jumpscares | ( OPEN ) GAME START.

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( OPEN ) GAME START.

▶ WHO: Everyone.
▶ DATE: July 9th, 2015 (Day 1)
▶ WARNINGS: Blood, violence, general zombie horror.
▶ SUMMARY: You've met with a bad... however that line goes. Welcome to Earth.

GOOD MORNING!

Please try and ignore whatever it is that you just heard. It should only last for up to a minute... maybe.

It... it is morning, right?

There are no windows.

There's a light, but it's barely considered one. The compound runs on a solar generator, but that doesn't mean it has a lot of power. The light seems to be hanging from the ceiling, swinging precariously. That's when you might actually start to wake up, sit up, find the things that are familiar to you... and then some of the things that aren't. It'd be wise to explore the small room you're in before leaving through the steel door, but there's nobody around to tell you that.

Outside is a tightly knit compound, just as dark and metallic as the room. The hallway you're in houses dozens more doors identical to yours, and if you're unlucky there may be more people poking their heads out through them, just like you. There's a dull glowing sign that reads MEDICAL BAY but not all of you remember being hurt. Some of you may be just fine, apart from the memory of the sound you heard when waking up.

The Medical Bay is stocked with enough medicine to last a couple of months. There's almost everything that can be found in a hospital. Somebody was thinking ahead.

Outside of the Medical Bay are more doors, some are even locked—many aren't. There are living quarters, a food storage, a kitchen, some laboratories; even a room full of computers and nothing else, all with a screen asking for a password. There's only two doors out of the compound, a vehicle bay with what appear to be a few military jeeps and trucks, and the front doors. It's on the inside of the front doors that something is painted in bright red, flecked with what smell like blood:

DO NOT GO OUTSIDE WITHOUT A GUN AND WATER.
GUNSHOTS ATTRACT THEM.
HOLLOWS IS 1.3 MILES NORTH OF HERE.
GOOD LUCK.

And on the outside of the doors, if you choose to open them:

THE WORLD ENDED JULY 3RD, 2015.

Now... how long ago was that? And where is this place? Luckily for you, Hollows is a small town that can be raided. It hasn't been too long since the apocalypse—surely you'll be able to find something there. Batteries, food, weapons, maybe some people—and what you're guaranteed to find. Them, whatever that means.

Outside of the compound there's a fence with a single gate. Nothing can get past this unless you let them in for tea, so be careful. There's a shooting range and a large shed full of weapons and ammo, enough to last two months if you're careful. Guns, knives, anything that would be used by the military and police is hidden away in the shed. There are even a few hunting bows with arrows.

If you climb up the ladder to the top of the wall, there's enough room to walk along the top. There's definitely something moving in the distance, something you should definitely be worrying about. Maybe it's time to get a good look with a sniper rifle...?

Oh.

It's gone.

Maybe it was just a trick of the light. Regardless, it's impossible for everyone to stay in the compound forever. There are nefarious things at work! The choices are to go to Hollows, stick around, or go somewhere else. Really, the world is almost a blank slate. Maybe more of a used slate, but still yours to explore.

When the night comes, you should be hiding. The screamers, the ragers, whatever the hell they are, are running full tilt through the streets and across the landscape, running through anything in their way, ripping apart anything alive. If you don't make any noise, they won't notice you. Especially since they're stuck listening to each other. But if you get noticed by one, it won't be long until a horde forms... you might be able to outrun one for awhile, but they don't seem to let up on their breakneck pace. Maybe someone should have told you how to kill them.

OOC NOTES.

There will be zombies in Hollows. Whether you meet them on the way there is up to you. Apart from the undead and the animals (maybe somebody should let those poor creatures out of their houses) the town is completely deserted. In fact, the closest thing you can find to a human are the bodies of those who died without being bitten, and there's even few of those. You can find anything you'd find in a normal town here, and are free to loot and raid the houses and stores—the cops won't be coming, after all. The power is OFF apart from what you can find that is solar powered or still has a charge. If you're lucky and find another town while exploring the first few weeks, you might find an area that still has power—thank hydroelectricity.

Just keep in mind travel time... and travel expenses.

You have creative freedom over everything else. The world is open. The only stationary places are landmarks and cities—if you want to go to Texas and talk to the poor astronauts stranded up in space, it's there. (Might be a long trip, though...)

If your character can figure it out by geography before getting to Hollows, the compound is located a few hours from the west coast, in California.

The way to kill a zombie is blunt force to the head. The head doesn't need to be removed, but significant damage needs to be done to it. This does not include the throat—it needs to be a headshot.

