revivalproject | Obsolete

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Obsolete

WHO: Tony and open!
WHERE: The university, the mine hole...?, the beach caves
WHAT: Fixing the zombie problem
WHEN: Through the October biohazard event
WARNINGS: Gore, probably! Zombie stuff.

a. the beach
It was quiet, like the sand and the fog that hung so densely over the water cushioned any sound. Even Tony's footsteps, which had been so trudgingly heavy to Tony's ears on the road, were deadened as he reached the beach, and the creak and rattle of his armor as he moved was softened to static, like the hush of the waves. The fog was thick enough here that he had to pause and squint through it as he broke through the treeline, trying to spot the shape of the radio tower that should have been a clear landmark. It was leaning, precariously. If anyone not yet accounted for had made their way down here, and Tony suspected they had, to keep the water to one side and away from where the zombies must have been congregating around the sounds and lights of the city, the tower might not have been working for them. Tony hissed, and started a jog toward the caves, slowed by the heavy metal, and the regular ring of the scabbard at his side bouncing into his armored thigh.

It was only as he was hauling the weight of the metal up the rocks that he heard it. He had to stop, sweat from the effort quickly chilling in the cool air to raise goosebumps along his skin as he listened. A slap-slap-slap, like someone running, barefoot across the stones, echoing in the caves. Not the shamble of the zombies struggling to animate their limbs. Tony took a breath, could feel the call at the back of his throat, and it came out as a sigh when he realized it wasn't just one set of footsteps. Slap-slap-slap-slap.

The fog didn't seem so smothering as Tony turned to climb quickly, the clanking of his armor like an alarm and every rattling breath a siren.

b. the mine
Littering the city with as many posters as possible to draw people to the safety of the university was only really effective if the entire zombie horde didn't descend on the same building. And it was temporary, armor against a battering that had to be redirected. On a small scale, that was easy; Tony could spot movement in the fog, and shout, "Hey, come and get it!," or bang a metal fist against a concrete wall to ring like a dinner bell. Any sound, any movement, and they'd come lurching after him, immediately distracted from whatever had been driving their struggling brains a moment ago. As a mass, though, they were formidable.

The bigger problem was, even Tony's fireworks had been confiscated. The more complex devices, with controlled chemical reactions, timers, pressurizers, remote controls and kill switches, all of those were all his, and all immediately useless in the dead city. What their alien babysitter recognized as more computer, or less immediately as explosive, suddenly didn't work like the systems Tony built were sensitive to the whims of the weather. And what he needed, something that just blew up if he threw it hard enough, had to be built again, against the hope that whoever was keeping his toys away from him wouldn't notice for long enough.

The top of the greenhouse provided a clear vantage point over the gaping void that was the hole in the earth where he was supposed to die. Making a quick explosion, that was easy; Tony could assemble a grenade with his eyes completely unfocused, staring into the darkness all the while, until he had the mass drawn back by his shoulder in a slingshot to send in a perfect arc toward that emptiness. Most of them exploded before they reached the mine; some hit the wall a few feet deep, and rained fire into the depths of it, a silent lightshow at this distance. They were all as effective as Tony thought, drawing huddled groups of zombies toward the commotion, managing to lure a few of them over the edge. As a mass, though...

There had to be some way to set up a show.

c. the university
D.A.T.A.'s aperture looked dull and still. Watching over the grounds would be his job right now, if he wasn't in Tony's lap, his motherboard exposed to search fruitlessly for some loosened wire, sign of discharge, warped board, that could be fixed to bring him back to life. Instead, it was Tony that glanced up occasionally, his muttered apologies long since fallen silent, peering out into the dark through the narrow gap at the top of the window's reinforcement. The view was always the same. A dense carpet of fog, swirled by slow, jerky movements, and a brilliant ceiling of stars. The thunder continued to rumble, like it came from the fog itself, the stormclouds clinging to the earth. Tony barely heard it anymore, like the occasional pop from the candles flickering around the foyer. His busy hands slowed as he watched the stars with longing.

It was the strange light that darted between them, fizzing like lightning, that snapped his focus down to an unfamiliar movement outside by the gates. It wasn't loping or shambling, but moved with awareness. Intent. D.A.T.A. bounced as he hit the ground and Tony vaulted himself off of the ladder he was perched on to see over the barrier, then went sliding to a stop on the polished floors in front of the lever that he had to haul up and over to crank the doors open. They groaned, and thundered like the fog as they reluctantly parted, pouring light out into the night. Tony cut through it like a shadow, and could feel all of the hungry attention snap toward the signs of life. He didn't hesitate, winding back and pitching something into the sky, where it popped with a shriek and a flare of light, exposing him just long enough to wave impatiently to the figure in the dark while the zombies tracked the noise with their dead eyes.

