Dinner and a Movie

[Laurels]

((Rodney Vasicek continued from Meet Cute))

The sun was starting to go down a bit. Rodney noticed a building nearby, and squinted to look closer at it. He adjusted Roz's arm.

"Hey, let's check that place out," he said to her.

It had been some time since they left the church. Rodney had continued to support Roz as they walked along. It was somewhat frightening to know he was watching an injured girl and that a crazy killer could appear at any moment. Rodney only had the orgel, and he wasn't sure what Roz had, so things looked bad for them. These sorts of thoughts ran through his head as they walked.

The other thoughts were about how freaking terrifying it was that he was this close to a girl. Roz had been the one to suggest he help her walk, and he had gladly obliged. However, this meant he was side-by-side with a girl, holding her slender arm and rubbing his hip against hers. Rodney didn't want to show how weird he was feeling, so he continued to walk without trying to show that he was super self-conscious right then.

"Well, if you want," Rodney said. "Unless you'd rather we go somewhere else."

[Lilith]

((roz is in this thread now))

Her pain would flare up from time to time but the painkillers helped her to push through it. There was also Rodney, the boy who helped her when she was at her lowest. He was helping her move around, and, together, they were able to cover some ground.

Then, they stopped all of a sudden. Roz wasn't watching where she was going, she was looking at the ground, barely holding her bag. She was tired, very tired. Her body didn't tolerate the situation well along with the blood loss and the sun's rays hitting her, even though it was calming down. She never thought she would think of this, but she kinda missed her cold apartment.

"Yeah, we can rest there."

She wasn't very interested in spending the night in a shed but she understood that beggars can't be choosers. Her leg didn't give her the freedom to run away and hide somewhere on her own. She looked at the boy and smiled softly. She didn't mind spending more time with him, he was nice and he didn't backstab her even though he had the opportunity to do so every five minutes.

[Cicadan]

Feel The Earth Move.

Clay felt his hobble worsen. Now it was a foot-dragging limp. The low cut of his shoes, not particularly practical, exposed the skulltop of his ankle bone to friction, hot, stinging. After some time, modestly bloody. Just as his shirt was modestly vomit-y, his knee, not so modestly gory.  

He couldn't bear to even look at it. So, he didn't.

He wasn't even sure if he'd gotten the bandages and antiseptic right, but he'd half-assed what he could and then hauled his own whole ass over dusty earth and far too many jagged rocks. He'd found what looked like a small industrial park someways up the coast, away from all the homes. Maybe a good place to hide, he'd thought. Because, it looked like the sort of place where broken things belonged. Fitting, somehow. It had taken him a few minutes of pained hissing and awkward tugging of his own crippled leg to navigate the most convenient looking hole in the barbed-up fence. Maybe a few hours. Hard to tell with all the adrenaline.

He'd discovered the body soon after.

He supposed the funny thing was that he hadn't really known how to respond. Funny in, like, a dismally soul-crushingly morbid sense, funny not to him but perhaps to someone out there who needed a laugh in these dark times. He'd stared at it for some more amount of adrenaline-warped time. Fight, flight, nothing had come to him. His first thought that had broken through the daze had been a gross musing that he'd wasted his energy trying to drag himself into a death-polluted place. His second thought had been the Holy Rosary.




Hail Mary,
full of grace
the Lord is with thee



blessed are you among women
and blessed is the fruit of your womb,
Jesus


Holy Mary
Mother of God,

pray for us sinners


now and at the hour of our death.


Amen.



It had taken a while to navigate every bead with his trembling fingers. Now he was seated just inside the doors of what appeared to be a boat... hangar, whatever one was supposed to call one of those. His back bathed in the icy cold of the inert chunk of door he rested against. His eyes were closed but he couldn't force himself to drift off... into sleep, or whatever else God could gift to those whose eyes were sealed shut like mausoleum doors. Instead his thoughts slowly, unstoppably raced, the Tortoise ambling off to it's inevitable victory in all history.

Bridie, Cybil, Roz, Mary, Frankie...

He tried to tell himself it wasn't inevitable that he'd hear any one of their names at some point. His thoughts betrayed him with the innumerable, increasingly horrific alternatives. At some point it was just exhausting. He was grateful to have a distraction, in the form of a few popped painkillers and and the soft crunch of footfalls from outside.

His brain offered a friendly and obtuse reminder of what happened when he sought out company. Attacked in churches, on rooftops...

He ignored his brain without second thought.

"Hey." Clay raised his voice, it warbled weakly with his energy sapped, but he could force it to boom out, half-deafening himself with wall-to-wall echos of the building he'd shoved himself into. "I'm not armed, if you guys want to come in go on ahead."

