Palinopsia

Doctor Jax

Disease Empress
Original poster
FOLKLORE MEMBER
Posting Speed
  1. 1-3 posts per week
Online Availability
3PM CST - 9 PM CST
Writing Levels
  1. Intermediate
  2. Adept
  3. Advanced
  4. Adaptable
Preferred Character Gender
  1. Male
  2. Female
  3. No Preferences
Genres
Fantasy, Scifi, Urban Fantasy, Horror
The rural landscape was largely silent. Without traffic or the average hustle of daily life, it was abnormally still. A small church stood off on its own, the picture of a country chapel, with a single steeple and a red door. In its parking lot, a small woman stood staring at it with deliberation on her face. She pursed her lips and glanced around her guiltily, before she sighed and walked up to the door. She tried the handle, only to find that it was locked.

They took the time to lock the doors to God's House as the world ended. There's some sort of meaning in there somewhere. Surprised it's still intact.

Sister Therese glanced around, finding a storage shed, and she walked over. It had had the lock busted off it, and she dug around inside before finding something useful - a two-by-four.

"This little light of mine... I'm gonna let it shine..." she sang to herself softly as she walked over to the church.

Forgive me. I know it's just a building.

"This little light of mine..."

Crash went the plank into one of the windows, stained glass spraying inside of the chapel building.

"I'm gonna let it shine... This little light of mine... I'm gonna let it shine, let it shine, let it shine, let it shine..."

She cleared a big enough space out of window to ensure she wouldn't end up shredded by the leaded glass, and she surveyed her handiwork with a heavy heart. Carefully, she put her arm through the window to turn the lock on the door and open the church door. With trepidation, she stepped over the threshold.
 
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Two years... How could the world have changed so much? How could he have changed? 24 months ago he would've arrested a man for what he just did. Standing there, covered in unfamiliar blood, he clutched a crudely made trench club in his right hand as he loomed over the crumpled form of what was once another human being. The law felt a lifetime away now, his humanity too far gone to recall. This was just one more eraser across that chalkboard. The life of Sgt. Bruce Trotter might as well have been a storybook he read once upon a time.

Lifting the gore tinseled club to his face, Trotter wondered if this was technically police brutality. A bleak jest -- rather, a cheap cope, but the dark-haired man nevertheless gave a curt, bitter chuckle as he brushed the thought aside and took up a dirty jug of bleach from beside the corpse. The plastic handle was still warm to the touch.

Putting his spoils into his bag alongside the various bits of canned food and bags of chips he'd nabbed from the store shelves before the attack, the fallen cop stood to his full height with a pop of his knees and made for the door. He'd wasted too much time, the sun was beginning to go down and he was far afield. Getting caught outside at night, and near the countryside no less, was just asking to get taken by those... things.

Still, he hesitated at the bar of the door. He couldn't help but feel like he had forgotten something, one last cache of goods to sort through. Or rather, there was one he had ignored. Trotter looked back at the body, darkness pooling around it.

"If not me, somebody."

With that he rolled the body over and began going through the pockets, taking out a zippo, a few rolls of gauze, and a pack of menthols. The cigarettes had expired over a year ago, but he had other things in mind besides smoking them. Stuffing this meager loot into his jacket, he pushed the man back over onto his stomach and lifted his shirt, finding a snub-nosed revolver tucked into the back of his jeans. A Smith & Wesson Model 640, chambered in .38 Special. He popped the cylinder open to check for rounds -- empty.

"Yeah, I figured. You wouldn't be using your fists otherwise."

He glanced at the jug, the paper label speckled with mildew.

"Guess you must've really needed this," he said with a heaviness to his voice that reverberated through the empty aisles of the convenience store, "Sorry... So do I."

Trotter started at the sound of breaking glass in the distance, shouldering a beat-up weatherby hunting rifle and pushing his back against the shelving behind him. Scanning the area from his cover, he slowly rose back up and made a cautious path to the doorway, the pale blue glow of the foggy evening casting a dull azure hue over the interior of the store. Slithering his callused hand to the topmost frame of the doorway, he undid the tarnished bell that once alerted the storeowner to potential customers and sat it on the shelf beside him before painstakingly inching the door open. A cool breeze knocked a short flinch out of him, but the now quieted sound of ringing shards brought a nearby church to his attention.

