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Kestra15

Rapture

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((Wisper, No worries - I don't mind silent patches over the Xmas as I recognise most people actually get a holiday!

 

I would like to see posts from everyone in the next ten days please, including myself! -KM ))

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Petra stayed to continue discussions with Emily, when Erin and Mich left to go and start work in the garden. It briefly crossed her mind to mention to Erin and Mich that perhaps they should hold off starting work digging in the garden until they had finished the planning, but she quickly decided that letting them go and do some hard physical work would be a good way for them to get rid of any built up nerves and frustrations.

 

The discussions and sketch plans for the gardens progressed, with various ideas and layouts being considered. As the surrounding farms and fields could be used to grow larger expanses of crops or turned into orchards, Petra proposed that the gardens be set out and cultivated along the lines of a Victorian Kitchen Gardens, with a set of plots for vegetables, herbs, fruits and composting; once one garden had been set up the layout could be copied and extended easily enough into the neighbouring gardens, while still keeping to an ordered geometric plan. They also discussed the use of, and the locations for polytunnels, for propagation and the growing of more heat/humid loving fruits and vegetables, and the possibility of creating a large fish pond near by, which could provide a ready supply of fresh fish for the group, Petra recalled the idea from a history project the boys had done in school, where they learned about the lives of Monks and Monastery life.

 

They also discussed the urgent need to try and find any remaining poultry and other livestock. Emily briefly related the story of the large cat she and James had encountered, which underlined the fact that the group needed to find and house, any remaining animals before they fell pray to any ‘predators’, or before the possibly penned up animals succumbed to starvation. Similarly they established it would be a good idea to visit any near by Garden Centres, and bring back any vegetable seedlings and fruit trees, before they too died from neglect.

 

A comprehensive check through the telephone directory, produced list of local suppliers of building materials, Garden Centres, Live Stock suppliers and farms that could prove to be worth a visit, and a list of suggestion of items to obtain from the various locations.

 

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Micah reached out his free hand to catch the pickaxe Erin tossed to him on reflex, but didn't catch it; he was holding on to a pair of shovels with his right hand, which also happened to be his dominant one, and couldn't bend too far without dropping them. He bent over and picked up the spare pickaxe with his left hand and then walked over to Erin and, extending his right arm, wordlessly offered her one of the shovels he'd brought.

 

He shrugged in response to Erin's question. "Honestly, it doesn't make a whole lot of difference to me. I guess Petra and Emily would see us more easily if we started from here, though." Micah was fairly sure they didn't need to worry about the creatures from earlier - they'd been out in the daytime before, and hadn't seen any trace of them.

 

OOC: I've been around, but I haven't replied earlier because I didn't want to turn this into a 1x1, since no one else seemed to be responding. Sorry if I worried anyone.

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Erin took the offered shovel but set it down. She figured she'd save the digging for the actual planting.

 

"Fine by me" she agreed with him. She shrugged out of her cardigan and tied it around her waist. Hopefully her arms looked strong enough to keep him from saying something done.

 

"Last one to finish does laundry" she challenged him, smirking to help clarify that she was (mostly) teasing and sank her pick axe into the dirt. At least it wasn't packed too hard.

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Ez followed James to the front door of the nearest house. When it didn't fully open, she saw it as an opportunity to let out some of her overtired frustrations. Immediately after James asked whether they should find bolt cutters of kick it in, Ez had left a dent of a footprint on the door as the chain ripped out of the wall when the door swung open. There was a loud bang as the door hit and dented the wall from it swinging so hard.

"We should be able to enjoy the little things." She said quietly. "You can kick in the next one, if you want." She raised her gun and stepped into the house.

"I'll clear the upstairs, you take the main floor. When we're sure there's nothing living in here, we can scavenge. Sound good?" Although Ez hadn't intended on making it a question, she figured that they should work kind of as a team. These were the only people she may ever be around ever again, so she shouldn't be a total b*tch.

((I'm very sorry to have kept you waiting Quhanta. Real life jumped up and stole a lot of my time and energy. I'll try and stick more with it in future.))

 

James was only a little surprised when Ez stepped forward and masterfully kicked the door clean off the chain. He made a mental note not to stand too near her if she ever got pissed off with him, or at leatst have a table or something between them.

 

When she suggested that they took a floor to clear each he nodded in agreement. That sounded like a plan.

 

"After you."

 

James waited until Ez had begun to climb up the stairs and then looked down the long corridor ahead of him. It looked like this house had the same basic layout of their own little den, which probably meant there was a cellar and an attic too. Well he'd check this floor first then double back to the stairs afterwards.

 

The first room looked like some kind of study or home office. It held a desk with a laptop and many shelves with a fair assortment of books on each one, save the occasional nick-knack. There were photos of what James guessed were kids throughout the ages pretty much everywhere there was a gap on the wall and a photo of twin babies with a golden frame on the desk. Grandchildren perhaps?

 

Apart from underneath the desk there wasn't really much of a place for anythign to hide in here, a quick sweep of revealed nothing more harmful than a dropped sachet of sugar. James left the room and headed through the door opposite, the kitchen.

