Ashton Holloway
Location: Newnan
Interacting With: Caesar, Dead Guys
Ash became a creature of method. He led his people forward, ever forward, though they had to fight hard for every step. Their path opened up somewhat, thanks to the efforts of their Resident Badass, Caesar. But there were so many of the Dead inside their walls, and their own numbers kept getting getting shaved off by the margins.
They were about to break through; they could see the end. The largest concentration of Dead Ones lay around the downed Edenite, who had since ceased screaming. Tearing sounds came quieter and with less frequency from the knot of consuming flesh, though, and the ones milling about the edges seemed to grow bored with the scene. A few noticed the group of live, warm bodies passing by.
They had just met in the middle with Caesar, who was busy hacking apart another animated corpse. This one wore dirty, faded coveralls with a name stitched on the left breast pocket; in life the corpse was called Gus, apparently. Gus went down like a drunken prom date, and the intimidating Mexican joined up with his people, fighting their way to the Armory.
Ash looked to the venerable warrior and nodded.
"Thanks, Jefe. You good?"Caesar looked to the younger man and made a noise that wasn't quite a laugh, and wasn't quite a growl. He squared up, facing toward their destination, and uttered with a low voice,
"Lead the way, Capitán."Then their day got considerably worse.
Black James!
Location: Newnan
Interacting With: Epic Clusterfuckery
One silenced shot after another whispered out from the clocktower, most of which very expediently parted undead skulls, laying them back to rest. In truth, James wished he could do more, but the fact was that with Alicia gone, he was the most qualified to take the tower. His best bet for helping the people below was to stay put and continue raining silent lead on the scene.
James raised his eye from the scope for a second, getting a wide view of his field of fire. From his vantage point, he spotted something in the distance that damn near made him soil himself. Something the people on the ground couldn't see yet. He scrambled for his walkie and smashed the talk button down with fervored urgency.
"Uh, guys? GUYS! Goddamn herd coming 'round the Armory! Go, y'all! Go! Go!"Attention focused on their twelve, no one noticed the lone, particularly corpulent carcass edging in toward Meghna.
Caesar Gonzalez
Location: Newnan
Interacting With: Dama Muerte
No one except Caesar.
Even he was almost caught unawares, up until the last second. The plodding, massively overweight corpse reached out its gnarled hands, bone showing in places with an incomplete set of filthy, yellowed fingernails. It gurgled quietly, drooling out oily, black foam, teeth bared in anticipation of Indian cuisine.
This would not do.
For a short second, Caesar saw his daughter's features on the slender girl. He knew she died a horrible, flesh ripping death, and hoped to spare this good, gentle woman the same fate. No one deserved to die like that. Well, a few people
did deserve to die like that, in Caesar's estimation, but Meg was not among that number.
He reacted with speed nurtured by a lifetime of mortal engagements, shoving himself in between Meg and the handsy cadaver. Dear God, this one was massive. In life, he must have been a longtime competitive eater, or a certified shut-in with the pizza guy, Szechuan Palace, and Bob's House of Deep-Fried Butter on speed dial. In death, the fat bastard had its hands on Meg, and Caesar wasn't having it.
Set in full Attack Mode, Caesar dipped in low batted one gory hand away with his machete, keeping both from gripping. A quick vertical slash lopped off the other one, its fingers grasping a handful of Meghna's shirt. The severed hand relaxed and dropped to the ground, rolling off to the side with the middle finger extended. A portent, certainly. Caesar kept up the attack, slamming his fist into the creature's face, and shoving with the entirety of his weight. Not his finest display of martial art, but the object was to move the thing back without it falling on its intended victim, preferably without the noise of a gunshot.
Slowly, laboriously, Caesar fought it back. After a few seconds, he spun deftly to the side and hacked its knee out from under its bloated torso. The blubbery, rotten corpse fell to the ground with a juicy, skin-splitting splat, leaking liquefied fat and various ichors onto the street in the shadow of the building next to them both. It was unable to right itself, unable to move with any determination that made it particularly threatening; at least in comparison to the more mobile dead people in the area.
Caesar took a deep breath, turned a machete to an underhand grip, and drove it into the fat, dead man's skull.
An odd scraping noise barely registered in his hearing from somewhere above, almost completely drowned out by the general noise of a horde occupying his home. He raised an eyebrow and turned a glance up, and immediately wished he was standing anywhere else but in that one spot. A body, or rather the top half a of body, clawed its way over the side of the roof to Caesar's immediate right. Silent in its descent, it was unerring in its path toward the elder bladesman and landed on him heavily.
