001-003 » a chilling mathias welcome

[villagemod]

WHO: Everyone.
WHERE: The east end of Mathias, along the waterfront.
WHEN: Days 001-003
WHAT: The newest residents of Mathias Township are welcomed with a storm.
WARNINGS: Will update as necessary. PM this account to have a warning added!
NOTES: A small love letter from your mod. This spot can be used for plotting.

RECOMMENDED ♫ Deadly Avenger "Mara"

DAY 001
THE ARRIVAL BEGINS

Is it the whooshing crash of waves on dark jagged rocks that wakes you? Perhaps. It might also be the near-continuous rumble of thunder growing closer every second, the vibrations almost seeming to come from the wet sand beneath your hands. Or maybe it’s the shivering of your own body as water recedes from the pebble-covered shore, the cold sinking into your very bones as a chilled wind picks up. It could be any of these things that rouse you from a deep slumber that leaves you feeling groggy and out of sorts--

But it’s the fear that gets you moving. A deep, intense terror grips your chest and squeezes the breath right out of you, and you know without a shred of doubt that you have mere minutes before whatever it is you’re so afraid of arrives on that stretch of rocky beach to greet you. Even if you want to stay rooted to that spot and faced it head-on, your body betrays you, a survival instinct etched into your genetic code forcing you to seek shelter.

Welcome to Mathias. You should probably run now.



THE STORM ARRIVES

When the storm crashes into the small township, it's hard to remember what life was like before it. The ocean becomes a raging thing, waves rising and falling as if trying to attack whatever they can reach along the coast. Any foolish enough to venture along the beach have no hope of surviving the encounter; their bodies will be swept out with the current, gone in the blink of an eye.

The wind is a howling beast, screaming between buildings and driving spikes of cold into any crevice it can reach. The rain is just shy of freezing, every drop like a shard of icicle trying to itself into your skin. It will bite at your nerves and leave you shaking if you stay out in it too long, so you had best get inside if you haven't already. You certainly don't want to attract the attention of the lightning that arcs in the sky like a vengeful god ready to unleash its wrath.

The Grey Gull restaurant sits at the edge of the town along the beach, and just a few yards away are two parallel rows of houses lining what might be a picturesque street if the world weren't beginning to resemble an apocalyptic landscape.

Move quickly, and choose wisely.

DAY 002
THE STORM RAGES ON

The storm has somehow become even more violent overnight. The world outside your shelter might be trapped in an endless night, for all you can see through the thick covering of storm clouds. Lightning continues to streak across the sky, thunder following almost immediately in its wake, threatening just how near those spikes of electricity truly are. You can see them touch the shore at times, even the street between the homes, but never the buildings themselves. A blessing, perhaps, or an oddity to take note of?

Some may be foolish enough to try venturing outside. They are welcome to, of course, that is their right, but the rain is still like ice and that lightning is so very near. You may try heading further into town, and you can certainly see buildings beyond this row of houses, but should you walk toward them...

Well. It is far from a pleasant experience. Exhaustion sinks into your bones so quickly that it leaves you reeling, and every second you push through it makes you physically ill with a feeling that you might collapse at any moment. The second you turn away from that path, however, you feel infinitely, and even more so each step back the way you came.

Something wants you to stay where you are. Perhaps you should.

DAY 003
THE CALM DESCENDS

The third day begins much as the second, with waves crashing upon the shore and thunder booming with such force that the ground seems to shake. It feels very much like the world might end right there, torn apart by a force of nature unlike any seen before. Any who venture outside at this time are almost immediately afflicted with a terror so intense that they can make it no more than a few yards or the short distance to cross a street before they become incapacitated by the fear that sets their heart beating dangerously fast. The term scared to death may very well become literal this day.

And then, suddenly it stops. The rain, thunder, lighting— all if it just stops and the silence that fills the night is deafening. There are no sounds of life within the town, no car motors or dogs barking or the voices of anyone beside those new arrivals in the immediate vicinity. In fact, none of those things even exist in Mathias. There are no cars, no animals or insects, no other people. There is just... emptiness and silence.

