Journal:AGT
| AGT ('Agate') | ||||||||||
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January 31, 2006
I guess I have to write this all down. That 'just in case' thing, again. "Just in case you get turned, just in case you get revived again—just in case you don't remember again." She never really said it, but I know that's what she meant.
This is going to be hard times.
Let's see if I can get it all out in one sitting… my hands are shaking already.
It started yesterday. Things were looking up for KTFE and I. We had a plan and we knew where we were going. We had camped out in the hospital again, which was filling up with more and more people by the hour (where were they coming from? Why were they staying here? This really couldn't be the only place to go… could it? Then again, why the hell had we come back to this place when everything bad that has happened to me since I came about has originated from this building?)
We both did something stupid, then.
Don't be stupid in Malton. You don't get a paper-cut or a bruise, you get broken limbs and psychological trauma, you get gouges and bites and you die.
She died.
Later: I had to stop.
Have to write it out, though. Going to write it quickly, or try to. I don't really want to, though, but here it goes.
Zombies were amassing at the hospital's main doors, and people were calling for support to keep them from tearing down the barricades.
KTFE and I were foolish. For one thing, she agreed to go help. For another, I told her just to climb back in as soon as she was getting tired and I'd patch her up, and somebody else could take her place (I wish that somebody else had taken their place. Jesus.)
She didn't come back at first. I was nervous the whole time, I waited with a tension I've never felt so thoroughly before for maybe two minutes (it felt like longer), before I decided I had to see for myself. So I passed through some of the others to the window she'd slipped through to see where she was, if she was doing okay.
Definitely wasn't doing okay.
So I did something stupid. I srambled out through the hole and I screamed at her and she must have heard me, because she was trying to come to me even though she was just about surrounded, and I managed to duck and weave and whatever the hell I did to grab her, and I was dragging her back, and they were dragging her down and I wouldn't let them.
I managed to bring her back into the hospital, clear the fucking way.
Covered in blood.
She was covered in blood.
I tried to fix her up, I tried to get help to fix her up. They watched me and they didn't do anything and she was just laying there and dying, and god knows I can't do much with these fucking scrounged up antibiotics but He KNOWS I tried, and it still wasn't enough.
I think they let me hold her for a while, looking back on it, but somebody knelt and felt her neck and announced that she was a gonner, and I knew that that was true, but I didn't want to believe it. And I knew that she really wasn't gone but I also knew that I didn't want to see her when she came back. Didn't want to see her like that…
That didn't stop me from fucking them up when they tried to grab ahold of her. She's mine, they couldn't take her away from me.
Oh god, I don't want to think about it right now.
I fought like a cat and they still man-handled her away from me, and what's worse, what's the worst thing out of all of this: they just shoved her through the hole.
Dumped her face-first on the pavement outside to get trampled or maybe worse, and they didn't give two blinks about it.
I guess somebody held me back or something, I don't remember right now. I don't want to remember. I guess I really did go a little crazy for a while. I know I was howling, my throat is fucking sore. Once I had realized that I couldn't go out after her I think I ran away like a ninny and hid in my little patient's room for a while. Nobody came in after me, nobody comes up to the third floor since there's not much up there to find and loot.
I must have hid until the sun went down, maybe I slept. I haven't slept since then if I did at all, it's all nerves. I feel like I've just snapped and I know that I had at that point.
Later, when the sun was good and set, I was coming up with a new plan. I couldn't just hide there for the rest of my life until the zombies breached and swarmed us again. I couldn't let her be a part of that.
I remembered her talking about it being less congested, less troubled down south. I remember Margerie—one of the two ladies handing out those bottles—telling me how some of the NecroTech-technicians were able to revive the undead. KTFE had told me that some people down south had talked about a revive point. It didn't take much to put one and one and one together in my state of mind.
I did another stupid thing. No, I did a number of stupid things.
I got up the resolve to try roof-walking, even though I never have before. Never, never try this if you don't have help your first time. You will fall and break your neck and get chewed on. Or you will soil yourself and be made fun of by those on the other side.
ESPECIALLY don't try the kitty-corner routes. Jesus, I'm such a dumb ass.
The hospital stairwell.
I went up it. NEVER AGAIN THAT STAIRWELL OH GOD.
Compared to that the roof seemed like a safe-haven to me, and that's saying something. It's not that high a building, five stories I guess. I couldn't see her from where I was, maybe she wasn't up yet. God, you can see a lot of zombies from up there. If I had anything in my stomach to throw up I might have. Vertigo… jesus.