The question was... investigate, or be smart?
 
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When Gregory Rasputin woke up one afternoon from horrifying nightmares, he found himself oddly safe in his makeshift bed from the nightmares of waking day. His leg was stiff. It always was. Always had been, it seemed like, for long as he could remember. Heavily, like lifting great weights, his eyelids raised, giving way to the dusty illumination abandoned and heavily windowed buildings contained during the day. It was the stiffness in his leg that had woken him; it was drawn up to his chest in a vaguely fetal position. To be fair, it was about the only position that he found comfortable, given the condoning nature of the bathtub.

Bathtub? Maybe not quite; people didn’t normally put bath tubs in from of an audience. But with its partially hidden location and it’s close proximity, it felt ... safe. As safe as one could feel when alone. Teeth clenched, Greg extended his limbs, trying to work out the ache that more and more looked like was going to be his only reliable companion. Subconsciously, he reached up a hand to feel for his crutch and the bag of tools he kept attached to it. They were his lifeblood, even more than the hunting rifle he had cradled as he slept. Gaining some strength back, he lifted his gaunt figure from the tub. Yes, his crutch was as he’d left it, as were the tools that accompanied it. They were maybe the only blessing he had. Bathed in the multicolored lights of the colored glass windows, they certainly looked like it. Funny, to be reminded if a blessing in a damn church.

Irony of ironies. It took the fuggin’ end of the world to drive him back to a church. Greg smiled, despite himself. He was in church, and it wasn’t even Easter. His momma would have been proud. Maybe not proud of why; in the wake of invading demons and God knew what else, taking shelter in a church seemed like an obvious choice. Funny, then, that no one else had thought to do the same thing. He looked back to the front door, grateful that at least his eyes hadn’t failed him. Yes, it was still secure, deadbolted. It-

The door knob shook. It wasn’t hard; just like someone was expecting it to be open. In his normal life, Greg wouldn’t have thought much about it. Post-apocalypse, it was terrifying. His heart rate spiked, eyes wide in fear as he ducked back down into the baptismal tub. The church’s interior, previously so secure and even peaceful within the chaos of the world at large, had suddenly become a cage, with creatures of some unimaginable form clawing at its gate. Hands shaking, he raised his rifle, completely unprepared to fight for his life. A silence fell over the world; the door didn’t rattle again. Perhaps the demons had left. But Greg was frozen in place, fear freezing his heart the color of his cold blue eyes. Seconds turned into minutes, though it seemed as though another two years of hell drug past, and it seemed as though he’d be left alone.

With a piercing crash like a gunshot, a beautiful window shattered, giving way to a weathered piece of wood. He felt his heart skip a beat, and hunkering down into the tub even farther, he trained his rifle on the window. An arm reached carefully through, unlocking the only barrier against the outside. The door swung open, and as a figure stepped through the doorway, Greg managed a yell.

“Hey!” he managed, voice strained and weak and very obviously frightened. “Geddout! Leave me alone!”
 
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Upon hearing a human voice yell out at her, the sister immediately dropped the plank of wood and ducked around the building, her heart hammering steadily but frantically in her chest cavity. Stupid, stupid, stupid! she thought to herself. She had assumed - incorrectly, obviously - that there would be no one in the pristine-looking church, that she would be able to get inside without a problem and see if there was anything useful the congregants had left behind. No - instead, she found herself nearly pissing her pants as someone, maybe a former member, yelling at her to get out and leave him alone.

The sensation of hunger raked sharp claws through her mid-section. She hadn't had a proper meal in - oh, almost weeks. She had survived solely off of beef jerky, chips, and whatever other gas station fodder had survived the rampant looting over the past few years. Sometimes she got lucky and found a house that still had a more-or-less stocked pantry of canned goods, but she could only carry so much with her. She had hoped that the church within had a kitchen or a food pantry for the less fortunate (of which she was now one, though could you be less fortunate when everyone felt misfortune?) and that she could sate the hunger that threatened to yank her stomach out.

