[MW] Pennsylvania

[re_mybrains]

It's a pleasant March afternoon in downtown Harrisburg, Pennsylvania -- sunny, partly cloudy.

In the courtyard of Pennsylvania Apartments, the bang of the front door slamming is still echoing when it opens again.

Two dozen zombies, in varying states of decay, are staggering towards it.

A human lighting generator, a superhero, a geek, and two regular schmoes are coming out the door to face them.

Ladies and gentlemen, place your bets.

Comments

[re_mybrains]

The moment the door's open, Tom darts out and whirls to cover either side. The bulk of the shamble is still a few yards away, and he doesn't want to get ambushed the way he did before.

--Oh look, that zombie in the skirt that did the ambushing is still there. Tom stares, bemused, for a bare second before bringing his gun up and firing.

The zombie's head jerks to the side as the bullet slams through half its skull; it stumbles forward another step or two and falls as Tom moves sideways to clear the door.

[accipiterpuella.livejournal.com]

Kendra is armed for bear, zombie, and miscellaneous as yet uncategorized malevolent entities of a possibly ambitious nature. She's got a particularly large morning star in her right hand, crafted more for close quarters carnage than distance killing. She spent a goodly portion of last evening checking and rechecking her weapons, testing them for heft, balance, and sharpness.

She's ready.

But she's also hoping she won't have to get too up close and pesonal with the enemy. But Kendra knows that such hopes are almost always futile. That's why her left hand has a broadsword, a heavy one, because she doesn't want to waste time with crushing skull strikes when she can just behead. She's got other weapons, but if it comes down to using those, she'll be in more trouble than she'd care to admit, but that short sword strapped to her right hip should hold her for a while if things go south too quickly.

Truth be told, she'd have preferred to be the first one through the door, on the principle that an aggressive offense is better than a defense without fail, but Tom knows the lay of the land until she can get in the air and pick out her targets.

He might feel a whoosh of air behind him as soon as he's given her enough room to ascend.

Ugh. The smell, that sickly sweet and slightly astringent smell of the undead. Sadly, she's familiar with it.

Then she's ten feet in the air, assessing who is where and what is what.

"Go!" she says, mostly to herself. She's trying to save her voice for when the killing starts.

[re_mybrains]

A few zombies -- two in the middle of the shamble, one on the front line -- crane their heads back, tracking after her.

(So does Tom, for a second. Because. Damn.)

But zombies are pretty dumb. To scent after Hawkgirl, they stop in their tracks, which makes the front one a perfect target for Tom.

The rest of the shamble keeps shuffling forward, zombies at the back pressing against their slower fellows.

[accipiterpuella.livejournal.com]

Kendra doesn't like zombies close to her friends. Were this a more leisurely pursuit, where so much danger wasn't present, she might experiment with distraction techniques, but right now all she wants to know is if she can make them keep looking at her and perhaps, if the stars are aligned, follow her.

"Up here!" she singsongs. "Hey, sooooey soooey soooey!"

Then she arches, and descends in an arc. Kendra can fly very, very fast when she's got space and time to work up speed, but gravity works almost as well in pulling her down, and she uses that to her advantage. The shamble is too close together to use her sword effectively until she picks off one or two to loosen up the crowding.

There, that guy, the male zombie at the back, pushing the shamble towards Tom.

Her mace is up with a roar - that's the fun part, when her adrenaline surges into overdrive and she can roar as loud as she can - and down it comes with a wet CRUNCH sound of breaking skull and traumatized brain matter.

If she loses her voice, there's always the throat lozenges in a pouch on her belt.

[re_mybrains]

Now that's an effective distraction technique. The zombies at the back react, slowly, turning away from the main group and reaching up towards her.

[accipiterpuella.livejournal.com]

Her first suitor has slowly begun to crumple to his knees. Apparently, it takes a while for these zombies to work out that they might, in fact, be dead.

Half his head is sliding wetly down the remains of his Kings of Leon t-shirt, with bits of skull festively decorating bits of brain like particularly white tortilla chips in pink guacamole.

Meanwhile, Kendra has taken to the air again, striving for height, up, up, and up, orienting herself first to the sun, whose position reads afternoon to her. Circling, she looks down, scanning and picking out any structures, trees, overhangs, or anything else that might hide more shambling or ambling unwanted pursuers coming their way.

"Clear!" she shouts, hoping to God they can hear her. "Clear! Nothing but them for now!"

[re_mybrains]

BANG. Another zombie at the front of shamble jerks backwards and drops; the fallen bodies are starting to interfere with the shamble's forward progress.

"Well thank fuck for that!" Tom hollers back to her, wincing as a shot from one of the others goes past.

The zombies at the back keep reaching up after her for a minute before losing interest and turning back towards the food that's actually in reach.

[accipiterpuella.livejournal.com]

"Good shot!" she yells back. That's the spirit.

He's good at this.

Later, they can talk about how sad it all is. It is sad, this pretty Earth of Tom's that's been overrun with the dead, with nothing home in the faces of all of these people that used to eat, laugh, make love, weep, walk the dog, buy milk at the store, and simply live.

Kendra's taken the opportunity to put some horizontal distance between herself and the shamble, angling for an approach that doesn't get her in the line of fire of anyone else. That would be, after all, a bit louche. Nothing humiliates like going to the hospital and explaining that you went down due to overzealously getting in the way of friendly fire.