Didn't stop me right then. I tried the rope to Hillard (it's a slack one, tied firmly against a pipe on the one side and a high antennae on the other, but still it swings and it's rough and in some places you can see brown stains that aren't weathered bits.) That was the most strenuous 'adventure' I've had. Period. Could hear them below me and the wind and the dark and with my legs looped around this fucking swaying rope. Hand over hand over hand over hand. Ha ha, it was kind of funny once I got to the other end and came up against the antennae. I couldn't let go. It was like my hands had a death grip on this rope, even though I knew there was solid ground underneath me again. Or maybe they were frozen on.
I'm stealing mittens off the first corpse I find barring the fact they come back to life and fight me for them. It's cold out here.
Still, I did it and I kept moving, south now. I didn't realize what was going to happen next.
The next building is taller, maybe fourteen stories—an expanse of boards has been nailed together, here, and ends inside a broken window. It has been used many times and it creaks, and I found myself hating this so very much by the time I got into the building.
Zombies.
Inside. One on my floor.
I did a stupid thing (like I said I did.) I didn't retreat right away. It must not have heard me, since I found the next link easily enough, and wasn't followed. I didn't realize that the next building was a dead end until I got there.
More zombies.
Inside. Again. And a lone survivor.
What the hell?
I was tempted to speak up, to ask what was going on, and more importantly, give me a god damned needle or whatever the hell it is, I need to go save my KTFE, but then again I've heard things about humans and the undead working together, and it's not for the good of the living. Exhausted. In short, I holed up in a broom closet and stayed put for several hours, trying to figure out what the hell to do now. There were no more buildings to jump, zombies in here and in the building I'd just left, and if there were undead in here then there must be more outside, right? That's how it works.
I didn't sleep. Like I said, I haven't slept since my little breakdown, if not even earlier.
Eventually, and with this sense of utter, utter failure, I decided to move back. Keep tabs on her. See if she'd gotten up and if she was going to move. So I headed back. The path was no easier then last time and I think I may have almost wet myself when I thought the fucking boards between the police station and the building one north were about to fall apart on me (the next time I hear the sound of squeaking nails and splintering wood I hope to hell it's not when I'm depending on them to keep firm, damnit!) but I did make it.
I didn't move from the window facing the hospital.
There were more zombies out front, then…
And the red hair. She was standing up again. But she wasn't moving. Some were trying to push into the building, as if by sheer numbers, like they could push all of the shit behind the doors out of the way. But she wasn't doing anything. I stayed there and I watched her for… I don't know. The sun was coming up. I screamed when some idiot survivors came out and started hacking and shooting them up again; which is stupid I know, but at least they let her be.
And then somebody else came. I didn't know him. He was wearing a lab coat and I guess he was here on a mission; really, finishing what I was an idiot and tried to start.
I watched him mash something into her back, or her neck or maybe her head; it was hard to tell from where I was watching.
She fell over. He ran away. I watched him take off down the street and turn a corner, and then I realized what had just happened.
He hadn't gone and killed her.
He'd revived her, holy shit! HOLY FUCKING SHIT so I ran for it.
Yes I did another stupid thing. I went out on the street. I went looking for her.
I almost got beaten or eaten to death, but she wasn't there…
I went searching. Clever little bitch (forgive me, I hate you right now even though I love you), she was up again by the time I'd gotten down all of those stairs (and almost fell and had a broken neck again. STAIRS. I HATE YOU.) but she was inside again. And not only that, she'd made it to the next building over.
I found this out by forcing myself across and nearly tripping on her. She was sitting next to the window, close to the floor.
Cold. But… somehow she's alright. All that's left of those horrible gouges from last night are some faint lines, if even that in some places. Jesus.
I'm still not moving from next to her, never again. If she's going somewhere then I'm going with her. Plain and simple.
And that man… I haven't asked his name, but he's in here, too. I owe him one. I don't even mind.
And that's more then enough writing, I'm sick of it. I have her back and that's what's important, and there's no way in hell that I'm fucking this up again.
Thank god.
January 30, 2006
I'm up bright and early this morning, though not early enough to beat some of these army types to the grind. I swear they never sleep. Maybe we're holed up with androids… the fellow in the trenchcoat sure acts lifeless enough—
Anyways. Just my luck today, I go looking into some of the back-halls and I find a whole stash of antibiotics and other first-aid supplies… I think it was somebody elses… but, if nobody sees me taking them, then nobody can get angry with me, now can they? So, hushhush, I've now got a few more goodies to add to my collection. (It's for the good of everyone else, anyways. Why stash these guys when people need them every minute? Might as well use them while you can, right?)
