fleetstreet | there's no running that can hide you now, 'cause i can see in the dark;

there's no running that can hide you now, 'cause i can see in the dark;

[ Nothing much changed, really. In the end, Beacon as it had existed for roughly ten years, didn't last. Radio silence. Then the new head's order. Caroline will eventually cling to the belief that, had she had years inside of Hotel Echo - military base and research facility, the only one of its kind on the entire planet - she could have found the cure. Or at least, a vaccine.

It's not true, of course. Four years or four weeks roughly amount to the same thing.

The facility had been "shut down", as the call had said. There's something about seeing a seasoned military sergeant turning paper white, especially after she had heard him talk about encounters of the closest kind with hungries of insane numbers.

Caldwell had seen a few burn shadows when they had been flown to the base -- the word describes them well. Whatever chemicals is in these bombs, and even her scientific interest doesn't go that far -- burn whatever they touch, and what's left is dead land.

Apparently, that's what "shut down" means.

So they had decided to screw the government and run, but you don't get very far these days. They had humvees, but they had made noise, and weren't made for the kind of trail Jean had sent them on. Nothing humans still had on their side was.

So they had fled on foot.

She's lucky, she only has three hungries on her trail.

She's unlucky, because even three hungries can go on for pretty much all eternity, while she can't. Not even with adrenaline pumping through her veins, she can't. She feels the absurd urge to stand still, look at them, the insane curiosity that must have killed so many of her kind, but her legs keep going, somehow. It feels as if she is removed from her own body, in a way. She's watching the running, she feels the fear, and she feels not a single thing at the same time.

She hopes it stays that way when they get her. She had seen what they had done to Jean Selkirk, who, in falling, had saved her life by being the more eligible meal.

"Saved", in context, might as well be translated as "prolonged by a few minutes that, in the greater scheme of things, weren't of any importance whatsoever".

What she needs is a miracle.

Even if she ever had been a believer of some kind, this seemed like an absurd thing to ask for in the given situation. ]

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[ Gretel doesn't even know why she bothers anymore, really. Hansel is dead, what's the fucking point?

She eats, she sleeps, and she kills hungries. There's nothing in particular that drives her to do any of it, really, it's mostly habit. It's what they always did, it's all that she knows. She keeps thinking that she should just... Let them have her, but something inside her can't just give in without a fight, and for some fucking reason she still keeps winning.

The woman that runs under the tree she was going to have a nap in is not winning. She is losing big, and Gretel isn't going to let that happen. She can see that the stranger still wants to live, so if anyone is going to be a meal for hungries it should be Gretel.

She drops down between Caldwell and the hungries, knowing that she only has one shot at this. The gun she carries is flamboyantly large, custom made by her brother and perfect for pulverising hungry heads.

Three shots echo, calling to every hungry in the area but it also very effectively turns three of them into mush. ]

Sorry lady but we ain't done running yet.

[ The odd part is that Caroline is in a similar situation - yes, she can run to survive, but for how long? What for? Where to? To Beacon, perhaps, under a fake name. Doesn't sound tempting with what seems to be a new, totalitarian regime in place. To the junkers? Nothing she had heard about junker communities sounded appealing, not even compared to death-by-hungry. Of course, what she had heard doesn't necessarily need to be true, after all, just this morning, her belief system contained "being the head of a research facility for an indefinite amount of time".

She needs a moment to register Gretel as a) human, b) not as useless as Jean, and c) not a figment of her imagination. All three seem equally impossible.

Parks (who is, most likely, dead, her brain helpfully adds) had told her that hungries react to sound even faster than they pick up the human scent. She had pretended to know, but she didn't, perhaps that's why she wastes another second on pointless staring.

This is surreal.

Where did the gun come from? Better not question her savior. ]

Running. More running.

[ Her feet obey her command before she has properly processed it yet, which is a blessing, because it makes her look a little less dense. Still dense enough, probably, but they'll get over the first impression.

As long as this woman doesn't turn out to be a problem as big as a hungry.

At least with that gun, it'll be over fast. ]

Where?

[ Running and talking is bad, very bad, she can already feel her sides aching and wonders why on earth she didn't pay more attention to staying in shape. ]

Just a bit further.

[ At least for now, because it is pretty plain to see that Caldwell won't be able to keep this up for much longer. Shit, what the fuck are they going to do now? This woman isn't like her and Hansel, how the hell is she going to keep her alive?

Scent, they need to mask her scent somehow. ]

Okay no, fuck this. They'll smell you. We need to fix that.

