entranceway | [Video] Entry #2

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[Video] Entry #2 - Event Day 3

[The camera's pointed at Jay's shoes. Wherever he is, it's carpeted, and it's at least somewhat well-lit. When he finally speaks, it's at a whisper and oddly flat.]

If anyone was thinking about using the last house on...Lakeview Drive for shelter...

[A gas can swings into view, and a narrow stream of gasoline leaks from the spout onto the carpet. The camera tilts for a second, revealing a well-furnished suburban bedroom with lazy gasoline loops painted across both the floor and the bed.]

...Don't.

[Jay starts down the stairs, trailing fuel behind him.]

Don't get anywhere near this place. If you're looking for me, [He tries and fails to suppress a cough. The fumes must be getting to him.] I won't be around either.

[He's in the living room now. Jay pans the camera across the room--couches, coffee table, TV, stereo--before dribbling the last of the gasoline across the floor and up to an open window. He tosses the can aside.]

Last warning.

[Jay reaches up to the inactive stereo, twisting the volume dial as low as it can go. Hand visibly trembling, he switches it on. Nothing. Good. He switches the input to "radio". His breathing is audible now, high and ragged.

He twists the volume knob, and the speakers come to life with the deafening roar of...well, you win some, you lose some.

Jay bolts from the house, leaving the front door hanging open.

There's chaos for a moment, leaves hit the camera lens, and then Jay's looking down from a reasonably sized oak tree. A corpse shambles into view, heading straight for the house. Jay cuts the feed.]

[OOC: Jay has just attempted to create walker-bait out of the last house at the end of a dead-end street. Very loud, very flammable walker-bait. He's stolen Tim's lighter, and he's planning to shut the front door and light the place up through the window once enough bodies find their way inside.

Feel free to use this post to yell at him/cheer him on/try to stop him/try to help him.]

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[Tim looks up through the windshield and he glowers - hard and furious enough to melt lead, and hopefully pointed enough for Jay to realize full well that he has no right to be indignant when it is his bullshit plan that Tim is saving him from.

He slams his foot onto the gas pedal. The thing rumbles forward, picking up speed rapidly, with more and more of the zombies turning their attention to both the motion and the sound. The car impacts the first of them with a meaty crunch that sends the thing slobbering and clawing at the window. Tim ducks; the window's shattered clean through and offers no protection.

He's got no clue how to break the steering lock, so the car's just rolling straight ahead without stopping.

Right for the house.]

[No.]

"Tim!"

[The car's heading straight for the house, the house Jay filled with gasoline, and there's nothing he can do to stop it.

All he can do is watch. Like always.]

(OOC: Clementine's going to hop in after this post, so as to watch the chaos and help as much as she can.)

"Oh, for fucks sake."

Clementine hisses out a low breath between her teeth as she comes upon the scene, because what became a one-person rescue mission has now escalated to a two-person rescue mission. Jay yells Tim's name, and she thinks she has an idea of who's in the car too (and goddamnit, no). She doesn't do rescue missions in her fucking world, because it means dying. She's trying to do better or be better and not just be someone who survives at any cost to those around her. She also has no idea what to do when a car is driving straight into a house full of gasoline, which is why she's trying to make her way to the guy in the tree while lugging half a walker corpse behind her and hoping the whole place doesn't explode.

This is. Great.

The car's pretty much shooting ahead at full speed, and even if Tim did take his foot off the gas pedal, the momentum is gonna carry it straight into the zombie nest.

Which is when the radio picks that particular time to change its tune.

Tim wrenches the car door open and leaps, rolling awkwardly across the concrete. His legs and shoulders burn from the impact as he tumbles. There's an awful snapping sound mere inches from his ear, and he kicks out wildly, catching the walker in the thigh and knocking it back several paces.

He scrambles upright, panting hard, heart thumping. The zombies have encircled him almost entirely. He gets roughly ten seconds to think oh, shit before the car slams into the house.

The force of it blasts Tim forward, along with most of his undead entourage, nearly taking the skin off his palms as he lands. His ears are fucking ringing like they would after a gunshot, and all he can think is the fucking fire at his back, the heat of it feeling ready to sear him to cinders at a moment's notice, the way hospital bedsheets caught flame and licked up to the ceiling and he needs to get out of here.

He needs to get out of here before he's bitten, or worse.

Tim's out. Tim's out and alive and--

Jay barely gets a second to think about it before the collision. There's a deafening sound and his hand scrapes against the bark of the tree and Jay's blinking, splayed flat across the...oh. That's not good. He should move.

Jay pulls himself to his feet, but it's harder than he remembers. It feels like everything's been tilted by a few degrees, and standing's hard enough without those two pairs of milky white eyes watching him stumble. The leftmost one starts toward him, and Jay sways on his feet. He has to get away. He has to run.