It may be best to wait until daylight to move further inland.



THE NIGHT DARKENS

For those who are foolish enough to leave the relative safety of the cluster of houses near the Grey Gull, they will find their journey quite chilling, in a very literal sense. There is another row of houses beyond where they had been, branching off on either side into a neighborhood. There are no lights on in any of these homes, though there are occasional streetlights illuminating their way. But as they continue further, reaching a third block of houses, those lights begin to dim, until they have gone out completely, and what had previously been a simple fall chill becomes biting cold as the temperature sharply drops.

In all of this, there is silence. No sounds travel through that night air to comfort them, and even looking up to the sky stretched out above them offers little reassurance. That sky is black, without a single star and not even the faintest outline of the moon to guide them. All that reaches them here is the barest hint of light traveling from the way they've come. The longer they linger outside in this place, the colder it will become, and any light they carry with them will slowly begin to dim as well.

Truly, they should have waited until the sun rose once more.

---

LOCATIONS

THE GREY GULL is what one might expect of the most frequented restaurant in a small coastal town. The wrap-around porch is lined with white chairs characterized by peeling paint. Exposed wooden walls and worn seating speak to its many years of existence, and the mishmash of décor confirms that the owner never much cared for how the place looked. What mattered here was the food, and faded chalk menus advertise soup specials and a daily pie. The bar appears to have once been well-stocked, but all the bottles remaining are unfortunately empty. There is, however, quite a bit of food in the kitchen that is somehow as fresh as if it were purchased that day.

The second floor of the restaurant is a sparsely furnished apartment. There are no personal items to be found; perhaps it was waiting to be rented out to someone.

THE HOUSES are well-kept, middle-class homes, four lining either side of the street. Their doors are unlocked, windows unshuttered, and everything within feels like the owners might return at any second. There is running water and electricity, fresh food in the fridge, photographs on the wall... but also dust everywhere. If you didn't know better, you'd say the place had been abandoned for years, and yet nothing has aged. It is both strange and unsettling, and yet no matter how hard you search, no answers may be found within these homes.

What can be found within them, however, is a phone. One single black phone within a main room of the house, and beside it, a list of handwritten numbers and names that have been crossed out.

1302 8-5491 Thomasen
1304 8-9256 Lyrie
1306 8-4712 Anders
1308 8-3201 Mulcalley

1301 8-0415 Sanderson
1303 8-6762 Reese
1305 8-9132 Evers
1307 8-9025 Hirano

Should your character choose to shelter in one of the houses, you are welcome to choose the features of that particular unit. Please reply to the comment thread below with the details you decide upon, specifying the house number in the subject line.

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day two

[enduresurvive]

A; for Rey
Ellie feels a little stir crazy by the next day. The storm rages on, just like the one that had blown in that morning in Seattle, the last thing she really remembers before the beach here. She's still sure this isn't near Seattle, but it's a pretty eerie coincidence, isn't it? Well, whatever. She still has that touch of fear, but...it doesn't feel quite the same.

In the early hours of the morning, Ellie comes out of the room she's barricaded herself in and back down to the living room. The storm rages outside and she feels keyed up by her own nightmares and the general uncertainty of the town. There's someone else here now, though, and she pauses in the doorway, still but on alert like a deer about to dart back off into the woods.

"Who the fuck are you?" she asks, never one for politeness, really.

B; for John Constantine
Anyway, she can't stay in the fucking house forever. She has to get back. What about Dina and Jessie? What about how fucking close she was to finding Abby, after all of it? That all still matters.

Outside, though, it's a nightmare. Sheets of water pour from the sky and thunder flashes above. The visibility is much worse than it was in Seattle, though. She can barely make out the buildings. But she'd noted, looking out the window, that there was some kind of bigger building, the restaurant or whatever it is, in the distance. She's got a good sense of direction.