[ What the fuck can they slather on this lady to make her not smell like dinner?

Maybe they can catch a break and some animal or other will have taken a giant crap nearby or something. ]

We fix that, you hide up in a tree or something and I'll distract them.

E-blocker.

[ Breathing is so, so difficult. How can breathing be such a challenge? Caroline Caldwell, PhD, sounds like an asthmatic hedgehog, and it's almost as bad as the thought of having to put on e-blocker. Because explanations are tough, she simply pats her lab coat pocket, which is both the most useless way of explaining the matter and probably goes unnoticed to begin with. ]

I have one tube.

[ And a screwdriver, and a scalpel. Those are declared irrelevant for the moment, however.

She is also aware that the tube won't last her longer than a week, and that's already pushing it. The chemicals at the base would be far more ideal, and are likely to last a lot longer, but they're also far, far away and the showers? Possibly no longer functional.

She doesn't even want to know what this woman planned to smear all over her.

... Though, speaking of that, how come she isn't worried about her own scent? Caldwell is seriously tempted to sniff, but given the running and not-dying that is going on, she saves that for later. ]

-- Climb?!

[ Hungries can't climb.

Neither can Caldwell.

On the other hand, she is exhausted, terrified, and out of her element, so it's not as if she's arguing or fighting the order. Besides, given the... well, it must be shock she's in, she might be able to climb. Badly. ]

I have no fucking clue what E-blocker is but it had better work.

[ Y'know, for Caldwell's own sake. ]

Now hurry the fuck up, come on.

[ Caldwell gets herself dragged to a nearby tree, the highest available branch clearly out of reach for the both of them so it should be out of reach for hungries as well.

Gretel widens her stance and laces her fingers together, giving Caldwell an expectant look. ]

Come on, give me your foot, I'll boost you up. Now.

[ There's really no time to dilly-dally here. ]

[ Caldwell has so many bones to pick with this day. For one, her research was blown to shreds, as was her facility and a good deal of everything she owned. Then she watched Jean Selkirk being eaten. Fine, the woman cried when a test subject was dissected, thus proved to be utterly useless, but still, that kind of thing ruins your day.

Then, she was chased by hungries.

And now, she was expected to climb up a tree, then get mostly naked, rub the world's most useful, but also most disgusting body lotion exactly where you'd imagine that kind of lotion is supposed to be rubbed, and all that in front of a strange woman who someone stayed alive despite not knowing what e-blocker is.

... Better than dying. Marginally better than dying. ]

Oh, bloody --

[ She can't swear. She literally cannot. She doesn't know what to say.

To gloss over the equally acrobatic and mythical scene that follows, here are the highlights: the boost nearly killed her, there was a beautiful moment during which Caldwell dangled from a branch like an overweight kid in gym class, back when PE and overweight kids still existed, she ruined her lab coat, and she made an entire assortment of undignified, mostly unattractive noises while trying to look like she has climbed a tree somewhere in the past twenty years. ]

[ Yeah that whole scene was just all sorts of no. Especially the part about where the E-blocker is supposed to go because while Gretel is far too pragmatic to be shy, she still wasn't quite ready for that particular sight.

She is going to have to keep looking after this incompetent lady, isn't she?

That's the problem with saving people. A lot of the time you have to keep saving them and in Gretel's experience that tends to only work for a limited amount of time no matter how hard you tried.

Maybe if they had saved a few people less, Hansel would be alive.

That is a terrible thought, and she knows that it is, but how can she not think it? ]

Okay, now you stay up there until I come back for you. It might take a while, but I'll come back. Probably.

[ She doesn't really wait for confirmation before taking off into the forest to distract some hungries. Caldwell has a long wait ahead of her. ]

[ Long waits can be spent rubbing e-blocker in places where the sun doesn't shine. Read: pretty much everywhere, but the general rule one is supposed to follow: sweat matters, but pheromones are worse. Who wrote this.

Eventually, she resigns to sitting on a branch that is far too high up for her comfort level, and listens. Waits. Considers and eventually accepts the fact that she has been abandoned and will most likely die in or at least nearby this tree.

Part of the plan had been to study the abnormal hungry children's capacity of normal affect. She supposes that is what she's feeling right now. Normally affected by the fact that her world had, once again, crushed down on her. It's a bit of what she had felt when the first hungries had appeared, it's less still than what she had felt when her father had --

Well, technically speaking, he hadn't died. His body was, in a way, kept alive.