Sometimes I hate my conscious. At this point, it's not going to do me a lot of good, not when half the other people here have thrown their morals to the wind. The people in here have, at least, or so I figure. I seem to be getting on a lot of nerves (and no, I'm not intentionally incessantly watching them. I'm just a people watcher. It's what I do!)
So, off I'm going today. Back to that 'newest model' hospital. Again. The one with the fucking pitch-black stairwell that's still littered with all kinds of things that I nearly tumbled down on my first attempt to search the place.
At least I'm feeling better now, and I know KTFE's got my back (she's already taken off, just making sure that the barricades are actually loose enough for me to get in! I'm waiting for her to come back and give me the thumbs up.), so maybe I'll be able to give the place a thorough look-through, finally.
Later: Apparently it snowed heavily last night, in this part of town. That, and I now have a nice collection of splinters across my ass. A note to the wise: if you're going to slide down something to escape a building, check to make sure it isn't a rough board first!
This is so embarrassing. Thank god nobody's going to be reading this. At least, not until after I'm thoroughly dead and wandered off somewhere where they can't tease me.
Anyways, the point of this writing is that we have water, honest to god clean water! There's only a bottle of it for each of us, but a pair of older ladies (Surprisingly nimble for being old bags!) appear to be doing runs through SE scarletwood. They're 'Necrotech' employees—scientists, I guess, but they've set up some kind of water-reclaimation gizmo on the top of a few buildings around here. They've been collecting the snow, I guess, boiling it up, and putting it into bottles and cans and even old yogurt containers and the like, sealing them up pretty good, and carting them over to the hospitals and the like. I guess once a week they come by with as many as they can carry (and that's not a lot) to hand out to people in need. Dedicated. Insane.
I managed to snitch a couple over the uproar from those shotgun-porcupines, make my way back to KTFE with hers, and proceeded to gloat. I can't help being good.
So I don't know whether or not to guzzle it all down right now and then go back to collecting snow and… ugh… other sources of water, or to save it. My mouth's dry just thinking about it…
Maybe I'll see if I can talk to those ladies and finangle some more out of them, or at least get on their sweet side for later. Mua ha ha haha (I can't believe I just wrote an evil laugh… I must belong in that mental hospital that KTFE was going on about!) At any rate, here's to fresh, clear water!
Cheers!
Later:
Those fucking heartless bastards are going to get it, I swear.
YOU CAN'T TAKE HER AWAY FROM ME.
Heading south. Gotta keep up with her, she's… moving again.
Oh god.
Gotta get help. Jesus fucking christ.
January 29, 2006
One day really changes things, huh?
Yesterday things were going okay… I'd even managed to get the woman to sit still for a while and talk. Couldn't stand seeing her prance around in a bra like this was some sort of nudist colony, so I lent her my cabbage-shirt, and managed to rustle up one of those horrendously mint-green smocks you see sick people wearing all the time. How fitting. Hypothetically, at least. The fucking thing doesn't tie up completely in the back and I can feel a cold breeze every time I go outside. I hate looking like—being—an invalid.
At any rate, I got her to talk a little. So she says that we knew each other in university, we were the same class, had the same friends, the same enemies. I'm starting to believe her, even if none of it is true. I just want to have something to hold on to. 'Agate'. What kind of person names their kid 'Agate'. I must have been teased as a kid… maybe I became a rebellious teenager with makeup problems. Maybe I was some hippie-love-child who lived in a colony of space-worshiping hobos, and family seized me and brought me to Malton for a proper upbringing, and it had some profound and lasting effect on me. Maybe I was a normal little shit who got their way. God knows I would like to now.
We talked, and we huddled together for a while. Then she got mad or something—I wasn't helping—and took off…
And couldn't get back in.
Again.
God damn it, KTFE, if you ever pick this off of my shambling corpse and read through it, know right here and now that I am going to smack you upside the head if you do something stupid like that again.
This time it was trouble for real.
That siege that I'd mentioned earlier… yes, they were actually right about that. The police department was gone, and of course the undead were after us next. Who wouldn't be, with so many people crammed in here all at once? So of course the makeshift barricades were built back up, apparently for good.
You don't want to know what kind of an episode I threw, trying to get people to pull a space open for her. I'm rather ashamed of it, myself. Well, no, I'm not. I'm ashamed that the fucking god damned zombie-humping bastards didn't listen. Not a single fucking one of them. They had this look, this, "oh well, it's only one survivor," look. 'ONLY', my bony ass! Jesus Christ!
So I jumped out the window to find her.
I am an idiot. Full-fledged.
