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Quarantine, Day Eighteen - Entry Five


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#1 Guest_AlphaMonkey_*

Posted 11 April 2006 - 08:05 PM

Notebrains:

1. Some fallout between Jeff and Coll... ok, a lot... and it's a bit sad, too.

2. More both of them kinda acting like jerks to each other, (Though, admittedly, more Jeff being a jerk than Colleen) but also some niceness near the end. ;)

3. Lonely Colleen is ;) Poor Colleen. Poor lonely, emo Colleen. ;)

4. Who knew Colleen had such famous friends? :roll:

-----

Jerk.

Stupid. Jerk.

I tell him, ‘I don’t want to talk about it,’ and what does he do? Tries to make me talk about it. I mean, c’mon, Jeff! Are you dense? Are you retarded or something? Gimme a friggin’ break, here!

Sigh.


After the argument, I ended up wandering for a while… could have been a half hour, could have been half the day, for all I knew. I didn’t really have any destination in mind, I just wanted to walk around for a bit and clear my head. In less zombie-infested times, I would have gone for a run in the park… or maybe just headed out onto the street in front of my apartment building, picked a direction, and kept going until I got tired and decided to turn around. Couldn’t do that, anymore… for obvious reasons, so I had to make do with what I had. And what I had was a pretty big mall that was a whole lot emptier than it otherwise would have been. It wasn’t the jogger’s trail at Cornwall, but I was learning pretty quick to settle for “good enough.”

Anyway, all the lights in the mall were off, of course, and it was starting to get dark. I had Old Man Winter to thank for that. As the days went on, they got shorter and shorter – not to mention colder. I figured there wasn’t much point to my little walkabout if I couldn’t even see two feet in front of my face without the help of a flashlight… and I didn’t want to waste the batteries.

So I just picked a spot, somewhere on the second floor – someplace that felt at least a tiny bit homey. It was a feeling I hadn’t had in weeks, and I missed it. I missed my apartment. It wasn’t the hugest place, or the nicest… not by a long shot, but it was mine, and I wanted it back.

I didn’t know if I’d ever see the place again, the way things were going, and thinking about it too much would just make me melancholy. Instead, I pulled up a section of bench, sat down, and took a look around. There was a small fountain right behind me… the kind people threw pennies into, hoping for good luck. Most of the coins were gone, actually, leaving behind some nasty, stagnant water. A few large potted plants stood nearby – sickly-looking things. It was obvious they hadn’t been watered in a while, and they clearly weren’t getting enough light, either. But while the décor was lousy, my little nook had the benefit of being very out of the way, and very quiet – the perfect spot for someone searching for a little bit of solitude.

I leaned back, sinking into the bench as much as I could, clasping my hands together behind my head, and just trying to tune out everything that had happened over the past few days. The corpses, the shooting. The fires, the rubble in the streets. The whole ugly mess. I wanted it gone.

Now, true, it hadn’t been all bad. Along the way, I’d met a handful of people I wouldn’t have minded getting to know better. But, sad to say, the bad outweighed the good by quite a bit, and I was willing to throw out the whole pile of memories just to get rid of the bad ones.

Unfortunately, the brain doesn’t operate that way. Or, at least, mine doesn’t. Funny how that works. You can never seem to remember what you want to remember… like all those formulas for that physics test you’d crammed for the night previous… or exactly what adenine, guanine, cytosine and thymine actually were… or, maybe most important of all, the phone number of that really hot blonde girl you’d run into at that bar on Hudson Street – the one with the hotpants?

And all the stuff you wanted to forget… well… that stayed with you. I always knew the universe enjoyed its sick jokes, but I guess I never really realized just how much.

-----

The sun had been down for a few hours already, and while somewhere, in the back of my head, I knew I’d just wasted pretty much the entire day, (and was pissed at myself because of it,) I still didn’t feel like doing much of anything. I was in a lousy mood – had been for a while – and even though nursing it was the worst move to make at a time like this, that’s exactly what I ended up doing.

You know how it is, sometimes. You’re in a rut… a funk… a… whatever-you-want-to-call-it… and you know you should just suck it up and deal… just say to yourself, “Nope, I don’t have time for this garbage, I have more important things to do,” and just get over it, already. But for whatever reason, you just don’t want to.

This time out, I was feeling… well… pretty lonely. I mean, don’t get me wrong, I like my solitude, same as everyone else. I need my privacy, same as everyone else. But… well… I come from a very tight-knit family. My parents, my brother, my sister… we’re really close. Mine’s the kind of family that insists on getting everyone (and I mean everyone) togther for Thanskgiving, Christmas, New Year’s… when I was growing up, company was never very hard to find.

And even though I was a total nerd in high school, (I mean, we’re talking the works, here. Short, skinny, red hair, freckles, the fugly braces, all of it.) I still had friends. If I was ever alone, it was something I did by choice… not something that happened by chance.

But this time was different. Woodroffe Mall had people in it. Not a huge crowd, but no small number, either… and yet… I was still finding it a really desolate place to be.

My stomach was rumbling. I hadn’t eaten in a while. Worse, in all the fuss and bother over the past few days, I hadn’t managed to do much better than scrounge a couple of MREs from somewhere and stuff them into my pack. I pulled one out and cut the packaging open. Normally, I would have done what everyone else does at this point in the narrative: complain about the food. But honestly, at the time, I was beyond caring. I was just going through the motions. Tearing open wrappers, cutting through plastic bags, setting up one of those little chemical heaters that Kari apparently still didn’t know how to operate. Hard work, since I wasn’t using my flashlight and there wasn’t a whole lot of moonlight coming in through the windows. But I managed. Barely.