Wait. Tim.

Jay lurches sideways, giving the two after him a wide berth and circling around to the opposite side of the car. He blinks, but it's like someone's stretched plastic wrap across his eyes. Where's Tim, where's Tim, where's Tim?

There. Crouched next to the car, pulling himself upright. The walkers around him look worse off, but not by much; a few seem like they're starting to get their bearings. He has to move now.

Jay darts in, grabbing Tim's arm. "Come on, come on." He pulls, tries to get Tim on his feet, and nearly loses his balance in the process.

Behind them, the stereo's started to fail. The sound's distorted, crackling at the edges, but still unfortunately recognizable.

What the fucking fuck, she thinks. This is why people don't do rescue missions.

The blast sends Clementine back, but she's far enough away to not be nearly as affected. Her hands scrape against the pavement, breaking skin, burning. She shoves herself to her feet, gripping hold of her ice pick. There's no way those two are going to survive. They're fucking surrounded still. Every instinct in her screams at her to run, but she pushes forward instead.

She takes out the walkers on the way to clear a path to them so they have a clear path of escape. The blast's drawing more walkers in because it was loud as hell. The walkers can smell their human flesh. They're screwed unless they get somewhere safe or cover themselves in guts fast, but it's hard to do that in the middle of a horde.

God, they're going to die.

She kicks out the walker's knees directly in front of them. It drops to the floor, and she shoves an ice pick through the skull.

Her gaze says it all Move. Now.

There's an arm hooking around his, and he can't see, can't think for the hammering in his skull, the high, bright tone drilling at his ears. There's the shambling and groaning, the thicket of graying limbs shifting ever closer, but then there's someone else -

He's going to die, it occurs to him dazedly. He's going to die, and it'll be to the horribly ironic sounds of Michael Jackson howling about evil things lurking in the dark. He's coughing raggedly, groping blinding at Jay for support. Every muscle shrieks in protest, his jeans and skin abraded with the dark streaks of his own stupid, stupid plan.

There's someone else, someone besides his partner in idiocy. And despite the way he's moving dazed, only barely able to duck out of the way of lurching, snapping jaws, he manages a disbelieving stare in Jay's direction.

"It's a fucking kid." This. This was Jay's master plan. "You brought a fucking kid."

He...what?

And then the blurry, foul-smelling horizon shifts, a walker falls, and something drives a hammer or something through its head and Jay looks up and it's a fucking kid.

That person. The one who said they were coming. Is a literal child. He got help from a literal child. And the literal child is glaring at him and wait, yeah, there's an opening. She just made an opening. Jay stumbles toward it, pulling Tim behind him, because they need to get out now. He can't think about how it feels like someone's firing a nail gun into the back of his skull, and he definitely can't trip even though the grass is swaying under his feet, because then they're both dead.

"Thanks," he manages, but then there's something reaching for him, and the word ends in a yelp as he pulls to the side, yanking Tim along with him.

Focus. Focus.

"Shut up and move for fuck's sake," Clementine hisses out between her teeth, because this isn't the time to point out that she's the only one of the three of them with over two years of experience with walkers.

She ducks down and cuts open the guts of the walker she took down. She moves back to the two of them with the guts in hand, because she's still not listening to her instinct to run. This is her version of doing something stupid.

There are too many walkers, and she can't keep making holes in the horde forever.

"Gotta get their guts on you or they'll tear you apart."

Jay's roadside assistance was a fucking kid. And luckily for them both, she's the only one of the three of them with an ounce of common sense. The idea of draping himself with slimy zombie's innards is about as appealing as driving a car into a house soaked with gasoline, but he's done a lot of stupid and undesirable things today already. What's one more?

He's moving as quickly as he can with Jay at his side, which isn't very fast at all, but at least the walkers aren't particularly speedy either. Thank fuck for small favors.

And large ones.

"Is that gonna work?" He winces, staring at the streaks of red down his knees and palms. "I mean...will it..."

Is it safe, considering he's probably about ready to get infected to high hell?

Oh god. He talked to Michonne about this before, and the kid mentioned it in their thread earlier, but actually being faced with the prospect of smearing this stuff all over him? When zombies in stories are typically caused by an infection or a virus?

Jay grits his teeth and reaches for a handful of guts. His palm makes contact, and he...dry heaves. One second. One second. He's fine.

And then Tim asks a question, looking down at the open sores on his knees, and Jay retracts his hand. Checks it for blood, open wounds. He doesn't see anything, but that doesn't mean it's not there.

He hears a groan just behind his left shoulder and he staggers right, shoving Tim out of the way. He kicks out at the thing's kneecap and actually manages to throw it off balance.

Okay. Short on time. Walkers coming. A kid is handing them a rope of intestines that smells like rancid garbage and might either save them or zombify them. Explanations needed. Now.

