[ The cool wind washes over Billy. He pushes himself to roll over on to his back, absently aware of the squish of wet sand beneath his hands, and inhales the damp air. His body hurts. His head hurt. His face hurts, but he feels good under the cold. It smells fresh and salty and not dirty like the docks of New York that he's used to, which is what ultimately coaxes him to open his eyes. He sees the sky above him and watches the sun try to push through the clouds. There's not a single building in his peripheral.

If someone were nearby, he might quote The Wizard of Oz.

Instead, Billy grunts as he sits up. He does a cursory glance of himself. Clothes, the same as he remembers, but now bloodied and ripped where he took a bullet or a knife (no, not a knife, he thinks, and his jaw clenches at the thought of the shard of glass that Frank had used to get the upper hand). He's thankful he still has his vest. The weight of it is more comforting than it's ability to protect him. There are a lot of ways to kill a man who's wearing one.

In an instant, he raises a hand to his face. He's not sure what he expects to feel. A bullet hole in his cheek, yes, but what about the other side of his face? Will there be fragments of mirror, will he feel anything at all or will his touch sting at the exposed flesh? Billy is braced to feel something horrific. Instead, he feels smooth skin, then the raised lines of scarring. He uses both hands to map his face, he counts the scars he can find, and he doesn't stop to question how the hell his face is like this when he should be looking like ground beef. He has no idea how he looks, and a strange panic rises inside him at that.

He needs a mirror. He needs to know where he is.

When Billy stands, he takes a good look of his surroundings. ]

Shit.

[ The sky starts to turn.

Billy doesn't need to stand around and wait to see that it's going to be a bad storm. He's smart enough to have clued in that this place is pretty abnormal, and even if that wasn't the case, when the sky starts to turn black that's usually a pretty big tip off. He doesn't have a house to go to (but judging by what he's seen, plenty of the houses look empty, and Billy's not above taking over one), so he makes the decision to go to the first place he saw when he got here.

The building sits near the beach. From the look of it, it's not a residence, and as Billy approaches it he reads the sign. The Grey Gull. Some sort of restaurant, he guesses, by the look of the inside. It must be at least frequented by the others here, because the place seems clean, but Billy doesn't really care about that. He's glad to be under a roof as he hears the rain start to pelt the outside.

He's ready to wait it out. On one hand, it gives him a chance to evaluate what's going on and start to think about what he's going to do. On the other hand, he feels a prickling frustration that he can't get a feel of the township immediately. Billy's never liked being in the dark about things. He can only plan so much on so little information. The flash of light against the darkness and the ground shaking thunder pulls him out of his thoughts with a start.

Just a storm, he tells himself.

Billy shakes off the nervous energy he's suddenly filled with. He decides that, whatever the case, he can't just stand around and try to watch the rain against the windows, so he starts to case the building. His first stop is the kitchen, where he raids the drawers for knives, looking for the sharpest and easiest to tuck away. ]

You know the drill! Choose your own adventure. Billy will be exploring as much as he can before the storm hits, but I'm easy with things. Hit me up at blackspire if you want to plot something.