036 » aftermath: the dead

[villagemod]

WHO: Everyone.
WHERE: Mathias Township...?
WHEN: Day 036
WHAT: What happens after death?
WARNINGS: Will update as necessary. PM this account to have a warning added!
NOTES: Plotting post over here! And a log for the living.

RECOMMENDED ♫ Deadly Avenger "Kijo 鬼女"

DAY 036
RED SKY AT MORNING
But for the dead, morning does not come. They awake to a frozen world covered in darkness, the night sky above so clear that they make out the stars that are both familiar and strangely not. The moon is full, casting light that reflects upon the snow, but both are covered in a haze of red.

Everything is covered in red. The snow, the ocean, the night sky. It's as if they are seeing through colored glasses, but that filtered hue cannot be removed.

Those who were victims of the Hunt awake where they fell, surrounded by their own blood but curiously unharmed. In fact, their physical state is that of before the Hunt, and the only sign of their injuries are the wild splatters of blood all around them.

There is no sign of anyone in Mathias except for the dead, no matter how much they search. And there is quite a lot now to search — the fog has vanished from the town completely and all paths are clear to be wandered. Time is of the essence, though, for the dead will not remain so for long.

They have only six hours in this place that is Mathias but not.

SAILORS TAKE WARNING
At the fourth hour into their stay, a storm arrives. Perhaps difficult to see at first, before long the clouds can be noticed moving across the sky, at first blocking out only patches of those strange stars but then blotting them out entirely. The moon struggles in vain to shine through their darkness, eventually failing and leaving only artificial light to guide the dead in their journeys.

The storm begins with the fifth hour. The rumbling is like that of a thunderstorm but infinitely more ominous, signaling something approaching that is not meant for the world of man. Within a few minutes, they learn why as lightning arcs across the sky, the cracks of powerful energy echoing through the air. Those branching spikes at first remain in the sky, but then suddenly they crash down to meet the earth, striking the Town Hall. The sound of splintering wood fills the air, followed moments later by the roaring crackle of a fire raging into existence. Those cracks and crashes continue, but no others reach the ground.

The fire spreads with purpose, moving outward from the town's center but never touching the forest. It leaps from building to building, consuming everything in its path. It is a living, breathing thing driven by a need to devour. There is no stopping or controlling it.

As ash begins to fall from the sky like snow and the final hour begins, the earth rumbles like the sky. Like so many of them recently experienced, the ground shakes, sending burning buildings collapsing inward and residents tumbling to the ground. For a full minute, it seems as if the world is truly ending—

And then it stops. The world is silent. No rumbling of the sky, no crackles of fire. For a few moments, there is nothing.

The sound returns with a cacophonous rush, jarring and overwhelming. At first, it seems as if everything is normal, at least as normal as this nightmare world ever is. But residents will quickly begin to notice that the fire is receding, following the same path it took before. Back and back it goes, retreating through the street toward Town Hall. And if residents pay close attention, they will catch glimpses out of the corner of their eye of burned buildings suddenly repaired and standing as they had before the storm — just a glimpse, gone in a flash when faced fully, but enough to have anyone questioning what sanity they still have remaining.

When the sixth hour ends, so too do the dead. They will blink and in one moment be in this empty red hellscape of Mathias and in the next, awakening on Day 037, with only their memories to show for their harrowing experiences.


ABOUT THE FIRE
The fire that spreads through Mathias can be treated as an almost sentient entity. It does not necessarily behave as fire normally does — it can skip buildings, burn when there's nothing to fuel it, and may actively pursue residents. How it behaves in your character's encounter with it is up to you and does not need to match how others perceive it.

Characters may be injured and even killed by the fire. Both will incur sanity loss and may cause your character to gain a Madness (in addition to others they may gain from normal sanity loss).

— All who are injured by the fire lose one sanity point and will wake on day 037 with their burns.

— All who are killed by the fire lose two sanity points and gain the Madness pyrophobia for seven days. The degree of their pyrophobia is up to the individual player.

---

CONDITIONS UPDATE

— THE WEATHER starts off clear, with temperatures well below freezing. The storm begins to move inwards around three hours in, and takes full form an hour after that.

