Slave Species IC

[CaptainQ]

Valken was so focused on the sound of the whistle, his ears were unable to pick up the sounds coming off of someone's shoes.
"Wah!" he cooed, taken by surprise he turned his torso to look who it was behind him in the doorway.
Even as the stranger threw in food, Valken did not move. He simply stood there, his body half turned and staring at the man pointing the gun..
The dark barreled thing that smells bad, hurts his ear drums, and 'makes people dead'. The stranger looked like a monster.. he had shiny metal things on his face, his hair was scary and Valken couldn't make heads or tails of his clothes.

"hmmm..!" He hummed loudly at the stranger as if to growl at him. Despite noble efforts, Valken strangely began to pace around in a circle as if trying to escape but clearly the doorway being the only exit. The whites of the child's eyes stood out starkly against the darkness of the room, indicating that he was gravely terrified.
As the moment mounted with more tension and awkwardness, Valken suddenly stopped and decided that he did not like this live person- 'I do not like you sam-Iam! I do not your fucking like green eggs and ham!'
He whined loudly in his discomfort and elevated stress, could it be because of the stranger or the gun? "HHMMMM-AAH!" Valken finally shouted again only this time he resorted to pressing his back against the wall and bearing his teeth at the stranger, not to smile but just as a cornered dog would do.

As the stranger still remained Valken opened his mouth as widely as he could, his molars and swollen tonsils were exposed to the air and he screamed. Valken screamed as shrilly as he could, has harshly as he could make until it turned his face red, his eyes bloodshot, strained his little lungs and turned his hands into tightened balls of fists that make his palms almost bleed.
Perhaps it wouldn't matter if the parasite hadn't reached this poor child as it seemed he was already far gone...

[Silux]

Alex had clenched his eyes shut as he waited for the end. He wasn’t sad, though. With any luck they would just kill him on account of being a nuisance. That, or he could kill himself before they could take him under. Death would have been preferable to any outcome in his eyes; he never was a religious man, but still held deep within himself a hope that the afterlife was as real as the world around him. He hoped with all his heart that he could see her again, and him. He hoped that after this was all over, that he could go back to the way things were before. Before the horror, before the tears, before the infection and the soldiers, before the endless running, before the ceaseless hiding and the degrading lows simply to stay alive.
This place. It was hell.

Why won’t you just fucking kill me?

Alex could almost feel the gun being pressed to his neck, and the bullet going through his windpipe and out the other end. He almost knew what it would be like to lay there, dying in the snow right next to Hannah - his blood would mingle with hers and that would be the end of their tragic story, never again to be disturbed by inconveniences of reality.

But. Nothing. No weapon. No bullet. No death.

I don’t have all day!

Without speaking, Alex raised his head and opened his eyes. The man that stood before him was not infected. He was far from it. They always looked so vacant and empty, but this man was full of life and energy, despite his apparent age. It was rare, actually, only the fast, the strong and the youthful ever really found the power within themselves to survive for so long in a world like that, but against all the odds, this man in his sixties with an educated accent and caring facial expression stood right in front of Alex.
Instead of pointing a gun at him, the man instead pointed a flask of, what Alex could only presume to be, alcohol. Alex watched wearily as the man took a sip to show that it was not poison or some other malicious substance, before offering it to Alex again.

Looking down at his rifle, and back into the man’s eyes, he slowly raised his hand and grasped the ice-cold container, and took a large gulp of the powerful drink.
Nothing like alcohol to warm you on a winters night.

Alex rose slowly, while handing the flask back to the newcomer.

“Look. I.. I’m sorry.”
He gestured towards the two corpses at the head of the alley.
“I’ve had a bad day,”, he mused while wiping away the remnants of tears from his cheeks, and wiping his nose which had since been running from the chill of the night.
Smiling weakly, Alex introduced himself:
“My name is Alex Joel, and I am bloody glad you aren’t infected,”

[Noxious]

She had long since realized that this location had been severely compromised. Maybe it didn't matter anymore to her, but the consistent thumping of her heart in her ears said otherwise. She needed to think, she needed to do so quickly. This was not a new feeling, the drumming heartbeat in her ears creating a sort of rhythmic tension that drove her to start calculating. There had been two gunshots, alerting her and possibly others in the area. Then there had been the whistling, the explosion. The time that had lapsed between all of these events had not been substantial, but she didn’t have enough knowledge in regards to how close everyone was. They should move buildings at least, somewhere higher, more secure. Or they should go lower. It was risky to go below the city this time of year, the damp soaked into your body begging sickness and infiltrated the shabby souls. There were so many small intel fragments that would make this decision easier, but of course, they were not that informed.

