Rapture

[Fortune86]

"So what exactly is your plan?" asked James as he made sure the shotgun was loaded, just in case. "The damn thing is sitting on our only means of escape. We're not going anywhere unless it decides to move, which it might just do to follow our scent. I'm fast but I can't outrun a leopard."

 

He knew Emily just wanted him to fire off a warning shot, but the shotgun was a slow loading double barrel. By the time he got some more shells in it the leopard could have doubled back.

[Fangirl05]

Erin yanked her arm out of Mak's grip and slunk toward the door anyway. She worked off her jacket off as she went and tied it tightly around the door handles. That would at least but them a couple seconds.

 

She watched him fiddle with the door lock for a second out of interest, but quickly turned back to keep watching the door and whatever the hell was on the other side.

 

She followed Mak and Ez through the door as soon as there was enough room to squeeze through and leaned hard on it to make sure it was super closed.

 

"Let's move!" she suggested, already shoving them forward.

 

 

[Quhanta]

Ez caught Mak's flailing flashlight beam out of the corner of her eye. Thinking that he was only shaking out of nervousness, she only turned to look when Erin nudged her. An exit was being advertised and the animalistic clicking was getting louder. Erin was going to stay as a distraction. No. Ez wouldn't let her, but Mak had already pulled her arm toward the exit. She slipped through the door after Mak had disabled the alarm system. Erin spoke a bit too loudly and started shoving, but Ez was more than happy to be on her way out after what she had seen through the misty pane of glass. She only saw what was probably an alien of some sort and Ez was ready to get way out of the hospital. Somewhere in her gut, though, she felt, in an odd way, that they were missing something. Ez wanted a better look at the creatures that they were running from, if only to know what they were up against, but that may not have been all.

"Do we have the right drugs for Jaune?" She whispered to the others. If they had to abandon ship before they completed their mission, she did not want to have to come back. There could be more next time. Maybe there were more that they were missing? Ezmerelda's paranoia was kicking in.

[Fangirl05]

Seriously? They were being chased by a gang of something straight out of the Unexplained Fiels and Ez was worried about Jaune's drugs?!

 

"If not, we'll come back for them later" Erin decided, "preferably with all the other armed people."

 

It was sounding like an increasingly good idea to not leave the house without a gun. At least she wasn't hearing any claw-clicking for the moment...

[Salix]

Petra smile was one of relief on hearing that Wisperlee and Cujo were fine. Maybe their hurried exit from the shop had after all been a panic over nothing. She looked over at the big dog, who had adopted a relaxed draped position out of the motorbike’s sidecar. Cujo looked unconcerned as he watched a flock of birds peck at something on one of the garden lawns; but Petra ‘knew’ that back there at the shop he had sensed something, a something that he didn’t like.

 

"Shall we head back to the others? Tell them that our Birmingham lead panned out, but they went missing."

 

Petra thought over Wisperlee’s question. Should they return to the others now, giving up any hope that would find Alex, Ellie and Sereana? It looked like Wisperlee was eager to get back to the group as soon as possible, and Petra wanted that too, but could she in all good conscious go back to the others without first making some effort to see if Alex, Ellie and Sereana had returned to the car, and were waiting for them.

 

Glancing at her watch Petra then made her decision “It’s just coming up to 11 o’clock, I know that we are probably miles away from the park, but I have to go back to see if Alex, Ellie and Sereana are there waiting, and if they are not, well then, I guess I’ll leave a note for them”.

 

Petra looked at Wisperlee expectantly. She didn’t want the younger girl to feel that she was trying to tell her what to do; she had deliberately avoided trying to use the word ‘we’ as she spoke. It was up to the younger woman to decide if she wanted to come with her, of if she wanted to head back to the others. But Petra was fervently hoping that Wisperlee would decide to come with her.

 

[Mistress of Whispers]

Wisperlee didn't have to think about it long. "I'll come with," she said. She didn't think they'd find the others again, but they should at least try. Cujo seemed disappointed when she reved her enging again - clearly he'd much rather hunt those birds - but he remained put as Wisperlee turned the bike back to Birmingham.

 

This time Wisperlee drove in front, navigating empty streets easily. It was a good thing, she thought, that the group had moved to a small village - big cities were just too eerie abandoned like this.

 

It didn't take long to make their way back to the abandoned car. Wisperlee's heart sank a little when she saw the bags and her 'stay here' note still stuck under the windshield, both untouched.

[DragonSpirit009]

"So what exactly is your plan?" asked James as he made sure the shotgun was loaded, just in case. "The damn thing is sitting on our only means of escape. We're not going anywhere unless it decides to move, which it might just do to follow our scent. I'm fast but I can't outrun a leopard."

