Anima — Roleplayer Guild

Southwest Missouri
Plains land

They had been walking for god knows how long. Joseph considered himself an outdoors man. Before the world went to hell, whenever he could gather enough vacation days, a trip to a nearby state park wasn’t uncommon. A day away from the congested city of D.C was always welcome. He loved the place, but only in sparing doses.

“It’s already that late?” Back when batteries and electricity were commonplace, there wasn’t any need to read the sky. Now, he depended on the sun’s position to tell him exactly what time it was — approximately anyhow. “How you doing back there, Sam? If you see a good place to hunker down, don’t be a stranger.”

Samantha Walker. Joseph met her during the days of the initial outbreak. When they fled the cities, he was worried that the FBI agent wouldn’t last too long out here. For a time, it seemed like that. She complained and was downright miserable. The thought of abandoning her had crossed his mind until she pulled him out of the clutches of a walker. Damn woman had undergone a mental shift or something. Docile and strong, there wasn’t any indication of her past bratty persona. A morbid side also emerged from her.

“All I see is plains.” Taking a canteen from her pack the two had looted from a camping store, Sam brought the opening to her lips. She was frugal with the precious remaining water. “No trees either. Oh, meant to tell you earlier, our purifiers are running low.”

Joseph shrugged. His eyes stared into the bland distance. “Give it another few months, and we won’t care how clean the water we drink is,” he said. “Shit, we already eat snakes — those few bars we got saved for emergencies. Yeah, I don’t really care if those purifiers go out.”

As she always did, she ignored the cop. Like anyone living, he had the right to bitch and moan. Hell, she did too. It was peculiar. Back at in the city, she hated the traffic — wanted to personally break every car horn, alarm, and anyone else that jarred her from he restful evenings. Now, the silence which she had been craving for so long became her personal demon. Moderation. That’s all she wanted. But now, there was nothing unless the walkers were after them. That moan drove her crazy. Every time she heard it. Unlike the cars in traffic, this sound never became normal. It woke the fear that she hadn’t felt since she was a kid.

“Holy shit! Would you look at that?”

Sam stopped her feigned surveying as she came to stand by her companion. “Is that what I think it is?”

Joseph grinned. “Where there’s a fence, there’s a building. Shelter. We can find it and barricade it till we’re on the move again. In?”

Sam shrugged. “I think I can free up my schedule,” she said. “I’ll try to make it work.”

Joseph laughed as he rubbed the hilt of his hatchet. “Dusk’s setting in. Let’s go.”

—

“Now just what the fuck do you want to do with them?”

“Keep the woman. Kill the man. The bitch’s got one hell of punch. The fuckin’ brute put you on the stretcher for a moment.”

Sam stirred as the voices gradually grew louder and louder. As she moved, a jarring sensation of pain shot through her side. Her things were gone except her dirty black and grey long sleeve, jeans, and hiking boots. Inching towards a corner, she felt the smooth surface of cement against the palm of her hands.

“You’re awake.” She turned to the voice as a smilingly, badly beaten Joseph stared back at her. “Goods news or bad news first?”

“Bad news.”

“You look like shit.”

Sam shook her head as the voices from upstairs seemed through the thin flooring. They were inside a building. A building! It all came back to her. They found shelter, cleared it anyways. Right as they began to settle in, others came back. If she remembered correctly, they were dragging something in a sack. She hoped it was wildlife they were out hunting.

“The good news?”

“We’re alive. Found shelter too.”

Sam rolled her eyes. “How bad is it?”

“Looks worse than it is,” Joseph said as he wiped his bruising face against his shirt. “I’ve got a plan to get us out. It’s risky, but I’d rather take my chances than be one of their … ah, meals.”

The woman’s jaw dropped wide open. No way.

“You don’t want to be here either. I’ve been up for some time, and those guys up there? They’re into some really, really fucked up shit, Sammy. And yeah. They … fuck I don’t want to say it. Makes me sick. They eat people. Christ! There was another woman in here with us. They took her.”

Sam tried to stand, but her legs saw to it that she remained sitting. “I’m not going to be someone’s meal,” she said, her teeth clenched to subdue her desire to scream. “What do you have in mind?”

“They’d probably ‘tender’ you up before that,” he said before nodding apologetically to Sam. “How’s your acting?”

“Did undercover orientation. BAU doesn’t deal with any of the ‘going deep’ shit. Why?”

Joseph stared at her pointedly. His canter all gone. “Here’s what we’re going to do. You’re not going to like it, but if you want to live, you’ll do it. And do it well. You get me?”