There's also a glaring hint. The computers in the compound, asking for a password. It is impossible to hack at this time. There will be more on this later!

Finally, if your character is exploring outside of the compound (or extensively inside of it) there's a comment here for linking me the thread. You can also PM me! I'll be ducking in with what your character may or may not have found, via a response to the actual RP thread.

IF YOU HAVE ANY QUESTIONS please direct them here!

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

-- The shield is what she sees first. Round and telling, with the piss-poor lighting glinting off its curves in a way that made it all seem less real than it has to be. Except she doesn't believe it. Doesn't believe any of it. Peggy goes stone-still on the other side of an open door. The room was once a laboratory, she surmises. But any further thought about its previous life is wiped away as she watches the man behind the shield. He grows recognizable.

"Good God," she whispers. Soft and beneath her breath. Hardly ladylike (not that it ever mattered much) and certainly hardly spy-like, either. He is dressed almost as she remembers him -- in greens, rather than blues. But she's another woman altogether. A little softer outside the olive drab. Silk blouses and pencil skirts. Office wear. She's unarmed, though she wishes she wasn't. If only because before this very moment, she hasn't seen a single face she could dare trust.

And even then, she doesn't believe. Merely stands like a statue -- wondering whether the apparition will pass her by. Or else disappear.

Oh. Wow. She looks... amazing. Steve tries to find words, to ask what's wrong, but his brain is still short-circuiting around the fact that he's never seen her wear clothes like that except for the red dress, and thinking about the red dress- well. His brain short-circuits again.

"You... look... Do you have a mission?"

He can't think of another reason for her to be dressed as a civilian.

It speaks! The apparition speaks -- and with the sweet half-remembered tones she'd tried to conjure again and again in quieter moments. Oh, the SSR had reels of Steve's appearance and voice and mannerisms committed to tape. But Peggy never cared for the painful crackle hiding in the recording. All the scratches and whines of technology that drove home how artificial it all was. But not now -- when he speaks, it sounds proper.

She sucks in one long breath. It fills her lungs until she feels them ache. Then, in one bursting sigh: "Not exactly, no," Peggy answers. But her voice is fraught with confusion and more than a little panic. She doesn't sound like a woman merely standing in a doorway. A battle might have been raging 'round them for how on edge she is.

Peggy steps forward and lays one palm on the open door's frame. "How impossible!"

He takes a step forward, starts to lift a hand, then stops. "Are you all right?"

Another thought: "Still angry?"

He didn't think she was. After the shots she took at his shield, things seemed to be settled between them. Maybe he should have asked Howard.

"Steve," her voice is pained. Strained. "I couldn't be angry. Not about--"

God, it must read like some blinding fairy's tale: the statuesque hero, gone down in tragic self-sacrifice for his nation. And the weeping woman ever left behind. Her jaw stiffened at the thought -- it isn't the sort of woman she aims to be. She'd had a year and then some to live a productive life worthy of Steve's sacrifice, and not to wallow. She shouldn't start wallowing now. With him so near!

"I promise not an inch of me is angry."

"...What is it?"

She might not be angry, but something is definitely wrong. He's never seen her look like this, act like this. Casualty notice? He takes a step forward, closes some of the distance, wants to take her hand and isn't sure if he's allowed. "What happened?"

"I could ask the same question of you--"

With forced-stiff fingertips, she gestures. At him, perhaps. Or else at the whole bloody building. Peggy wonders by what devilry he stands before her, and whether this cursed compound might be some bizarre miracle in disguise.

"Steve," she gains some measure of control over her own tone. It grows firm. Wary. "How can you be here?"

"I don't understand."

He enjoys his ability to be honest with her. It's a feeling he's only ever had with his mother and Bucky before now. The Commandos feel like they could become family - they've certainly been through hell together, and they like him. But Peggy feels a less like family and more like coming home.

The uniform. The questions. The way in which he doesn't understand. All of it sends a chill coursing through her blood -- and Peggy scrabbles within her thoughts to gain some idea of why he isn't half-so-shocked as she. Surely, it's no small thing to return from certain death. So why does he seem so cavalier?

Rather than appear flummoxed for another second, Peggy took the requisite moment to reclaim her composure. With a soft sigh, she walks to within a foot of him. Seeing him brings on a sweet pain, but she tamps it down in favour of the crisis at hand.

"Neither of us are meant to be here."

"I kinda figured on that part."