It's funny how no one really seemed to know what to call it. Back in the days between the Breakdown and Beacon, you would run into people - friends, teachers, family - and they would ask what happened to someone's father, brother, sister, partner. Dead? No. Hungry? Yes. Sorry for a loss that isn't a real loss to mourn, since they're not dead. They're just the enemy's host. And, of course, eventually dead as well.

The look that was given usually read something along the lines of "and you? Are you an hour away from being a threat as well?"

She hopes that, once she gets eaten, she doesn't get eaten by anyone she knows. ]

[ It is one hell of a job to distract all those hungries and avoid detection, but Gretel has gotten very, very good at that particular job over the years and while it feels like it takes fucking forever to accomplish it, eventually she deems it safe enough to go back for Caldwell.

Not that there is such a thing as actually being safe anymore, but at least they are not about to get eaten in under a minute.

She thinks.

She comes strolling out from between the trees, casual as if she is out on a sunday walk and looking arrogant as all hell. She thinks she's earned it. ]

You can come down now.

[ She is tempted to comment on not needing permission, when she finds that the permission itself really isn't as much part of the problem. Caldwell, like many white girls just before the Breakdown, literally cannot even.

Up had been an issue, down? Down is an even bigger one.

Supposedly, this is a good time to comment on her shoes of choice -- nice, fancy ones, with heels. At least they used to be before this day started to turn into an unimaginable nightmare, because at this point, neither fancy, nor nice, nor heels continue to apply. For the first time in nearly two decades, the doctor begins to regret her own ideals. The shoes, the lipstick, the clothes she chooses for herself when the lab coat isn't allowed to be her top choice, are all chosen with care. She wants to come up stainless steel when the rest of the world is rusting, and it served her well in Beacon.

It does not at all serve her in the field.

Swallowing her pride is a nice thing to focus on while she climbs (or alternatively unintendedly slides) down her tree in a highly undignified way. One thing can be said, though, she doesn't scream, not even when she nearly falls.

She makes it to the lowest branch, and, in one final Fuck It to her pride, her style, and her dignity, dangles and jumps. ]

Thank you.

[ Civilities are necessary and, for once, honest. Even less room for false pride when you'd have to deny that you nearly died several times in the very short time between their first meeting and now. ]

You owe me one.

[ She isn't a fucking charity. That word lost all meaning a long-ass time ago, didn't it?

Not that she won't keep helping Caroline even after she has revealed herself to be the massive pain in the ass that she indeed is, but Gretel is not the type to do noble deeds and expect nothing in return. If she does you good, it's only fair if you do her good in return, right?

Some part of Gretel still has enough of a hero-complex that she has kept helping people even though it would be so much smarter to just lie low and say fuck you to the rest of the world. Some part of her still wants to do good, but one still needs to be practical. If you want to stay alive you'd better make yourself useful, it's just the smart way to go.

She's looking Caldwell up and down now with a critical eye, clearly questioning her usefulness. Can't run, can't climb, probably can't shoot... what can this woman do apart from not scream? ]

[ She's a passable shooter!

As long as she doesn't have to run at the same time... and what she's aiming for isn't moving too much, either.

Back when the world wasn't full of monsters bearing a striking resemblance to former friends and neighbors, debts had been a manageable thing. Throw money at the problem until the problem ceases to exist, a wonderful, simple concept.

But money lost all meaning, trade became the new thing, and right now, she had awfully little to trade, except for knowledge.

And knowledge did little if most things tied to it don't grow on trees. Well, regular plants could get her a decently long way, but heaven's help her, she would rather not have it come to that. ]

I'm a doctor. I will pay my debt.

[ Has been true for a chunk of the apocalypse, at least. ]

A doctor? Been a long time since I met one of you.

[ Been a long time since she needed one too, fortunately. ]

What kind of doctor?

[ She is mostly very, very self educated but she has managed to pick up on the fact that doctor can mean a whole lot of things, some of them more useful than others. ]

Microbiology. Then Ophiocordyceps began to run amok and with no one knowing what it was and the medical field radically thinning, I went back to med school.

[ Well. Largely improvised med school. She supposes Gretel can read between the lines. ]

Long story short, if I wasn't a skilled surgeon, we still wouldn't know what it is that turns humans into hungries.

[ The hilarious part? She actually thinks the other woman knows who she is, now. When she had discovered the high king of all fungi, she had taken education regarding that wonderful discovery upon herself. Much to the suffering of the Beacon Education System, a high number of military units, and every other doctor in England.

And still, she only came 27th in the Rosie/Charlie project.