Sigh.

I hated eating alone. Meals had always been a social thing for me… an excuse to sit down with someone and… as lame as it sounds… share something other than the food. Dinner with the family, lunch with the gang. Breakfast… in bed… with the girlfriend…

And now… where was I? Yeah. Alone. Mom and Dad were safe and sound, halfway across the country. Liam and my sister-in-law Susan had recently moved “upstate...” to Long Island.

Heh.

New Yorker joke. Kinda.

And Clara was somewhere just outside the Quarantine zone… also safe… relatively speaking, of course. My family wasn’t stuck in this mess like I was… and part of me – most of me, actually, was extremely grateful. But there was no denying that another, smaller, part of me kinda wished they were here. I missed them.

As for friends, well, I hadn’t seen any of the guys or girls from my precinct since Day One. Not since that convoy escort mission had gone south, and fast. We’d all gotten split up after that, dispersed all over town. More than a few of the people I had worked with were probably dead… or worse, undead.

Most of my other friends lived out of town, and out of those that did reside in Malton, well… I hadn’t seen Clark, or Wally. Hadn’t heard from Cara or Diana. And I didn’t have a clue where Vic, Gar, or Rachel were. Mia was AWOL… so was Roy…

Sigh.

No family, no friends… well… no friends, except one, and he and I weren’t on speaking terms at the moment.

Damn it.

I was still mad at him; I believed I had good reason. He was prying into something he had no business prying into, especially not when I’d explicitly told him to cease and desist. It was him stomping all over my privacy, and I didn’t appreciate it. I told him that, I meant it, and I was sticking to my guns. But that didn’t mean that I wasn’t starting to regret having been so short with him… because I was. And, more telling, I guess, I was starting to miss the company.

Maybe part of the blame for that fight lay on my shoulders… maybe even a lot of it. I could accept that. But some of it rested on his, too. We’d both had good reasons to be pissed off, and we’d both had good reasons to go our separate ways. From a rational standpoint, it all made a lot of sense. His actions, my reactions… they all fit. But that didn’t stop me from feeling like total crap about it.

Friends bicker. Even good friends. It’s a fact of life, and it’s not something I harbor any delusions about. People are different; that’s just how things are, and those differences are bound to cause conflict. It doesn’t stop people from becoming friends, it doesn’t stop them from forming bonds. But what it does do is make the hurt all the worse when you find yourself arguing with someone you genuinely care about. And all the obnoxious, getting-on-each-other’s-nerves, aside, that boy was my friend.

And I guess I was his.

“Here.”

The sound of something heavy hitting the floor in front of me startled me a little. I’d been so lost in my thoughts that I hadn’t even noticed him walking up. I was lucky he wasn’t a zombie trying to eat my brain, because if he had been, he might have gotten in a couple of solid bites before I even figured out what was going on. “How did you find me?”

“I looked.”

I nodded in response, not saying anything. I wasn’t sure what I could really contribute to this already-stilted conversation, so instead I started staring at the ceiling. I shuffled my feet, and one of them bumped up against something; I glanced down to see what it was. There was a small knapsack, smaller than the one I was currently carting around; it was full – bulging, really. I tucked a finger under the closure flap and peered inside, mildly surprised at what I saw. “What’s all this?”

“Well, gee, I don’t know. If I had to take a wild guess, I’d say it looks like ammo.”

Actually, it was a little more than just ammo. There was plenty of that, of course – about ten pistol magazines, and a few 12-gauge shells stuffed with buckshot, (which wouldn’t do me any good until I could find a shotgun to use them with,) but he’d managed to scrape together some other supplies, too. I could see a snub-nosed flare gun in there, as well as a handful of compact first aid kits. There were a few more MREs tucked away down at the bottom, and a small field compass, probably scavenged from one of the sporting goods stores somewhere in the mall. He’d tied a small penlight to one of the zipper-pulls on the outside of the bag, and crammed a handful of batteries of various sizes into the side compartments. He'd even folded up a blanket and tucked it into the bottom of the pack.

Damn it, Jeff. It’s things like this that make it very hard to stay angry with you.

My gaze shifted from the pack and up to his face. For a brief, and rather stupid, moment, I felt a slight urge to sass him back for his patronizing commentary. That compulsion passed quickly; I was too glum to really make a fight of it, anyway, so, instead, I just asked him the question as straight as I could. “Why are you giving it to me?”

He glared back at me. “Because, Abby,” he said, using the shortened form of my middle name. It was something he did whenever he got seriously annoyed with me – which, I’m ashamed to say happens fairly regularly. “…even though I’d like nothing more than to just drop kick your head right now, you’re still my friend, and I won’t have you running around out there without supplies. So just take the damn pack, all right?”

There didn’t seem to be much I could say to that, but I felt I had to say something… anything. Instead, all I managed were a couple of eye blinks and a few seconds of silent staring.

The staring didn’t go unnoticed. “What?”

I opened my mouth, closed it, opened it again. “Nothing. Thanks.”

He shrugged. “Yeah. Whatever. Look, it’s late. I’m going to head back to the Food Court and try and get some sleep.”

“Wait.” I stretched a hand out towards him, but stopped just short of catching hold of his sleeve.

“What, Colleen?” I knew I was trying his patience as it was, but I had to ask, anyway.

“Don’t go.”

“Why not?”

“I just… I don’t want to be around a bunch of people, but… but I don’t want to be sitting here all by myself, either.”