— THE FOG has vanished. The dead may wander the whole of Mathias at their leisure, though there is still a chasm in the earth between Hill Lane and Stine Road. The chasm spans from one side of town to the other, each end disappearing into the forest, and effectively blocks passage to the "northern" (actually western) part of town.

— DISAPPEARANCES continue. Eliot Waugh has now vanished as well. Though none of them will notice until tomorrow...

— THE GREY GULL now has a working bar! The selection is not quite what it once was.

---

OOC NOTES

— FOOD will be restocked in some fashion in the next log, don't worry. We aren't going full survival mode yet.

— REWARD REDEPEMPTION is on hold for this log. Sorry, friends! It'll be back next round.

— HOUSEKEEPING Please be sure to have a look at this post in regards to sanity loss from the Hunt and what is being done with the corpses of the Hunt's victims.

— MOD STATUS What will become a regular reminder that it's mostly just Amy steering this ship for now, so things will probably be pretty slow for a while. Apologies in advance, and please don't feel shy about pinging me if you're stuck waiting for something.

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Comments

Open + 1 to come for the Storm and fire

[tinstar]

We all float down here- Waking up

Raylan gasped awake, just as frantic and as panic as when he'd... died? and his hands automatically groped across his stomach before flying to his face. All he could remember was screaming and pain and blood everywhere and- Raylan didn't realize he was hyperventilating or that there was wetness pricking at his eyes that made him look more like a lost ten year old than a forty something plus man who steadfastly refused to cry. That didn't stop the hot wet tears from rolling down his face anyway as he looked around at all the blood. His blood.

Horrified and with a terrified whimper that he didn't recognize, Raylan scrambled back and pushed to his feet to gain any kind of distance he could from his own murder scene. With a panicked glance around, Raylan couldn't see the thing that had killed him, and his next thought was -

"NEAL! NEGAN!" If anyone who heard it could sense the raw terror under the names, they could gather how well Raylan was doing.

Run Rabbit

Once he'd found Neal and Negan, along with some semblance of control and a fractured, barely held together mask, Raylan searched through 1306, calling just as desperately for Henry and Malcolm. He went through each room, checking the closets and bathrooms and screaming at the emptiness of it all in his frustration. The table in the master bedroom was hefted and swung freely at the wall as his back curved with his frustrated fury.

Twenty minutes later, Raylan was back outside and striding towards the town center. Anyone who had ever seen him casually amble across a room would sense the difference in his stride, legs stepping one foot almost in front of the other as he strode with a deadly purpose.

If death wouldn't grant him peace, then he would raise a little hell instead.

Run rabbit

[bestfuneralever]

Klaus was not doing so great. Everything in this Mathias-that-isn't has him on edge, not least of which started with waking up on the other side of dead, and the blood-soaked version of their creepy fog-hell town. He's gotten some level of bearings a bit after he's woken up, finding nothing useful at the boarding house and setting out to search for someone familiar elsewhere.

The choice of where to go wasn't much of one, not even a real thought in his head, just an automatic obvious thing, made easy as breathing. He just let his feet carry him the familiar path from the boarding house to 1306 Phillips Drive in hopes of being greeted with a familiar face.

What he doesn't expect, as the house comes into view, is to hear so much slamming coming from it. He frowns and picks his speed up to almost a jog as he heads to the front door. "Guys?" He doesn't even bother asking for just one of them, the entire house is full of friends, any of them answering would be better than nothing.

He doesn't bother waiting for an invitation inside, instead he just wrenches the door open and walks inside. Someone's here, he knows because he hears them as he moves through the house. The loud crash of he-doesn't-know-what as he heads toward the bedroom makes him jump, hands racing to cover his ears in an instant, muscle-memorized action that comes to him without thought at any loud noise these days. "Raylan? Doc?"

Re: Run rabbit

[tinstar]

The chaos stilled at the sound of his own name echoing through the hall and Raylan dropped the legs of the most recent chair to suffer his wrath. Who was that? His heart jumped in his chest, both in hope and in fear - Did Klaus die with them?

"Klaus?" Raylan nearly sprinted to the door and almost tripped over some debris for his efforts as he stumbled into the door before tearing it open and taking in the sight of Klaus like the wonderful, terrible blessing he was.

"Fuck," he said, moving forward to wrap both his arms around the somehow equally narrow man, wild manic eyes searching his face. "How are you here? Did.." He couldn't form the words, swallowing tightly. Tell him Klaus didn't suffer what he did. What Neal and Negan did.