Life isn't fair.

... Or well, life is sort of fair, given that none of the 26 scientists ahead of her are still alive.

No, life isn't fair, because Gretel probably still only knows her as "that lady whose ass she just saved and wow why does she smell like a chem lab?" ]

[ Sorry Caroline but Gretel has no idea who you are, which probably shows in her somewhat blank stare. There is a spark of interest somewhere in there though, because Gretel is hungry for knowledge, she has been trying all her life to understand what the fuck happened to the world, but she's never really had any opportunities to get the sort of formal training that Caroline has. ]

You figured that out?

[ Junker. It has been her first impulse, and there it is again. This woman must be part of one of the junker communities, if she were from Beacon, she would know.

On the other hand, she saved her life, which is against everything the junkers stand for. Too territorial, too focused on keeping what little resources they have to themselves. Can't blame them for that, sharing is a quick way to starvation.

She nods, but it's clear that she's absent now. As if she's taken a mental step to the side and is part here and part elsewhere. ]

I did.

[ She snaps back quickly enough. ]

It's Ophiocordyceps unilaterales. It's a fungus, transmitted - I assume you know this - via blood or other bodily fluids. The pathogen takes over the brain, and what we have aren't people anymore. The white threads you can see breaking through the skin on older specimen is mycelium. Roots, in a sense.

[ Well, not really. And she isn't about to explain the concept of potentially fruiting bodies or spores, mostly because these are theories. ]

[ Huh, seems like someone kind of likes to lecture a bit. Well, good thing Gretel doesn't really mind listening as long as people are saying something worthwhile. ]

Fungus. So people are basically turning into mushrooms.

[ She starts walking and nods for Caroline to follow her. They shouldn't keep standing around like this. ]

[ Caldwell loves to have an audience. In another universe, she would make one hell of a teacher/primadonna. She smiles and begins walking without complaint or hesitation. ]

In the farthest sense, yes. They become hosts to the parasite. The person's own mind is first suppressed and then completely gone while the... mushroom is left in charge. Which is why hungries attack without regard for their own bodies - the fungus doesn't need to sustain the host body, it just exists to infect others.

I've wondered about that. If the people who are infected are still kind of in there, you know? Just watching their own bodies doing shit they don't want to do but they can't stop it any more.

[ She used to try to talk to Hansel about things like that but he wouldn't have it. He wasn't the biggest fan of creeping himself out.

Now she wishes that she could stop wondering things like that, because now there might be a hungry out there wearing her brother's face.

She hopes not. She hopes they just fucking ate him. ]

[ This time, she takes her time with the answer. It's tough, because it's so unclear. She would need an ATLUM to tell for sure, and good luck getting your hands on one of those even before the world crashed down. ]

It is highly unlikely, but not impossible. It depends on what the fungus does, precisely does, once it crosses the blood-brain barrier.

[ She remembers wondering about this when she had gotten the call that her home town was in lockdown -- which is nothing but a military way of saying that her father physically exists, but now focuses on tearing flesh from bones as opposed to quiet research and the discussing physics.

She doesn't wonder whether Gretel lost someone important to the fungus -- everyone under the age of fifteen has. Everyone without age-limit if they haven't grown up in Beacon. ]

Taking my own research into account with what I have witnessed? I don't think consciousness lasts beyond the first few hours. The fungus shows little regard or mercy for the cells it attacks, and the damage a human brain would normally take under such circumstances is severe.

Good. I wouldn't wish it on anyone to be a prisoner in your own body. Better to just... be gone.

[ Be a fucking flesh eating mushroom. ]

I guess you haven't figured out how to stop it?

[ She has a feeling even she would have heard about it if a cure showed up, even if her contact with other human being is very, very limited most of the time.

Caroline might notice that their direction is starting to take on a very... steadily upwards type of character the longer they keep walking. ]

One month in a sub par lab wasn't enough, no matter how promising the test subjects.

[ Not that she's bitter, not that she's bitter, she thought bitterly. It's as if the world has decided that it doesn't want to be saved, lest of all by Caroline Caldwell. All by itself, that will only lead where it always led: she will triple her efforts and get yet another step closer to the goal - the cure, the vaccine, or at the very least, the answer.

After she picks herself up, that is.

And while their path seems to get steeper and steeper, she feels as if she's falling a little more with every new step. She observes her mood at one remove, as if it wasn't hers at all. It doesn't worry her, as the conclusion she comes to is that pitch black depression would be appropriate, so disappointment is a friendly compromise so far.