It was amazing the kind of motivator starvation was. Things she would have never considered doing - stealing, breaking and entering, trading essential goods for - were on the table and sometimes necessary where the hunger was involved. She had to get into that church, congregant or not. If he had a gun, she would be up the creek. She'd lost her hunting knife a week ago down a small gully and couldn't find it again. That was another essential she'd been hoping to find.

A knife in a church? You've really changed how you see things, Abby, the little voice said, but she pushed it away.

She weighed her options. She could haggle. There were things she'd taken with her - mostly medical supplies - that would benefit someone else, and perhaps they'd be willing to trade. That was considering there was only one person there. Multiple people meant trouble, as she could be overpowered easily. For now, though, the man inside didn't know that she was a very small, barely five foot tall former nun. That might give her leverage.

"I... I don't mean you harm! I'm just hungry!" she called out, deepening her voice ever-so-slightly in an attempt to sound bigger than she was. "I can trade you. I have gauze, antibiotics, Tylenol! But if you don't want to trade, I'm going to be on my way!"

A fog began to deepen around the church, and the area was quickly becoming obscured, the eye obfuscated as a white cloud descended. The ensuing wet made Sister Therese shiver, and she stuck her hands under her armpits. She glanced about her, aware that the fog just as often presaged the strangeness that had overtaken what seemed like the whole world, as much as just being a common phenomenon in New England.
 

The outmost perimeter of the church was littered with the scattered refuse of another world. As Trotter stalked a better vantage, his feet worked hard to avoid the little gremlins that sought to alert his position to who or whatever was waiting around the corner. Their soda can hands and brittle stick arms spread out, almost strategically seeming to grasp at his footfalls. Broken bottles and splattered puddles glistened in the dying light of the afternoon, reflecting the hunkered shadow of a man who passed next to noiselessly.

Newspapers billowed in a listless dance, caught up in the chilly autumn breeze that flung them from captor to captor.

‘End of the Fairytale – Charles and Diana split.’

‘Fairgrounds “Canstruction” benefits Food Bank.’

‘Milk, 2 gallons for $5.99 at Hickman’s Small-town Grocer.’

‘Clinton Wins! New president: ‘A new beginning, a new partnership, a new America.’

These things were important. It seemed laughable now. As Trotter cornered the hedge of the church a subtle smirk tugged at the corner of his cracked lips. That was a pretty good deal on milk.

“Hey!” a shaky voice called out. With a start he hunkered down and gripped his rifle close. “Geddout! Leave me alone!”

Trotter creeped forward at a painfully deliberate pace, and again until he crested the very periphery of the wall, leaning forward just enough to steal a half-eyed glance to the other side. It seemed there was a young woman – a tiny slip of a thing by anyone’s standard – locked into some tense negotiations with a squatter.

To be honest, if you asked him he couldn’t even tell you why he was still there. More than once he had reminded himself that darkness was creeping in and he was no closer to safety than when it first occurred to him that he should head back to his shelter. He heard a disturbance, was the only rebuttal he offered himself. Old habits.

Trotter continued to eavesdrop, hearing what the woman had on offer. Antibiotics could certainly be useful. Honestly, he had half a mind to step forward and offer to barter with her himself, but this was a tense situation. From the sound of whoever that man was inside, another surprise might tip him over the edge. Perhaps he’d better just leave. . .

Thank God for those gremlins.

The sound of a snapping branch gave Trotter just enough warning to turn and see what looked like a man. Yes, a man, only… there were so many legs. He’d hardly had the time to register anything about it beyond that before it shrieked like a cat with water in its lungs and threw something at him with a force great enough to splinter the faded wooden siding behind him when he ducked. A wet crunch and the warm splatter on his shoulder told him he’d regret looking at the projectile. Instead he gave a frenzied shot from the hip and scrambled around the bend of the wall, no longer caring about stealth in his mad dash to put some distance between himself and whatever that could be.
 
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Tylenol.