 

He knew Emily just wanted him to fire off a warning shot, but the shotgun was a slow loading double barrel. By the time he got some more shells in it the leopard could have doubled back.

“We need a distraction.” Emily spoke looking around her. “Something, that sounds like a gun firing.” She looked at the barn wondering if it might hold something. Slowly Emily moved along the side trying to find a hole to peek through. Now and then she could see different items between the boarded panels. Inside she could see some pitch forks, hammers, leather straps, hay stacks, but no kind of something that would help them in their situation. There was no tractor or extra truck nearby. The house was a bit far as well and the leopard would spot them if they tried heading that direction.

 

“I… I don’t know.” Emily spoke staring at the ground while her mind tried to find a plan. They could break something in the distance but the leopard would move too fast for them and still catch up. They could hide in the barn and then kill it but that just seemed to wrong for her. There is that myth of the dominance stand but there is no way in hell she was going to do that.

 

“We will have to kill it then.” Emily spoke with a heavy tone. “No warning shot.”

 

[Fortune86]

James waited while Emily slid along the side of the barn, peering in through the gaps in the wooden wall, presumably to look for something to frighten the leopard. When she left left his sight he risked another glance around the corner. The beast was still sitting on top of the truck cab, it's spotted tail twitching every now and again. It looked like it was sunning itself, soaking in the warmth of the morning. James suspected that its day was going to go down hill very quickly.

 

It wasn't long before Emily returned, empty handed and looking despondent. She hadn't been able to find anything then. His suspicions were confirmed when she agreed they had no choice but to kill it.

 

James nodded and peered once again round the corner at the leopard.

 

"Ok then. I'm going to have to get up close though, and I don't really fancying running out into the open at it. Can we lure it over here?"

[Kestra15]

The three stood in a surprisingly spacious emergency stairwell, with a glass set of double doors leading to the outside world as well as options to go up or down. If a fire had ever broke out in the hospital, the evacuation plan for those too sick to walk included strapping them to the mattresses and evacuating patients down these stairwells and out to Level Two, the 'ground level' the three were at now. From here their options were to go out the glass doors and take the long way back to their van, down to the underground level, or up. Not fancying trying to navigate the underground level of the hospital - a scary enough experience when it had lighting and people around - and not wanting to risk being caught in the open, Mak started up the stairs.

 

"We'll just pop up a level, scoot across to another stairwell, and get back through A&E that way," he whispered to the two ladies, hoping that the sound wouldn't attract too much attention. With a whole ward and two mostly-soundproof sets of doors in the way, even Erin's talking voice shouldn't carry. "Come on."

 

Flicking his torch back on Mak quickly and quietly made his way up to Level Three, stopping at the emergency exit to ward A3. Without much choice about the matter he heaved the double doors towards in, snapping the ceramic tube on the other side with a light tinkling of pottery on tiles. Without any power fuelling the system the automated alarms didn't trigger, and the ward before them was near-identical to the one below. Aside from a juice box sitting outside the door to a single-patient room, it was as empty as the one below - with the added bonus of no mysterious figures lingering outside the opposite doorway.

 

"This way," he beckoned to the other two.

[Fangirl05]

Erin brought up the rear as the three of them hurried along Mak's route. She really wished there was a way to throw these things off their trail, since she had no idea how keen their senses or tracking skills were.

 

She found herself worrying about Jaune as they went. He'd been asleep when they'd gotten here, right? What if they'd already gotten him?

 

Then they'd all have a lot less trouble to deal with, is what. Which was why it was so weird that she didn't want him to have been taken.

[Peelzies]

"Front door is bound to be Keycard locked, and considering a radio station is often the last bastion of survivors in an emergency, theres a backup generator. We could probably get in through the roof, though."

 

Alistair hopped onto the dumpster on the western end of the building and proceeded to climb to the roof of the building, not quite waiting up for Micah. His eyes scanned the roof quickly, searching for the metal panel that signaled an emergency hatch. A glint of metal caught his eye, and he quietly stepped towards it so as not to disturb anything he might not want to.

 

The hatch opened with a squeal, a tile floor appeared beneath him, illuminated by a flickering and dim light.

 

"Spooky." Alistair muttered under his breath.

 

"Micah, lets move it. I'd rather not be away from the rest of the crew for much longer." He stated, waving over the young man.

 

He slid in feet first, his combat boots hitting the ground with a thump. Around him he saw a scene that looked like the setup for a horror movie. Long, tiled hallways, red lights and flickering fluorescents. He opened the nearest recording studio.