He didn’t say anything for a few seconds – just stood there, staring at me. I guess he was trying to figure out how honest I was being with him at that point… and whether honesty even mattered to him given what had gone down between us several hours ago. Eventually, he broke into a sigh. “Fine.”

I saw him push the straps of his backpack off his shoulders and set it down next to a bench over on the opposite side of the fountain. It wasn’t lost on me that his chosen camping spot meant he could keep his back turned towards me.

“Listen, I-“

I didn’t get out any more than than that before he stopped me. “No.”

“What?”

“I’ll stick around and keep you company, but before, when I asked you if you wanted to talk, you turned me down. So the offer’s off the table. I really don’t want to speak to you right now, so if you’re seriously that lonely, I’ll sit with you, but that’s it. Ok?”

“Ok,” I said, my voice getting just a touch hoarse. His response wasn’t… exactly what I’d hoped for, but it was more than I expected… and probably a lot more than I actually deserved after having treated him so poorly.

My increasingly-guilty-feeling conscience wanted me to apologize to him at that point, to say I was sorry for pushing him away like I had… to try and explain why I’d done it in the first place… to try and patch things up, even though deep down I knew I should never have let the situation get that bad in the first place… but I figured he wasn’t in the mood to hear any of that… at least not yet.

I hoped he would forgive me at some point… and he probably would, even if it took him some time.

But the waiting would hurt.

A lot.

#2 Guest_Theodur_*

Posted 13 April 2006 - 05:29 PM

2. More both of them kinda acting like jerks to each other, (Though, admittedly, more Jeff being a jerk than Colleen)


Well, doesn’t surprise me. ;)

3. Lonely Colleen is :roll: Poor Colleen. Poor lonely, emo Colleen. :P


Who would have known that this girl could do angst, too!

And all the stuff you wanted to forget… well… that stayed with you. I always knew the universe enjoyed its sick jokes, but I guess I never really realized just how much.


Nice internal musings. Pretty deep. For Coll, anyways. Isn’t the truth what they say that dying provides you with an entirely different perspective for looking on things?

This time out, I was feeling… well… pretty lonely. I mean, don’t get me wrong, I like my solitude, same as everyone else. I need my privacy, same as everyone else. But… well… I come from a very tight-knit family. My parents, my brother, my sister… we’re really close. Mine’s the kind of family that insists on getting everyone (and I mean everyone) togther for Thanskgiving, Christmas, New Year’s… when I was growing up, company was never very hard to find.


Couple of probably unintended typos here. ;)

I hated eating alone. Meals had always been a social thing for me… an excuse to sit down with someone and… as lame as it sounds… share something other than the food. Dinner with the family, lunch with the gang. Breakfast… in bed… with the girlfriend…


It’s the TV for me, all the way. And when someone tries to talk to me, I just turn the TV volume up until the intrusive voices from the outside world fade away. ;)

And Clara was somewhere just outside the Quarantine zone… also safe… relatively speaking, of course. My family wasn’t stuck in this mess like I was… and part of me – most of me, actually, was extremely grateful. But there was no denying that another, smaller, part of me kinda wished they were here. I missed them.


Why doesn’t she try to get out of the town? It doesn’t seem like a difficult task at all, at least in daytime, after all she should be able to outrun any zombo out there. It doesn’t really seem like ‘making a stand’ in defending the city is very much on her thoughts.

I was still mad at him; I believed I had good reason. He was prying into something he had no business prying into, especially not when I’d explicitly told him to cease and desist. It was him stomping all over my privacy, and I didn’t appreciate it. I told him that, I meant it, and I was sticking to my guns. But that didn’t mean that I wasn’t starting to regret having been so short with him… because I was. And, more telling, I guess, I was starting to miss the company.


She sounds pretty desperate, alright.

The sound of something heavy hitting the floor in front of me startled me a little. I’d been so lost in my thoughts that I hadn’t even noticed him walking up. I was lucky he wasn’t a zombie trying to eat my brain, because if he had been, he might have gotten in a couple of solid bites before I even figured out what was going on. “How did you find me?”


“I looked.”


I guess that means that he felt a little bit responsible, too.

He glared back at me. “Because, Abby,” he said, using the shortened form of my middle name. It was something he did whenever he got seriously annoyed with me – which, I’m ashamed to say happens fairly regularly. “…even though I’d like nothing more than to just drop kick your head right now, you’re still my friend, and I won’t have you running around out there without supplies. So just take the damn pack, all right?”


Wow. But he still has to act as if he has been mortally insulted, eh? :)

“I’ll stick around and keep you company, but before, when I asked you if you wanted to talk, you turned me down. So the offer’s off the table. I really don’t want to speak to you right now, so if you’re seriously that lonely, I’ll sit with you, but that’s it. Ok?”


I really don’t think she was even trying to talk to you about ‘that’… you jerk! :?

“Ok,” I said, my voice getting just a touch hoarse. His response wasn’t… exactly what I’d hoped for, but it was more than I expected… and probably a lot more than I actually deserved after having treated him so poorly.


Pardon me, but I really can’t agree with that. I don’t at all understand why Coll has to be made the guilty one for the whole incident… :D

I hoped he would forgive me at some point… and he probably would, even if it took him some time.


But the waiting would hurt.


A lot.