She had started across the roof, still low so that couldn’t be spotted from the ground, while all these things fluttered through her mind. Would they bring a group to chase the parrot haired one? That was her largest concern at this point, seeing as his “disruption” had been the most abrasive towards the things. But now, hearing a sort of moaning and muffled yelling she had to wonder why he was making so much noise down there. She pivoted her gun about the hallway as she descended the roof access back into the stairs. She barely registered any difference in temperature and silently she missed the feeling of “coming in from the cold”. It was a brief memory, the only kind she was ever really allowed anymore. And then she back to her surroundings. Her gun was trained with her sweeping eyesight as she hurried towards the commotion; someone was hurt or insane-both options completely fathomable about the punk, either way the noise needed to cease.

The quick movements jerked to a stop as soon as the door to the classroom was open. In front of her stood the man she had seen in the alley, her gun instinctively finding solace between his eyes while her own were captured on the display before her. The child, screaming, almost a tantrum, but, there was blood on what she assumed was a little girls face, there were bodies. The smell in the room wasn’t new, but it was definitely not something she had grown immune too in this last years and she immediately felt her stomach surge to her throat as she made a gagging sound. How had she not noticed this on the way up? She’d been too quick, to hurried. Her mind went to the thought that it could have been worse, there could have been infected in this room and she would have been trapped on the roof, but then she chastised herself…would that really have been worse? She was staring at a child that had obviously been feasting on death. The diseases the little thing could have caught. Her lips, that had seemed frozen in a line somewhere between reserved and disgusted quickly turned to a forced smile of pity.

She turned her head towards the parrot kid and gave him a slight frown with narrowed eyes, not removing the gun from where it was trained as she backed towards the kid a few steps. She gritted her teeth as she spoke quietly, harshly, though it was the only tone she had none for so long that she didn’t really mean it to be insulting. ”Keep an eye on the door.”

God if this kid attacked her she would probably die from the bacteria in its bite alone, but she couldn’t force herself to aim the gun at the dirty little child. Instead she lowered herself closer to the child’s height in a crouch and returned the forced pitying smile, trying so hard not to look to closely at the rooms deceased occupants or focus too hard on the smell, less she start gagging again. She was much less intimidating in appearance than the parrot boy, who she realized also had quite a stench. She knew she didn’t smell amazing, but hell, at least she made an attempt. Her voice became something maternal, something she herself had been unaware she possessed as she practically cooed at the wailing child. ”It’s okay. We are here to help. It’s going to be okay.” She lied. It could be okay, maybe, possibly, if they could all hurry this along and get out of here.

[custoscustodum]

The Professor’s heart pounded in his chest. Now that the situation had become relatively relaxed, the real insanity of his decision to approach the man had begun to hit home, and the adrenaline expenditure began to catch up with him; despite the cold, he could feel that his lower back was damp from sweat beneath his clothes. Nevertheless, his outward expression showed no signs of this, and he just beamed down at the man as he glugged the whisky. He began to wonder why he’d acted so recklessly, but the answer was obvious: a life had been at stake; he’d had no other choice.

There were strange sounds in the night, though they might just’ve been the wind.

“That’s the spirit!” he exclaimed playfully, pun ruthlessly intended as he took back the flask. When Alex apologised, the Professor took a gulp of the drink himself.

“Don’t mention it, my good man,” he began, dabbing at the corners of his mouth with his scarf as though he were using the finest linen in the finest restaurant. If Alex had been slightly younger, he might well have offered him the scarf to wipe his nose on. As it was, he screwed the top back on the flask and returned it to his pocket adding,

“If you ever want to talk about it, I’m always all ears” – there seemed to be no question that they’d be sticking together for at least the foreseeable future – “but otherwise I won’t mention any of this again.”