Just do it, just do it. His idiot brain is scrambling over her being so close when it should be focusing on their surroundings, their situation-

He takes her hand, looking down at her pale fingers in his and trying not to marvel too much that she knows who he was and can still look at him that way. "What is it, Peggy?"

Bloody hell. A hundred little daydreams haven't prepared her well enough for it. His hand on hers! It conjures butterflies. Or small sparrows, fluttering through her veins. Desperate to break free. Peggy Carter hasn't felt this damned vulnerable in a long time, and the oddity of the whole compound only doubles down on that chipped-away feeling.

She squeezes his fingers between her own.

"Nothing, Steve. Nothing at all." Her smile is tight. It betrays an agitation, still. But also the promise of stability in their shared company. "Tell me: what's the last thing you can recall? Perhaps we can sort out what's brought us here."

Infatuation quickly loses ground to simple, human concern. It's very clearly not nothing. It's very clearly a big something. If answering her questions will help, he'll do it, but he's not sure where it ties in.

"Well. You tried to shoot me." He smiles at her a little, hoping she takes it as a joke, then goes on more seriously. "We did a couple of recon missions near one of the sites on our map. The Commandos and I got back from a strike mission day before yesterday. We blew Schmidt's second factory to hell. Right before I woke up... no, while i was waking up... There was someone screaming. Something. But before that I was with our people, and with you."

He gives her hand a small squeeze.

Edited 2015-07-10 03:52 (UTC)

"-- I tried to shoot you," she repeated. Echoed the thought with both a mild fit of pique and a wave of sadness. She'd not been trying to shoot him, really. The shield had always been there. Perhaps she'd only wanted to spook him. Or hone his attention. Or throw a small tantrum. Either way, she regrets it now. So much had changed in the months that followed.

"That was...rather unkind of me, I suppose." It isn't precisely an apology. But hindsight allows her to behave a little more humbly about the incident. All has been forgiven on her half of the fracas. Grief does wonders for absolution.

"I deserved it." He did, and it's an apology that matches hers. A quick glance down the hall - no one else, not yet - and he draws her back into the room that she came from. "What is it you're not telling me?"

[ -- she must be better. slyer. more cunning in the ways she brushes panic aside. because peggy carter doesn't know how to tell a man he's dead, doubly so when he's still so far from that death. she allows him the brief power of leading her back inside the emptied lab, and scrapes her teeth against the inside of her bottom lip.

she remembers kissing him, once. before he leapt from their jeep and went to die. only he can't remember what hasn't yet happened. what a headache-- ]

Nothing. Nothing much. [ she collects her words into a brief and tightly bound bundle. peggy won't tell him an absolute lie, but she won't tell him the absolute truth either. ] Only that to my memory it's been quite some time since you...deserved it, so to speak.

[ she grows in confidence as a plan is formed. she'll tell him she knows a time beyond his, but will be conservative in her claim. perhaps no further than the action that had spurred on that kiss she can't forget. ]

[ He's never been good, even in their short acquaintance, at hiding his feelings from her. He thought - seeing her in the hall, hearing her voice - things would start to make more sense, not less. ] What?

[ Still mystified. Now uneasy. Something happened. Something big. ] Are the Commandos okay? Bucky?

[ He checks his hairline for bandages, the base of his scalp - no head injuries that he can detect. No injuries at all. And he's not in hospital clothes. So why...? Something going wrong with the serum? ] Peggy. Please talk to me.

Sergeant Barnes. A sticking point. A death which makes even this kindness feel more like cruelty. Peggy breathes deep. She takes control, firming up her grip on his hand and turning her body with precisely the right angle to seem more...assured. More certain.

It pains her to colour their reunion with a lie. To deny herself the opportunity to tell him about New York and the SSR and about the vaulted heights of his heroism. Then again, perhaps it would only put him ill at ease to hear such praises sung.

"When I saw you last, you were off to do battle with Schmidt. A...a great deal had happened. I'm afraid, Sergeant Barnes..."

She trailed off. Lump in her throat.

"No."

He lets go of her hand and steps back, then again, and his back hits the door.

Casualty notice.

Words he's heard a dozen times from others rise in his throat like bile. "I saw him an hour ago."

"Steve, I--"

Her fingers grip at nothing. She holds empty air and feels her own sorrow swell. At least, under the guise of this pain, she can find the means by which she might express her own. Peggy's expression grows dark and stormy. She doesn't have to think hard to remember that blown-out building -- Steve, with his bottle of ineffectual booze. It wasn't your fault.

Everything is unravelling well beyond her control. Gone are any thoughts of this bizarre building, because she's too mired up in worry to think clearly about the situation in which they've found themselves. All she can see through her tunnel-vision is how he hurts.

