damned_institute | Nightshift 42: Central Street

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Nightshift 42: Central Street

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Punching zombies was almost mechanical now, though Wally wasn't sure if that was from having hit so many or from blood loss kicking in. Maybe it was even both? He'd been punching so many, following Bats as he led the way down the street running down the centre of Doyleton, that they'd all started to blur together into a rhythm of 'punch, step, punch, run'. He was pretty sure there was starting to be less of the punching before running now that they were getting out of the main street. Less people, less zombies.

Man, he was feeling tired. He'd have given almost anything for them to get a break now, just a couple of seconds to rest. Catch his breath and stuff. But while there were less zombies now, he was bleeding enough to attract any that were close by, so unless the zombie apocalypse decided to go home early, he probably wasn't going to be getting that break any time soon.

Wally jerked back as another zombie got a little too close before he got a swing in. At this point he wasn't worried about putting them down permanently, just long enough that he could get the hell out of the area, but it was still slow going and he'd had more than the one near miss.

"Where are we going?" he yelled out to Bats, trying to locate where the dark figure had disappeared to this time. Getting lost in a horde of zombies would really bite. Literally.

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Under normal circumstances, Bruce was sure—someplace where rules of physics worked and time-space could not be bent—the Batman would either be trailing behind the Flash (and reminding himself that there was nothing inferior about being a normal human) or running beside him, shooting a glare at the man after yet another crack about dead people and wishing to himself that the years with Dick hadn't made Bruce so quick to sense when an inappropriate pun was coming.

Under normal circumstances. But real-life "zombie apocalypses" weren't normal, and neither was the steady, red stream dripping down Wally's arm and shoulder. A wound that Bruce didn't understand the reason for, a wound that shouldn't have been there because sometimes, being a normal human does make you inferior because metas alone can take advantage of their powers to dodge or fend off attacks when a normal human being would just have to deal with being—

—there was something wrong about this situation. Something deeper than what Bruce could see from the surface. He'd trusted Wally to defend himself, but the man hadn't. Not even when he could. Not even after he specifically assured Batman that he could.

Flash—you still have some of your powers, right?

My powers? Uh, yeah. Why?

Why.

The zombies were becoming useless as a distraction, enough so that Batman began to feel a certain careless lightness when he dispatched them, forgetting to be disturbed at the implications of destroying human corpses. The restraint that'd halted his blows before was gone, leaving his limbs free to break whatever he liked in his rush to get to the next destination. All his thoughts now were focused on getting the two of them to some place of relative safety—or, at least, some place that could equip them enough so that they could stay safe no matter where they went. Wally was rapidly falling behind him, so Batman checked his pace and decelerated until he was once again near the Flash, even if he was still a bit ahead of him.

"We're making a right on this street," Batman managed between another two blows.

"There's an auto repair shop that might get us some cover—can you make it?"

After his little meltdown earlier in the fast food place, Bart was feeling kind of...drained. Numb. Like nothing else could touch him. After all, getting half-convinced that everything you'd ever trusted to be real was actually part of a program written specifically to mess with your head had to be the worst of the worst, right? So...he just needed to find some way to cope with it, and maybe figure out a way to confirm whether or not it was true. He didn't really need to worry about anything else, because there was no way anything worse than what had already been done to him could happen, right?

That was when the ground started sprouting zombies.

"Oh, come on!" Bart said, slapping his own forehead. "Is this the best you can come up with now? What, is someone in Programming bored? Or did you all just run out of good ideas?"

Seriously, zombies? In a setting like this? Talk about cliche! They weren't even the scary Resident Evil kind, just your standard shambling horde. Dodging them wasn't a problem, with Bart's superspeed.

"I know you're going all out with the horror tropes, here," he said conversationally, kicking one zombie's knees out from under it when it goes a little too close, "But would it kill you to at least try for a little originality? It's bad enough that your evil mastermind sounds like he's reading from the "How to be a Supervillain" handbook, so now you've got to rip off Silent Hill too?"

