn't crumbling around them. Near the outside eating area, to her right, the older members of the group - ex teachers and parents, mostly - sat discussing the barricade re-build and ration distribution. A few children run around. Bethany takes a moment for herself, thinks happy thoughts:

The bright yellow of a sunflower as it rustles in the breeze. Making faces in the mirror as you pass by. 99 red balloons drifting into a clear sky. The first laugh of a newborn baby. Finding unbroken shells along the shoreline of the beach.

With a smile plastered at her lips Bethany descends from the hill where her tent was located. She reports in for morning rations and tucks her food - a bag of beef jerky, a banana, and a half-filled water bottle. She needed to get another group together, and soon. Maybe it was time for her to move on...

No, she couldn't. These people were her family, now. Beth, 'clocking in' for the day, begins passing out jackets and blankets to those sat outside. Occasionally, she engages in idle chit chat with the other students, but remains oddly quiet otherwise.
Edited by Cambrysiel, May 16 2016, 08:16 PM.
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FeelsGoodMan

Charity was one low he would not abide, but that did not stop him from witnessing the numerous exchanges. Stanislaw had it within his mind that surely, among the lesser-equipped students, there would be one desperate soul willing enough to follow him to the overrun dorm, to risk life and limb for loot. But they seemed contented with the jackets and blankets and whatnot--Stanislaw could not bring himself to approach them. So he leaned against a wall, watching the rations being passed about, his SKS hanging idly from one shoulder while his satchel rests beneath the other.

Once finished with his daily rounds, Stanislaw made it a point to do several rounds about the campus--not out of any sense of duty towards the common defense, but more out of...scouting work. Yes, scouting. Recruits. An eternally fruitless endeavor. The weak-minded were in short supply in the outbreak.

Faint gunshots from a short while away. Barricade work, no doubt--though a minuscule hush fell over the thronging mass. But it was business as usual, and the crowd quickly turned back to their incessant squabbling. At this point, Stanislaw shifted his gaze over the crowd, blatantly searching--his narrowed eye-slits indicated so--for someone. Found her. In the thick of it, as usual. Bet that filled her ego quite a bit--the narcissist. He locked onto her for some time before kicking off the wall and, with a brisk, purposeful stride (an unusual event for him--when it happened, there was a plot), heading to the direction of the barricades by the infested dorms. His own food stockpiles were low, and he would not deign to those damn handouts. If he could just make it in...
Edited by Cambrysiel, May 16 2016, 08:16 PM.
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Cambrysiel
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The gunshots catch her attention immediately. Bethany's head snaps to the side once they echo through the air, and though someone grabs her hand to inquire about the sound, Beth doesn't register and takes on a brisk pace in the direction of the gunfire. Her own gun, a semi-worn AR15 with an improvised sling made out of old seatbelts, bounces against her side - and then her back - as she begins to run.

Gunshots echo down the street. Down the street. Down in front of you. You saw the pink mist fly out of his head. They've just killed your lover. They're coming for you next. Blood glides between the stones in the street unforgivably. The stains are still there today. You cry, you cry, you crybaby. He wasn't important, you didn't love him, NOT REALLY!
____

It's a good ten minute jog from the camp to the infested dormitories and west barricades. Upon approach Bethany picks up a large rock and chucks it towards the upper floors of the dormitories. A window crackles, then shatters, and the afflicted corpses shuffling near the barricade now turn their attention towards her.

She raises the gun, presses the end of it into the hollow of her shoulder. Her cheek finds the buttstock of the rifle, one hand curls around the pistol grip and trigger and the other, the vertical grip. She inhales deeply and lines up the first shot with the head of the closest goon.

Pop.

Bethany is no stranger to recoil. She takes it well and advances as the first corpse drops. Takes note of which direction the shell flew.

Pop. Pop. Pop.
Every shot seems to echo louder than the last.

With every shot she leans forwards on her left leg, ensuring as much stability as she could while simultaneously walking and shooting.

With the first four corpses dropped, Bethany releases the magazine and checks it. She still had a good amount of rounds left, so the clip is slid back in and she smacks the bottom, eliciting a click from within. She gun raises again --
-- there! Movement, to the right, beside the building.

Bethany swings the muzzle of the gun to her right, lining up a shot with the moving figure and firing!

POP.