Pain medication was such a hard thing to come by anymore. For all the rush people had made in fleeing to some rumored shelter or in terrorizing those around them who for one reason or another been less prepared for such an scenario as the country had found itself in, everyone had been uniquely meticulous in stripping every last pill from any shelf Greg had ever come across. So to have this ... woman, by the sound of it, offer it- His leg twinged, and he flinched. Stiff from waking up, now aching from movement. He couldn’t win with the damn thing.

Nor could he win if it came to a shoot out. Eyes narrow, he looked past his rifle sights to try to make something out about the intruder. No; she’d already ducked out of the way, outside the door. Had she been armed as well? He couldn’t recall. His own rifle barely qualified him for the term; a meager twenty-two rounds could go so damn fast. Yet, she had made an offer, so ...

“Fine!” His voice echoed in the dusty hall, the pews and wallpapered borders doing little to absorb the sound. “All of what you just said; it’s worth the shelter. You-“

The air cracked with the sound of gunfire, and Greg took instinctual cover in his little tub. But no more followed, and he peered over its edge again.

“Hurry up! Get inside and lock the door! And for Gods sake, figure out a fix for my damn window.”

He could do with a companion, even if for only a little while, but that didn’t mean he trusted her. Particularly with the onset of that damned fog.
 
Sister Therese was, by nature, a patient woman, willing and able to wait in incredibly trying, insurmountably tense situations. Life in the prison was one where long stretches of nothing often dominated, with just the gentle and unbending thrum of danger not too far off. Perhaps it was the reason she had lasted so long out here. She could stand to wait a little.

And the man inside was seriously considering her offer. Finally, he acquiesced, and she brightened significantly.

Unfortunately, her elation made her susceptible to some tunnel vision. With her eyes forward, she missed Trotter coming in behind her to watch and listen. Had she taken the time to check her back, she might have seen him. However, hearing the sharp snap of a twig broke her concentration, and she glanced behind her with rabbit-like alertness. This was followed by an animal screech and a sound like a watermelon hitting concrete from behind the church, swiftly capped off by a resounding gunshot.

A man - large, larger than most, she quickly realized with a sinking feeling - barreled around the corner towards her, and her heart exploded into a panicked snare drum roll.

Her immediate thought was that she had said she had medical supplies out loud for everyone to hear. She was going to be murdered because she had band-aids and Neosporin. However, the rest of her synapses finally fired, and she realized that if this big guy was running from a sound, she better do the same.
The man inside the church offered them refuge verbally, and she didn’t wait. Therese barreled through church doors, briefly considering locking the bigger man out there, but her conscience immediately rattled her in that split second, and she left the door open, searching inside the church for something to block the broken window with.

A pew would work in a pinch, but she was far too small to lift one by herself, and from a cursory glance of the guy in the baptismal font, he wasn’t much bigger.
 
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Did he hit it? How close was it now? Trotter didn’t dare to look back and check. His mind invented all sorts of hypothetical monstrosities lapping at his heels. Brief flashes of a key feature he’d taken in before his flight – that crooked maw, impregnated with gore – spurred him onward with crazed purpose.

He heard that familiar voice cry out from within the church again, beckoning the woman inside. Now she was perched within the swan-neck pediment, starring out at him with scared eyes. A grim thought sank his heart down into his gut.

What if she shuts the door?

By rights he couldn’t blame her if she did. Who was he to her? Some gruff looking stranger with a hunting rifle and a bloodstained shirt just rushed her from the bushes. He would likely do it in her place. That selfish man inside him still hoped she was a better person, though.

It would seem Trotter hadn’t used up what little good karma he had left from his former life, as the woman left the door open for him. He barreled through the church door, clipping his shoulder hard against the frame. He’d likely feel that tomorrow, but that animal need to escape numbed the pain for the present.

The man immediately slammed the doors behind him, fumbling with the lock. The deadbolt didn’t seem to want to line up with the hole, the door likely having shifted them out of alignment in the years of disuse.

Click, click, click, click, click, clickclickclickclickclick.

He frantically turned it back and forth with increasing desperation. His mind kept prompting him to remember how at any moment that thing out there could slam its full body against this flimsy barrier. The thought injected a creeping shiver into his spine, building into a clawing mania. Finally he gripped the handle and lifted with his full strength, hearing it slid in with a satisfying clack.