 

The red "recording" light was still on. Odd, simply due to the fact that most recording software shuts off by default after hours without input. Nothing particularly out of the ordinary though. Alistair began searching for the equipment he would need.

[Quhanta]

Ez listened to Mak and followed silently up the stairs. Once on the level, all seemed calm. No creatures were in immediate view and the halls were clear, save for a Five Alive juice box sitting dented outside of a patient's door. It was clear and they could make it out to safety, but just in case, Ez still held her gun firmly and pointed her flashlight beam steadily. When Ez was walking past the juice box, she heard a sound coming from the room. Unsure of what it was, she paused, raised her hand to halt the others, and listened intently. After a moment of creepy silence, a small sniffle could be heard coming from the room. She cautiously took a step toward the door, turned the knob, and waited. No sounds of an oncoming attack, so she pushed the door open a bit and shone her light into the pitch room. A small whimper came from inside and she pushed the door open as wide as it would go and scanned the room quickly. In the far corner lay a small child. Ez put the safety on the gun, shoved it into her belt, and ran over to the half conscious child.

"It's a little girl!" She exclaimed a bit too loudly. "I think she's dehydrated and may be starving. We need to get her out of here." Ez turned and handed her gun over to Erin. Whether she grasped it or not, Ez wasn't paying much attention. She cradled the little girl in her arms and grabbed the small, purple coat sitting on the bed, wrapping her in it. Alongside the coat were a couple sandwich wrappers and empty drinking boxes. She heard them coming and had dragged herself off of the bed and into the corner.

"We need to go." Ez spoke firmly and calmly despite what she felt. This little girl toughed out a few days alone in a dark hospital, even venturing down to get herself some food at some point. She was brave and Ez was not going to let her be left behind.

"Mak, I don't know where we're going so get us the f*ck out of here, now." Ez grasped the small girl tightly in her arms and hoped that she would survive.

[Fangirl05]

Erin fumbled with the gun for a second, having not seen Ez flip the safety on, but sheathed her knife and held the gun at the ready.

 

She looked unhappily at the girl in Ez's arms. Poor kid. This was exactly what she'd been afraid they would find.

 

Wait, how had a girl who looked about five years old managed to survive at least four days alone in a hospital being patrolled by a small hoard of... Things? That struck her as pretty suspicious. Still, she tried to keep it off her face as she readied the gun and peeked out the door in case they had heard Ez. It looked clear, but still.

 

"What's your name?" she asked the girl.

[Salix]

Petra was grateful that Wisperlee had decided to come with her, despite wanting to go back and check for the others, she didn’t know how she would have reacted if Wisperlee had insisted that she would travel to the group in Oakington.

 

The drive back to the car park actually took less time then she had though, of course it helped that they were no longer constrained by traffic rules, they could drive on whichever side of the road they wished, travel up one way streets, cut across round-a-bouts.

 

Petra’s good mood was dampened when they arrived at the meeting point, it looked as deserted as it had been that morning, nothing had been moved or disturbed.

 

“They aren’t coming back are they”. She had known that this would be the case, but still she had held out some small glimmer of hope that Alex, Ellie and Sereana had somehow been delayed earlier, but they would be waiting for them when they arrived.

 

Opening the door of the abandoned car Petra turned the ‘stay here’ note over, fished about in her bag for a pen and then thought for a few minutes. She felt like she ought to leave some kind of message, just encase Alex, Ellie and Sereana, or anyone else for that matter came back here, but on the other hand she didn’t feel it was safe to give the location of where the group was staying. In the end she wrote

 

You are not alone (she didn’t realise that statement could also act as a warning) If you can, head South towards Cambridge.

 

That should be enough information, Petra thought, whoever read the note would learn that there were still other people about, and that they should head for Cambridge, which was near, but not too near to Oakington.

 

She held out the note for Wisperlee to read and comment on, and then secured it on the dashboard of the abandoned car.

 

“I guess we head back to the other then, unless there is anywhere you would like to visit on route or anywhere near here?”

 

[Mistress of Whispers]

"No," Wisperlee confirmed, "they're not coming back." She wondered if she should feel more distress at that - in a group of barely a dozen people, losing three was a big blow. Maybe she was already getting accustomed to losing people? Or maybe she was just tired of it.

 

"Whatever is going on, it's still taking people."

 

She nodded after reading Petra's note. "If we get Erin's radio station running, maybe we can leave a second set in Cambridge. That way anyone who reads this and comes to Cambridge, could contact us from there." That would be something at least.

 

Wisperlee considered Petra's last question. Part of her did want to go back and raid that pharmacy. But then she remembered their flight from the hardware store and... No, maybe best if they head back to the safety of numbers. Well, she thought as she looked at the abandoned bags sitting neatly by the car, the *illusion* of safety in numbers.