Somehow that didn't seem wise... His fist tightened around the rosary still buried in it's depths, threaded tautly between cracks in his fist.

"Uh, if you're squeamish be careful. There's a body on the fence, uh.. far side of where you guys are." He wasn't even sure if the unknown people were listening to him. If there were unknown people there at all. Still, he rambled. "... Uh, hah. I know it won't seem like the most Good Samaritan thing ever to have left a body just lying out there, but ah... I'm injured, can't, you know. Go around burying bodies and stuff."

[Laurels]

Rodney froze as he heard a voice call out to him and Roz. He slowly looked over and saw another boy. The other kid looked pretty worse for wear, and he was warning them about a body nearby.

That made Rodney a bit nervous. If there was a corpse nearby, that meant a player could be nearby. That also meant someone here was actually dead. Sure, someone had tried to kill Rodney and someone else tried to kill Roz, but the thought that someone could actually be dead was frightening. It had been half a day since the game started, so it wasn't like it was unlikely people could die in that time, but it was still creepy to think about.

But the new guy wanted to let them know he wasn't dangerous. Rodney wasn't sure how to respond, so all he said was this:

"O...okay."

[Lilith]

Someone else. First person she had seen other than the boy she shot  (that wasn't announce on the announcement) and Rodney. She wondered what happened to the boy but she didn't mention it. Maybe Rod had forgot about him, maybe it was for the best to keep her pure and weak persona.

Anyways, they weren't alone. There was another boy and he said something that sent chills down Roz's spine: there was someone else. A body, a dead body that used to belong to someone who was breathing and alive. Roz wondered who could it be. Was it a friend? Was it someone she didn't like? She was curious.

She spoke louder than she was used to with Rod. She dropped her role of a weak girl for a few second, just to make sure she was clear when she spoke to the boy. She wondered if Rod would notice or, like the doormat he was, would do nothing about it. She felt bad calling him a doormat in her head, but he had been pretty passive about everything and she assumed he was like that all the time.

"Whose is it?"

[Cicadan]

Clay's broken knee char-broiled, seared, until it almost fell right off the bone. What it felt like when Clay half-halfheartedly tried to stand. A particularly visceral, gory sort of agony. His breath caught in his throat, nearly violently spit out by a scream he managed to swallow down before audible.

He'd tried. But for now, well, he could just stay here. Cozy spot, what with metal digging rudely into the crook of his back.

He recognized a voice, almost immediately. Roz. At once he was happy, at once he was terrified, but neither emotion seemed all that potent an impression. Like a whisper outside of his head, not the actual thoughts within.

"I don't know whose it is... Not from the clothes, and she's lying face down... felt wrong turning her over, I didn't even think about it..."

Clay, from their perspective, stayed almost dead still, an inert shadow melting into that of the building.

"I don't know if you noticed this from when we were friends, Roz, but ah... I never exactly had a lot of friends. Who's your new one?"

[Laurels]

"Oh! I'm...I'm..Rodney..." Rodney said to the boy. "Rodney Vasicek, that is."

The boy seemed unsure about who Rodney was or why Roz would be with him. He especially was certain about bringing up that he and Roz were friends, which may be good. But, as Rodney remembered from many lectures from his dad, friendships don't always hold up in The Program.

"We, um, ran into one another after escaping from dangerous people, and now we're helping each other."

Rodney looked to Roz.

"Um, so yeah."

[Lilith]

"It's- It's okay Clay. We are friend, I won't hurt you."

That was a half-truth. She wouldn't hurt him unless she was provoked or if they were the last two remaining. Right now, he could stay alive and Roz hoped he would be killed by someone else. The same went for Rodney now, she wouldn't hurt him unless these two situations were met.

"We, uh, yeah, what Rod said."

She didn't want to elaborate. She didn't want to misstep and say she shot a guy, trying to kill him. She shallowed. The guy she shot wasn't dead and there were so many names she wasn't able to really understand them. She hoped nobody she loved died but, in the end, it didn't mattered.

"So, uh, a body uh? Does she have her bag or anything near her?"

She saw it. Several times. People scavenging from other people's kills. Roz saw it happen and she saw people winning by doing it. Roz wanted to be that person.

[Cicadan]

"Rodney. Clay.. Bronson." Formal address seemed out of place somehow, but it wasn't like Clay knew a thing about social conventions? In mundane life, let alone in 'lets all kill each other for our country or some such' life. "Nice to, uh.. yeah. You know."  

Did Rodney know? Clay nodded idly, not knowing how else to punctuate his out-loud thoughts.