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Tony responded with an innocently raised hand, he couldn't help it, he was multitasking, was he supposed to just leave Cal to the possibly-magic-zombies?, then was up on his feet to do what he came here for. Two sets of bolts had been torn free from the rock, and the result was the tower looking like it was being buffeted by the wind, bracing on its back foot. Tony had to stretch up to grab it by its nearest brace, then use the weight of the armor he was bearing to try to draw it back down, bending the twisted metal back into place with a chilling, whale-call groan of metal that echoed across the water.

Cal had to wince at the sound. Well, hopefully it wasn't too easy for these things to track where that had come from, otherwise it'd be getting busier over here.

He glanced back down, fingers flexing as he could barely make out the movement of bodies still attempting to climb back up. There was also something else, unseen, but familiar. He closed his eyes briefly, lips tugging in the faintest of smiles. His connection to the Force was tentative but there, and he wasn't about to waste it.

As he looked down, he held his hand out, making a grasping motion as one of the zombies below was plucked off the rocks and then tossed into the milling bodies on the ground. The movement drew others off the rocks, a false alarm but still something to keep them from converging too quickly. He flung off a few more towards the sands, already feeling it start to fade as the storm above shifted.

It felt like hours to draw the tower back down onto its full foundation, screeching its protest through the whole process. By the time Tony could draw himself up again, it was clear the sound was very easily trackable. At his vantage point, at the top of the cliff, he could see groups of poorly animated bodies crashing through the treeline and stumbling onto the beach, all of their heads turned toward the cave. There was no stopping to take stock of just how bad it was going to get; Tony had to work fast, dropping back down to his knees to start jamming the bolts back into place.

"Exit strategy!" he prompted over the cliff's edge, shouting through the clanging of metal as he hammered. "Quick, just start talking, something's going to stick!"

Maybe Cal's efforts would have been better used towards assisting with the tower, but he'd at least managed to keep things clear. For now.

"There's no way we can find a better place to climb back down, can we?" Maybe he should have spent more time exploring this area. "Don't suppose you have anything we can use to slide on..." Like a giant chirodactyl...although if they had one of those then they'd have been dealing with worse problems.

A different way down, okay, the way they came was the cave, so, "Water, maybe, I'd have to get out of the armor," Tony rationalized, "Don't think they can swim." It didn't feel like a great option, it's own dead end that required leaving a resource behind, so Tony chanced glancing up from his work finally to consider the last available direction; across the rock ridge, leading back into the woods, where a pair of zombies just came stumbling over the dry leaves. There must have been an easy way up, somewhere in the foliage. They weren't moving fast, so Tony still had a few good seconds to set his jaw and finish his hammering. "Slide...?" he grit out, shoulders pinching and reaching fruitlessly for the full inventory that Extremis would have been able to provide. He had to try to account for everything on his back by pure, brain-meat memory, and blurted, "Would a body work?" He was out of time, and had to spring up to use the hilt of his sword to slam into the nearest zombie's face, sending its jaw careening over the edge of the cliff in an arc of black blood. He had a pair of them up here, if that was an acceptable offer.

"Thought about the water- ruled it out because of the armor," Cal admitted. Also he wasn't sure that coming up on the beach waterlogged and still having to outrun zombies would be any better a situation.

"Iiii was going to suggest bodies if we are disregarding injuries to them."

The Jedi started scrambling up to where Tony was, mostly at the sound of-

He jumped to the side, clinging to a small overhang as he saw something fly past, but the brief whiff of the liquid that went with it was enough to give him a hint not to ask what it had been.

"-think they'll hold up?" he asked as he got back to a point he could upon.

Tony wasn't prepared for half of a man's face to just come off like that, and was frozen in shock as the zombie's tongue unfurled down its throat in a sluice of bile and blood. The zombie wasn't slowed by the incident at all, and had only to regain his footing to reach for Tony again, earning him a belated kick to the stomach to knock him back into the radio tower with a thump. "It's not 'disregarding'," Tony panted through his panic and roil of disgust in his stomach, "it's pragmatic." He wasn't so blinded by the ideal of saving everyone unscathed that he couldn't be realistic. The second zombie had replaced the first by then, and Tony threw up his arm to let it bite down on his bracer as he asked, "Hold up against what exactly...?"

Cal wasn't going to argue. He didn't need the Force to sense that this was an uncomfortable situation for either of them to be in and using bodies as a sled weren't really making things any better. But it was either them or the zombies, and the latter didn't look like a very productive scenario.

Perhaps it was a bit reckless to be making leaps up a cliffside but the Jedi saw better places that made footholds and in the end it helped carry him up to where Tony was much faster so that he could apply the end of his pipe towards the side of the zombie's face to knock it away.

"-forget it. These our rides?"

The man went stumbling back, slipping on the rocks and with the sound of pebbles pattering down the metal of Tony's boots, then across the ground as several of its teeth came loose from its rotting gums while it tried to chew threw the armor. The realization made Tony's nod of appreciation lag a beat before he replied, "If they're willing to cooperate." The pair weren't exactly looking road ready, but Tony's Ferrari wasn't going to be flown in any time soon. The zombies were rallying, despite their battered faces, lurching forward again like they were ready to participate in this terrible plan.