Found her a block east, holding her own against three (count them, three) undead… for a while. So I ran out flapping my arms around and screaming like a schizo-monkey, trying to distract them, and generally winding myself in the process… and I guess they lost interest in her and I, because they shambled off—probably towards the hospital I had so recently, idiotically dispersed from.
Good god, I hope the fuckers all choke, die, and stay laying down. I could punch every one of them in the face right now…
Things happened. I tried to drag her out of plain site; she's heavier then you'd think; I collapsed. Rested. Found myself inside some beaten up old building with a big dance-floor. She apparently threw me over her shoulder and man-handled me into the building.
Not only an idiot, but a weakling too, woopdie doo.
Today was better. No zombies came on in through the door (the place hasn't got a thing to shove in front of them, which makes me entirely too nervous), and the only people who entered were likewise terrified and injured survivors.
And me with not a single stretch of bandage with me. Today I'm heading back to the hospital—no, I think there was an older one just north of it. I'm going to check that out. Hope I don't get barricaded in or out again.
Fuck.
Later:
She's back! She's back she's back!
More interesting things to do than write. More later!
Later: We went seperate ways, again. I didn't want to, but I can't follow KTFE overground. My hands get shaky, I can't keep ahold of the ropes and half-assed clapped-together boards and panels that span rooves and windows, out here. So I rested, mostly.
I watched her go and I had convinced myself that I was never going to see her again (after last night, at least) but she slipped in just as the sun was going down, and brought news, even.
Things are dying down around here (but in a good way. Har har har), just a little bit. Further south, things are even quieter. As soon as I'm rested enough to be able to take on those overhead pathways, we're taking off from here and getting the hell away. I'm sick of the smell of old hospital. At least this one is only one story (I figure that they must have built the other right next door to replace this crumbling heap of drywall and asbestos. The good thing about that: nobody wants to shack up in here, not when there's a 'new and improved' model a block away.)
In other news, nothing makes one appreciate living more then a somewhat comfortable bed and an extremely comfortable woman. You know what? I don't care if we're hidden with half of the army and a baker's dozen crackerjacks in here. They can give me dirty looks all they want. If they can tune out those horrendous zombie groans, then they can tune out a pair of happy humans for a while. It's not as if we're interrupting them right in the main reception, damnit.
But I digress.
Resting tonight, hanging around tomorrow and maybe the next day while I regain some strength, and then KTFE will show me the ropes.
Here's to not breaking a leg. Or, you know, a neck.
January 28, 2006
So people are saying that we're being laid seige to. KTFE finally came over—I had moved over to the police station again, and then back to the hospital during the early morning, after a quick nap (you all know how hard it is to sleep in a place full of paranoid, pissy people without any sense of respect towards other people), and I told her to stay put at the station, I'd come back.
Only the fuckers at the hospital managed to shove some heavy equipment from upstairs down to the main floor, further blocking all entrances—even the high windows, which KTFE wouldn't be able to scale anyways. Or, at least, I don't think she could. She's just on this side of midget, after all. That's not the point. Even if I could find a way down from the second floor (which I don't think I could; I'm not as nimble as the scouts that come back and forth around here) I couldn't possibly get back in.
I couldn't help telling them off, just a little bit… and maybe it worked, or maybe there was a calm voice of reason in here (mine was neither calm, nor reasonable, now that I look back on it) after all. They pulled back the machinery and, of course, survivors came spilling in. There were several (including KTFE) trapped outside who'd thought that this place was 'safe' to enter.
God, this place needs some leadership, and fast. The police department has just been overrun, just one block away. I didn't just hear that from someone, I actually went to check, myself.
I'm crazy, I know it.
Managed to avoid the undead that were bashing in at the doorway amongst the scattered, broken barricades, I climbed in through the back window that KTFE and I use whenever we're in and out of there. Took as many med-kits as I could carry and did what I could for the sops stuck inside… I would have beaten the hell out of the zombie in there with them if I thought I had a chance to even land a harming blow, but by this point I just… no. I can't do it. I can't go right up to the sacks of skin and start chopping away at them like a Christmas tree, not like KTFE can.
So I ran back to the hospital the moment I ran out of gauze and padding and alcoholic swabs, and if I had a tail it might as well be tucked between my legs.
I'm exhausted, this running back and forth and realizing that, yes, we're being (slowly) overrun? Yes, we're all going to cark it and I'm going to go back to… whatever, whatever it was that I went through before. I know I'm being a melodramatic honker, I'll probably rip this page out later, but… rgh. I'm going to go find my nook up on floor three and see if I can't get something done in preparation. Or at least sleep. Sleep is good.