Out of everyone he'd met, Klaus was the softest of them all, even against all the shit that life had thrown at him. It wasn't fair. He'd been in Nam, hadn't he suffered enough?

[bestfuneralever]

There's a note in the cowboy's voice that just rips a piece of Klaus to shreds. So desperate. So hopeful. So raw and open, in ways... he really hasn't heard from the other man in their short-lived friendship thus far.

He's a little surprised by the sudden, almost voracious, way he's taken into the other man's arms. He doesn't hesitate to return the gesture, arms winding around his friend and squeezing, a solid reminder that he is here and whole and-- something not-quite-dead. "Thank fuck I found someone I know." he mutters into Raylan's shoulder. He won't be thankful that he's here-- it means he died, too-- but company in misery is better than misery in solitude.

"It got you, too- that thing? I don't even know what to call it- what it was. Some weird- fucked up- invisible animal thing."

[tinstar]

Raylan was not nearly as soft on his face as every other man in 1306 but he cared about the people that had come to be comfortable under his roof, despite him knowing that it had very little to do with him directly. Doc and Malcolm had a way with people, a way that he never would but after the conversation they'd had in the kitchen and over dinners and what he understood of the kind of person Klaus was, it felt more acceptable somehow.

Klaus wrapping himself back around and squeezing like he was actually relieved to see the Marshal did little to dissuade that thought. He nodded against Klaus's head with an uneven breath before drawing back a little.

"Slipped on the goddamn snow before I could get to the trees.. It got Neal and Negan too. Doc and Malcolm were inside so I assume they're safe but.." Shit. Taking a deep breath, he looked what he could see of Klaus over, making sure he was just as 'repaired' as the rest of them had been.

"Where'd you come from? Nearby?" He assumed so, assumed that this was the closest familiar spot to where Klaus went down but he couldn't be sure. He wasn't sure of anything right now.

[bestfuneralever]

"Yeah, I- I found Negan earlier." He nods a bit as they step apart and for a long moment, it's everything he can do not to crumble and break. "Five- Five's not here... and I don't know if that's the better option or not." Which sounds cruel when the only way to get to this second Mathias was death, apparently, but.... six of one, half-dozen of the other, pick a trauma any trauma seems to be the motto of this place.

"It caught me right before I got to the boarding house." Even though he knows there are no injuries to speak of, he can't stop the subconscious reach toward his ribs where what he could only assume were wicked, razor-sharp claws, had dug in deep.

[tinstar]

The shock of seeing Klaus wore off slowly, but the more Klaus spoke and the more he neared a fracture that threatened to crumble, the hot anger that hadn't dissipated by his appearance roiled around in Raylan's gut. It went further than just indignation, deeper than any self-preservation still working in high gear in the back of his head. His head tilted down, eyes dark and furious over the tension in his jaw.

"No. Better that he ain't. Doc and Malcolm aren't here either." Raylan's hands pulled back, one coming up to try and prop on the gun that wasn't there and it only pissed him off more.

"But if we're dead-" They must be right? He could still feel the separation of his guts from their proper place, the raw terror that encouraged him to turn the world over to get away if he had to. "Then we're going to get somethin' outta this place for it."

It was more than a threat. It was a promise and while Raylan would get one answer, the demand of his satisfaction wouldn't be confined to this second Mathis. God help the first human-type form the township should take.

[bestfuneralever]

"He wouldn't agree-" the argument, which isn't really one so much as an opposite truth, falls from his mouth without thought. "he'd rather it be him than me." Than any of his siblings, but as it stands thus far, they are the only two Hargreeves in town.

He hears that half-second hesitation at the end of that cut-off statement. He feels much the same, at this point. That has to be it, but then why are they here, and where are the ones that had died before them?

"What do you mean? How?" Confusion creases his forehead at that determined statement. If they were stuck here-- and for all they know, they are, forever now-- what good does them earning information do, if they're all stuck away from the others?

[tinstar]

"Well, shit in one hand, wish in the other I guess." It wasn't nice or pretty but not much about Raylan was, to be honest.