She also notes what her own brain would like to hide from her, namely the many, many far too trustful steps she is taking right now. And as much as she would like to protect herself from potentially nasty truths, she is above such measures. ]

Where are we going?

Somewhere safe. Ish.

[ Gretel is still working on remembering how to talk to people who aren't Hansel. People who don't understand her every look or gesture. People who actually need words to get what she wants to say. ]

It's where we... where I keep my stash of supplies. It's a bit of a climb so not many hungries come there.

[ She tries to sound at least a little bit reassuring. Like she knows the first thing about what the fuck they are going to do now. ]

[ The "we" is immediately and irredeemably carved into her brain. Two options:

I 1) There are an unknown number of others. Could be a lion's den, could be a shot at living in some survivalist community. Given that Beacon cast her out and assumes to have obliterated her, that is suddenly a positive option.

2) She is dead meat.

II 1) There were an unknown numbers of others. Preferable for obvious reasons, since Subject One has saved her life and thus isn't likely to turn around and murder her within the next couple of hours.

2) Assuming the unknown number of others didn't end up on the wrong end of a Die And Dine.

Caldwell feels a headache crawling in, first behind her eyes and then in a dull, throbbing pain in her temples. Adrenaline has long since left, and her body aches for sleep. And food, though food is secondary, no, tertiary, in these situations. Shelter, water, food.

Or, given Armageddon: shelter, water, something to fend of hungries with, food. Mostly, you aren't even making it to the completion of point one. ]

Good thinking.

[ It's no high and mighty compliment, it's merely a comment. The walk isn't her best friend, and she's conserving energy. Who knows how far they'll have to go. ]

Edited 2014-11-26 21:48 (UTC)

Yes.

[ It is good thinking, and it has served her very well for years now. She's still alive after all. ]

There's water there, and some food. I'll keep watch while you sleep.

[ Keep going, is what she's saying here, even if it is not in so many words. You can do it.. ]

We should take turns.

[ Better offer to be useful asap, she cannot count on medical emergencies arising, even less so given the state of her resources. A scalpel and a screwdriver only get you so far.

The fascinating thing about the human body is that it will start sending all the signals - hunger, thirst, fatigue, cold - early on, often hours or even days before they become a true threat. Caldwell knows that, and she has ignored them often enough to gain a certain level of practice. No one can turn them off, but one can very well become accustomed to ignoring them. Especially during the early days of the Breakdown, it was an essential skill. Sleeping before it was absolutely safe, or being too preoccupied with your natural desire for food to ignore the new safety measures, or simply whining at an inopportune time, could get you killed in any number of ways.

So Caldwell learned to shut it and keep going.

... Unless someone brings up Nobel prize winning cellular biologists. ]

Sorry lady but I don't trust your exhausted ass to have my back if we get in trouble. We can talk about taking turns when you're not more or less sleeping on your feet.

[ But she does appreciate the fact that Caldwell intends to pull her own weight. No that there is any room in the world for freeloaders anymore, they've all been weeded out. ]

Suit yourself.

[ No, she trusts her judgment. There is also the part where the best Caldwell can do is shoot - and that, usually, only makes matters worse, given that it draws in even more --

Hungries.

There is one significant fact that she, without any intention whatsoever, came across. ]

They ate her.

[ Which is almost a nice way to put it, but it's also not the point. Ophiocordyceps' primary interest (assuming, for the moment, that a fungus can have an interest in the commonly used sense) is to spread. In other words, a single bite would be enough. Of course, it also needs to sustain itself, and while it always, always feeds on the host, more activity demands more nutrition.

The deal is though, the hungries had far more of Jean than they would have needed. Ophicordyceps doesn't even need a complete body - as long as a good part of the nervous system is intact, the victim will very quickly find itself turned into a host. But what was left of Selkirk was most certainly not very hospitable anymore.

In other words: Ophiocordyceps is not solely relying on its current primary road of transmission.

Conclusion: there has to be another way for it to spread.

She's half thrilled, half terrified, and completely off in her own little Caldwell-world, where everything is fungus and thus hurts a whole lot. ]

They ate who?

[ Gretel isn't sure what just happened, but quite clearly Caroline decided to skip a few steps in the conversation and decide to assume that Gretel had spontaneously turned into a mind reader.

Had Caroline been Hansel, that migh even have worked. But she isn't, so Gretel is left feeling mostly confusion and annoyance mixed in with just a touch of curiosity. ]

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there's no running that can hide you now, 'cause i can see in the dark;

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