Trotter turned to see the stranger trying to move a heavy oaken pew. He rushed to her aid and dragged it over with the surprising ease that only adrenaline could loan you.

“What do we have to barricade the window?” Trotter bellowed, his mounting frustration apparent, “Are there any loose boards? Nails? Give me something!”

The man in the tub wasn’t moving. Trotter surmised he must’ve been injured in some way, or just in shock. So it was down to him and this young lady to barricade the place. That’s when he noticed the matching oak cabinet against the wall. It was hefty, likely full of hymnals and spare bibles. A testing effort to budge it confirmed his suspicions.

“Are you able to lift this?” he asked her, a cooler head finally subsuming his demeanor.

If not they'd have to try and walk it there.
 
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Another one rushed in. Another one. How the hell was this happening? Injured, too, by the looks of it. The first one, maybe a nun, by the looks of it, would probably want to care for him. But as long as he got the damn Tylenol, Greg didn’t much care.

Time enough to think of that later, if they survived the Thing that was outside. The strangers’ efforts to baracade it outside were stupid; it wouldn’t stop trying to get at them. Leveling the barrel of his rifle at the door, keeping his sights at around head height, he yelled out to be heard over the racket the intrusion was making.

“Leave off on that bookcase!” He racked the slide to the long gun, loading a round into the chamber. Fortunately not a single shot number, the M4 would give him some grace if he missed or if the shots were ineffective. Grace? Hell; I may waste a full half my ammo before taking it down. “Pop that lock and stand away. I’ll pop the bastard in the head.”

I hope, came the rueful thought.

Greg swallowed deeply, unsure that doing so wouldn’t remove the only occupation the first two strangers had and leave them with nothing to do but attack him. Shooting a target in a doorway was one thing, but the two humans were inside and outnumbered him. He hoped this was the right call.
 
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Therese took a look at the bookcase after having moved the pew, and she swallowed as she did some quick calculus. No way. The man in the tub - a scrawny thing, with a scraggling beard and deep, hollowed out eyes - wouldn't be much help, and he was already getting ready to, instead, shoot the thing coming through the door instead.

But there was a profound screeching in the back of her head as experience superseded rational thought.

"No!" she shouted, running towards the back of the church. "They don't go down. Bullets - they just make it angry, I-I-I've seen it. We have to-"

Something skittered onto the porch of the church, heavy footfalls hitting the planks, and Therese froze for a moment. It knew they were inside - had seen her and the bigger man dart into the building, and it wasn't likely to stop once it realized that the only thing separating them was an oaken double door and a mostly open window. She hoped that it was too big to actually crawl in through the window, but perhaps that was a vain hope.

Chillingly, it knocked on the door almost politely at first, right before it became a pounding. The door hinges squeaked as they managed to restrain whatever was on the other side.

"We need to hide," the Sister stressed.
 
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“I was hiding,” Greg hissed through clenched teeth, the suddenly polite silence from the ... demon outside unnerving in a way he was still couldn’t get used to. The insistent, even urgent, pounding, only made it worse. “Safe until you and your damned friend got here.”

He didn’t dare say more. It was quiet within the church; the chick had halted behind him, and even the bleeding fool had the sense to stop moving. There seemed to be just as much noise outside, and a less experienced survivor might think the creature had left. But Greg, and, he assumesd, his new companions, knew better. These Things were troublingly smart, and a simply locked door wasn’t going to dissuade it for long.

Greg hissed; the idiot Gruff was still standing near the door. He snapped his fingers once and gestured for the man to join them away from it; above all, they had to keep quiet.
 
The knocking continued. Steady beats that reverberated through the wood and straight down to the guts. After a moment of this the wood fell silent. Trotter strained his ears, probing for any footfalls or rustling to indicate if it had changed positions – perhaps towards the open window.

Snap, snap!