Continuing to bitch at an invisible -- and possible non-existent -- programmer, Bart wasn't really paying attention to where he was going as he continued to dodge the slow, clumsy zombies and their attempts to devour his flesh -- which is probably why it came as such a shock to realize that dodging that was gradually getting more and more difficult. It felt like, for every zombie he avoided, there were three more ready to take its place. While he'd been talking, the horde had been steadily growing -- and now he was surrounded.

Okay, so maybe they were a little more of a threat than he'd expected...But that didn't mean he couldn't get out of this somehow, right?

...Why did that train of thought seem so familiar?

With a startled yelp, Bart found himself falling right into the arms of a zombie standing behind him as he tried to dodge a rotting arm that passed way too close to his face for comfort. Of course, that had nothing on the stinking growl that ruffled his hair -- until he turned at speed and punched it in the face, sending it crashing down.

"Ew..." Oh frak, he had zombie gore on his hand! And it was soaking into the bandage...there was no way that could be good for his cuts. Quickly wiping his hand off on his coat, Bart lowered his shoulder and deliberately crashed into the wave of zombies closest to the street, determinedly trying to break free of the knot. Rotting hands grabbed for his arms, coat, and hair, but he ignored them, only lashing out at the ones right in his way. He'd really underestimated these things; and if he was having problems, even with superspeed, what about all the completely normal patients elsewhere in town? He needed to find Kon and Tim, so they could come up with a plan for helping the people who'd need it!

Finally breaking free of the cluster that had surrounded him while he wasn't paying attention, Bart stood in the center of the street, still surrounded, but with at least a couple seconds breathing space. He could use that to re-orient himself; he knew he still wasn't thinking completely clearly, which was why it was so important he find Tim.

"I'll never be able to enjoy Silent Hill again," Bart said mournfully, looking around. Where would an emotionally-stunted detective/sidekick most likely be, at a time like this...?

While earlier Wally hadn't really seen the point in walking all around town just to note where everything and everyone was, right now he was suddenly glad that Bats had done that, since it meant he did have an idea of where to go to get some cover. Whereas Wally was just... tagging along, punching zombies, and trying to see if you could stop bleeding through sheer force of will.

Too bad the answer seemed to be a 'no' on that one. It would have made things a lot easier.

"I- yeah. I can make it," he answered. It might have been more convincing if he hadn't sounded so tired, but he was determined to make it true, even if he had to--

Wait. There was a flicker of movement, too fast to be human, but then Wally was all too familiar with that idea. And he knew only two other people who could move like that in a place like this. He half turned, and a glimpse of wild brown hair confirmed his fears.

It was Bart and he was surrounded by zombies. Worse, he didn't seem to be making as much of an effort to get away from them all. They were all around him and he- he was just standing there...

It had to have been whatever was done to him the night before in that tiny room on the other side of the TV screen. While they hadn't done anything to Bart's speed, whatever they had done to his mind...

A zombie blocked his view for a moment, and Wally realised he'd just been standing there again, not even doing anything when Bart needed him. His lips thinned into a tight line, and he swung hard at the thing in front of him, knocking it down and out of the way so he could slip past. He didn't care about his bleeding shoulder or if Bats had even noticed him running off in a different direction, all that mattered was getting to Bart. Before a zombie beat him to it.

Almost as if it had heard him, one of the rotting monstrosities made a lunge at the kid's back and Bart was just... Wally wasn't even sure if he'd noticed. But by then it didn't matter because even moving at a normal run, he could still plough into the thing hard enough to take them both down without it laying a finger on Bart.

"I- yeah. I can make it."

The same way you still have some of your powers? Batman thought sardonically before he could stop himself. He sent one more corpse flying with more force than strictly necessary, and the splatter from the blow drenched his upper right arm almost completely.

Whatever had made these corpses the way they were...Batman had to hope weren't spread from skin-to-skin contact. Or maybe, he didn't need hope to guess that the zombies' "illness" couldn't be spread so easily. He remembered the look on the doctor's face from last night—the clean, calculating precision that defined the lines of his silhouette and his weapons. The doctor bore the look of a man too focused to approve of indiscriminate, large-scale slaughter; the zombies were likely here not to destroy them, but test them. Either that, or weed some of them out.