"There's gotta be somethin' here that isn't there. Somethin' beyond the fuckin' drapes-" The creepyass red tint to everything that Raylan had pointedly ignored in his panic to find Neal and Negan, specifically. "-that's useful. Maybe somethin' about what brought us here." Or what killed them. Or how to stop it. Or how to do anything but stand still and breakdown in helpless grief. He could feel the fractional threat of it, one that was promptly burnt out by resilient fury.

"You see anythin' on your way here?" He assumes that Klaus kind of.. walked blindly here, no one was going to be too attentive fresh out of being turned into lawn art, but he couldn't help but ask.

waking up

[conning]

He'd pulled himself from the snow, after a while. When it had started melting around him, when he'd stopped feeling the cold of it on his skin and started to feel numb instead.

His coat was half-soaked by the time he got up, which he registered was bad, on some level. It was freezing out here. Worse than freezing. He would need to change or get inside--

1306. He whipped around, toward the house, expecting to see the front door smashed in, expecting chaos, carnage--

But no, everything was intact. It was intact, and it was quiet, and Doc and Malcolm weren't crashing through the front door to come and get them. Panic hit him, and he started to run for the house, but the sound of Raylan screaming his name and Negan's made him stop. Change direction. Almost with relief. He didn't want to face whatever was in that building alone.

The panic in Raylan's voice made him sprint. Was that thing still after him? It killed you, his shocked mind said. It killed him already, too.

He ignored it.

"Raylan! Raylan!"

[tinstar]

Raylan started moving back towards 1306, ducking only long enough to pick up his hat out of habit, legs restlessly tingling until he burst into a run. He had to get back to the house, he had to get away from here, he had-

"Raylan!" Neal.

The slow of his legs that came with the call back broke into a harder run, the Marshal suddenly feeling like he could take a race on with a steam train, heart clawing its way up his throat. He was smart enough to save his breath, not bothering to yell back. The kick up of snow and the sound of him charging should be enough. Within a few seconds of Neal coming into view, the same thing that caused him to fall happens again - boots sliding across the snow and sending the Marshal face first into the ground, hat rolling off to the side.

"Goddamnit," he swore out of gritted teeth into the unforgiving snow. No ABC's to be found here today, it seemed. But it wasn't going to stop him and after only a second he was pushing himself back up and looking at where he'd seen Neal, half expecting him to be gone. Breathing out a heavy sigh at the sight of the New Yorker coming towards him, he snapped up his hat and jogged at a more reasonable pace.

"Neal," he greeted breathlessly, shamelessly grabbing and pulling him closer to look him over. It was two seconds away from a hug, to be perfectly honest, but Raylan was too worried about the state of Neal than validating his lack of mirage-ness. "Jesus Christ, are you okay? I'm sorry, I thought you guys were right behind me and then y'all were screamin' and I couldn't-" Stop the thing or turn around or even pretend like he'd helped them and not run like a chicken shit. He swallowed the rest of his seemingly pathetic explanation down and waited to be mocked for it all.

[conning]

Neal finishes the hug, practically throws himself into it, clinging to Raylan. He presses his face against the taller man's shoulder, and does what he's been on the edge of doing for days. He starts to sob.

He's shivering. He's not sure if it's from lying in the snow waiting for something to happen, or if it's from what already happened, or if it's from the air that chisels into his soaked coat and clothes like a handful of blunted knives.

He tries to speak, tries to explain himself, tries to tell Raylan what happened, the way he felt himself come apart. The screaming he lived long enough to hear. The pants-shitting terror of coming face to void with what chased them. It comes out as a wail, and he doesn't have the presence of mind just yet to feel ashamed.

[tinstar]

A rough breath was forced out of him at the force of Neal colliding into him, but there was no hesitation in him dropping his hat so he could wrap both his arms tightly around Neal like the smaller man was some saving rock in the storm he felt in the middle of. The sudden wracked sobs are both a surprise and not; a surprise because he didn't expect it so immediately and not a surprise at all because he was on the edge of it himself.

He couldn't help the hot fresh tears rolling down his cheek and into Neal's hair, head shaking in a silent protest against the working jaw against his shoulder, one hand coming up to cup Neal's neck. What the hell could he say to help this? To comfort what they'd just been through? He wasn't John Henry. He wasn't Malcolm. He didn't have those tools.