The Professor reciprocated Alex’s smile with a characteristically enthusiastic grin, and, without giving him much of a choice, grasped the younger man’s hand and it shook it with a firmness that was perhaps surprising, given his aged years.

“It’s an absolute pleasure, Alex,” he greeted, still shaking the hand. “I’ve been told the Victras needs a healthy brain to attach itself to, which is probably why I’ve managed unscathed so far: a moral philosopher is half idiot, half raving doomsday peddler.” The smile broadened and he released Alex’s hand.

“People call me the Professor, and I let them; truth be told, I quite like the moniker: it makes me sound more important than an old player of language games.

“But enough prattle! I don’t think they go in for whistling much, so we might well not be alone out here.

“It came from there, I think.” He nodded at the school building. “Let’s go and investigate. What do you say?”

The Professor’s invitation was more like a mad uncle’s entreaty to begin an adventurous scavenger hunt, than a request to look for another fellow survivor in this godforsaken world. Maybe that attitude was needed, however; maybe, as long as you weren’t actually deluding yourself about the severity of the situation, you needed to try and keep your spirits up.

[CaptainQ]

Valken's eyes became watery not with tears of fear, but because he was exerting himself so hard with his screaming that it seemed that the pressure could squeeze what little retained water his body held.
Barely through his blurred vision, he could see a second figure come into his view in which case he decided to momentarily 'cease fire' with his screaming. At first he had no idea what to make of the woman crouching down before him so he had became drastically confused yet enchanted by this moment.
The more Valken stayed quiet the more he had begun to doubt he'd want to start screaming again, his throat sired hotly, his head was delirious and dizzy, and his eyes were tender. He sniffled as he kept his wide owlish at the woman, "wooo.." Clinging to boris defensively he tried to make a sound at her, tried to speak english but he couldn't remember it as much. He couldn't quite remember how to say 'who' in english for that word actually had many different words in german.
"W-weerr-bist.." It's no surprise that in times of incredible turmoil that some tend to revert back to their native language, but Valken knew enough that these people probably wouldn't understand him...
So finally he swallowed and heaved, strangely he placed Boris's neck in his mouth and clenched it in between his teeth as a means to carry him without hands. Whether this was as a result of his cannibalism or perhaps some primal instinct to carry young in the mouth is...plausible either way.
Valken submissively fell to his knees and crawled by hands and knees towards the woman, bragging his stuff animal, Boris in his teeth which probably made himself out to be a very odd child, possibly one of significant mental illness, possibly because of his unguided time alone at such a pivotal age...

As Valken came to the woman he kept his head down facing the floor, he kept crawling until his bulbous, round cranium bumped the woman's stomach or breasts and then he simply collapsed himself onto her lap.

[Hellis]

Hen the d screamed at hm, the punk had a fleeting thought of escaping. Of running before the infected came. Then the boy bared teeth at him, with sore and red gums and the punk abandoned said thought. Leaving the kid would be inhuman of him. And the rugrat reminded him of himself, a survivor, someone without a place. The sheer suffering displayed moved him, if only a bit. It wasn't so much that the punker was dead insde or didn't care. But he had to keep his cool or he could get bitten. The boys mouths as like a komodo dragons. He had to do this the right way. But that's when the woman showed up. A handgun aimed quite squarely against his forehead. The way she held it, she was a better shot them him for sure. He looked at the gun, thumbing his own snub revolver within the jacket, he would have no chance to draw it. He had been careless and had she been an infected he'd be dead by now. Instead his eyes fixed on the little boy again.

“He needs help” Nathaniel spoke softly. He had no desire to rile the woman up. He didn't want to get shot by another survivor. He didn't feel lke dyng. He was the last of his breed, a free spirit. The nfection had only served to lit his fire.

Suddenly the kid became calmer. He wasnt screaming anymore and his eyes looked less wild. He eyed the woman quickly before he saw the exhausted kid huddle over. It was a sad, heartbreaking scene. But Nathaniel could not let go of that dreading feeling that had started since the kids tantrum. Something was up. He just knew it.