The agitated snapping of fingers brought him back to the pulpit. It was that man, the scraggly one from the baptismal. He has brandishing a gun and had it fixed on the doorway. One look told him the man was as scared as he was frustrated, likely more so. Those sunken eyes took him out of that godforsaken church and back to the winter of 66, to his grandpa’s cabin in Canton. Trotter remembered checking the fixed snares his grandpa had placed along the outer edges of the property, and he remembered finding that coyote. It had its foot stuck in the braided steel cable and it was half crazed from the fright of it – a starved, mangy wretch, but it stared him down with the clear intention to fight with every scrap of strength its wiry body could muster to arms. Its eyes were the same as this man’s.

Quietly, he nodded his acknowledgement and began to slowly back away from the entryway. He was careful to try and keep his footfalls as silent as he could manage. Those boards weren’t getting any younger, and many seemed to creak with even the thought of setting down on them. His eyes stayed fixed on the window.

Trotter knew already, his gun was out. He’d fired on reflex back there, and wasted one of the last .224 Weatherby rounds he was like to find for a while. For no more than it was that beat-up Varmintmaster had done him well in the past, but it was somewhat overspecialized in terms of cartridges. He wasn’t about to let an armed stranger know that though, not unless he had to. You could get by on a lot of bravado with an empty rifle.

“Chu—R—ch,” moaned a ragged, unnatural voice from behind the beaten doors, “—let—meINplease—“

The diction was so awkward and oddly timed – going from struggling to enunciate a single syllable to rapidly forcing a whole sentence into the confines of a single word – and the accent so difficult to place that it was clear to anyone listening... this was something trying to sound human.

Trotter’s eyes widened as long, nearly skeletal fingers oozed underneath the door and began probing around softly. The dark red stains of the spider-like digits gave way to fetal looking pale hands.

“w—Ou—ld… IwoUldliKeto… s—EE… you… I’lLbe—nICEto—youplEAse“

There was a brief silence, nothing but the sounds of fingers gently scraping and tapping hardwood.

"Jee-suhs... jesusjesusjesusjesusjesusjesusjesus..."
 
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The sister recoiled at the older man's harsh rebuke. If I had known you were here, I wouldn't ha--

Her train of thought was derailed by a sudden resume of scrabbling at the door, and she noticed that even the big guy who had heralded this mess was backing away, leveling a rifle. For now, she was glad that there was more than one person here who had a firearm, though she had the distinct feeling that disposition would change as soon as whatever was out there had vacated the premises. A small woman surrounded by men with guns - not a good position to be in, but not the worst given the present circumstances.

"Ch--u--rcH," the voice moaned, and she held her breath in a moment of terror. Few she had seen could talk, and the approximation of a human voice sent fleas skittering beneath her skin, itching with panic. Her eyes stayed locked on the door as she carefully put herself directly behind the big guy, letting the rifles of both point towards the door. She didn't have any weapons on her, and it wouldn't do to get in the way either.

She swallowed as the voice continued its mockery of the English language, giving childish enticements, as if saying good words would bring the humans inside the church to the door. A hand shot out under the door towards her, and she bit her lip as she pressed herself up against the wall near the bookcase, instinctively finding a place to hide. The creature's hand was pale, nearly translucent, and its fingers bent in unnatural ways as it scratched against the floor. A chorus of Jesus spilled out, and Therese had to put her fingers in her ears, unable to take hearing it mangle the name.

"Jesusjesusjesusjesusje--"

The train of words very rudely was cut short as the hand pulled back and hovered, as if it had touched a hot stove. The hand stilled momentarily, along with the voice, replaced by guttural chirps as it seemed to reconsider.

Only for the creature on the other side of the door start to keen in panic, the hand grabbing futilely at the hardwood floorboards for all of three seconds, before the hand ripped back underneath the door, the skin sheared off as it made its exit. Outside, squealching noises were interspersed with disturbingly human wails. The shrieks seemed to move farther and farther away, as if whatever creature was on the other side was being carried away.

Therese stared at the bloody splatter and the skin that writhed on the floor uselessly with a dry mouth, eyes wide as she glanced at the stained glass window and then to the other two. She didn't dare make a noise, afraid to attract... whatever that was.
 