Then she's circling back, shoving her mace into the loop at her right hip so she can free up a hand, aiming again for the back of the shamble, flying in fast just feet above the ground, snatching at the leather collar of a jacket being worn by a sadly decrepit teenage girl.

Or what used to be a girl.

"C'mere, you."

And they're in the air, rushing upwards.

[re_mybrains]

The zombie lets out an annoyed noise and flails up at Kendra, swinging in her grip.

[stilljustandrew]

Andrew, meanwhile, has his shoulder to Tom's and is firing into the shamble.

His aim isn't flawless, but with targets packed this close together it doesn't have to be.

[accipiterpuella.livejournal.com]

Oh, gods, they talk. Or something close to it, because for these kind of zombies, ones that don't appear to be agents of some collective intelligence (yet), that's pretty damn close to talking.

"Sorry," she says, curtly, but with feeling. "You have to go now."

They're still airborne, going higher and higher, until Kendra judges that it'll do.

Then she lets go, watching the girl tumble and pinwheel in the air. If there's anything left after she hits the ground, Kendra will chop it up later.

She's glad she's in the air when zombie meets ground. She hates that sound of a human body being spread out into a thin paste of biomass.

[stilljustandrew]

Andrew's not too fond of it either, and he's a lot closer.

God, this is so much messier than vampires.

(If not as messy as, say, slime demons. But much more human-looking, and that doesn't help.)

He sets his jaw, and keeps firing.

[got-red.livejournal.com]

Shaun leans back against the open door, only all too happy to be guarding the rear. He's trying very hard not to think about the last time he used a cricket bat for purposes no one ever imagined.

He only hopes he doesn't look as nervous as he feels.

[re_mybrains]

In the first minute or so of combat, enough zombies go down in the front line to slow down the ones behind them. Hawkgirl's in the air; the other three are flanking the door. It's going well.

Until one of the zombies discovers that hey, it can go around those obstructions on the ground.

The remains of a young man in a hooded sweatshirt are staggering towards you, Shaun.

[re_mybrains]

Tom flinches at the impact. "Jesus--"

One of the zombies, stuck behind one of its downed fellows, overbalances and tips forward. It hits the pavement with an unpleasant thwk noise and lies still.

For a second.

Then it apparently re-evaluates the situation and reaches for Andrew's ankle.

"--Andrew on your left--!"

[got-red.livejournal.com]

Great. Why is it always the bloody hoodies?

Maybe he should have gone with the gun after all, he reflects, as it's rather hard to get up enough leverage to kill a zombie with a cricket bat when you also have to prop open a door. Nevertheless, the hooded zombie goes down easily enough once it shambles into close enough range.

[stilljustandrew]

"Gah--" Andrew stumbles back from the grasping hand, and puts a bullet through the prone zombie's head at point-blank range.

Close enough to get splattered.

[re_mybrains]

"Oh, shit," Tom mutters, half-disgusted, half-dismayed. "Don't let that get inside you, man--"

[stilljustandrew]

"Not a chance," Andrew says fervently, scrubbing a smear of zombie gore off his knuckles -- the only bare skin to be touched by it, fortunately, owing to the angle.

His shoes and pant legs are sticky with it, though.

[re_mybrains]

Which is why ranged weapons are awesome, as far as Tom's concerned.

Anyway.

The zombie crumples with one arm just inside the door. The movement attracts the attention of another zombie, which tries to change direction -- and ends up tripping over one of the bodies.

It hits the pavement with a damp thwack and lies still -- for a second, until it starts inching veeeeeeery sloooooowly forward, worming and dragging itself along.

[got-red.livejournal.com]

Hey, it worked before. And none of the zombies seem to be complaining. Which is... rather the point.

Not having to hold the door does make it a lot easier though, and the crawling zombie is quickly dispatched before it can start gnawing anyone's ankles.

It hardly seems fair, really.

[accipiterpuella.livejournal.com]

Kendra has descended more in the matter of Screaming Death from Above after dispatching disturbingly reactive zombie #2. In fact, she's in the process of being Screaming Death From Above right over their heads, until, due to the lovely intrinsic qualities on Nth metal and its habit of making gravity something she can play with, she simply stops and floats above Andrew and Tom's heads, judging her height to be just out of zombie reach (unless they can jump, but time will tell, time will tell.)

"You boys all right? Who's next?" she queries, unlooping her morning star mace and hefting it again in her right hand, poised and ready.

"Your body count is making me smile," she adds. To both of them.

[re_mybrains]

Tom takes a quick glance around -- Elle and Shaun both seem to be holding their own -- then sights and fires at another zombie (misses, fires again, drops it).

"We're fine!" he yells up to her, barely looking away from the shamble. "Get the edges!"

[stilljustandrew]

"For some value of fine," Andrew adds under his breath, aiming at the next zombie.

That's about half of them down now.

[re_mybrains]

"This is fine," Tom mutters, a little sharp.

The shamble's slowing down, partly blocked by the growing pile of bodies, partly distracted by Hawkgirl's aerial harrying. And, of course, partly deterred by the simple fact that this food is annoyingly hard to get at. Seriously, what's its problem? All they want is--

"On your left!" Tom barks.