What she doesn't have is much of a way to overcome that bone-deep fatigue that hits her only a few feet away from the house. It's like she hasn't slept in days. That wound in her shoulder aches. She feels like she's dragging. It's like being sick or something, but...that can't be right, can it?

She stops, still not at her destination, and leans heavily on a street sign, trying to work her way through it.

"Oh, man up, Ellie, for fuck's sake," she scolds herself.

B;

[hellblaze]

John had stepped outside from the Gull. He leaned against the outside wall, not much caring if his trenchcoat got soaked again. It was hard to judge anything through the sheets of water, but he was trying to tell what direction he could bounce towards. He's decided he can't stay much longer in the Gull. Sure, food's decent, but he wants to find a shop that's going to get him some cigarettes. The pack he has will eventually dry out, but, he'll need more.

Then, he stands. He can see the woman out there leaning on the sign. John glances up at the sky the moment the lightning flashes. Oh, Johnny boy, why are you such a bloody idiot? It's not like he's a hero or has to prove he is to anyone. He's saved loads of people. Hell, the woman probably could get to the Gull by herself anyways!

He sighs and flicks the collar of his trenchcoat up. Not that it will do much to help. Then he is dashing out into the rain towards her. The rain feels like ice dripping down his skin and he's instantly regretting his decision. He feels like a drowned rat. Regardless, he's beside her soon, ignoring the elements and the cold.

"Goin' out in a storm like this is bloody stupid, luv." He feels he almost has to shout over the rain. He nods the way he came back to the Gull. "C'mon, let's get you out of this, yeah?"

[enduresurvive]

The cold is biting, though that part, Ellie can bear a bit easier. Jackson has terrible cold winters full of blizzards and subzero temperatures. This freezing rain is shitty, but the temperature isn't the part that's the worst. It's that sudden sickening tiredness that gets her.

She looks up in time to see John there, though she can't muster the strength to really fight. Luckily, that's not what he's there to do, but...well, you never can tell, right?

His accent throws her, because she's never heard anything quite like that. Maybe in a film sometime, but certainly not in real life. But then nothing here seems like it can be real, right, so what's one more oddity?

"I'm fine," she yells back, though it's obvious that she's not. She pushes herself all the way upright but she can't manage to take another actual step. Damnit. She doesn't want to look weak or incapable in front of anyone, but especially not a stranger who could be a threat.

[hellblaze]

John holds his hands up to show he won't push. She doesn't want the help? Then he won't insist. Though, he will still walk with her back to the Gull - Grey Gull. Or not. It's obvious she's not much going anywhere in that state.

"Bollocks your pride." He sighs to himself and gives a shiver under his coat. He motions for her to grab onto his arm and he'll do what he can to anchor her while they make the rest of the trip. "Not really the kind of weather to give piggy back rides in."

He knows he wouldn't be able to get the pair of them there if he had to carry her.

"You can curse me to Hell once we get out of the rain. Come on."

[enduresurvive]

It's obvious that Ellie isn't a fan of this suggestion. She doesn't need anyone helping her, okay? But...well, that's not true. It's actually never been true. She's only even alive because of other people. Joel. Tommy. Tess. Dina. Many others, many of whom aren't alive themselves anymore. And they were all strangers once, too.

Fuck it, fine.

"Yeah. Okay."

She reaches out and takes his arm, wobbling as she lets go of the sign, but staying upright. She's small, but she's obviously strong underneath her layers of fabric. She didn't get this far away from the house on nothing, after all. She should thank John, probably, but she doesn't. Manners aren't her strong suit at the best of times, really, and this is far from the best of times.

Water buffets them, pushing Ellie's hair into her eyes. She fruitlessly pushes it back again with her free hand. Every step feels heavy, like it might drag her down to the ground. She refuses to let that happen, even if the going is painstakingly slow.

