Bad Guys Win

[Dr Adjective]

God in Heaven, she really was relentlessly optimistic, wasn’t she? Despite it all, Esther couldn’t entirely help but have her mood buoyed by the insistence on looking for positives, theorising options, anything other than the sitting in a corner and sulking that Esther had had planned had she stayed alone.

But the armoury thing, that wasn’t such a long shot, was it? Sure they probably wouldn’t be packing much of use, even if either of them managed to translate 7.62x25 Tokarev into Russian - in Cyrillic type, naturally - and go looking for it, but there was a secondary option in play.

“If not, I mean, aren’t shells full of… you know… gunpowder?”

Esther stepped closer to the fire, set down her gun on the table. Handing over the single-shot bulky rifle she had little use for, that had been no small display of trust. Actually letting go of the only safety blanket she had, the thing proven to ward off Chimera? Well… she didn’t see Charlie as a threat, not any more.

“Could make it into a trap, somehow?”

She took off her hat, too. Was getting slightly toasty now that the fire had been going long enough to properly warm the room. She set it down next to the gun, the beady little bear eyes keeping a wary eye on the first and last line of defence.

[Applesintime]

Charlie had been thinking the same thing, not so long ago. Granted, she didn't really know how to go from 'lure beast into armory' to 'it's exploded and the beast is dead' with only a flare, plus there was the thing where you had to lure the Chimera or whatever into the armory in the first place, and she couldn't really figure how you'd do that without sacrificing someone.

"Yeah. All that stuff would go up pretty quickly if you had a good fire or an explosion or something in there. Concrete'd probably keep it contained well enough, maximise the blast power. Although, door's open so it'd probably end up venting that way..." Hm. Charlie was more used to having a lot more firepower to solve her hypothetical submariner issues with than a couple of guns, flares and an old Soviet grenade. But variety was the spice of life!

Following suit, Charlie's hat was taken off and shoved in her bag haphazardly. Running a hand through her hair, she grimaced at the feeling. "God, I need a shower. Don't think we'd get any water here, though," a quick glance outside at all the snow, "well, running water anyway. Maybe we can go skinnydipping in the sea." A snort left her body, Charlie glancing over at the entrance to the room. The mercs and scientists here probably had showers.

[Dr Adjective]

Of course, Esther cottoned onto the same limitation fairly quickly. Between then they had two firearms, a grenade, and some more mundane firestarters. Chances of getting all that ammo to go up at once, without vaporising themselves in the process? Pretty slim, probably. She’d sort of hoped Charlie might have some clever plan from her military background… maybe Carl might know something neither of them did?

Going a mile a minute however, the other girl had already changed the subject.

Yeah, Esther kind of wanted a shower too. She’d generally been pretty lax about personal grooming for much of her life, but having had little better to do on the ship, she’d actually gotten back into the habit of showering regularly. Just in time to feel extra grimy by comparison now that the option was gone.

And then Charlie offered an alternative.

Esther tried to force a smile, and chuckled nervously as the other girl gave a sarcastic snort. Freezing to death in the Chukchi Sea would be bad enough, but undressing in front of other people? At least she was making a joke of the idea at large, right? Not at the expense of Esther and her weird scrawny body?

“Heh, yeah… I don’t think you need to see that. Or anyone else.”

[Applesintime]

"Knowing this place, there's probably something in the water that'd kill us if the cold didn't. What with how cold this place is, surprised the water isn't frozen solid like one really big ice cube." Charlie let out a little chuckle, noting Esther's mild discomfort but just passing it off as, uh, general 'oh man getting naked in front of a sorta-stranger' style of embarrassment. She got it. It be like that sometimes. "Even then, if there wasn't anything in the water and we didn't freeze to death from how cold the water was, we'd probably get eaten by the Chimera or something anyway. Ah well."

Charlie let out a light sigh, glancing out of the window. The streets of... she didn't actually know what this town was called, but they looked kinda pretty in the storm, at least what she could see of it. It was the sort of place that you could imagine in a million different ways; some fairytale Christmas-style town with all the families bustling around in big coats and ushankas, or some Tom Clancy style place that's locked up like a bank and has ominious Soviet officers in their quarters declaring that the submarines in the pen will strike America or some shit.