Wow. And here I thought he was really concerned about Coll. But then he piles even more misery on her by making quite sure how much his feelings were hurt. An understandable reaction, for sure, but I just hoped he would be above that kind of thing and hopefully endear himself a little more to this particular reader… :P

#3 Guest_Wyvern_*

Posted 14 April 2006 - 03:44 AM

So I just picked a spot, somewhere on the second floor – someplace that felt at least a tiny bit homey. It was a feeling I hadn’t had in weeks, and I missed it. I missed my apartment. It wasn’t the hugest place, or the nicest… not by a long shot, but it was mine, and I wanted it back.

Somewhere homey, and right outside the lingerie display :shock: No point being completely depressed.

As for friends, well, I hadn’t seen any of the guys or girls from my precinct since Day One. Not since that convoy escort mission had gone south, and fast. We’d all gotten split up after that, dispersed all over town. More than a few of the people I had worked with were probably dead… or worse, undead.

That's got to be annoying. No matter how bad things get, you'll still be around-can't even take a cyanide pill to escape.

Damn it, Jeff. It’s things like this that make it very hard to stay angry with you.

Yep, while you've been moping, he's been scrounging his ass off all day.

“Ok,” I said, my voice getting just a touch hoarse. His response wasn’t… exactly what I’d hoped for, but it was more than I expected… and probably a lot more than I actually deserved after having treated him so poorly.

He wasn't all that innocent.

But the waiting would hurt.

A lot.

What those two need is a horde of zombies to attack. Bet that'll get them talking again.

#4 Guest_VigaHrolf_*

Posted 14 April 2006 - 02:46 PM

2. More both of them kinda acting like jerks to each other, (Though, admittedly, more Jeff being a jerk than Colleen) but also some niceness near the end. :)


Acting like jerks... one thing bound to happen between friends every now and then, especially under high pressure situations.

4. Who knew Colleen had such famous friends? :shock:


*snigger*

I tell him, ‘I don’t want to talk about it,’ and what does he do? Tries to make me talk about it. I mean, c’mon, Jeff! Are you dense? Are you retarded or something? Gimme a friggin’ break, here!


ID: "Colleen, you're not the Goddamn Batman. For many reasons. Such as distinct lack of stubble."

GT: "Have you checked her legs? Betcha they're stubbly."

ID: "Were you like this before the head trauma?"

GT: "Yup." :)

After the argument, I ended up wandering for a while… could have been a half hour, could have been half the day, for all I knew. I didn’t really have any destination in mind, I just wanted to walk around for a bit and clear my head. In less zombie-infested times, I would have gone for a run in the park… or maybe just headed out onto the street in front of my apartment building, picked a direction, and kept going until I got tired and decided to turn around. Couldn’t do that, anymore… for obvious reasons, so I had to make do with what I had. And what I had was a pretty big mall that was a whole lot emptier than it otherwise would have been. It wasn’t the jogger’s trail at Cornwall, but I was learning pretty quick to settle for “good enough.”


ID: "Considering the fact that a jogger in Malton today would be seen as a mobile buffet, this is a wise decision."

So I just picked a spot, somewhere on the second floor – someplace that felt at least a tiny bit homey. It was a feeling I hadn’t had in weeks, and I missed it. I missed my apartment. It wasn’t the hugest place, or the nicest… not by a long shot, but it was mine, and I wanted it back.


ID: *nods*

TK: *nods*

I leaned back, sinking into the bench as much as I could, clasping my hands together behind my head, and just trying to tune out everything that had happened over the past few days. The corpses, the shooting. The fires, the rubble in the streets. The whole ugly mess. I wanted it gone.


ID: "Definitely. If there was a way to turn this one back..."

TK: "There just has been too much. Too much of everything."

Unfortunately, the brain doesn’t operate that way. Or, at least, mine doesn’t. Funny how that works. You can never seem to remember what you want to remember… like all those formulas for that physics test you’d crammed for the night previous… or exactly what adenine, guanine, cytosine and thymine actually were… or, maybe most important of all, the phone number of that really hot blonde girl you’d run into at that bar on Hudson Street – the one with the hotpants?

And all the stuff you wanted to forget… well… that stayed with you. I always knew the universe enjoyed its sick jokes, but I guess I never really realized just how much.


ID: "Shakespeare was right when he said the good men do is oft intered with their bones but the evil lives forever. I mean, we remember the slights, the pain, the death, the agony, but what aobut the good things. Why do they seem so damn far away?"

The sun had been down for a few hours already, and while somewhere, in the back of my head, I knew I’d just wasted pretty much the entire day, (and was pissed at myself because of it,) I still didn’t feel like doing much of anything. I was in a lousy mood – had been for a while – and even though nursing it was the worst move to make at a time like this, that’s exactly what I ended up doing.


Stewing over that kind of thing doesn't ever do any good.

You know how it is, sometimes. You’re in a rut… a funk… a… whatever-you-want-to-call-it… and you know you should just suck it up and deal… just say to yourself, “Nope, I don’t have time for this garbage, I have more important things to do,” and just get over it, already. But for whatever reason, you just don’t want to.


Bran: "It's why people fall to revenge and obsession. They can't let things go. And the worse the sin, the harder it is to let it go. And trust me, I know all about that."

This time out, I was feeling… well… pretty lonely. I mean, don’t get me wrong, I like my solitude, same as everyone else. I need my privacy, same as everyone else. But… well… I come from a very tight-knit family. My parents, my brother, my sister… we’re really close. Mine’s the kind of family that insists on getting everyone (and I mean everyone) togther for Thanskgiving, Christmas, New Year’s… when I was growing up, company was never very hard to find.


Its funny - even the people who really do like solitary living will find it burdensome when it is actually enforced. You can go a month without talking to anyone (Not Recommended) because you don't feel like it, but as soon as you can't talk to anyone for some outside reason, it drives you nuts.