The shot misses. Ricochets off of a slab of concrete and disappears over the barricade. Bethany peeks through the aim again... and lowers the gun. Because there stood Stanislaw, wide-eyed and pale in the face, and Bethany had almost shot him. He ducks into the infested dorm and Beth chases after him, both to apologize, and to try and get him out of there. He didn't know, he didn't know how bad it was. This is where it happened. Beth draws in a deep breath and follows him in.
Edited by Cambrysiel, May 16 2016, 08:16 PM.
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FeelsGoodMan

Stanislaw's ears were not filled with pops—cracks, fizzles, plumes of dust. They were not reassuring noises, as they might've appeared to Bethany (Stanislaw judged that, whomever the shooter was, they enjoyed the sound by their liberal dosage of lead), but rather a harsh. Oppressive. Cold, they would certainly not cease even if Stanislaw begged, pleaded. Bandits, this close to the campus? Dared they? Oh, Lord.

It was by luck—perhaps a divine favor—that Stanislaw remained unharmed. Flinched, he had, bittering the victory of his survival, but it was a victory nonetheless—one he could savor, as time seemed to dilate before his very eyes. Upon opening said eyes, shot a gaze directly before him. Wished he hadn't. The possibility that she might take action against him had never occurred. But here he was, his SKS not in any position to return fire: he had been walking around the shambling corpses, keeping them at a distance while luring them away from the double-doors, which he would then sprint to. All of it had been planned! How he would gather the supplies, escape, the like...

She shot the plan to pieces.

Stanislaw saw it lay before him, the bits and scraps. He wanted to scoop them all up into a single coherent part before him—the notion would be just as futile, like piecing together shattered glass. The desire was overwhelming his senses and nerves and ENRICHING! that his subconscious—that hardened veteran that won Stan a thousand battles—was forced to ensure self-survival. Left leg first, right second—a mad scramble, devoid of grace, powered by instinct, up, up, up the stairs.

Too high was he to notice what would've surprised him most. The guest stood there, ghostlike in his countenance. The only thing that grounded the reality of the scenario was the gun. Stanislaw was too panicked for flight, and so he did as he was told instead of rebuking the man (as would be proper). They were to await the arrival of the girl before fate and the harsh lot of life was to be decided.
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Cambrysiel
Administrator
Oh no. Oh no, ohno, ohnoohnoohnoohno no no no.

Bethany has made a profound mistake.
... But then Stanislaw was gone. Up, up, up into the building, where the risen corpses shambled aimlessly, their rotten fingernails scraping at the usually barricaded doors.

Beth takes a moment to brisk down each corpse and assure that they dead 'for realsies', she smacks the butt of her rifle into each one before dipping her hands into their pockets. Any wallets were shoved into her back pocket. Money was worthless, now. Credit cards did nothing more than open poorly locked doors. What Bethany wanted were the ID's and photographs. They served as conduits for memories, a passing glance into each persons life, and Bethany had long since made a game out of it.

Not now, though. Now, she has to go find Stanislaw, and apologize, and get him out of the building before anything bad happened. Four floors to search, each with approximately twenty-two rooms, all doubles...

"Fuck."

One foot after the other, after the other, after the other. She's inside the building, the butt of her gun is pressed against her hip and she's flickered the flashlight on. The bottom floor is... lonely. Her footsteps echo against the wooden floor, drawing weak moans from within locked rooms. The first story is empty. All of the rooms had long since been locked. If the corpses inside weren't double-dead already, famine or pestilence would take them soon.

The second floor is more eerie than the first. The lights flicker and broken windows allow wind to whistle through the corridor. Beth takes it one step at a time, her footfall light and nearly-silent, her trembling hands tight around the grips of her gun.

Beth yelps when her foot shatters a large piece of glass and immediately regrets it. Two bodies stumble into the hall, their heads turn, what were once considered noses take in the surrounding air and they listen for movement. These were the oldest ones. Newer corpses ran, crazed, the virus causing hysteria. Older bodies grew fungus, became blind, and relied on some sort of echolocation to navigate.

Bethany remains a b s o l u t e l y s t i l l (save for the hand that clasps over her mouth to stifle her breathing). She waits... waits for - something. Anything. If she moved, they'd come after her. If she tried to shoot one, she'd likely miss, and they'd both be upon her again. Oh, what was a girl to do?

Luckily, Beth wasn't a damsel in distress. She didn't need anybody to save her -- not in this sense, anyways. Slowly, and carefully, as to not cause much noise, she squats down to the floor and wraps her fingers around one of the larger glass shards that'd broken off of the panel she stepped on. The same amount of caution and discipline is practiced as she stands, and reels her arm back...