Right now, it was a nightmare.

[Dr Adjective]

“It’s because of the salt,”

Esther found herself explaining without really having intended to. She wasn’t sure why. Maybe she wanted to be helpful? Maybe she wanted to be impressive, what with how she’d already called attention to the way her physique wasn’t?

Back when she was younger, they’d called Esther “gifted”. She picked things up quickly, rarely needed a second explanation, rarely needed to take notes or revise. She understood the underlying reasons for why the answer was what it was, so if she forgot, she could work it out again on the fly anyway. They used to call her “bright”.

But that had been before that playful, curious light had gone dim in her.

Even before gifted burnout caught up with her, and her lack of practical study skills kicked her ass so hard she had no choice to learn, what had happened to Esther’s father - no, been done to him - killed so much of her enthusiasm to learn. Her interests narrowed to understanding a single thing: “how did things get like this?” Thus, history.

But maybe, just maybe, it was that Charlie’s infectious attitude was reminding Esther of her younger self, bringing that insatiably curious little nerd closer to the surface. Heh. Surface. Like the ocean with its salt, the stuff that fell in wasn’t completely frozen over. You could fish it out with some effort. Was that a weak metaphor? Esther didn’t much care. Clever turns of phrase were for English majors.

“Maybe freezing would be better.” she added, applying a preponderance of will to not visualising the alternative.

“I… saw it.”

Beat. No. No she’s not going to cry in front of this girl. She’s not.

“Freezing would be more, uh… more peaceful. After a while you just… y’know, you don’t feel anything at all.”

[Applesintime]

Ah, yeah, the salt. Charlie should have known that probably, it was sorta important for her considering how much submarines would have to go around the colder parts of the world! Although, that probably depended on where she was going. Some sub based in Japan probably wouldn't have to deal with the cold. But, uh, that was enough for one day. They could go check the actual sub place out tomorrow!

"I mean, wouldn't wanna freeze either. Seems kinda cold." A brief smile crept up onto her face. "But, uh, yeah. We can go check the place out tomorrow. Speaking of tomorrow, uh, probably should get to sleeping. I don't think anything's gonna be sneaking up on us given, uh, outside." As she spoke, Charlie grabbed the sleeping bag from her duffel bag. Should they, uh, be sleeping in the place that had the fire smoke in it, small as it may be? She remembered reading how gas building up in places could be a problem, carbon monoxide or dioxide or something.

Mm.

[Dr Adjective]

That little smile. What the hell did that mean? Along with describing freezing as “kinda cold”? With the way Esther had been hovering on and off the edge of tears for much of the conversation, whenever it veered back towards recent traumatic events, it felt weird. One minute the optimistic enthusiasm was infectious, uplifting even, the next, Esther’s instinct told her she was being mocked.

But then she mentioned sleep. And Esther felt like she hadn’t slept in years. Was that what she was smiling about? No. Ludicrous. Esther wouldn’t want it anyway. She put the thought from her mind. Must just be relishing the thought of some rest.

“I hope not.”

Couldn’t just go on without any rest anyway. Having a vicious blizzard protecting the exterior made it about the best time to gamble on sleep they were likely to get.

“I assume they built this place to keep heat in,”

Esther crossed back to the fire, bit her lower lip, pondered how she was going to put the thing out. Eventually she settled for slapping it with a thick folder until only isolated embers remained, abruptly plunging the small room into darkness. Probably should’ve gotten her sleeping bag out first. Oh well, she was a girl well-accustomed to skulking around dark rooms at night.

“I, uh… good night?”

Why was that a question? Fuck it, she didn’t know.

[Applesintime]

"Night!" Charlie chirped. This place was... well, she wasn't gonna describe it as snuggly. Or warm, or anything positive. But hey, they were safe from the beasts lurking outside and the actual outside! Maybe, if she pretended very very hard and ignored the gun resting next to her, or the grenade, she could pretend she was in some submarine. Although the wind didn't howl outside submarines unless something had gone really, really wrong, in the same kinda way that this was something very, very wrong, the kinda thing that got a new bulletpoint added to the submariner's handbook.

Ah well. She could at least pretend that the massive explosion that woke her up was a Tomahawk.

((Charlie Vandermeyer and Esther Ježek continued in Shallows Low))