And even though I was a total nerd in high school, (I mean, we’re talking the works, here. Short, skinny, red hair, freckles, the fugly braces, all of it.) I still had friends. If I was ever alone, it was something I did by choice… not something that happened by chance.


ID: "This one isn't chance Colleen. It's apocalypse. And you running your mouth. Not the greatest collection of circumstances."

But this time was different. Woodroffe Mall had people in it. Not a huge crowd, but no small number, either… and yet… I was still finding it a really desolate place to be.


TK: "It could be the lack of power, the shattered shops, the hordes of zombies outside? Or just the desert of the mind?"

My stomach was rumbling. I hadn’t eaten in a while. Worse, in all the fuss and bother over the past few days, I hadn’t managed to do much better than scrounge a couple of MREs from somewhere and stuff them into my pack. I pulled one out and cut the packaging open. Normally, I would have done what everyone else does at this point in the narrative: complain about the food. But honestly, at the time, I was beyond caring. I was just going through the motions. Tearing open wrappers, cutting through plastic bags, setting up one of those little chemical heaters that Kari apparently still didn’t know how to operate. Hard work, since I wasn’t using my flashlight and there wasn’t a whole lot of moonlight coming in through the windows. But I managed. Barely.


TK: "I don't mind the MREs. They're not great, but they're edible."

GT: "I like em."

I hated eating alone. Meals had always been a social thing for me… an excuse to sit down with someone and… as lame as it sounds… share something other than the food. Dinner with the family, lunch with the gang. Breakfast… in bed… with the girlfriend…


Breakfast in bed can get messy. Especially depending on the eating method. :lol:

And now… where was I? Yeah. Alone. Mom and Dad were safe and sound, halfway across the country. Liam and my sister-in-law Susan had recently moved “upstate...” to Long Island.


New Yawkahs. :)

New Yorker joke. Kinda.


New York - where Westchester is upstate. ;)

And Clara was somewhere just outside the Quarantine zone… also safe… relatively speaking, of course. My family wasn’t stuck in this mess like I was… and part of me – most of me, actually, was extremely grateful. But there was no denying that another, smaller, part of me kinda wished they were here. I missed them.


ID: "Wouldn't it be better to be there with them, as opposed to having them stuck in this with you? Just saying."

As for friends, well, I hadn’t seen any of the guys or girls from my precinct since Day One. Not since that convoy escort mission had gone south, and fast. We’d all gotten split up after that, dispersed all over town. More than a few of the people I had worked with were probably dead… or worse, undead.


TK: "My entire ladder crew is gone. Who knows about the rest of the station."

ID: "And I got to watch most of my team get butchered. And before most of the radio net went down, I got to hear the other teams getting torn to shreds. Bastard zombies. At least I got a few out."

Most of my other friends lived out of town, and out of those that did reside in Malton, well… I hadn’t seen Clark, or Wally. Hadn’t heard from Cara or Diana. And I didn’t have a clue where Vic, Gar, or Rachel were. Mia was AWOL… so was Roy…


ID: "At least Bruce is okay." ;)

No family, no friends… well… no friends, except one, and he and I weren’t on speaking terms at the moment.

Damn it.

I was still mad at him; I believed I had good reason. He was prying into something he had no business prying into, especially not when I’d explicitly told him to cease and desist. It was him stomping all over my privacy, and I didn’t appreciate it. I told him that, I meant it, and I was sticking to my guns. But that didn’t mean that I wasn’t starting to regret having been so short with him… because I was. And, more telling, I guess, I was starting to miss the company.


There's enough blame for both of them. And enough pride for the two of them not to back down easily. It's going to be a long wait...

Maybe part of the blame for that fight lay on my shoulders… maybe even a lot of it. I could accept that. But some of it rested on his, too. We’d both had good reasons to be pissed off, and we’d both had good reasons to go our separate ways. From a rational standpoint, it all made a lot of sense. His actions, my reactions… they all fit. But that didn’t stop me from feeling like total crap about it.


ID: "Even best friends fight under good conditions. These aren't good conditions."

“Here.”


And Jeff returns.

The sound of something heavy hitting the floor in front of me startled me a little. I’d been so lost in my thoughts that I hadn’t even noticed him walking up. I was lucky he wasn’t a zombie trying to eat my brain, because if he had been, he might have gotten in a couple of solid bites before I even figured out what was going on. “How did you find me?”

“I looked.”


And while he has brought a gift, he is still mucho pissed off.

I nodded in response, not saying anything. I wasn’t sure what I could really contribute to this already-stilted conversation, so instead I started staring at the ceiling. I shuffled my feet, and one of them bumped up against something; I glanced down to see what it was. There was a small knapsack, smaller than the one I was currently carting around; it was full – bulging, really. I tucked a finger under the closure flap and peered inside, mildly surprised at what I saw. “What’s all this?”


Pressies!

“Well, gee, I don’t know. If I had to take a wild guess, I’d say it looks like ammo.”


Yup.. Grade A pissed off. Not that you can completely blame the guy.

Actually, it was a little more than just ammo. There was plenty of that, of course – about ten pistol magazines, and a few 12-gauge shells stuffed with buckshot, (which wouldn’t do me any good until I could find a shotgun to use them with,) but he’d managed to scrape together some other supplies, too. I could see a snub-nosed flare gun in there, as well as a handful of compact first aid kits. There were a few more MREs tucked away down at the bottom, and a small field compass, probably scavenged from one of the sporting goods stores somewhere in the mall. He’d tied a small penlight to one of the zipper-pulls on the outside of the bag, and crammed a handful of batteries of various sizes into the side compartments. He'd even folded up a blanket and tucked it into the bottom of the pack.