Caesar was blindsided. He had nowhere to go but forward and down, which he did with the utmost of reluctance. Dripping, fetid teeth tore into the back of his neck before he could react, gnawing and salivating foul fluids into the fresher wetness of Caesar's blood. He was dead. No matter what happened next, the old man was dead. And that
really pissed him off.
The thing had a hard grip on both shoulders. Shaking it off just wasn't gruesome enough for Caesar's tastes right now. Instead, he flipped himself over, on top of the half-an-asshole that had killed him. Much resembling a suicide king, El Jefe righted a machete and flexed his bicep mightily, driving the blade into the monster's temple and twisting until it lay still beneath him. He stood. People were staring, people he knew with certainty that he cared about. People he cared about that were in danger.
A sense of calm washed over him, strange and comforting all at once. He felt an odd freedom, knowing he was going to die. Like everything unimportant washed away; all the anger, all the ego. The petty matters that once plagued him as important were shed, as he let go of everything holding him to all of his negativity.
The group was in a clear spot now, but they soon wouldn't be. Caesar walked over to Ash with genuine warmth and just a little regret in his eyes.
"Thank you for taking care of Alicia, Ashton. I would have been proud, very proud to call you my son." He gripped Ash's hand, looking him square in the eye, and nodded, expressing with his face what his words could not. He respected the man, and was grateful to have him in his life as well as his daughter's.
Ash's stone exterior cracked just a bit, allowing tears to form. A single one welled enough to spill onto his cheek as he looked upon this wholly intimidating man; a man he had avoided conversations with, a man that (presumably) wiped his ass with sandpaper and pissed two-penny nails. He looked upon him with regret of moments lost, the possibility of family. Now the old man was dying, just as surely as the coming night and the dawn after, he was a dead man.
"No. Now's not the time. I'll be ok, Ashton. At the end of this, I'm going to be with M'hija. First, we've got jobs to do. You get these people to the Armory. Make this place safe. I'll take point." Caesar looked to Ash's machete, smiled just a little, and held out a hand. Without an ounce of reluctance, the younger man surrendered the weapon, knowing it would be put to good use. It was a little shorter than Caesar's favored ones, but no doubt he could use it with equal proficiency. And it was apparent that he was going to. Caesar, El Jefe, Papi - the Ex-Federale, Former Mercenary, Private Security CEO, waded into the approaching Horde. He set Ash's blade in his teeth, and he began to dance. It was a beautiful and terrible dance to behold.
This was the point to his life. This moment, this battle. The training, the killing, the reason why he maintained his physicality into advancing years - it all led to his actions NOW. Caesar's hands moved faster than unaided human reckoning could follow. He was juggling three blades in an all-out effort to cause as much carnage as possible, long hair flowing behind him like a scarf in strong, ever changing wind, trying to keep up with the elder badass's footwork.
He cleaved the legs from one, launching a front kick into the ribcage of another. It fell back against several more, buying him the time to sheathe his blade in the first one's skull. It remained there, upright, as the brutal Mexican halted a bite at his throat with the machete held in his teeth. A quick neck twist opened the Walker's jaw wider and headbutted it to the ground, where Jefe's bootheel stomped it into the Great Beyond. He replaced the skull-bound machete with Ash's, and spun a series of heads in half with a sustained offensive figure eight maneuver, making the air around him perilous for any reaching pieces of hand or face.
He widened his stance and got low as he pushed forward. It wasn't enough to get to the Armory. He had to move slowly enough to kill every last one of those rotting cocksmokes that stood to overpower his friends, following in his wake of blood and bile. One blade ascends while the other descends, the third immediately hurled into the face of another. Before it drops, Caesar was already there, yanking it free and embedding it deeply into the skullcap of another. Hands and legs were removed. Undead faces split down the middle. Torsos ripped open, making the path slippery for the ones behind it. Limbs flew into the air with the wild abandon of a man composing a frenzied salad or digging through garbage for a winning lottery ticket. Corrupted flesh exploded upon impact of knuckle, bone, and steel. Caesar created art, the composition being a hellish performance piece PLUS a rabid impressionist painting of Open Air Autopsy in redscale upon the ground. This was his masterpiece of violence, motivated by raw, unyielding love.