Batman looked at Wally. His shoulder was still bleeding.

They passed more groups of people, and there was a certain (though minor) gratification in seeing that most were fighting back. Batman kept running, pausing when he noticed an atypically large cluster of corpses. The groups that were fighting tended to scatter the zombies as they went, so such a large group of creatures in one place could mean—

Batman's eyes widened when he finally glimpsed the figure in the center, and almost by a reflex he turned to see what could only be described as a grim, painful expression on the Flash's face before the man broke suddenly into a run—charging straight towards Bart Allen's location.

"FLASH!" A curse rang through Batman's head as he socked two corpses that tried to follow the Flash before turning his back and going after the man himself.

Bart knew he wasn't thinking clearly -- that was why it was so important he find Tim; Robin could always be counted on to think clearly -- but he'd thought he was doing okay. But...it looked like 'okay' wasn't going to be good enough, because he didn't even notice the zombie shambling up behind him until the Flash, practically moving in slow motion to Bart's subjective eyes, suddenly ran past him and tackled it.

Somebody shouted something, but Bart wasn't listening, already turning to keep track of Wally. At first, he couldn't even register what he was seeing; the Flash, grappling -- grappling! When he should have been using the same hit and run tactics Bart was using, that he'd first learned from Wally! -- with the zombie, blood pouring from his shoulder. That. That was just so wrong! The Flash wasn't supposed to get hurt, not like that! He was way too fast!

Forgetting about the other zombies already closing in, Bart joined the melee, trying to to bodily drag the zombie off his cousin and punching it in the head at speed when that didn't work. Was there any way this situation could get more screwed up?

Well plan 'get the zombie away from Bart' had worked, but the downside was that Wally hadn't really planned anything beyond that, and now he was sort of on top of an irate zombie - did zombies even get anything but hungry? - and trying desperately to remember how you actually fought someone when you couldn't just dart away when you needed to.

Blood and rot made it difficult for him to get a good grip on it, but he managed, at least enough to keep it from biting him like the other one had and things looked like they might be working out okay in a hopefully-not-getting-chewed-on way--

At least until Bart, instead of getting some distance like Wally had hoped, jumped straight in, first trying to drag the zombie away from him and then punching it when that didn't work. The blow only stunned it for a moment, then the creature lunged at Bart, mouth wide and lined with rotted teeth.

"No!" Wally yelled. There was no way, under any circumstances, he was going to let Bart get hurt while he was around. Not after last night. And he'd been injured once already, so another bite really wasn't going to change anything as far as he was concerned...

So as the zombie struck at Bart, Wally shoved his forearm, slick with blood running down from his shoulder, into its mouth. It bit down and he clenched his jaw against the pain, directing a intense look at Bart.

"Get some distance," he managed. "There's too many for you to handle."

"Says the man who's gotten himself bitten twice this evening."

The utter coldness of the voice that'd spoken was matched only the brutality of the actions that followed next. There was no more warning than the sound of corpses being shoved aside and broken through before a pair of hands came into view from behind the corpse biting Wally. A pair of hands that proceeded to rip the corpse's spinal cord from its neck, and from the opening that the bone left, reached inside and took hold of the zombie's central nervous system in the most direct way possible.

The Batman said nothing more as he proceeded to tear the creature's brain out. Movements revealing nothing more than detached, absolute efficiency, he said nothing as the back of the zombie's skull shattered and cut into his forearms as he yanked out the greyish matter, exterminating the corpse in the one way that would not cause the teeth in Wally West's arms to sink in deeper-- by moving the corpse less.

But that terrible look in his eyes.

"I'm not going to leave you behind!" was what Bart wanted to say, but Wally's blood was getting everywhere, dripping onto the ground, and he'd just let himself get bit, he'd taken a bite from a zombie for Bart, but why? Not 'why was he trying to protect Bart,' but 'why was he letting himself get hurt doing it?' Something was really, terribly wrong, and the thought of what, and the sight of all that blood coming from his cousin, was enough to set the blood draining from Bart's face, and he could feel the shakes starting to come back, and this was so not the time, but he. He couldn't help it...So he really had no idea if he'd even actually said anything, let alone if the message had gotten through at all.