Clementine wants to scream, because every time they make a noise, a walker attacks. She doesn't want to have to explain. Her hand is a fist around the ice pick. Her fist shakes, and she dives it through the skull of the one that's knocked off balance by him kicking its kneecaps.

There's just always another walker behind the last one.

"I've done this two times before. It's the only way you're going to survive as long as you be quiet and walk."

She's shoving the guts at the two grown men with her tiny fist. Another walker's drawn in by the smells of human flesh. She pulls out her hatchet, cutting the thing at the knees and then shoving it into the skull once, twice. Blood splurts back at her. More walkers move into the area, drawn to the blast which rang out all over the place. Fuck, they're all gonna die.

Can she still hear music? Maybe. So can the walkers. This is just one shitty, flesh-eating dance.

Shit. Jay slams one of them down, and Tim almost ends up dropping on the spot from the abrupt lack of support. But there's more. There's more. They just keep coming, and the sound from the collision has just made it worse.

Keep quiet. Grab the slippery rope of something's intestines and let them fall across his shoulders, steaming, like the world's most grotesque necklace, ignoring the way his stomach jerks in a nauseating lurch.

She's still helping them. She's still here.

His breath lapses into something shallow and rigid, and he holds - still. Still as he can.

Trying not to gag.

Jay covers his mouth with a curled fist, nails digging into his palm, as he forces down another gag. Those are people. Those used to be people and they are people, and he's watching this literal child split their skulls open, the blood spraying across her face.

And the only way he's gonna survive is if he does what Tim's doing. What the girl's already done. Alright. Okay. This is fine.

He grits his teeth and takes a handful of...some organ he can't define, shredded by rot or the ice pick or both. It doesn't sit on him as well as the intestines do around Tim's neck (and that's not a collection of words he ever imagined would go together) but it's the smell that counts. He tries to soak as much of his shirt as he can, holding the whatever-it-is like a rotten, dripping sponge.

He can't hold back another dry heave. Don't think about it. Don't breathe in more than you have to.

And then...she said walk, right? Be quiet and walk.

He catches her eye and gestures, small and close to his chest. He points to himself, Tim, and then to her. Then he points toward a small opening in the crowd. It probably won't still be there in a couple seconds, but it's a start.

Clementine lets out a breath of relief when they listen. She remembers the first time she covered herself in walker guts. She was nine. Lee had cut off his arm too late, and he was dying of the walker scratch. He covered her up. She shook, and she cried, and she felt so gross she would have puked if she'd had anything in her stomach. It's not like she can't understand the reactions. It's just been awhile, and this has become normal.

The guts smell beyond terrible, but they do the trick. As soon as they both are sufficiently covered, the walkers don't try to reach or grab for them anymore. It's like they're invisible to the horde.

She meets Jay's gaze and looks to where he points.

She gives the thumbs up. It'll probably be better if she keeps an eye on them from behind. Tim can lean on Jay from behind that way as they make their way through the small opening. Gotta slowly make their escape.

It works. He shouldn't be surprised that it works, but work it does, and, apparently unable to detect the scent of warm flesh beneath that which has already died, the walkers begin to mill about. One of them leers unpleasantly close, milk white eyes wide and empty.

Tim's jaw clenches as he represses a shudder. There's sweat and...things sticking to the back of his neck, warm and slippery.

Forward. Forward. Shuffling slowly, painfully slowly, trying not to bump into the damn things. There's still the roar of flame behind them, the stench of gasoline clinging to the back of his throat in a coppery tang, but all they can do is move forward and get out, as quickly as they can.

Edited 2017-07-18 06:00 (UTC)

Jay's out front. He's never been fond of that. Too easy for someone (something) to come up from behind. Too easy for someone you shouldn't have trusted to take advantage.

He's trying to keep his pace slow enough for Tim to lean on him if he has to. The ground's still uneven, his vision still blurred at the edges, but he can't stumble or he'll hit something. He just has to watch the ground. Watch where he's walking. Watch where those things are moving. Listen for the shuffle of human feet behind him.

(Don't think about the smell. Don't think about the heat behind them.)

Maybe they can get out of this.

It's slow going given the sheer number of walkers headed in the area they'd just been in, but eventually they hit a clearing where there are no more walkers around at least in the immediate vicinity.

Clementine lets out a breath of relief. She even manages to smirk because it worked, because they're out of the mass of hordes. They're not out of danger completely yet, but they're away from the writhing mass of walkers in the corner of the town.

"Fuck. I really thought you two were gonna die."

Honestly? Tim isn't entirely sure that he isn't actually dead and dying at this particular moment. Hotwiring a car to drive it into a house soaked with gasoline ranks up there with among the stupidest things he's done in his life, which is saying something.

If he weren't feeling like his legs and muscles were composed of jelly, he might've shoved Jay off him to tear him a new one over bringing a fucking kid. As it is, he can only just kind of...wobble.