“We need to go. This place isn't safe. To far removed from the river, from the pipes. To many entrances. Shit.. The kd must have been heard for several blocks. The alley had people in it, way to easy to spot. I got careless, we need to go.”

[Silux]

Retracting his hand into the thick sleeve of the rugged greatcoat that loosely sat atop his shoulders, Alex, too, dabbed at his face, though he was to wipe the discharge from his nose, induced by the bitter cold of the night.
That was not so much the case, and as he looked into the distance he could barely see the warming glow of the sun creeping it’s way across the horizon. It would still be a good couple of hours before total daybreak, but it was encouraging to know; he would have given anything for that night to end.

“Professor, you say?” Alex exclaimed, laughing weakly, amazed and thrown off guard by the solid handshake from the man. “And philosophy, of all fields? I’m sure you can tell us why the Victras has chosen to take humanity down screaming, then?”

Alex immediately felt the sting of compassion within himself. The Professor had shown him kindness and trusted in his goodwill even at the risk of his own health despite never having met him before. It was rare to find anybody in days as dark as those, let alone somebody with such compassion and empathy. He felt almost protective of the old man, wishing to repay his kindness in good will and protection against an ever increasingly hostile world.

As they say: One door closes and another on opens

He had heard the whistling, and it was evident that his new friend had also perceived the pitched signal. The Professor was already pointing towards the school building nearby, towering just over the alleyway, peeking it’s head over the line of buildings, obscuring the onset of dawn.
Alex looked towards the building and back at the Professor, acknowledging him with a simple nod as he bent down to scoop his rifle from the crimson snow under his feet. It had been stained red with the diffusing blood from both cadavers ahead - and it sickened him. He would dwell on it later, now was not the time to display any more weakness to newcomer.

Pulling back the barrel lever, Alex inspected the inside of the rifle barrel, though he was unsure why as he was fully aware he was lacking in ammunition. Looking over his shoulder, Alex eyed the corpse of David Wiseman: he was a solider, now. An armed soldier.

He couldn’t.
It was too soon.
It was necessary.
He had to.

“Give me a moment, mate.”

Alex gave the Professor another reassuring smile. He didn’t want the old fellow to feel like he was abandoning him. He just needed to do something.

Alex walked with wavering intent towards the two corpses slumped at the opposite end of the alley, barely holding back a wicked wretch from the back of his throat from the smell and sight alone. The bodies were not rotting, not in that cold, they were perfectly preserved, but there wasn’t anything like the smell of a freshly dead human. To the young Doctor, it smelt of guilt and blood - a pair that found their way together more often than one would think.

Alex had to close his eyes as he got close enough to be able to stretch out a hand and touch the bodies, he could not bear to look upon their faces. So, kneeling, eyes closed, he slowly pushed his hand forward, feeling the rough spin of the rag-tag uniform under his fingertips. It was David’s arm.
Alex took a deep breath before quickly moving his hand down David’s torso, and gripping hold of the sling fastened to it. He could feel two magazines. One was for some small firearm, potentially a pistol. That was useless to him.
The second magazine felt larger, heavier and more solid. It was almost certainly for a Rifle Carbine. It would not have hurt to remove it anyway.
Alex yanked the magazine from the sling, and quickly turned and hurried back towards the Professor without ever looking back; only opening his eyes once he was a good fifteen paces from the ghastly scene.
He looked down to his hands: Rifle magazine. Three shots.
Alex carefully replaced the empty magazine hanging from his rifle with the new.

Cocking the lever, Alex readied himself, and began to cautious talk towards the school.

[Noxious]

Her hand was still numb from the cold, tense, always tense, aiming that gun straight at the punker and only lowering it when he began to speak. It wasn’t that she believed him to be infected, his fashion choices left her little doubt on that front, but she had seen how even the still human had turned during this time. What she had seen, what the older people had warned her of, that loss of humanity that takes over when the survivor inside starts to eat up the compassion in a furious drive to stay alive, that was enough to make her weary. She wasn’t immune to the survivor instinct either and she would have shot him if it had seemed necessary, but then he spoke to her, cautiously even. ”He needs help.”