The glass flies through the air. The creatures just barely have time to look at her, to register the whoosh of her moving arm, before the glass flies into a wall behind them and shatters. Their heads snap towards it and while they shuffle over to investigate, Bethany backs into the stairwell.

With the doors shut behind her, she was safe. For now. She jogs up to the third floor and prepares to see more shamblers lurking in the halls...

Surprisingly, what she comes across is a coterie of three men. Teachers! At least, two of them were. And their new point of interest? Bethany.

She only has time to shoot the first man before the other two rush at her, overtake her. One grabs and twists her wrist behind her, the other yanks the gun from around her body and lobs it across the hall. Beth tried to scream, oh god, she tried, but the bigger brute wrapped his sweaty palm over her mouth and nose and try as she might, her kicking and writhing only did so much against the two much larger men.

They tow her into a vacant dormitory and throw her onto the bed. Her head hits the wall and for a moment, the world around her grows fuzzy. She groans, and is greeted by a swift kick to her back that makes her roll off of the bed, instinctively trying to get away. She crawls, claws for the door, but one of them was upon her now, tearing at her sweater, laughing about the blood that coated her shirt, 'tough girl, this one!'. The one that wasn't sitting on her tried to smother her again, but Bethany is quick to react. She grinds her teeth into the web of his hand until blood spurts out and coats her mouth, inside and out. She can feel chunks of flesh come loose as he tears his hand away. She's smacked, hard enough to see stars, and goes limp. She couldn't fight them, she couldn't fight them, she couldn't fight back --

"Holy shit! She's fucking infected!"

The bigger swine rolls off of her and clambers away, presumably for a gun or a knife or - anything, to kill this little girl with the bite on her ribs. The bite that was not bloody, nor red and raw. It was just there. Existing, like she.

She's on her feet before she registers that they'd yanked her sweater, shirt, and bra off. Out into the hallway, her feet sinking into the broken glass so hard that the shards embed themselves in the bottom of her shoes. The pair are shocked, they don't chase her - not right away. She has time to grab her gun. She has to find it - fuck, where was it?!

Too late. The smaller man catches up with her, grabs her wrist and yanks her back. Beth uses the momentum to swing her foot at his crotch. Poor bastard wasn't wearing a cup; he crumples to the ground with a groan. Beth grabs a fistful of hair and smashsmashSMASHES his head against the wall as hard as she's physically able. Beats the skull into the wall until she's sobbing and he's a bloody, pulpy mess and Bethany has done this a few times before, you can tell because she knows just what part of his face to introduce to the wall over and over and overandoverandover.

The deed is done. She drops the man, her hand is coated in his blood, her fingers smear it across her face as she wipes her tears away. She picks up her gun by the strap and lugs it up into her hands, hisbloodhisbloodhisblood coats the grip and trigger as she pivots around to face his consort, who is staring at the pair with wide eyes of shock and fear. Beth is apathetic as she fires a single round into his torso; she has to be. POP. He stumbles back, back into the wall, slides down the wall into a heap of something once respectable. His eyes and mouth stuck in an expression of shock until the last lights faded out.

More footfall, coming down from the fourth floor. Bethany swivels to meet the new arrivals with the muzzle of her gun. She waits, finger tickling the trigger...
Edited by Cambrysiel, May 16 2016, 10:24 PM.
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FeelsGoodMan

...to be confronted by a strange man, who leans in the doorway. As far as one can tell, he is unarmed—but that means nothing of what he could be concealing beneath that jacket. Hell, might even be hiding something beneath the ushanka atop his dome. No large bulges on his person, however. His gaze does not appear to rest upon the indecently-exposed sections of her torso (that is, to say, all of it). Uninterested, probably. Instead, the Hispanic male—probably no more than 20, if even that—beckons Bethany with two intertwined fingers (“cross your fingers that it'll work”). A light, nigh-melodious voice (cherubic—a contrast with the acne scars running along his lower jaw) slipping into her ears. “Are you a friend of Kazik's? You'd do best to see him, then.” The voice pierces through the now-howling wind, over the occasional *Titter-Tatter* of light debris tapping the windows of the dimly-lit hallways. The snow has picked up. He slightly adjusts his position within the doorway, indicating the direction which he wished for her to come.

A veritable Kaa!
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Cambrysiel
Administrator
A warning shot follows his arrival, a bullet lodging itself into the decaying wood of the doorway by which he stood. She's careful to keep the verboten mark covered with her arm. Silent as she'd even been, she slowly side-steps towards the dorm room that the molestation had almost taken place. Darts in. Grabs her things. Darts out, her tank top and sweater thrown on again, both hanging loosely off of her malnourished form.