[hellblaze]

He doesn't expect a thank you for this. Maybe if he saves her life at another point he'll be a right prick and ask for it. For now? Getting out of the rain is a bit more important. John pace is meant to push her a bit, but not make it so she'll stumble and fall. He'd offer his coat but it would get a bit personal and well, it's soaked as it is.

John shifts her closer once they're underneath the covering of the Grey Gull. Only to help her get around some of the furniture outside. He even opens the door for her to step inside. With a glance behind him he shuts the door and sheds the trenchcoat and throws it over the back of a chair.

"Few people have been using the stove in the back to dry off the clothes. Coffee pot is in the back as well."

He looks around, squeezing his sleeves. As for him? He still wanted to do a bit of exploring.

[enduresurvive]

Ellie grits her teeth and goes along with John silently, forcing herself through the heavy exhaustion. This isn't the worst thing she's ever done. It's not even the worst thing she's done in the past week. She doesn't like relying on a stranger, but it can't be helped for now.

She drops her wet bag on the ground near a table and sort of slithers out of her soaked jacket and hoodie, leaving her with a relatively dry t-shirt. The rest of it she just deals with for the moment.

"Um. Yeah. Thanks," she says. She sits heavily in a chair for a moment, not bothering to go set her clothes to dry yet. She'll get there. She just has to wait for the weird nauseous exhaustion to subside. Strangely, now that they're indoors, it seems to be doing just that.

"Wait, did you say you have coffee here?" Coffee is a luxury she can scarce imagine. She's had it a few times. Joel likes - liked - coffee enough to pay too much for it. Ellie herself likes it okay, but it's kind of bitter, right?

Joel was drinking coffee, that last night.

She shoves that thought away again.

[hellblaze]

"Cheers," he nods to her thanks. "Not my coffee. Someone else who came through found it yesterday. Not the best in my opinion, but, suppose it's better than not having anything warm. Especially when the place has no alcohol."

John walks over to the counter and takes a seat at the chair he had been in with an earlier encounter. He checks his lighter and then the cigarettes. Ah, shit. Still too wet. He leans back with an annoyed sigh.

"I don't suppose you've gone beyond those nice houses down the way."

[enduresurvive]

Ellie shrugs. "I don't think I know the difference between good and bad coffee. We don't have much of it where I'm from."

No alcohol? Now that seems weird to her. She's not a big drinker or anything, but she's had drinks before, sure. But this place, this town, doesn't look totally ransacked yet, so why would the booze be gone? Did these people who lived here take the time to take it with them?

She watches the thing with the cigarette but doesn't comment on it.

"No, the storm just...man, I don't fucking know. It sounds stupid, but I felt like I was gonna pass out out there." She shakes her head. This place is weird. John and his accent are weird.

"Thanks. For helping me, I mean. I'm Ellie, by the way." She may not quite trust him yet, and she's not Miss Manners, but keeping allies on your side is probably the way to go in a place like this.

[hellblaze]

"Oh, well, most of it comes to preference. Some like loads of sugar. Others like the idea of it being as bitter as possible. Not much of a fan of the lack of variety here."

He looks over at her as she admits what she does. Eyebrows raise slightly. Not out of judgement or cynicism. If anything? He believes her and is taking a mental note of it. He hasn't gone much farther than the Gull just yet.

"Oh, you looked like you were about to fall flat on your face for a bit, luv. By chance... you didn't run into anything, did you? Feeling like spiderwebs or something solid you couldn't see?" John turns in his seat to look at her. "John."

[enduresurvive]

Ellie isn't big on sugar, largely because it's also not all that easy to get. Yeah, you can get it sometimes, but it's not worth it. So sweet coffee isn't really her thing (which is probably part of why she just finds coffee bitter and overrated). She hasn't really considered the whole food situation much; there were a couple things in her pack leftover, but she knows how to go without. Jackson kind of spoiled her, since they always have food, but...

Well, best not to think too hard about Jackson just now.

Her face scrunches up in confusion at John's question.

"Spiderwebs? What, no, I just felt...kinda sick, that's all. I definitely wasn't hallucinating invisible shit." Even she isn't that far gone, she thinks. What a weird question, though.

