Night 58: Pantry 1

[doneinthree]

[from here]

Momentum carried Kirk forward even as the scene changed: snow gave way to tiled floor and the field to a row of shelves, which they all got to experience intimately as Kirk slammed into Glasses and Wichita, and the two of them slammed into an assortment of soup cans, which tumbled off the shelf and down on their heads. Being the tallest, Kirk caught the brunt of the assault, because that was really all he needed right now on top of a gunshot wound and disorientation from the sudden teleportation. "Ow, ow, ow—"

Vaguely, he was aware of how deeply unheroic this whole thing had been, just as he'd been aware of how ridiculous he probably looked to the transporter technicians after he'd gotten trounced on the drill by Romulans and nearly killed himself and Sulu after losing his 'chute. But they were alive, or so Kirk judged from the echoes of ow from beneath him, and he'd take a ridiculous rescue any day of the week over an unsuccessful one. He let the pipe drop from his fingers, where it clattered on the floor alongside the last of the rattled soup cans, and grabbed his flashlight as he stepped away from the other two. They were in some sort of pantry... he remembered storage rooms marked on the map beside the first floor kitchen. Interesting.

It appeared they were— No. Kirk turned to point his flashlight at the exit, and frowned. He thought he'd saw someone darting from the room — short, with long pale hair — but the door stood firmly closed, and he hadn't heard anyone or anything in here except Wichita and the other guy. Funny. The last time he'd been in this area, he'd been with... okay, never mind, those cans hit in the head harder than he thought. The three of them were alone. Kirk finally allowed himself to prod at his bloody arm and grimaced. The bullet had passed clean through and hadn't hit bone, but his shirt sleeve was a mess. So much for his shiny new uniform.

But as much as it hurt, he knew he'd gotten off inexplicably lucky. Wichita had probably been shot worse. Kirk clamped a hand over his wound and looked over at the other two. "Everyone in one piece?" he asked, trying for a tone of confidence.

Comments

[cons]

Tears sprung in Wichita's eyes as soon as she felt that hand on her arm; the contact seemed to trigger how absolutely screwed she felt, and when they sprang... forward? Down? She couldn't tell. She just felt momentum, and then she was getting a face-full of metal and she nearly screamed from the pain in her shoulder. Instead she pressed her mouth shut as tightly as she could, the sound grinding in her throat. There was no space in there, nowhere to move, and the anger and confusion she felt just moments before were completely washed out in favor of panic and fear and sadness.

She was going to die. This was the end. She was so sure! How else could this go? It made her want to just curl up right there and give up. What was the point?

"I can't- I can't reach where he shot me." Wichita reached back again with her hand, but the pain just made her whine quietly, and she could feel it as she moved, the way her shirt was sticking to her back and the steady pulse of blood seeping from the wound. Unreal. It all very very unreal. She scrambled to her feet, trying to put space between herself and the both of them, but it was imoossible to see and there were cans all over the floor and--

"What do I do? I don't know what to do, I don't know how to fix this. I don't wanna die." BECAUSE GETTING SHOT IN THE SHOULDER CLEARLY COULD ONLY LEAD TO CERTAIN DEATH. How sad...

[toxicspiderman]

[from here, timeskipped past]

S.T. landed in the pantry, his feet in the middle of a pile of cans and his stomach taking its damn sweet time showing up. It sloshed, when it did. Food was definitely a good idea. Something with less bulk than bran flakes or activated charcoal, but in that vein.

The smell of blood wasn't helping. He shone the flashlight around. There it was. Not much. Maybe someone had splattered an overgrown mosquito somewhere. Not even close to enough to be fatal to a human. He ignored it. He wasn't sure what someone else's blood, especially when it had started to coagulate. Instead, he scratched his hand with the prongs, and it slurped the blood up like a four-toothed gold-plated vampire.

"Here we go." He ignored the really salty stuff in favor of some cookies that were shaped like peanuts just in case the smell wasn't enough. Then he wrestled a box of single-serving yuppie waters down off the high shelf.

He knew what was in Boston tap water. Among other things, his often ill-washed self, back when they were sampling the reservoirs. People freaked out about bird shit but it was the little things that killed. Parts per billion, invisible and engaged in an ongoing cold war with fancy filter gizmos and testing kits. He drank the fucking water. Life was too short to carry a recycling bin on your back, and you couldn't give water bottles to a homeless guy as a free nickel.

"Drink some of this. You'll thank me for it tomorrow. If we can't find anything else, you can re-use the bottles."

They'd make good beer bottles, too, if you didn't care if a few exploded. Which was just as likely with the larger bottles, that didn't have screw-top lids.