"Dangerous people... shit, did they hurt you, Roz?" A bit closer now, he could see the imbalance in stance, the weight Roz was trying to keep off one leg. Clay wasn't sure why, but suddenly he was standing. Barely, he needed to lash one hand out to slap against the metal door, to hold his dangerously trembling body up. His leg still hurt like hell, he could now easily confirm that.

"You need to rest, Roz. You too, uh, Rodney. Don't burn too much energy and all that."

Clay felt pretty fucking peculiar, trying to give out any sort of orders.

"And, uh, yeah. One bag pinned under her body."

[Laurels]

"Umm...yeah...we should rest..." Rodney said.

He looked around the area. They could probably hide inside the boat shed. But if there was an extra bag lying around, maybe it would help to see what was inside. They weren't low on rations and water yet, but they would need more medicine if they were to continually treat Roz's injuries.

"So...maybe we should go inside. J-just a thought."

Rodney looked at Clay.

"You can come... if you'd like."

[Lilith]

"We need to loot it."

That came out louder than she thought it would. She wasn't wrong, Roz needed the supplies and she didn't want someone else to have them. Plain simple, and plain selfish. That was the only way to say it, there was no walking around it, just clear and simple.

"But, yeah. We could set up camp inside of... that shed?"

Did she trust Clay and Rodney enough to sleep with them around her? Nope, but she assumed they would try to kill each other before killing her since she wasn't a threat because of her leg. Maybe that would gave her enough time to pull out her gun and score a kill. She saw his eyes linger on her leg and she felt like she needed to explain it, so she did.

"Yeah, uh, earlier a boy attacked him and he slashed me. I think he's dying now."

She wondered how cold and uncaring she sounded. Maybe she looked scared enough to blame it on her fear of death, but maybe it was good enough. She didn't mention her gun to Clay, no need to lie about it then. She bit her lips. Was there anything else she was forgetting to do?

[Cicadan]

"If you'd rather me not hang around, I can..."

Clay's injured leg protested even the thought, but he ignored the bile-churning agony.

He also pointedly ignored the idea of grave robbing. Roz, well. He tried not to judge. She was still God's flock, living on God's earth, even if in that moment she didn't quite sound like the girl he'd used to know. Harsher, colder, unfamiliar-er voice... She'd been attacked. She was-  still- his friend, and she'd been attacked, and he focused on that.

"Okay. I'm glad you're alright, Roz. Let's just hope the wound doesn't get infected."

Clay lingered in place, lingered in sight. He wasn't exactly going to be useful anytime soon, he realized. Said realization was dull. Mundane. 'Oh, yes, I'm going to be a cripple for the rest of my short and pointless life'. The impact registered like a foam ball plopping to the ground.

"Well, don't mind me. Do what you guys have to do, and.. uh, I can volunteer some supplies if you guys are short."

[Laurels]

The group had moved inside the shed after getting the bag from the body. Rodney tried not to look at the dead girl. It was bad enough to know people were dying, but to see someone who had passed away was too much for right now. He merely kept his gaze away as they grabbed her stuff.

Once inside, Rodney made sure Roz had a place to sit on an old crate. He had gone through the bag and found extra first aid gear for Roz to treat herself.

"Um... we should change the bandages," he told Roz. "You know... to prevent infection..."

[Lilith]

Changing her bandages, uh? She looked down at her leg, it still hurt and it probably still bled a bit but it wasn’t as bad as earlier. She didn’t want to risk an infection, she didn’t want to look for antibiotics that probably weren’t around her. Her leg’s wound wasn’t pretty but she didn’t really feel shame anymore.

Maybe it was because her life was now broadcasted to everyone in America, but any feelings of shame or fear of nudity wasn’t in her mind. It was as if it disappeared, flew away when it learned that Roz was in danger of death and didn’t want to be around if she were to die.

‘‘Yeah, we need to change the bandages.’’

She unbuttoned her pants and started to lower them. She slowly but surely removed inches and inches of it until it was down to her knees. She looked at Rodney and smiled, she didn’t know why she did that. Only one of them was going to survive, and there was the possibility she would have to kill him but she didn’t feel like that right now. It was probably because they were in the dark, in a shed, in a weird place for three students to be together. Clay must be thinking how weird it is for Roz to remove her pants in front of him but she didn’t care, she only spoke a few words instead.

‘‘Can you help me bandage it, Rod?’’

[Cicadan]

They'd left the body just sitting there. Didn't seem right. Clay didn't know what to do about it. What to say about it, natch.

He kept his eyes averted as Roz asked Rodney for assistance, stared at his own little section of wall. Out of sight, out of mind. He passed the time by pretending he had any of his own thoughts to listen in on.