And then Batman came out of nowhere and ripped the zombie's brain out.

Oddly enough, that helped calm Bart down and bring him back to himself. Everyone knew Batman was brutal and freakish; maybe not usually 'rip the bad guy's spine out' brutal, but these weren't real people they were dealing with after all, they were zombies. It made perfect sense for Batman to take them down as quickly as possible, as efficiently as possible.

And Bart had to admit, ripping a zombie's brain out was pretty efficient.

"How do we make it let go of him?" Bart asked, (mostly) fearlessly -- and then remembered that, oh yeah, they were surrounded by zombies, and was on his feet and stunning a zombie coming up behind Batman probably before the utterly badass, but still completely normal hero had time to even notice it coming.

Wally flinched as Batman spoke, his voice horribly flat and cold as he fought his way to them and then--

--ripped the zombie's body apart.

With his bare hands.

If that hadn't been enough to send an icy knife of fear into his gut, the other man's face would have done the trick. He'd seen that expression before, last night on the TV screen. And he remembered all too well what had happened then and how Bruce had been after. Again he had to wonder why the zombie attacks had to happen tonight, of all nights. But he had a feeling he already knew the answer to that. Somewhere the Head Doctor was laughing, he just knew it-

A zombie moved up behind Batman and Wally tensed up, knowing that it was impossible for him to do something with how things were now, but trying to think of a way around it anyway.

"Look out!" He didn't even manage to finish the warning before Bart was there, hitting the thing hard enough to stun it. Wally sagged in relief, but it wasn't over yet. He was beginning to wonder if it ever would be.

The focus in Batman's (set of jaw, line of eyes—) face was momentarily compelled elsewhere as a sudden whoosh of displaced air blurred past him and ended with the sound of a blow. Batman turned around a second too late, an eternity too late for the speedster that'd effortlessly stopped the zombie behind him. His eyes narrowed, remembering what it was like to have facts of another's superiority shoved in his face—the sheer power of a speed he would never obtain. Power.

Just the way it should be.

Time had stopped, but when it began moving again Batman removed the stony, evaluating look from Bart Allen's person and redirected it where it was needed most.

He said nothing this time as he went to work. Nothing so much as a hold still or stop talking for warning before the Batman took hold of the zombie's skull firmly in hand—one on the bottom jaw, another on the top—and began the grim work of prying the destroyed creature's maw off.

Looking back over his shoulder, Bart saw Batman begin to work on the skull, leaving Bart to watch his and Wally's backs. Which was how it should have been; Bart had the superspeed here, and even if he was messed up in the head right now, he was still totally capable of something simple like making sure the zombies didn't come any closer.

And besides, punching zombies helped him avoid thinking about what just might be wrong with Wally...

His bandages hands were coated in gore at this point, but Bart tried to ignore it. Wally needed him, and as completely screwed up as that entire concept was, Bart wouldn't, couldn't let him down. The zombies could try to close in all they wanted, attracted by the smell of blood, but Bart was holding them back. For now.

"This is really, really gross," Wally complained, but there was an edge of tension to it. Bats was quiet, but it was the kind of silence before something happened. Something like a major explosion that levelled a bunch of city blocks. It probably wasn't going to happen right now, but later... Things were going to get awkward. Really awkward.

Maybe if he was lucky, he'd be unconscious from blood loss by then.

Lame comments aside, watching Bats pry apart the rotting jaw of some dead guy was just freaky, so Wally instead focussed on Bart. His perceptions were always faster than normal - even during the day when he couldn't use his speed, which was just weird - so keeping an eye on the kid wasn't that hard. And while he knew that Bart didn't really need someone to watch over him right now, he felt better just keeping a watch out. Just in case.

There was a crack and the pressure on his arm eased. Wally turned back to what Bats was doing and made a face as the remains of the zombie was pulled away.

"That is just disgusting," he said, struggling to his feet. His head spun a little, but there were still zombies everywhere, even if Bart was keeping them back so far. Passing out had to come later, if he had any say in the matter. "Which way now?"