 

"Let's head back to Oakington; tell the others what happened."

[Kestra15]

As Ez had recovered the half-conscious girl from the side-room and Erin took the gun, Mak stood in the middle of the ward and swung his torch from one end to the other and back again. The powerful beam punched through the darkness, turning looming shadows into harmless curtains while crouched creatures become abandoned laundry trolleys. His back, still aching from the poor night's sleep, was now tense and solid as he kept his ears open for sounds of pursuit. While the doors down on Level Two had been secured one way or another, he'd simply pushed the emergency exit too rather than securing it properly; a potentially foolish mistake, as it now revealed where the three - now four - had fled. But there wasn't time to go back and waste precious seconds masking their trail. He slung his bag off his shoulders, shoved their meager pill collection inside, then settled it on his back once more.

 

Loosening the sheath at his hip, Mak transferred the weighty Maglite into his left hand pulled out his own knife, holding it in his right hand in a reverse-grip as he led the other three to the end of the ward. Slowly he pulled the door open and peered down the corridor in one direction, then opened it further and turned to check the other way was clear. His heart was in his throat, blood running, expecting at any moment during the check for some unseen force to reach out and strike him down, knock him to the floor and kill him before he even knew what was happening. In spite of the myriad of death-scenes played out in his overactive imagination - a surprising number in a three-second period - there was no dragon-esque figure there to decapitate him, only the darkness of an empty internal corridor. Satisfied, Mak exhaled and waved the others out with his torch.

 

"Each level is near-identical to the others," he explained, voice just above a whisper as he walked quickly down the corridor, keeping his torch ahead so they could see if anything come from the front. "We'll take the stairwell just past C3, it'll bring us out the other side of A&E and avoid the main corridor downstairs." He managed to guide them without incident to said stairwell and, after another cautious check, held the door open for Ez and their young refugee.

[Fangirl05]

Mak apparently had an eye on their front, so Erin again brought up the rear, checking over her shoulder every couple of steps to make sure they weren't being followed.

 

They managed to get back to where they'd come in. Now all they had to do was get to the van and hope that one of those things wasn't already there snacking on Jaune's innards.

 

It was harder than she thought it should've been to decide which she was more afraid of; That a monster was waiting for them or that Jaune would be half-eaten when they found him.

Edited August 12, 2015 by Fangirl05

[Avialae]

Micah followed Alistair up the side of the building with some difficulty, not used to climbing buildings without a ladder. He finally reached the roof, panting, and stopped for a moment to catch his breath when he heard Alistair call for him to hurry up. "Sorry, I'm not really used . . . to doing this sort of thing," he called after the other man, and followed him down the hatch into the dimly lit hallways of the recording studio. Micah did not like at all the way the building was lit, and wondered if the lights here still worked.

 

He followed Alistair to the recording studio. Not understanding the significance of the red light, Micah decided to keep watch at the doorway, his hand resting on the hilt of Alistair's gun. He almost jumped when he heard the clacking of shoes on the tile floor. Micah didn't dare call out to Alistair in fear of alerting the stranger, so he could only hope that the other man had heard the sound as well. Micah suddenly wasn't sure what to do - greet the stranger and hope things went well or hide here and hope he passed them by? He didn't want to attack him out of nowhere, even if he did have a gun now. That wasn't the way to do things. Cautiously, Micah stuck his head around the doorframe, trying to get a good look at who was coming.

 

OOC: Peelzies, what kind of gun does Alistair have? Pistol, hunting rifle, subautomatic?

[Quhanta]

The child did not respond to Erin's voice, but kept on breathing and mumbling inaudibly under her breath. She was alive, but needed a lot of comfort, help, and safety very soon.

Adjusting her hold on the child, Ezmerelda had the little girl's arms draped over her shoulders and she held her legs around her waist. She held the child with one arm bracing under her bum and the other across across her tiny shoulders. She followed Mak through the door and down the stairs, back to the ground floor. The three of them were running through the hospital and to the van.

Everything in Ez's gut wanted her to panic, but her body showed little to no signs of worry or fear. She was just doing a military, straight-backed run through a hospital with a half conscious little girl in her arms. No issue... They got to the exit and made it outside. Ez was off in the direction of the van when she began to speak in a slightly labored voice.

"I'll take the back seat so that I can lie her down." Ez stated firmly, her face softening and giving way to some worry before quickly hardening again.

 

[Peelzies]

(( Alistair's weapon is a Browning Hi-Power 9mm handgun with a 13 round magazine.))