The shrieks faded, far too slowly, like a trickle of ice water down the spine only now beginning to petter out. Even as the cries went quiet, either from the distance or from a finality no one there dared to consider, the effect lingered, the skin still cold and wet. Greg found that he was holding his breath, and with that realization, his lungs began panicking. With regrettable practice, he released it gently through his nostrils, ignoring the rising inner protest in favor of considered safety from whatever had been outside. From whatever might still be. His old breath finally given freedom, the mechanic took a cautious breath of new air.

He wished he hadn’t. It wasn’t clear whether it was the Thing’s very presence from before, or whether it was the bit of Itself that had been left just within their doorstep, but a putrescence filled the local atmosphere. Greg’s stomach lurched violently, even this far from the doorway, and his hand raised in a vain attempt to mute his involuntary gagging. Tears formed in his eyes, trying to clear them of the odor, and he blinked furiously. Finally, unable to bear it, he leaned forward and retched, managing to land the small amount of bile outside his small tub. How lucky that’s all it was, he considered ruefully; if he’d actually had any dinner worth speaking of, that would have been really painful.

“Sunnovabitch,” he muttered, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. The stink lingered, however, despite the vent through the broken stained glass, and he lifted the neck of his shirt above his nose. “Shit.”

He spared his “guests” a wary glance. Now that the worse threat was gone, whatvwoild they do? Carefully he leaned back to his initial position, keeping the shirt above his nose as he propped the rifle up defensively. Whatever they might try, he had to be ready.
 
Therese was likewise gagging from the smell, but she was terrified to move from her current spot, eyes watering until she could not hold the contents of her stomach any longer. She staggered back from the door, made it perhaps four or five feet, then immediately upended the canned beans she'd called breakfast behind one of the church pews. The stench was completely masked by whatever miasma was given off from the thing that had been at the front of the building, and she looked over to the other occupants.

"If... If you want, we... we should go to the back of the church. There's usually a... a kitchen, if it's not picked clean," Therese croaked, but it was obvious that this was a tentative offer. She was in the presence of two men with guns, a situation that was not to her advantage. "A-and I meant to make good on my offer. On the painkillers. I don't really... really need them."

Therese gripped the strap of her backpack with trepidation as she waited for the response from either man.
 
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“It is. Picked clean, that is.”

The grunting answer came after what seemed an eternity, as if it was given after intense and exceedingly careful consideration. Greg sat up fully; the others were thus far non-threatening toward him, and the woman at least would be worth trading with. Since they couldn’t do so without leaving behind that wall of a man at their flank, he gestured them forward with a weary hand.

“C’mon,” he grunted again, pushing himself to standing before positioning his crutch under his right arm. Rifle strapped across his back, he fairly slithered out of the baptismal, an impressive feat for his apparent disability. His right leg below the knee was atrophied and thin, with the scant muscle on it barely larger than one of the tall white candles that used to adorn the building. It was evident the crutch was a necessity in his life; he leaned on it heavily, usually not putting much weight on the leg. With small steps and repeated glances over his shoulder, Greg beckoned them on. “C’mon, honey; I probably got some stuff to trade ya for those painkillers and bandaids.”

He pushed through the free swinging door and disappeared into the hallway behind the sanctuary.

@Doctor Jax @tee-dot-jay-dot
 
The smell. God, the smell.

Trotter pressed the back of his wrist against his lips and turned his head away. A few hoarse coughs managed to escape, but he was ultimately able to wrestle his gut back into settling. He could hear that his fellow survivors weren’t quite as lucky; however, tension soon took over for the noxious aroma, fouling up the air just as aptly.

The danger was no longer an immediate one, or at least that was what he hoped, but the hour was long past a sojourn home. Instead, the man remained quiet as the other two returned to bartering. As the other male oozed free of his baptismal barricade Trotter’s eyes immediately fell on his bum leg, then to the rifle slung across his shoulder before they ultimately settled on the young woman off to his side. No weapon on her that was apparent. She was scared, obviously, of monsters without… and within. A primal thought occurred that he stood a good chance to walk away with everything here. His hand subtly, near subconsciously, groped at the outline of the trench club in his jacket pocket.

No, he wasn’t that man. Not yet.