Without a consciousness to compel it (however shabby the corpse's consciousness was), the skull was fairly uncomplicated to remove. Batman didn't seem to spare a glance for the dripping, deceased mess mixed into the Flash's living but similarly dripping blood and turned to Bart Allen.

"Ahead. We're making a right on Wicker Street and heading for the repair shop."

He didn't look at the Flash again when he began to run—even the brief pause before his movement was spent leveling a cross between a wary and expectant look at Impulse, anticipating the boy's superspeed run ahead of them.

"Okay." Bart nodded -- but against all expectations, he didn't immediately run off, leaving the two older heroes behind. That would have been counter-productive; as long as there was something wrong with Wally that kept him from protecting himself, Bart needed to stick close.

He could even think about it without freaking out too badly, if he thought of it as escort mission. And ignored the fact that he really sucked at those.

"What happened to you?" he hissed at Wally, falling back to guard the Flash's injured side as all three began to run. He carefully didn't look at his shoulder; he wasn't sure he could look at all that blood for too long without freaking out again.

What happened to him? "I, uh." Got experimented on and haven't told anyone yet, by the way, I think my speed's on the fritz. "I made a stupid mistake." Yeah, that pretty much summed it up nicely.

Noticing Bart's worried look, Wally flashed a quick smile down at the kid, doing his best to look not 'I think I'm on the verge of passing out'.

"Don't worry about me," he said. "With you and Bats here, I'll be fine." It was hopefully true; they were definitely making better headway against the zombies anyway. But still, even as they rounded the corner into the street Bats had indicated, Wally couldn't help but try and keep an eye on both of them, just in case. Bats might be pissed at him for getting bitten twice, but the fact of the matter was that if it was that or one of the others getting hurt, Wally would cheerfully do it again.

[to here (http://community.livejournal.com/damned/674856.html?thread=56090152#t56090152)]

[from here (http://community.livejournal.com/damned/673721.html?view=56204473#t56204473).]

Endrance looked around the side street. His prediction had been right so far - less people meant less things to fight. That was a relief in and of itself. "We shouldn't stay here too long...but we can at least take a moment to breathe." And check everyone's status, and change positions around if need be, though he didn't say that last part.

It was useless to ask how everyone was, anyway. They were all the same way: drained physically and emotionally and afraid of what would happen before morning came.

Edited 2009-08-07 16:48 (UTC)

Tsukasa clenched his jaw and forced himself to shut up and stop babbling when Haseo ordered it. He felt like a fool, a true idiot, for messing up the spell, not considering the consequences, and for nearly losing it. He was supposed to be smarter than that, but at the moment he was just terrified.

He had absolutely no problem with running though and he followed after Endrance, glancing back every couple of moments to make sure that the others were following. The zombies were getting further away at least, although he didn't know how long that would last.

He doubled over, hands on his knees and breathing heavily when Endrance called a halt. At least a t-shirt and jeans were much easier to run in than Wavemaster robes and he wasn't about to trip over a staff. "Is Leon okay?" he asked when he'd caught his breath, turning to look at the younger boy.

Kibitoshin skidded to a halt next to the other two, just about stopping himself from toppling over in his haste. It wasn't just for lack of breath that he didn't speak; frankly, he knew that nothing he could say would be worth the oxygen. It was a crushing thought and one that he couldn't help but dwell on, even just for a moment. Why could he never do anything? On Kaioshinkai he'd been rescued not once but twice, and at the expense of others too, and now...

The pain in his arm had deadened to a dizzy, pulsing haze. Was that really his pulse, though? It sounded so near, as though his heart were in his head rather than his chest. So long as Leon could still talk, though, it was okay. "What about everyone else?" He looked around at the others, brow furrowed. "Are you all okay?"

Hmm. Somehow, referring to them as 'you all' didn't sound right. He tried his best to smile, even if it came out a little more hollow than usual. "By the way, I'm Kibitoshin." Out of habit he held out a hand, only to notice that the knuckles were coated with a thick black substance. He snatched it back, substituting a nod instead. " Thank you so much for this- that makes twice in as many nights you've helped me in some way."

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Nightshift 42: Central Street

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