[hellblaze]

He flashes her a quick smile. "Better safe than sorry. Especially in a situation like this."

Whatever it is here can just instill dread and that feeling of illness right off the bat? He would of thought it was just a nasty ghost with a vendetta, but, something on this scale? Without that smell of sulfur anywhere? It does leave him a bit perplexed.

"Call me nosy, Ellie, but you look like you're about ready to go to war."

[enduresurvive]

She's still visibly confused. Was that invisible thing a joke? It had to be a joke. There's no such thing as invisibility, after all, except in movies and comics and shit like that. If only there were. But then, the government probably would have fucked it up long before Ellie was even born, she's sure.

Her face hardens a bit at his comment. "There's something I have to do," she says, in answer. It's not quite an admission, but he's not wrong in his guess. Most everyone she knows has been trained to fight, to shoot, but not usually with the aim of fighting regular people. You can't think of Infected as people; they aren't anymore, not really.

She decides to change the subject. She has a pretty good feeling she knows what John will say, based on the few other conversations she's had, but she tries anyway.

"You haven't seen any Infected here, have you? I haven't looked everywhere, but there's, like, not even a sign of them."

a

[reydacted]

Rey's a survivor, but even she wasn't going to stay in the elements for longer than she needed too. After dark she slipped into one of the seemingly vacant homes, sticking to the couch on the ground floor in case she needed to make a quick exit instead of having to deal with jumping out of windows.

She turns her head slowly, eyes wide and mouth parted just slightly as she's caught. Her pulse is spiking, but it does no good to look scared. She's fought her way out of worse before and she's sure she can do it again.

"Is this your house?" ignoring the question entirely. Rey hadn't been able to get a good look at the (printed! she can't believe it) photos or if the young woman in front of her is in any of them.

[enduresurvive]

Rey doesn't actually answer Ellie's question, but that's fine. She wasn't really expecting a literal answer, after all. If she'd been in Rey's place, she wouldn't have answered right away either.

"Not really," she answers. It's clearly not Rey's house either, or that wouldn't be the response. Besides that, everything is all dusty. No footprints. No bodies. No clusters of the fungus. No spores. It's...eerie, actually.

"I came in from the storm. Like you did, I guess." Five had done the same the day before. Ellie is a little bit softer now, but still clearly on her guard, just in case. "Did you wake up on the beach, too?"

[reydacted]

She nods hesitantly.

"This... isn't like where I'm from at all," which is the short explanation. She doesn't recognize any of the technology here. There's paper and ink and there's no transport vehicles in sight.

"Do you... is there anyone else you know here?" Rey had been so fortunate to have a companion follow her. She's not sure if it's the same case for others here.

[enduresurvive]

"It's a little like where I'm from, except, you know. No dead bodies, no Infected, no people constantly trying to shoot each other." She's gotten the feeling that somehow not everyone here has heard of Infected, which seems utterly impossible to her.

Ellie herself has never heard an accent like Rey's before, other than in old movies. It's not like people do a lot of travelling all over the globe in Ellie's world and time, after all. It makes her wonder, again, how the fuck whoever did this got them all here.

She shakes her head in answer to Rey's question. "No. I've only met a couple people, but definitely no one I know. Why, did you not come here alone?" She's immediately interested in that possibility. Does that mean Dina or Jesse or Tommy might be here, too, hiding from the pouring rain in another house?

[reydacted]

Rey's eyes soften as she gives Ellie a sympathetic look. Rey's loneliness is branded on her skin, like a persistent white noise that occasionally amps up the volume. Wherever this other woman came from, it was not kind, but Rey isn't convinced this place is any better.

She opens her mouth about to warn her to look out for tall, dark, and broody but shuts it quickly, shaking her head and compelled to offer a different answer, "No, I was alone too."

The lie slips out so easily and she's not even sure why. It's not as if the First Order and the Resistance exist here. In a lot of ways it would be easier to explain if there were still lines drawn in the sand that kept her and Kylo apart.