"I don't know how it's happened. Both of us here, stripped from such different moments. But -- your friend's service was a credit. Beyond commendable. I would not tarnish it by telling lies. Not now. Not like this."

She won't spill the details on how it had happened unless he asked, Peggy decided. She'd been cruel enough already.

"I saw him."

But he believes her. She wouldn't lie to him. Not about something like this. No one with a heart would lie about something like this.

He's having trouble breathing. For a moment he thinks it's the start of an asthma attack, though he hasn't had so much as a wheeze in months. The world feels gray and impossible. It can't exist without Bucky. Maybe it did, once, but it can't any more.

Where they are, when they're from, and how they got here - none of those questions are significant any more. The world has stopped spinning, and he's waiting to fly off.

She witnesses her mistake march its muddy boots across his face. Out of a selfish effort to spare her own heart, she's ripped his in two. And as such, she felt the failing quite miserably. Every emotion he bared is one she knew altogether too well since she'd lost him, and it's mere instinct to rush forward and settle both of her hands firmly on his shoulders. She can feel the rough cloth of the dress greens beneath her palms.

Peggy ducks her head. She must be brave enough to look him in the eye -- because she caused this pain by telling him. She wonders whether she should have lied. Or else told the whole damn truth -- it isn't as though Barnes's death would be any less real had she expressed her true point in time.

"I know you did. I know it seems impossible. But it happened--" Will happen, in his case. "We can't go back and change the choices our friends make, as much as we wish we could. As much as we want to protect them from anything--"

Her breath catches. Her eyes are wet. Perhaps she grieves the sergeant -- but more likely she grieves for both men and their damned dignified choices.

He hears the shield hit the ground with a quiet chime, and looks down to realize he dropped it.

He wanted this. He wanted this. To join up, to go overseas, to help. In spite of a hundred service flags in his neighbors' windows, the gold stars marching down every street. Even knowing the sound of weeping families in his bones. Because it wasn't supposed to be Bucky. An idiot thought: It wasn't supposed to be Bucky.

One arm goes around Peggy's waist. His forehead rests against her shoulder. He needs the reminder that someone else is nearby. He can't fall apart until he finds somewhere private.

Pull it together. Pull...

The first sound isn't a sob. He feels his chest shudder with terrible rhythm before he starts to cry.

The clatter of the shield makes her twitch. She can't break. Won't break. Peggy has had beyond a year to purge the worst of it, and rebounding now wouldn't help either of them. At first, her spine stiffens -- as though she isn't certain about being held and holding him in turn. Considering her own affections towards the Captain, she can't deny it's a chance she'd sorely wanted for some time. But the circumstances are all wrong. No joy can be taken from this moment. So instead, she bends her efforts towards supporting him. Her iron-stiff composure falters, and Peggy places a soft hand against the back of his neck. She curls her fingers over the starched collar of his uniform.

Paradoxical, really. How she'd barely been able to touch him the last time she'd shared this grief with him. Standing amidst the ashes, she'd felt like an interloper in his hurt. But this is different. She is different.

Peggy knows it's not a time for words. So she rests her cheek against the side of his head and doesn't impede his tears. Suppresses her own.

The tears don't last. He swallows them down, Swallows them down. Squeezes his grief until his throat feels like it's a solid knot and his eyes burn. He straightens, but there's no room to back away from her.

He tries to wipe his eyes on his tie - useless - and wriggles his shirt cuff up enough to use that instead.

Steve clears his throat. "When?"

He bends to retrieve the shield, settling it back on his arm. Captain America. Be Captain America. He clears his throat again. "When did it happen, I mean?"

How much time does he have to get ready? How much time to stop it?

-- She watches it all. Freshly isolated, Peggy watches him slip back into Captain America as she slips easily back into being the spy. To be a friend and a woman and a confidant...these are roles she'll find again when he needs them of her. For now, she is once more an intelligence officer. Called upon to report to him with a very distinctive and singular butcher's bill.

Her eyes flicker to the ceiling as she summons the dates to mind. It's been awhile. Longer, certainly, than she allows him to believe. "1945," is her eventual answer. "January--"

She understands why he asks. She can see it in his every line when she watches him again: he believes he can change it all, and in many a fashion she wants to believe him. Why shouldn't she believe him? If Barnes can be saved, then maybe...

"Steve--"

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whoops i realize i just switched from prose mid-thread. sorry about that.

IT HAPPENS (to me at least once or twice per thread shhh)

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