 

His attention turned from the varied radio equipment stacked around the room to the doorway. The sound of footsteps with no intention of being hidden rang throughout the hall. As Alistair prepared to reprimand the younger man for being less than stealthy, he realized that Micah stood dead silent, peeking out the doorway. He stifled a curse that attempted to escape his mouth, and with silent footsteps bounded over to Micah.

 

The footsteps of the unidentified individual were growing louder, yet Micah insisted upon the rookie mistake of peeking in plain sight. Alistair grasped at the back of Micah's shirt and attempted to pull him back in slightly, as silently as possible.

 

"Wait." Alistair mouthed at the younger man, not a noise escaping his mouth.

 

He had been ignorant. It was several days after whatever happened, not even the hospital's backup generator would still be running by now. The recording light made sense now; somebody or something was continuing to maintain this building. Whoever or whatever it was, Alistair was fairly sure that they wouldn't be too happy about the breaking and entering. The large combat knife in his hand and the man with a gun next to Alistair made him feel fairly comfortable with their chances, but there was no telling what was going on in this building. Anxious moments passed by as the footsteps grew closer.

[DragonSpirit009]

Emily looked at the ground and found a rather large rock. Picking it up she showed it to James wondering herself if it might work. She could throw it hoping it might cause the leopard to get curious and come investigate. The only trick will be to shoot at the right time before it spotted them.

 

“Any other idea?”

 

[Fortune86]

James was at first a little puzzled when Emily bent down to pick up a random rock, however he quickly realised she was probably hoping to use it to get the leopard's attention. The barn didn't give them much cover though, only the corner of the building hiding them from view.

 

"Just be careful where you throw it" he whispered back.

 

He felt in his pocket for extra shells. He didn't want to have to reload in a hurry, but if he did he'd have to do it fast. Real fast.

[Kestra15]

Leading the charge through the A&E, Mak slowed as they finally reached the jammed-open double doors that led out to the sunlight and the safety of their van. He could see Jaune moving around inside the vehicle through the window pane at the back, and the movements didn't look like the desperate actions of a man struggling for life. If anything they were the familiar lethargic movements Jaune made during the daylight hours, as if the drama unfolding in the hospital hadn't penetrate the outer walls - in fact, it probably hadn't. After all it wasn't as if the whole world would want to know about the pain of others, the screams of the dementia patients, the cries of the delirious, the sobs of those who have lost so much. As Ez started towards the van with the girl, Jaune finally slid open the side door and made to step out.

 

If the noises in Mak's head had been alarm bells back on the ward, now they were klaxons screaming out, echoing through his body, adrenaline pounding through his system like a tidal wave as an undefinable truth settled; Jaune could not step out of the van. Not at that precise spot. What it was Mak couldn't explain, didn't understand; an instinct, an urge so deep-rooted that it was part of his core being. While there was nothing to be seen in that patch of air and concrete, to Mak's mind there was a mirage-like quality that rippled into being a split-second after Jaune started to descend from the van.

 

"Jaune, stop!" he screamed desperately, leaping forward and clamping onto Ez's shoulder. But he knew it was too late even as he managed to stop Ez from stepping towards the puddle. Jaune couldn't fight gravity, couldn't have processed what Mak was saying in those last milliseconds before his foot hit the ground.

 

It never did.

 

There was no special effect. No whirlpool, spaghettification, puff of smoke, nothing. One moment Jaune was there, and the next he had simply disappeared. Right before their eyes, the Rapture took him.

 

Frozen in shock, colour draining from his face, Mak could only stare at the blank space that Jaune had occupied. There was not a shred of evidence that he had ever stood there - or that something had taken him.

[Quhanta]

Ez could see Jaune moving around in the back seat as she ran forward. Suddenly, Mak grabbed her shoulder, and she spun around to look at him just as the look of terror spread across his face. When she turned back around to see what he was looking at, the van door was open and Jaune was gone.

"What just happened?" She asked, standing there, staring ahead at the vehicle that was now void of all persons.

"Where did he bugger off to? Dammit! We have to go!" Ez turned back to Mak, "Where did he go?" She asked him, the little girl getting a bit heavy now.

[Fangirl05]

((*Pinkie Pie voice* Aww, bummer.))

 

Erin's jaw truly dropped as Jaune disappeared. It was one thing to know in the abstract that the planet had been Raptured, but to actually see it happen in real time?

 

"WHAT THE ACTUAL HELL?!!"

 

She clapped her hands over her mouth like that would somehow pull her shriek back in, glancing nervously at the door. She started shoving Ez and the girl into the back, urging them to "Gogogogogogo!" then hauled Mak in after them and slammed to doors shut.

 

"Drive!" she ordered, "Drive!"