“Ladies first,” he grunted at last, nodding after their host as the cripple ambled out of sight. His voice creaked from disuse, as if it were breaking off the rust. He had to think a while to recall when he last spoke to another human outside of growled threats or barked orders. At least, the last time he spoke to a living human.
 
Therese felt a rush of relief as the smaller of the two 'gentlemen' pulled himself out of the baptismal font, for the first time showcasing what looked to be a longstanding injury (pun not intended), but that relief was immediately overshadowed by a deep, abiding sense of guilt. What kind of monster has this place made me? I see someone weak and downtrodden, and all I can think of is the fact he can't somehow get one over me. God help me. She deflated as she realized what he'd said, that the kitchen was picked completely clean, but at the least it'd get them away from this stench.

It was awful, pervading every cubic inch of air, and she hoped that it hadn't managed to penetrate her clothes as well, though she could imagine that they didn't smell all that great to begin with. It was hard to believe that deodorant or antiperspirant was such a boon to everyday life, but now that no one could find any - or at least, that if you did, it was hidden away somewhere - it seemed worth as much as a bottle of water, if just for the bargaining power of smelling like a decent person alone.

She looked back to the big fellow who'd taken charge, eyes traveling to his lined and heavy face, as he seemed to think of something, then discard it.

"Ladies first."

She cracked a small smile then, fleeting and unsure, but nonetheless rueful. Ah, so chivalry hadn't coughed its last just yet. God surely did smile down upon her, to put these two in her company, at least for the moment. She walked behind the man with the crutch and lame leg, the confines of the chapel feeling vaguely familiar to her. It was hard to tell how many of these she had visited across New England, on convention tours with the other Sisters to visit friends or go to revivals. While the Catholic church wasn't much for those kinds of social gatherings, they'd found it important. Now, in the empty church, she let the memories swell over her, and she swallowed as she wiped her nose of the tears she wouldn't allow to fall.

"You weren't kidding. This place is picked clean," Therese murmured as she put her bag down, looking at the cabinets that had unceremoniously been ripped open for their contents. The fridge, no doubt, was not worth touching, though there were still large pots and pans leftover, too big for any passing survivor to justify hauling along with them. Perhaps she could make something with what they had. Digging through the cabinets, backs to the men behind her, she said, "Um, my name's Therese. Sorry if I, er, if I... you know, barged in. I hadn't meant it. I thought that the, the place was empty."

She removed cans from the very recesses of the cabinets. Ah! So they hadn't got everything. Whoever came through here hadn't been small enough to reach to the backmost things, and besides that, some of these were cans of goods that were probably hard to cook. It didn't matter - she'd learned that a little bit of salt and pepper went a long way, seeing as she had learned to hoard the stuff wherever she found it, even if it was just a tiny tic-tac shaped package of the stuff.
 
“It was empty. It was also safe. Was.”

The invalid set his bag down on a countertop, eyeing the woman as she perused the cabinets and casting back a wary glance to the hulking figure of muscle that followed. He bothered Greg, that man; if he wanted, nothing would prevent him from overwhelming both himself and the woman. The rifle would be too awkward in that small space, and the knife on his belt would not get him very far. He leaned against the counter, his hand falling to the blade hilt. If things got shifty-

The scrap of aluminum on wood drew Greg’s attention, and he shifted his view to Therese. His eyes widened in shock.

“Hey! Get away!” The knife, most readily available, was yanked free, and he stumbled toward her. “That’s my stash, and I’ll pull out what I wanna trade!”

Utter desperation laced his voice. This was it. The woman and the muscle were going to rob him, and if he was unlucky, they wouldn’t stop at that. It was too good to be true, thinking these newcomers could be allies. All they wanted was safety from the creatures outside, and finding such a weak occupant, they’d dispose of him to make the supplies last longer.

But he moved too quickly, and the crutch never found solid purchase on the aged and slick linoleum flooring. With an awful scraping, the foot of the crutch slid away, and Greg crashed to the floor, the knife skittering away. Sure this was how he’d go, he merely lay there, unable to extricate himself quickly, cursing bitterly the world.