This was his greatest moment on Earth.
It was his Swan Song, and it sounded an awful lot like
"Let The Bodies Hit The Floor".
Laying on the ground far behind the scene, Dexter's body soiled itself.
"THAT, my friends, is a Hordebuster." whispered Ash, following behind the truly inspired Caesar. He gripped his large, knuckle duster knife in one hand, also supporting the barrel of his carbine. Though his finger was on the trigger, he maintained mopping up any of Caesar's leftovers with the blade; the gun was purely for more lively opponents. He wasn't sure when one may pop their head out of a door or window, and wished to be prepared.
After what seemed hours, but was likely only a few minutes' time, Caesar had opened a proper hole to the Armory. Tom (remember that guy?) stood ready to fling the doors open and get to business as Ash shuffled everyone through the door, Caesar providing cover from the few that remained close enough to take notice. To his credit, Ash looked to Caesar and nodded his head to the door, insisting that he be the last one inside.
"I'm no good to anyone in there. But they need you. We got one more coming, I'll make sure she gets in. Go." After hacking two more down, Caesar got a little breathing room, enough to begin tossing his equipment through the Armory door. He unbuckled his shotgun harness and shrugged off his bandoleer of shells, followed by his .45 pistol. After dispatching yet another Walker, his collection of knives followed. Then Ash's blade. Then his leather vest. Caesar retained his trademark machetes, as there was one more task left to him. But this one, he would require help.
Sure enough, help was on the way. A somewhat familiar form could be spotted moving toward them in the distance. It was Zoie, and she was looking rough but it could have been worse. Stepping with purpose to get back to the group now that Cletus had been dealt with in the same manner one would a snake; her kukri dripping with the remains of Walkers. This surely was not the day she had had in mind when she awoke but no one really got to plan out their days anymore.
The group, minus the Whirling Bandito, had already made their way into the armory at this point. Many of the walkers had been dispatched with extreme prejudice and the bodies lay in various pieces on the ground like some scene from the Boboli Gardens, only juicy. Spotting Caesar near the back entrance to the armory Zoie quickened her pace, dispatching a Biter as her blade cut through its skull from behind as she passed and sent the top spinning to the ground as the body dropped.
Getting to him, Zoies brow arched as she noted the blood on his shoulder and she gritted her teeth. This was not a way for someone to go down. A bite that only left them knowing that there was no hope and nothing left for tomorrow.
"Yeah, I'm bit." She simply nodded, there really wasn't much to discuss at this point. He knew what he was in for, everyone did in this day and age. There was not getting around it. There was nothing anyone would do at that point. She reached out and rested her hand on his shoulder, giving him a look that was anything but pity and everything that was respect.
"Alright darlin', let's be gettin' this over with then," she said in her thick Georgia twang.
"You've earned your place here. They're good people, a family. They'll understand." Zoie took a step as she pulled herself closer and gave the man a a bit of a hug. Who cared if she was covered in blood and guts or that he was. In her mind the man at least deserved a little bit of comfort before the inevitable came. Releasing him she stepped back, twirling her kurki and shoving them into their sheaths at her back.
"Don't you be frettin' none. Ol' Mama will keep them safe as she can until there ain't a breath left in me." she said in reassuring voice as she pulled out her Beretta and and pulled the hammer back.
"No! Don't waste a bullet on me. Besides, live by the sword, right? Let's do this." Zoie tilted her head to the side as he spoke. Dropping the hammer back into place and holstering her sidearm. If he didn't want the bullet, he wouldn't get it. Few these days were able to chose their death, she had to honor the request.
"When you're done, give these to Ash. He'll understand."He handed his machetes over to the newcomer and tilted his head up to expose his throat.
"You make this clean, and you finish it after. Do not let me turn. Understand?" Reaching out she took his machetes and gave them a quick once over, running each blade along her thighs to get as much of the remains of others from them. Cleanliness was next to Godliness, well maybe not anymore, but hey he was about to meet his maker; might as well.
"I be understanin' papi." With that Zoie did what she had to and gave the man a quick and clean death. His own blades cutting through the flesh as if it were butter. She sighed as watched the blood flow.
His last thought, before the blood loss rendered him unconscious, was of his girl Alicia.
"M'hija..." He closed his eyes and saw no more of this world, passing from it with a smile on his lips. He died a warrior's death, cleanly, and without regret.