Damn it, Jeff. It’s things like this that make it very hard to stay angry with you.


TK: "That's because he cares for you and you care for him. Now bloody apologize already."

My gaze shifted from the pack and up to his face. For a brief, and rather stupid, moment, I felt a slight urge to sass him back for his patronizing commentary. That compulsion passed quickly; I was too glum to really make a fight of it, anyway, so, instead, I just asked him the question as straight as I could. “Why are you giving it to me?”

He glared back at me. “Because, Abby,” he said, using the shortened form of my middle name. It was something he did whenever he got seriously annoyed with me – which, I’m ashamed to say happens fairly regularly. “…even though I’d like nothing more than to just drop kick your head right now, you’re still my friend, and I won’t have you running around out there without supplies. So just take the damn pack, all right?”


That's a good friend. Even when pissed off, they're looking out for you.

ID: "I... Just pick up the pack Colleen. You'll need his help once the two of you calm down."

He shrugged. “Yeah. Whatever. Look, it’s late. I’m going to head back to the Food Court and try and get some sleep.”

“Wait.” I stretched a hand out towards him, but stopped just short of catching hold of his sleeve.

“What, Colleen?” I knew I was trying his patience as it was, but I had to ask, anyway.

“Don’t go.”


She is lonely. Poor Coll. :)

He didn’t say anything for a few seconds – just stood there, staring at me. I guess he was trying to figure out how honest I was being with him at that point… and whether honesty even mattered to him given what had gone down between us several hours ago. Eventually, he broke into a sigh. “Fine.”

I saw him push the straps of his backpack off his shoulders and set it down next to a bench over on the opposite side of the fountain. It wasn’t lost on me that his chosen camping spot meant he could keep his back turned towards me.


You know, Jeff is probably a bit more fair minded that I might be in that situation. I mean, it's obvious he's pissed, and when you toss in the stress, that's only going to magnify things... but he had a chance to take a real dig and didn't. Good on him.

TK: "Lad seems like a good man. You might want to consider pissing him off less, Colleen."

“Listen, I-“

I didn’t get out any more than than that before he stopped me. “No.”

“What?”

“I’ll stick around and keep you company, but before, when I asked you if you wanted to talk, you turned me down. So the offer’s off the table. I really don’t want to speak to you right now, so if you’re seriously that lonely, I’ll sit with you, but that’s it. Ok?”

“Ok,” I said, my voice getting just a touch hoarse. His response wasn’t… exactly what I’d hoped for, but it was more than I expected… and probably a lot more than I actually deserved after having treated him so poorly.


ID: "Yes, it probably is." *sigh* "Just find away to mend the fence, eh? I like it better when I don't feel sorry for you."

My increasingly-guilty-feeling conscience wanted me to apologize to him at that point, to say I was sorry for pushing him away like I had… to try and explain why I’d done it in the first place… to try and patch things up, even though deep down I knew I should never have let the situation get that bad in the first place… but I figured he wasn’t in the mood to hear any of that… at least not yet.

I hoped he would forgive me at some point… and he probably would, even if it took him some time.

But the waiting would hurt.

A lot.


All choices have consequences... some of them pretty harsh. But, at least she's still alive, no?

Good chapter Alpha. Get to see a little more of Coll, a deeper part, a richer part. Good work.

VH

#5 Guest_AlphaMonkey_*

Posted 14 April 2006 - 06:29 PM

Well, doesn’t surprise me.


Of course it doesn't... because, you know... Jeff is secretly this really evil guy... it's his fault the zombies are loose in Malton, and whenever he gets a chance to slip away, he teleports back to his evil lair, sits in his big-ass comfy chair, steeples his fingers together and goes "Mwuhahahahaha" for a few hours. You know... becuase he's evil.

:)

Who would have known that this girl could do angst, too!


Well, it's not like she's limited to just goofy, silly emotions. She's a person, just like everyone else. And even the happiest of people can get really sad under certain situations.

Nice internal musings. Pretty deep. For Coll, anyways. Isn’t the truth what they say that dying provides you with an entirely different perspective for looking on things?


It's true that she does give off an airhead-y vibe, but I've never thought of her as a ditz. It's much the same with, say, Imoen. Lots of people are quick to write her off as this vacuous, bubble-headed little girl. But she's got a lot more brains than people give her credit for. A lot more intelligence and insight. I say the same is true for Colleen. Plus, as you said, death does give you a new perspective on life.

Couple of probably unintended typos here.


Just one I noticed. :)

It’s the TV for me, all the way. And when someone tries to talk to me, I just turn the TV volume up until the intrusive voices from the outside world fade away.


Well, I like to watch TV while I eat, too... but when I'm with friends and such, it's all about the conversation. ;) Unless of course we're all engrossed in the show... like when it comes to Sunday nights and Family Guy. :shock:

Why doesn’t she try to get out of the town? It doesn’t seem like a difficult task at all, at least in daytime, after all she should be able to outrun any zombo out there. It doesn’t really seem like ‘making a stand’ in defending the city is very much on her thoughts.


Um... first chapter? Where it was mentioned that the city is surrounded by massive forces from the United States Army who have been ordered to keep everyone outside from getting in, and everyone inside from getting out? If it were just a matter of running to the border, it wouldn't be a problem. But when you run for the border only to get cut down by several hundred guys with M-16s... um... no.