"I know," he managed to say, knowing it to be a lie and not caring, the words themselves half drowned in his own tears and accent thick. "But we're.." Alive? Whole? Barely on the latter count. His body shuddered with the uneven half sob that pulled from his chest.

No, conversation wasn't gonna happen for a good few long seconds.

[conning]

He held on tighter, for himself and for Raylan, trying to get the words together to apologize for going down first. For his death not making any difference in the outcome for the others. He doesn't know why he thought it would.

"I'm glad you kept running," is what he finally says. He's still crying, still shivering, still has his face pressed hard against Raylan's coat, and he doesn't think he could let go of the other man yet if he wanted to. His voice sounds like splintered glass in someone else's throat. "Don't be sorry you kept running."

[tinstar]

Raylan's breath hitched almost painfully with his sharp inhale, head shaking a little, a short violent physical protest reaction, hands tightening on Neal like he could hold onto the sentiment even while rejecting it.

"I shouldn'a left you. Either of you, I shoulda put y'all in front of me, it-" It should have been him first. That's the way it had always felt - if one of the good guys was going down, in every other situation, he had a better chance of getting out of it. That wouldn't have helped this time but it didn't stop the guilt from coiling in his gut anyway.

"Don't matter. Won't happen again, promise." Second by second, Raylan was fighting and pushing things back down his throat as best he could. They had things they needed to do - they needed to find Negan, they needed to breathe and they needed to keep moving so they didn't dissolve and let Mathis win the day anymore than it already had.

[conning]

Again. Won't happen again. No, next time he'll stop, next time he'll let it--

"Don't you dare," Neal says, the words breaking a little. "Doc needs you. Malcolm needs you. You've got a life to go back to, a daughter waiting, you have scores to settle, you have..."

God, he can't breathe. He can't catch his breath. "If that thing comes back you run and you don't fucking stop."

He tries to inhale deeply and can't. Can't. It's like there's not enough oxygen in the space around them. He has the bizarre and all but insurmountable feeling they're being crushed flat onto some kind of Géricault canvas, Anatomical Pieces revisited, and he has to pull away from Raylan or give up on breathing all together. He turns away, digging his hands into his hair, screwing his eyes closed and trying to get himself under control.

[tinstar]

That's what he'd tried to do last time. Look where it had gotten him.

"Neal-," he started at the next break of the smaller man's voice against his shoulder but it was swept under and silenced by Neal's continuation. Doc and Malcolm might need him, sure, but they could survive without him if they had to. He wasn't necessary for that to continue and at home - the baby was barely a bean and Winona.. He wanted to be there for them, no matter what he had to suffer for it, but waiting...

Winona had proven again she didn't want him. And if asked, he'd go running back like a kicked dog, hat in hand.

He couldn't say any of that and he didn't stop Neal from pulling away. He didn't follow. Whatever Neal needed, it wasn't against his chest.

"It won't help. It still got me. We're still damned," he replied quietly, with a soft note of defeat before he started stepping forwards. "I ain't leavin' you to it again, Neal. I'm not. You and Doc and Malcolm give more of a shit about me than anyone else back home. I'm not leavin' you to it."

wake me up (i can't wake up)

[revvedup]

Max has been wandering for a while now, having hastily departed her own death scene. Everything being soaked in red makes things difficult to navigate visually, but she can still hear and Raylan's shouts for his friends stand out among the silence.

She runs in the direction the voice is coming from, coming upon Raylan looking just as worse for wear as he is, hair mussed and clothes and skin dirtied and bloodied.

"Raylan? Raylan!," she shouts, trying to get his attention. She's not either of the people he'd been looking for, but he's the first she's seen from town since waking up.

[tinstar]

The sound of another voice that wasn't one of the 1306 house was almost shocking in it's nostalgia of a time he wasn't here, settled with four other men who otherwise filled his sound space. It was sharp enough in his ears to rattle him from the lizard brain's instinctual focus, head swiveling that way so he could stare for a long second before his body kicked into gear. 

"Max?" His hat was forgotten as he started walking towards her, another blood splattered mound of something on the snow in the echoes of the wreck of his demise. As much as he wanted to trust what his eyes were telling him, her being here must mean... Shit, not her too. He'd only met her once, but that didn't matter at all. No one should have to suffer...