"This is going to be terrible but thinking about it even more isn't going to make things better," Cal decided. He took a quick glance over his shoulder before sidestepping as the zombie lunged forth, snagging a hold of its collar as it began to tip as though he were meaning to save it at the last minute before he let himself fall after.

Planting his feet on the zombie's back, he leaned into things as gravity did the rest of the work, letting go of the zombie's shirt in favor of managing his balance on this twisted snowboard of flesh.

Oh, that was vile. Looking out over the beach, where the echoing of the tortured metal and hammering had drawn more of the undead out onto the sand, faces turned up sightlessly toward them and hungry mouths open, the sight did nothing to temper Tony's grimace, his own teeth clenched anxiously. He still followed as the zombie next to him threw its arms out for him, grabbing a wrist to yank forward and topple him over like Cal had done, though he wasn't so confident in his surfing skills that he thought they would translate so well to a body-on-rocks situation. He dropped onto his knees on the man's back, where he could keep his face pushed down with one hand as he shifted them to the edge of the cliff. Behind Cal, there was already a red stripe to slide into.

It was not the most fantastic idea he'd ever executed. Cal was already regretting it the moment they started down, and he pointedly kept his attention on the way before them rather than the rapidly deteriorating state of his ride down.

He leapt off of it just before reaching the bottom, the body colliding with several other zombies, giving him at least some clear space to land. Skidding in the sand to a stop, he whipped out the pipe again as he moved to the side in anticipation of Tony's own arrival.

Tony's slide didn't have nearly as much control, and by the time Cal was making his elegant disembark, Tony's zombie had swung around horizontally. Tony was crouched over with his head down as they bowled broad-side through the climbing zombies, every collision threatening to tear him off of the jittering ride down, and every breath-stealing catch feeling like it might be the hook of an exposed rib finally yanking them to a stop on the cliffside.

When he did finally make it to the ground, it was with a bounce on the sand, and he had to tuck and roll away from the shredded remains of what had once been a man. He couldn't look back on it, maybe literally, the ground meat at his periphery making his stomach turn and keeping his head down reflexively even has he launched back up onto his feet, already charging forward with his sheathed sword braced in front of him to slam into any resistance. "What are you standing around for, come on!" he encouraged Cal. They were down the cliff, but now they were in the middle of the congregation.

"Was just waiting for you!" Cal quipped, bringing the pipe up with both hands to block a zombie's teeth-first lunge before kicking them back. He didn't take any further prompting as he tore after Tony. This was definitely not an area Cal intended to stick around, and he only hoped others would stay away from the beach.

Most of the zombies, the ones that had been stumbling their way down the beach or poured out of the forest, were easy enough to outrun or delay with a well placed shove, as long as they were relatively spread out. Getting to the edge of the gathering crowd would only make their escape easier. It was the undead at their backs, the ones that could run and who's teeth chattered instead of stretched hungrily, that Tony had to keep turning toward to catch with an elbow before they crashed into him. He could feel the crowd growing thicker like the hair raising on the back of his neck with every delay, and the quick zombies forming into a tighter mass, so soon it wasn't just one but several that fell upon him at once, and he had to shove back with both arms, heels slipping in the sand.

"Tony-!" Cal shouted, about the same time BD-1 squealed. The Jedi spun purely in reaction, a decaying body flying past him and the droid.

The thing shouldn't have been able to recover so quickly, landing on all fours and rounding on him again. He let himself fall back, BD-1 hopping off of him as he hit the sand, boot catching the zombie before it could truly tackle him. He flung it over so he could roll back onto his feet, reaching out instinctively the moment he felt that familiar tickle as above, the clouds broke. The zombie was grasped by an unseen hand, flung forcefully into the advancing mass. Without hesitating, Cal turned and threw his hands outwards towards Tony and his new friends, the zombies being removed forcefully, buffeted off of the man as though hit by a sudden gust of wind.

The sudden disappearance of resistance had Tony stumbling, which he followed into letting himself fall toward Cal until he could grab the kid's arm and pull. "Thanks," he breathed, barely a hiss and then he was continuing, "It's kind of like you've done this before. You're going to have to tell me how we find the guy casting the spell, it's a big city, can't expect you to be everywhere." That was all a few steps in the future, though it wasn't stopping Tony from taking the necessary steps now and weaving their way out of this mess, shoving Cal out ahead of him as the zombies started to fall in behind them again. "Trees," he said abruptly as they neared the foliage. "You still got some juice? Can you bring one down for us?" One good sweep and a tall enough tree could clear a path to pull ahead.

"Wish it were so simple!" Cal almost laughed, falling in alongside Tony as they started to run again. The one suggestion he could think of seemed equally impractical given his vague memories of what had happened in the caves the last time he'd attempted to go there. Even less so if the zombies were also getting powered up by the place, which in itself was disturbing.

He could still feel the Force without reaching too far, but he wasn't sure how rapidly that would change. "Think I can manage once we get closer," he said as he looked towards the trees ahead. Hopefully the break in the storm would remain clear for that long.

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