"I'm Rey, by the way."

[enduresurvive]

Ellie's injuries are largely covered by her clothes, aside from the bruise on her face, but it's obvious that she's been in some fights. Her world is brutal, especially lately in her opinion. She still hasn't quite grasped that people aren't from the same place. That's a difficult concept to grapple with.

Rey opens her mouth, closes it again, then answers. Ellie isn't versed in how to tell when people are lying. She knows lots of people lie about shit. She sure does, if she has to, and remorselessly. But she doesn't have any reason to guess that Rey isn't telling the truth, so she just accepts the answer.

"Ellie," she says. "I'm Ellie. Guess, uh, we're roomies now? Unless you have some secret plan to kill me in my sleep. But I gotta warn you, I'm hard to kill." There's humour in her tone, and one corner of her mouth crooks up in amusement. But she's also half-serious; she doesn't want to fight Rey if she doesn't have to, but of course she will. She'll fight anyone, if it really comes down to it.

[reydacted]

Rey cracks a grin, her shoulders relaxing at the joke. It's actually pretty horrifying if she thinks about it for too long, that the two of them stood here joking about how sleep is such a vulnerable state, relating about how they might have to use violence to still a threat, and just how woven that was into the fabric of their lives.

But still, it sets Rey a little at ease that someone might understand what had gone through her head each night as she slept in her AT-AT.

"I suppose, if you'll have me," Rey shrugs. "Same conditions, though."

[enduresurvive]

Ellie has long since lost any ability to be horrified by grim jokes. Gallows humour is the only way you survive surrounded by death and the infection. It's definitely one of the only things that has gotten her through. She finds humour harder to find these days, but she still tries sometimes.

"Definitely no killing you in your sleep," Ellie says holding up both hands in mock-defensiveness. "Seems kind of shitty not to give you a chance to fight back, y'know?" She's still joking, of course, awful as it is. But for her, this is a pretty sincere thing too. She's killed people, but she's not a monster. She hopes she's not a monster, even after the things she's had to do to hunt down Abby.

She pushes that train of thought away again.

"So, um...where are you from, anyway?"

[reydacted]

Rey hesitates just a little, shrugging and tucking a piece of hair behind her ear, "Nowhere really worth knowing."

Home had always been sort of an odd concept for her. It's not even like Jakku was really where she was even from, just where she got dumped.

"I've been sort of all over recently. We tend not to stay on one planet for too long--" she offers this almost idly, like interplanetary travel is decidedly not some technological feat.

[enduresurvive]

Ellie takes Rey's answer at face value, because there's a lot of shitty places out there. There are reasons you might not want to tell someone you just met, either. Fine, she can deal with that.

At first, she mishears what Rey says, something about travelling a lot. But then her brain catches up and she does almost a full-on double take.

"Wait, did you say planet?"

[reydacted]

Rey balks a little bit at the fact that planet is the apparent hang up, but she should have figured something was up when there was nay a transport or speeder to be spotted. Grimacing, she's not quite sure she can redirect that.

"You've never been off world before?"

Not the oddest thing. Rey hadn't left Jakku before she was chased off, but to act like the act of doing so was unbelievable is what gives Rey pause.

[enduresurvive]

Ellie just straight up laughs like that's the funniest thing she's ever heard, but there's an edge to it too.

"No. Anyone who was alive when we still had astronauts was probably a kid then, and like...there's definitely none left," she says when she gets that reflex under control again.

"If I could have been anything, if the world were different, I'd have definitely been an astronaut, though," she says. She thinks of the only thing she's ever really seen outside of books that's really about space. The museum, a couple years ago. She'd sat with Joel inside that model lunar pod and listened to a recording of the moon landing. That had been...god, so much better than pretty much anything that came after it, aside from maybe Dina being into her.

"You really...like, what, went to the moon? Man. I wanna go to the moon, because fuck Earth," she continues.