Raylan focused ahead of him, one hand being held out in invitation for whatever Max wanted - a hug, a touch of confirmation that neither of them were hallucinating and, if she wanted nothing at all, a gesture towards her as he closed the distance as quickly as he could without breaking into a jog. Having legs proverbially three and a half miles long gave him a broad stride and made short work of it. 

"Max. Shit. Are you okay?" First things first and nevermind that he was oblivious to the slight progress his shocked eye betraying wetness had tried to clean off.

[revvedup]

He's offering a hand to her and Max isn't expecting to take it, until she does, touching his wrist and then forearm as he comes closer. Truthfully, she could probably use the hug, but it doesn't occur to her to try.

"No." Ordinarily she'd lie, try to keep up a brave façade, except she's pretty sure both of them are dead. Her own eyes are welling, a few spilling over when she sees that his are, too. "I - I remember - "

She remembers everything that lead to her waking up here, and that's the problem.

[tinstar]

Raylan swallowed thickly as he tried to blink back the welling and the impossibly large knot choking him as he stepped forward, hovering hand hanging just over the middle of her back before it settled, just shy of an actual hug.

"It's okay, you don't-" He was trying very hard to keep his shit together and for the most part, he was succeeding. If one could look past the wild, watery look in his eyes and they way they couldn't stay here. "We-" No, he couldn't give voice to that.

"Alls that matters is that we're up now, right?" He wasn't sure if he was telling her or asking for himself. "With no fuckin' clue where we are.. You didn't .. see it after... Did you?"

[revvedup]

He doesn't voice it, but she can't help but think about it anyway, what what she'd experienced before everything went black and leaving a blood-soaked forest floor behind must mean. I'm dead, I'm really dead and they can't save me this time, even if I come back how will I know I'm even still me?

And who knows if they'd be coming back? No one who'd died had ever mentioned something like this, an alternate hellscape of the town.

She can tell he's not handling it well, either, and she wipes the tears that have fallen in spite of her best efforts away with rough swipes at her cheeks, trying to calm down. For his sake and hers.

"Uh, I - I saw shadows," she manages to get out shakily. "I was running from them and slipped and - I broke my neck. I couldn't move. I saw a mass of shadows right before it started tearing me apart."

She's trying to steady her voice, sound disaffected. It wavers the entire time.

[tinstar]

His compartmentalization functioned largely by ignoring what he didn't like until he was forced to look at it. Somehow Mathis had found the exactly perfect way to put a stark reminder of it all around him. He was half on autopilot, legs already itching to get them moving, keep them moving. As it was, he gently urged her with that hand down towards the 1306 house.

Movement always helped, though he was still side eyeing as much as he could fit into the attentive turn of his peripheral.

"Can't wait to be rid of all this goddamned snow. I tripped too. Tried to scramble away, realized I couldn't..." He took and let out an uneven breath, a roil of anger that would bubble up over the shock of it all soon enough, slowing to a stop like he wasn't sure where he was going anymore.

"Doc and Malcolm are gonna have to clean it up..." Oh god. At least if he'd caught a bullet like he was supposed to, they could just bury him and be done with it. This was.. so much worse. For everyone.

"What the fuck did we do wrong?" He asked, seeming to snap back into reality, eyes coming back to Max. "Every other time, there was a warnin', a call, a note.. What did we miss this time, we had to have missed something, right?"

[revvedup]

They've got that in common, though it's become more common for her since she'd arrived here. She can tell she's being moved along, but doesn't protest it the way she usually would, still too shaken up by the events that lead to them being here. And he's right, being in motion helps, as well as getting them further away from their respected death scenes.

"I don't know," she says, turning to him and rubbing at her eyes before she finally looks at him. "I don't - I think there were just the sounds outside, the scratching at the walls. I don't think there was anything like what we've gotten before."

[tinstar]

Raylan sucked his teeth with a long drawn out sound as he thought about it. Thinking was, at least, movement for his mind and gave it anything else to do besides try to process what just happened and freaking out.

"Gonna have to tear out the walls. See if we find any of those damned symbols. Scratch them out or.. paint them over, ruin the mark.." Calmer eyes returned back to Max but where there had been wide eyed panic before, there was a glint of determined anger that he tried to keep tucked away behind his very real concern.

"Were you outside with anyone else? You were comin' from the boardin' house, right?"