"Sorry," he manages, sagging. "For dragging you into this."

It's only now, away from those things, with Tim (scraped and bruised but breathing) on one side and the literal child who just saved their lives on the other, that it really sinks in how completely

unforgivably

fucking

stupid

this idea was. He nearly got Tim killed, because apparently Tim's willing to crash a car into a gasoline-soaked house just to buy him a chance to escape, and Jay can't think too hard about that fact without feeling the panic start to creep in, and he can't. Do that right now. If not for this complete stranger, this kid who insisted on coming even when Jay didn't really ask for help, they'd be dead. He and Tim would both be dead.

He needs something over his face. The camera hanging from the strap at his side would be too obvious, and he's not sure he has the coordination to flip the viewfinder screen open right now. His hands are streaked with gore, so that won't work either, and he's not sure when he started shaking but he can't make it stop, and he needs to.

Pull yourself together.

Tim's apologizing. Tim's apologizing like it's his fault, which is so far from the truth Jay's not sure how to respond. The words are jumbled in his head, and through gritted teeth, he manages:

"Yeah."

That's not enough. He's got his arms bent, hands curled over the back of his head like he's waiting for a bomb to drop, and that's not enough.

"I shouldn't--I'm sorry. I'm sorry."

Clementine's mouth forms into a thin, angry line. The smriks' gone. She'd been willing to shove away the anger too until the apologies that come first. She folds her arms across her chest. There's the anger she'd been swallowing down like she's good at doing when survival's more important.

"It was my choice, and if I hadn't dragged myself in, you'd both be dead."

There's a reason she stuck to text. There's a reason she didn't inform Jay she's eleven years old, because she knows no one in their right mind would accept her help. This is her life. This is her world. She knows it better than anyone except for Michonne who knows it just as well as she does.

She spits the words out.

"Trying to blow up a house full of walkers by yourself and driving a car into a house full of gasoline in the middle of a horde? Really stupid choices that almost got the both of you killed and could have gotten a lot of other people killed. So think in the future. Don't be sorry. Just. Fucking. Think."

Clementine studies them once the anger's left her. Tim looks like he can barely stand on his own two feet, and the other guy's shaking.

"You both look terrible. Do you have a safe house to go to?"

She's still got more common sense and street smarts than the pair of them combined, which isn't saying much but just based on how she handled herself, it's fair to say she knows what the hell she's doing.

He lets her berate him - both of them - even if he can't meet her eyes in the process. If he'd just sat and waited, she would've come anyway, making his entire stupid endeavor even more pointlessly idiotic.

He opens his mouth for an automatic rebuttal and finds he's too exhausted to snap anything back. She's right. And Jay's trembling, and they're both rank with the scent of something long-dead. The skin on his knees at the base of his palms feels raw, abraded, and the rest of him aches.

"We did," he mutters. So much for that meeting up plan taking them very far at all, huh? "Kinda got separated, so."

So Jay decided to burn a house. It happens.

It happens. Sometimes Jay steals Tim's lighter and they get separated and Jay decides to commit arson because it seems like a good idea at the time.

Because Jay's tired of feeling useless. Well, given how all this ended up, maybe he's been feeling useless for a reason.

"Was on the other side of..." Jay gestures vaguely down the street. "Y'know."

If he's not making sense, he hopes Tim'll step in. Between the headache and the rest of it, Jay's honestly impressed he's still standing.

He catches Tim's eye, but he can't hold the eye contact for long. Instead, focused firmly on the ground, he digs in his pocket and pulls out the lighter. "Here." He holds it out in Tim's general direction. "Sorry."

The last word slurs together into one syllable, barely audible, but he hopes Tim gets the idea.

Clementine shakes her head slightly in confusion. They really don't look good. She doesn't know that they'll make it to the safe house, but it's empty enough on the street that they should be good if they just get off the street.

"Is it far? You might want to hole up in one of these houses if it is. It'll be safe enough if you stay inside."

If there are no windows broken and no open doors, there's no way a walker could have gotten inside of it.

Walkers don't know how to use handles.

He has a lighter. Tim's lighter. It takes him a long moment for his gaze to properly settle upon in, a glint of silver in the weak light. It's...fuck. It's hard to see, harder still to focus.

But he manages to wrap fingertips around the familiar shape, gripping tight in his palm.

"We'll...we can take one of the other houses. 'S not a problem." Maybe he can get some of the stick off him, and close his eyes and hope the ache in his bones starts to fade.

After that stunt, it's not likely.

[Video] Entry #2 - Event Day 3

a SMOOTH CRIMINAL

action; that is now playing on the stereo. confirmed.

action;

LAUGHS

three hun-dred six-ty five de-grees. BURNIN' DOWN THE HOUSE.

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