She had slipped the gun it into the makeshift holster on her side that she had rigged together with scraps as the child attempted to speak to her. She turned from the man and focused on the small boy, trying to make out what he was saying but failing. All she could do was offer what she hoped was a comforting smile. It had been ages since she’d attempted to use those muscles and she felt a surprising ache almost in the action. Her medical training was petrified by the sight of the boy, whizzing about in an attempt to think of something she could do in this moment to make the child better, but it would require more than what she had on hand. She needed to give him some antibiotics, that would be the first step, which she did posses hidden in one of the sewers. As he began to move towards her she saw hope that the child would make it, but she too felt the pressure of the situation, they needed to leave.

She considered just grabbing the child and hauling him out, but then he started crawling into her lap and the moments froze, or rather her mind froze. She looked down at the child in what must have been utter disbelief for it was the first truly human interaction she’d had since her father passed. It was pure and innocent, and she felt a protectiveness wash over her that she had been unaware she possessed. His body, the little warmth that the child gave of made her eyes well up and she couldn’t help but curl one of her jacket padded arms around him. She may have even let out a little sniffle.

The punk rockers words jarred her from the daze and her watery eyes forced themselves away from the heart wrenching scene that had just collapsed into her to focus on him, this time without the gun following and her eyes seemed softer, more human, even though she tried to steel her expression and appear hardened for him once again. It was less difficult as his words sunk in for her to become the rigid tense survivor she had been when she walked into the room. As he spoke she nodded in agreement, tightening her grip on the child as she balanced him well enough to get to her feet. He was shifted to an awkward bundle that leaned against her hip. She knew this would be easier if she could hand the child off to the man, but considering the scene she walked in on, well she didn’t want them to be running with a siren in their arms.

”Do you have a gun? Any bullets? I truly doubt they are just going to let us run away this time.” As she said it she reiterated their desperate situation inside of herself. It required both of her arms to hold the child that, while small, was beyond the average size of someone you would carry about on your hip.

”You lead. I have some supplies in the sewers, if we can get there.” Her hip on the side where she carried the gun shifted outward and her eyes gestured towards her gun. ”Take this one too.” Even as she said it she narrowed her eyes at him in a warning, one that resonated through icy words that seemed to hiss from lips that seemed almost haunted from the lack of warmth that not only came from the outside, but came from her knowledge that this man could take it and leave her, but the child…he was already making her weak. She knew this, but she was powerless to fight it, but the words she spoke would hopefully create some fear in the parrot headed man. ”If you leave us behind and I survive; I will make them look like angels when I find you.”

She realized the harsh words may upset the child so she rubbed his back comfortingly as she spoke and stepped closer to the punker. This was the only choice she had, to save the child, to save her sanity, she would have to momentarily trust in someone else. It was obvious that the gesture was forced, but that it occured at all was crazy. She didn’t look back around the room, she was more than ready to leave this place.

[CaptainQ]

Valken had become attuned to the stark contrast of male and female voices. It was the presence of the opposite in scent,sound and body that strangely caused Valken to do nothing but surrender himself to and In some sense it was his own downfall.
The child exhaled as the woman wrapped her arm around him and in taking his next breath he was filled with her opposite smell. Now that he had a warm body mass to latch onto he could have been considered a parasite in of himself because of how he clinged to the soft mounds that made up the female body.
"hmm.." he hummed as he was picked up off the ground and positioned on the womans hips and now that his head was practically level to hers he turned his focus to her facial features and her hair.
But then he swallowed, washing down remnants of human flesh and bone that was left in his teeth. "hm.." He hummed again under his breath and he looked to the woman's breasts, wondered how they would feel against his teeth if he bit her there.
As the woman and the man with metal in his face started talking, it was loud enough to rouse him out of his perverted thought and so Valken shook his head and gave a huff. He fought to keep in mind that people alive are much better than people dead.
He zoned in and out of their conversation, the heat of the woman made him too tired, too comfortable to pay any close attention... but he enjoyed back rub.
"huuu.." He cooed and strangely rocked his head from side to side.