It's a "Quarantine" zone... duh. :)

She sounds pretty desperate, alright.


By her nature, she's a very sociable person. She came from a very open, welcoming family, and that's what she's used to. Not having anyone to talk to is really a foreign notion to her. So she's alone... but worse, she's lonely.

I guess that means that he felt a little bit responsible, too.


Of course he does. He feels bad, too, but we just can't see it as much since this is all from Colleen's perspective. But he feels bad about it... he's also still pissed, though... just like she is.

Wow. But he still has to act as if he has been mortally insulted, eh?


What, you've never been so pissed off at someone that you've given them a hard time even though you knew you probably shouldn't. Happens to me a lot. Can't say I'm really proud of it, but it's happened.

Pardon me, but I really can’t agree with that. I don’t at all understand why Coll has to be made the guilty one for the whole incident…


She's not the only one who's guilty. She's just feeling as if she is. Big difference. Remember that this is written from her perspective and therefore, events are very much biased by her own thoughts and feelings.

Wow. And here I thought he was really concerned about Coll.


Right. So he only spent the entire day scrounging for supplies... for HER. Instead of using that time to take care of his own need for supplies... instead of getting some rest for himself (which everyone could use,) he decided that he was going to make sure she was properly equipped so she could have a fighting chance if/when it ever came down to that.

He doesn't care about her AT ALL.

[/sarcasm]

:lol:

But then he piles even more misery on her by making quite sure how much his feelings were hurt. An understandable reaction, for sure, but I just hoped he would be above that kind of thing and hopefully endear himself a little more to this particular reader…


Sorry, dude... but people do things like that. People act like jerks. Sure, I wish I could just let stuff go when I'm pissed... be the better person and let things slide. But I'm not. And I don't think most people would hold that against me... so why can't he get a similarly fair shake? (Shrug)

#6 Guest_AlphaMonkey_*

Posted 14 April 2006 - 08:51 PM

Somewhere homey, and right outside the lingerie display. No point being completely depressed.


CN: "Well... well, yeah..." :shock:

No matter how bad things get, you'll still be around-can't even take a cyanide pill to escape.


That's one thing I've kinda been unclear on. Would people who died from causes other than a zombie attack turn into zombies themselves? So if you took like fifty sleeping pills, would you die and wake up a zombie? Or would you just be dead-dead? Hmmm...

Yep, while you've been moping, he's been scrounging his ass off all day.


The Grays are a very industrious people. :)

He wasn't all that innocent.


Certainly not. And he realizes that. He's just royally cheesed off right now... with good reason, if you ask me.

What those two need is a horde of zombies to attack. Bet that'll get them talking again.


That could work... but I've already got something else in mind. ;)

Oh, and nice changing the graffiti tag... we'll have to waste an AP to fix that now, thank you. :)

#7 Guest_AlphaMonkey_*

Posted 16 April 2006 - 05:26 AM

Acting like jerks... one thing bound to happen between friends every now and then, especially under high pressure situations.


Oh yeah... when you're under a lot of stress, you'll even snap at people you really, really care about. I've got some experience with that. :lol:

*snigger*


I figured I should point it out since I wasn't sure anyone would really pick up on it. :shock:

ID: "Colleen, you're not the Goddamn Batman. For many reasons. Such as distinct lack of stubble."

GT: "Have you checked her legs? Betcha they're stubbly."

ID: "Were you like this before the head trauma?"

GT: "Yup."


CN: (Scoffs) "Please." (Rolls up a pant leg) "Smooth as Greg's chin." (I've always been under the impression that Greg, aside from being young, also just really has one of those baby faces... you know... the kind that can't grow facial hair." :)

ID: "Considering the fact that a jogger in Malton today would be seen as a mobile buffet, this is a wise decision."


CN: "Don't sound so surprised. I'm certainly way smarter than you look." ;)

Why do they seem so damn far away?


CN: "Because, for some odd reason, when things are going good, you never question it. It only seems to draw your attention when everything starts to suck."

Its funny - even the people who really do like solitary living will find it burdensome when it is actually enforced. You can go a month without talking to anyone (Not Recommended) because you don't feel like it, but as soon as you can't talk to anyone for some outside reason, it drives you nuts.


Definitely. I'm not the most outgoing of people normally... and when things got busy at school, there'd be times when I'd go for a full week without even seeing any of my friends for anything more than five minutes. There'd be plenty of times when I just wanted to do stuff without them, but when I was too busy to actually go and hang out with them, then it got rough.

It's apocalypse. And you running your mouth. Not the greatest collection of circumstances.


CN: "Yeah, well, it's mostly the apocalypse that's the problem. Right?"

TK: "I don't mind the MREs. They're not great, but they're edible."

GT: "I like em."


CN: "I still wish I had access to some actually "fresh" food. I can do wonders with a rack full of spices and some basic ingredients.

Breakfast in bed can get messy. Especially depending on the eating method.


CN: "Yeah... Dana made me promise we'd never do that again. Not after she went to bed one night and put her foot in some whipped cream that we'd somehow missed during clean-up. Um... ahem..."

New York - where Westchester is upstate.


Being from New Jersey, I actually kinda do that myself... not nearly as much, of course, but I do find it amusing how anything, basically, that's not NYC is considered "upstate." :)

ID: "Wouldn't it be better to be there with them, as opposed to having them stuck in this with you? Just saying."


CN: "Well... yeah... I mean, that's obvious. But we're all stuck here... so assuming I can't leave, well..." (Shrugs)

ID: "At least Bruce is okay."