Sam nodded.

“Good. Here’s what I got…”

—

The stairs leading down shook. Sam took in a deep breath as she received a nod of encouragement from Joseph. Whatever happened after this point would determine if they would live or die. She prayed for it to be the first. Joseph was right, she didn’t want to do this. It disgusted her to even think she would do this with a canabalistic fuck.

The wooden door swung open when the after it was unlocked. A kid, no older than maybe twenty stepped in. His caution peaked when he walked by Joseph who gave him the meanest glare. He looked at her. He licked his lips. “If you don’t shut your goddamn mouth, Eric’s going to come down,” he said. “You don’t want that, so why don’t you just shut the fuck up.”

Sam smiled. She had worked with unsub’s who had acted in ways that pointed to a personality such as this kid. Fuck Joseph’s plan. She could do this her way without selling her dignity. “Your walls are pretty thin,” she said. She chose her next words carefully. “What’s your name, kid?”

“Doesn’t matter, does it?”

“I’d like to know who I’m talking to, if that’s alright.” In her peripherals, she saw Joseph silently swearing to her, to himself, to whatever. She refocused. “Heard about what you did. All of it. I can’t imagine you would ever participate in such a thing. Eating people? In my eyes, you’re no better than a walker.”

“We don’t fucking eat people!”

“There was a lady here before. Where did ‘Eric’ drag her off to?”

“You two are the only one’s we’ve had the pleasure of knowing.”

Sam rose an eyebrow. “I smelled something pretty tasty half and hour ago,” she said. “Some soup, vegetables, and the unforgettable scent of meat. Fresh. Meat. I didn’t see any cows outside. There was a lady here with us and now she’s gone.”

The man paled a shade. He walked towards the wall the wall. The repugnant scent filled the room as he exhumed his recent meal. “Fuck! Eric said it was a deer!”

“I don’t want to be eaten,” Sam said. “My friend doesn’t want to be eaten either. You know? We came looking for shelter away from the walkers. This things that tear the very flesh from bone. Those things aren’t human, kid. Now, when I hear that our kind is doing the same thing as them? Well, what do you think? How many bowls of fresh meat have you eaten? Did they tell you it was an animal’s? Let us go. You can still do the right thing.”

The man looked at her. His eyes were sunken as he breathed deep. “Eric saved me. There were ten of those … monsters, and he saved me.”

“Just let us go.”

“I…”

The man’s eyes grew wide. Joseph had sprung from behind him. A still bleeding hand covered the kid’s mouth as a large torn piece of jagged metal rammed straight up through his mid side. Joseph stuck him repeatedly until the silent screams stopped. Fresh blood plastered against his shirt.

“Sam? What the actual fuck was that? Seduce him, not fucking baby him! Jesus, come on. Grab his gun.”

Sam stared at the kid’s lifeless eyes as a pool of blood poured out of his body. It was surreal. Before she could dwell on it any longer, she heard sounds of fighting coming from upstairs as she grabbed the poorly maintained pistol and moved up as quickly ad silently she could.

As she entered the kitchen, another man was on the floor bleeding out, while another had Joseph pinned to the ground. The man looked up, as his eyes went wide when he saw the muzzle of a firearm trained on him.

Without a word, Sam shot him in the leg. He fell off howling in anguished pain. Oddly, she didn’t feel bad about it for one bit. “You okay?” she asked as she helped Joseph off the ground. “Nice job with that one.”

“Could have been easier, if you’d stuck with the original plan.”

Sam ignored him as she went to where their things were, stacked in a corner. She grabbed her climbing ax and walked back to the man she shot. “Are you Eric?”

“I was only trying to keep the kid and my boy alive.”

“By eating people? You sick shit.”

Eric laughed as he shook his head. “Whatever it takes to survive. Hell, you were prepared to take my home by force.”

Joseph chuckled. “A hypothetical outcome that can’t happen now,” he said. “We only stay in abandoned places, leaving folks to their own business or asking permission. We would have done the same for you.”

“Don’t insult me! Too many charle—“

“Whatever might or might not have happened,” Sam said loudly enough to silence the man, “devouring other survivors is indisputably and morally wrong.”

“Whadd’ya going to do with that axe, missy? Should have killed your pretty face instead of keeping you alive.”

A sadistic grin crossed Sam’s lips as she bent down to stare into Eric’s green eyes. “I am, in fact, going to kill you, but how quickly or how slow? Well, lets play that one by ear.”

Anima Member

Status

Recent Statuses

Bio

Most Recent Posts