[custoscustodum]

“Professor, you say?” Alex exclaimed, laughing weakly, amazed and thrown off guard by the solid handshake from the man. “And philosophy, of all fields? I’m sure you can tell us why the Victras has chosen to take humanity down screaming, then?”

This was a question the Professor had thought about a lot over the last few years. In fact, in an academic sense, the whole situation threw up many fascinating questions about the nature of humanity, morality, and responsibility, questions like: are the infected still people? If not, what are they? Ought they be held morally responsible for their actions? Ought the non-infected for their actions against them? And what about the Victras – did they even have the conscious capacity to be held accountable for any of it? The Professor’s best answer to Alex’s specific question was something like this: in the first instance, he was not at all convinced that the parasite had chosen to do anything; his suspicion was that the Victras no more chose to take over human hosts than did their microscopic, mundane counterparts, like tapeworms and ticks. If it was a mistake of bygone so-called natural philosophy to read divine providence into the fitness of purpose with which nature endows creatures to fulfil their niches, it was almost certainly also a mistake to read malice into such a mechanism too. Why had the Victras imposed themselves on humanity? Because it was what they had evolved, wherever and whenever, to do. The old man may have been wrong about this, and in particular it might turn out that the parasites were more intelligent than he gave them credit for, but, despite understanding Alex’s urge to want to find meaning in the situation, to find some explanation of why all this tragedy had occurred, his own best guess was that there was none.

All of that, however, was a topic of discussion for another time, since they currently had much more pressing matters at hand.

“Give me a moment, mate.” Alex said, before the Professor had a chance to respond to his question without sounding like he was fobbing him off. The older man reciprocated his new friend’s smile, sure that Alex was the one who needed reassuring, especially given what he suspected he was about to do. He watched patiently as the man did what he had to. It didn’t look easy. Sharp corners of memories forced their way into the Professor’s mind: a hand grabbing his leg, a gunshot, a fall, and screaming. He tried to purge them from his consciousness before they could kaleidoscope into a complete remembrance; mercifully, it wasn’t long before Alex was on his way back towards him.

When the younger man opened his eyes, it was to the Professor smiling at him, and then giving him a nod. Had they been better acquainted, he might well have given him a hug, or at least clasped him on the shoulder.

“Well done, Alex.” The three words carried a lot of weight; they could’ve sounded trite, or even inappropriate, as though he had performed well on a test, but instead they conveyed a multi-layered undercurrent of meaning: Alex had done well to get the bullets, partly for their continued survival, but partly because the Professor was sure his friends would’ve wanted him to use them to go on; moreover, he’d done well, in a horrible, morbid sense that could only be understood in such times as these, in turning his weapon on his former loved ones and pulling the trigger; the man had also done well to keep the flames of his will to live alight, for such a turn of events was sure to threaten to extinguish them; lastly, in a very broad sense, Alex had done well to keep going not just since the Infection, but all his life, for if, as the Professor suspected, there was no God, and no plan, and underlying sense of justice or fairness in the world, if it was all just a dubiously happy accidental by-product of the laws of nature churning away, then it took courage to get up every day, and every breath was an act of heroism in the face of the uncaring universe. In many ways, the situation of recent years served as a stark reminder, or perhaps a symbol, of this relationship between man and his place in the world, and was a testament to the unflinching, remarkable obstinacy of the human spirit. Just because there was (for the survivors) no government, no laws, no sanctions, no American dream on the horizon, didn’t mean that they should stop either caring about each, or just plain stop living.

As Alex made for the school, the Professor strode up beside him so that they were standing almost literally shoulder to shoulder. He left the hunting knife tucked in his belt at his waist, and had no other visible armaments. He’d put his trust in his fellow man once already that night, and admittedly would have been dead had Alex’s weapon been loaded, but it hadn’t been and he wasn’t; for the Professor, that was close enough to a miracle as he was ever going to get. Of course, it was still the relentless arbitrariness of the universe that was behind the miracle, but that didn’t really matter, for it was no less spectacular to have been so blessed by improbability than by the hand of God.

The Professor was garrulous by nature, and even more so when he was nervous – who or what exactly had been whistling, and why? He refrained from talking, however, given that it might spoil any modicum of surprise they might have in confronting whatever it was that was with them in the night.