Stanislaw. Bethany plants her foot into the ground and her expression becomes volatile. In that moment she's an earthquake rumbling cities, a tsunami ravaging the coast, the tornado that threw Dorothy into Oz.

POP.

The sound echos off of the walls. The young girl hears a ringing and her ears that she pays little mind to. The mystery man crumpled to the floor and Bethany sprints into the room. She throws on her top, just her t-shirt, wastes no time with the sweater. She runs past the man into the stairwell and begins to shout.

"STAN!" Her voice is laced with concern.
"STAN, CALL OUT." She's watching them shoot her lover again, not again, notagain!
"Fuck, WHERE ARE YOU?" Fear, imminent. Death, approaching.

She forces her way into the forth floor, gun raised high and ready to fire. Her gaze darts for movement, ears perked, listening for what she presumed would be a cry for help.
Edited by Cambrysiel, May 17 2016, 03:57 PM.
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FeelsGoodMan

The bullet lodged itself within Stanislaw's mind and Viktor's heart. A death reverberated between the two, severing a bond not formed often. Stanislaw's diary had weakened it—took a machete to the thread and nigh-tore it. But it was still there. Bethany had been the executioner.

Stan's selective thought process registered two simultaneous occurrences: the gunshot, and Bethany's calling. He was in neither position to react to either. He himself was stripped, gagged, and bound to the couch, regretting what he had once wrote (and regretting allowing Leonard to purchase rope—always had a vague premonition about its use). And it was cold, oh, was it cold—snow crept in through the open window of his former dorm. Goosebumps, all over his skin, and he shivered like a soggy cat. But, between Beth and the bullet, he would not have reacted to the screams. He would've called out for Viktor—a bond between the commander and the soldat that, even in their new iniquity, mattered much—if he could. Could, he could not, but tried.

“Mrmphgh! Mrrrr, Mrphmrr!” wriggled about. Screamed through the rags, at the top of his lungs. Resooooooooooooooounded along the hallways—the door was open. Locating him would still not be an easy task. Perhaps everything would work out and he wouldn't wait until the heat death of the universe—that is, to say, himself.

Viktor's heart pumped the last bits of his non-coagulated blood through the open, gaping wound. The bullet has spiraled through his torso, tearing apart two of the four chambers of the heart. The cold became only so much colder.
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Cambrysiel
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The creaking silence of age echoes through the streets, sounds like old wooden floors under heavy feet. All of the children once running around have evacuated or maybe they’ve just disappeared.

The spoken word plays like a busted record on repeat in Bethany's mind as she pussyfoots through the doorway and into the fourth floor. Her steps crackle, glass and rocks and disease broken underfoot. No idea, she had no idea what she had done...

"Stan?" She calls out again, quieter this time. Her tip-toes become full-fledged steps as she moves from doorway to doorway, peering into empty dormitories. There was so much supplies here, tucked away, going to waste --- NO! She had to focus. Had to find her friend.

Then - there. A cry, muffled, coming from.. somewhere. The sound reverberated off of the walls, making it hard for Bethany to pinpoint his (hopefully his, and not some lurkers) location. So Bethany begins to jog, quickly glancing in and out of the abandoned bedrooms, shining her light -- there! On the wall. A whiteboard, three faint green names long-since made permanent on the surface. Beth swings around the corner, into the room, gun aimed inwards (though her hands and arms now shook from the cold, too, her sweater discarded in the classroom.)

"H'ohmygod."

Her gun falls, clatters to the ground where she'd stood a moment before. Where did she go? She moved so fast... down in front of Stanislaw, her eyes are like steel, voiding any emotion that tried breaking through. Oh, but Bethany was not made of stone. The flicker of concern on her lips as she tears the gag from his mouth. The twitch of concern in her eyes as she retracts the stuffing from within and tosses it aside. Her hands, trembling both from the cold and fear, as they work to unbind him. Once his hands are free, Bethany just... throws her arms around him, hugs him as close as she can against her naked (not in the same sense he was, but everything was exposed, he'd know her secret, now) torso in a poor effort to warm him up.

"You're okay," her voice cracks and she sniffles, fighting off the cold that billowed in. "You're gonna' be okay. Just hold on, just - just don't move." Fuck. She should have brought her sweater. Bethany's cold, red fingers wrap around the frame of the window and she yanks, yanks, yanks with all of her might until it slams shut. Then - she's gone. Out the door to run back downstairs, her gun left by the door. She'd be right back, after all...
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