January 27, 2006
Jesus Christ, you think you've found somewhere half-decent to sleep and then you find yourself face to face with one of the clever ones.
Well, that's not quite true… but KTFE and I had decided to move south… towards the city's walls, I mean, since everyone I've overheard talking has said that the inner city is overrun. So, logically, we move to the fringe, we escape the mass of undead, right? There's always the side-benefit of finding some crack in the quarantine-defenses and getting the hell out of here. I mean… we're not infected, we'd be dead—undead—if we were. The only way we could pass on this… whatever it is, disease, strange radiation anomoly, whatever theory they've cooked up… to others is if we were carrying it… but that means we're now immune, so maybe we could find the fuckers who locked us in and have them take a blood-sample before we take off. I don't know… maybe I daydream too much. Whatever the case, we were just dozing through the usual sounds of claws on barricades (there's not much else one can do around here) when one of them pulled open the door. Time to get the fuck out when that happens…
Anyways, we're moving back to the hospital, stopping over at the police station to see if anyone needs help up there. I think I'm getting good with this whole 'medic' thing… when I first started I pretty much just wrapped wounds… Sit there, wait for someone to come jubbering my way and open up the med-kit I swindled from up a floor. Now… I don't know, I guess I can just tell by how people walk, hold their shoulder, hunch their back? I guess I've just been watching people too much.
I'm going to try to figure out how those scouts get into the building from upstairs… I never want to have to touch a street again, not at this rate.
And yes, I'm well aware that I could probably figure it out faster by just asking the SOB's, but sometimes they're trigger-happy lunatics, and they'd probably just as soon shoot my head off as lend me a bit of advice. I don't like the looks of them.
January 26, 2006
Do you know how very frustrating it is to not be able to remember something and then be expected to write it down 'just in case'?
Five and a half months of my life have gone right down the shute and apparently I never noticed them because I was, oh, a little dead. I guess amnesia is the better option; I'm thoroughly thankful to have forgotten, for instance, just how many brains I must have eaten. Apparently some thoughtful soul brought me back to life… somehow, I don't know. When I woke up I was in the middle of a street on the opposite end of the city from home… whatever remains of home, at any rate. Deserted streets and the occasional dead (honest to goodness dead) body on the ground, and fluffy clouds overhead like some kind of teddy-bear's picnic. And quiet. Everyone else around here knows how hard that is on the ears… but it meant that I could hear my own blood pumping, and that's… that's a strangely comforting noise right about now.
I feel like a god damn bulemic and it's been a week since I was brought back to life. I can hardly lift a book, let alone the crowbar that another survivor pawned off on loaned me. If anyone expects me to be of any use to this 'cause' that they're talking about, they can go cark it, for all I care. I've been holing up in the nearest hospital I could find for a while, now, and in the time when I haven't been huddling around the bonfire that folks have set up in the lobby, I've been wandering around the many halls, and into rooms that seem to have been pretty picked over already.
Going up these stairs is the god damned devil and there's no way you're getting me to go past the third floor—but that's not the point of this entry.
There's no dead bodies in here—and no live dead bodies, either. (Undead bodies?)—so I feel relatively secure. There's gadgets and bandages and syringes and small, easy-to-carry things that one can find if one looks very hard that I've slowly been hoarding in my own little nook… just in case I need it. I don't talk to people too often… I really don't know what to say. Whatever, nobody does too much talking here. There's the cranky old fuckers that have been in this building since the beginning, and the occasional survivors who climb in through the holes in the windows to bring reports of life outside, ask for a dab of a swab and some alcohol and then charge back off into 'battle' again.
One of those crazies that came tumbling through here has latched onto me.
I… kind of like it, but then again, what other half-naked women would find a near-death stick-man like me of any interest… I mean, unless she were asking about my diet?
She keeps saying she knows me from… before all of this, but I really do think she's half out of her mind… for one thing, she refers to herself only as KTFE, she insists on wearing the same bright red cosmetic contacts day after day (How has she kept those over the past five months?), she carries an axe in her boxer-hem, and she… she keeps trying to chew on me. One day she's going to be dead and I'll think she's just being strange again, and then I'll be a gonner, too.
There's a few crankers just slipped through the pop machines at the south wing who are screaming their bloody heads off, now, getting everyone all worked up again. There's always one, every couple of days, who collapses on the tiles raking on about how there's 'fifty zombies heading straight for the hospital.' And every time… nothing.
Still, there's more survivors coming in and giving warnings, and then getting the hell out again so… so I don't know.
I'll have to talk to KTFE. She seems to know what to do…