JG: "And Dick. And Tim. And Alfred." :)

There's enough blame for both of them. And enough pride for the two of them not to back down easily. It's going to be a long wait...


Both of them suffer from the sin of pride. Colleen more than Jeff, but it's a fairly close race on that one.

ID: "Even best friends fight under good conditions. These aren't good conditions."


CN: (Sighs) "I know that. In my head, at least. But that doesn't stop me from feeling like crap that I can't just put that aside and worry about more important stuff... like not dying."

Yup.. Grade A pissed off. Not that you can completely blame the guy.


Some people can. :)

TK: "That's because he cares for you and you care for him. Now bloody apologize already."


CN: (Frustrated) "I would, if I thought he'd listen. But he's not listening... and to be honest, I probably wouldn't be, either, if the situations were reversed."

ID: "Yes, it probably is." *sigh* "Just find away to mend the fence, eh? I like it better when I don't feel sorry for you."


CN: "I could always make a crack about your thick head. Would that make things better?"

#8 Laufey

Posted 20 April 2006 - 05:54 PM

I tell him, ‘I don’t want to talk about it,’ and what does he do? Tries to make me talk about it. I mean, c’mon, Jeff! Are you dense? Are you retarded or something? Gimme a friggin’ break, here!


Ah, I recognize this all too well. And would you know, some people think it's the women who always want to 'talk it over'. :D



I didn’t know if I’d ever see the place again, the way things were going, and thinking about it too much would just make me melancholy. Instead, I pulled up a section of bench, sat down, and took a look around. There was a small fountain right behind me… the kind people threw pennies into, hoping for good luck. Most of the coins were gone, actually, leaving behind some nasty, stagnant water. A few large potted plants stood nearby – sickly-looking things. It was obvious they hadn’t been watered in a while, and they clearly weren’t getting enough light, either. But while the décor was lousy, my little nook had the benefit of being very out of the way, and very quiet – the perfect spot for someone searching for a little bit of solitude.


Reminds me of my own plants. *feels guilty*

I leaned back, sinking into the bench as much as I could, clasping my hands together behind my head, and just trying to tune out everything that had happened over the past few days. The corpses, the shooting. The fires, the rubble in the streets. The whole ugly mess. I wanted it gone.


Reminds me of my own place.

*feels really guilty about lack of cleaning*

:P

You know how it is, sometimes. You’re in a rut… a funk… a… whatever-you-want-to-call-it… and you know you should just suck it up and deal… just say to yourself, “Nope, I don’t have time for this garbage, I have more important things to do,” and just get over it, already. But for whatever reason, you just don’t want to.


Oh yes, our brains seem to like doing that.

Sigh.


No family, no friends… well… no friends, except one, and he and I weren’t on speaking terms at the moment.


Damn it.


Somebody badly needs a hug. :P


Actually, it was a little more than just ammo. There was plenty of that, of course – about ten pistol magazines, and a few 12-gauge shells stuffed with buckshot, (which wouldn’t do me any good until I could find a shotgun to use them with,) but he’d managed to scrape together some other supplies, too. I could see a snub-nosed flare gun in there, as well as a handful of compact first aid kits. There were a few more MREs tucked away down at the bottom, and a small field compass, probably scavenged from one of the sporting goods stores somewhere in the mall. He’d tied a small penlight to one of the zipper-pulls on the outside of the bag, and crammed a handful of batteries of various sizes into the side compartments. He'd even folded up a blanket and tucked it into the bottom of the pack.


Damn it, Jeff. It’s things like this that make it very hard to stay angry with you.


Awwww! ;)


“I’ll stick around and keep you company, but before, when I asked you if you wanted to talk, you turned me down. So the offer’s off the table. I really don’t want to speak to you right now, so if you’re seriously that lonely, I’ll sit with you, but that’s it. Ok?”


“Ok,” I said, my voice getting just a touch hoarse. His response wasn’t… exactly what I’d hoped for, but it was more than I expected… and probably a lot more than I actually deserved after having treated him so poorly.


No, that I don't agree with. I think he's being the jerky one here.
Rogues do it from behind.

#9 Guest_AlphaMonkey_*

Posted 23 April 2006 - 12:32 AM

Ah, I recognize this all too well. And would you know, some people think it's the women who always want to 'talk it over'.


Or just really effeminate guys. :D

Reminds me of my own plants. *feels guilty*


This is why I don't bother with plants. I doubt I could keep them alive. I leave that sort of thing to my Mom. She's the only one with the green thumb in my family. My botanical experience is limited to chopping down grass with a lawnmower.

Reminds me of my own place.

*feels really guilty about lack of cleaning*


My only real failing is that I don't dust often enough, so that stuff builds up. But other than that, I'm usually pretty good about not just throwing clothes on the floor and such. It's not spic and span, but it's no sty, either. At least I don't think of it as such.

Oh yes, our brains seem to like doing that.


Mine does... almost as if it enjoys being in a bad mood and dragging the rest of me with it.

Somebody badly needs a hug.


Colleen does like her hugs. :)

Awwww!


:D

JG: "Look, yeah, I'm mad at her, but she's still my friend, and I'd still feel really awful if something happened to her. So I'm not going to let anything happen to her. It shouldn't be that difficult to understand." (Shrugs)

No, that I don't agree with. I think he's being the jerky one here.


He is, but so is she... however, Colleen is also the type to feel guilty when everything isn't all hunkey-dorey. She's not terribly accustomed to serious bickering with those she calls friends, so when it happens, she tends to feel really crappy about it.




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