 

Never in his life had he seen a room so clean. The kitchen had a typical layout of cupboards, cooker and sink, but nearly every surface was bare, save for a single pot plant on the window sill and a couple of pictures on the far wall. There were no stains on the countertops, no grime between the tiles. Opening the cupboard doors revealed neatly arranged stacks of tins, bottles and bags. If it wasn't for the very thin layer of dust that was just staring to appear you think the whole place had just been scrubbed down. There was a definite smell of disinfectant in the air.

 

It took a little longer to make sure there was nothing lurking inside any of the cupboards or oven than it did in the office, but he did find a bag of sweets that he recalled had been popular with the kids back at his block of flats. James pocketed them, thinking of Arwen, and then moved on again.

 

The living room was nearly as clean as the kitchen, but there were toys scattered across the rug and some drinks left on a table. Again there were pictures across the walls, some of them now featuring a dog. A recent addition he guessed, though he had no idea of where the animal was now.

 

The last two rooms, the downstairs bathroom and larder, continued the trend of being well scrubbed and having everything tidily arranged. There were no pictures in these rooms, although on the larder floor someone had dropped a bag of clothes pegs, spilling the contents on the floor. James wondered if someone had been holding them when taken.

 

Shaking his head James inspected every nook and cranny he could find for any sign of the little gremlin things and once content there was nothing out of order headed back towards the stairs.

 

"All clear down here" he called up to Ez. "Find anything up there?"

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(It's not a problem. He asked us to respond, so I did what I could. Life had me too.)

 

After receiving the nod of agreement from James, Ez went up the stairs. She moved quickly for the first three quarters, but slowed as her head came level with the new floor. With her gun pointed along with her field of vision, she scanned all along the open space as she slowly proceeded. The layout was similar to the house that they were all in, which was not unexpected. There were three rooms and a closet upstairs. The first door she came to, across from the top of the stairs, was a linen closet. The only thing about the cabinet that wasn't ordinary was the fact of how precisely folded and placed everything was. All of the towels had a shelf to their own size, folded and rolled to perfection.

 

"Weird..." Ez mumbled to herself before closing the door and moving to the next room. She flung open the door with her gun at the ready, but it seemed empty of life. Such a pity as well because it was a nursery. Directly in from the door were two mahogany cribs only a couple feet apart, each with a name written on the end of it in little wooden letters. Ez checked the closet, under the cribs, and under the change table, but they were all without monsters and followed the growing pattern of excessive cleanliness. The only window in the room was directly between the cribs. It was locked securely and there was nothing to report from there. Ez did, however, snatch the baby monitor. Closing the door behind her, she crossed the hall to the next room.

 

Clearly, this was the room of the parents. There was a large bed, a dresser, another monsterless and extraordinarily clean closet, and the other half of the baby monitor on the far side table. Ez grabbed it and checked under the bed, gun pointed. There was nothing there. The window was also locked securely and without damage. Off to the final room.

 

Ez went to breech the room the same way as the rest, but it only opened part way, bounced, and slammed in her face. Annoyed and confused, she slowly opened the door as far as she could and then did a quick corner peek from a crouching position. It was a chair. Blocking the door was a desk chair in a very clean room. Attempting to ignore the odd placement of the chair, Ez checked the closet, under the bed, and the window. All were the same as the other rooms. Exploring the desk, she found school things, a cell phone that would have been charging, and a laptop with Pokemon stickers all over it. She smiled to herself and looked up to the call of James from downstairs.

 

"All clear up here!" Ez yelled as she closed the door behind her and went down the stairs. "Did you find anything?"

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James rolled his eyes. He'd just said the ground floor was clear too. Was Ez wondering if he'd suddenly recall another gremlin attack? Or maybe she was just hard of hearing.

 

"Nothing" he called up again. "I'm going to go check out the cellar. Can you manage the attic?"

 

He figured the cellar should be clear, as if the layout was the same again then there would be no points of entry for the gremlins, especially since there didn't seem to be any signs of them else where. the attic might be a different story though, one or more might have crept through a window or skylight.

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"Yeah." Ez sighed and turned around halfway down the stairs to go up to the attic.

 

She pulled down the latter and snuck up to the attic. It was... clean. Not a sign of dust anywhere that couldn't have gotten there in the last few days. Everything was junk that is usually kept in the attic, but organized. The sweep was easy. She still checked in small crevices and behind boxes. She definitely checked to see if the window was locked. It was and there was no smashing. Her half of the house was clean and devoid of monster things.

 

Ez decided to go off and help James with whatever he had left to do as she was already done. She replaced the latter and found her way to the cellar.

 

"Find anything?" She called.

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When he got confirmation from Ez that she would be okay checking the attic by herself James descended the stairs towards the cellar. As he went down he became aware of a slight humming noise which grew louder with each step. The door at the bottom was locked tight, but James took a not out of Ez's book and simply kicked it down.

 

The room beyond was spacious, well lit and with everything neatly arranged. None of this surprised him. What surprised him was that the neat little rows laid out before him was very obviously not a herb garden. The plants looked a little dry, like they hadn't been watered for a short while, but a small generator purred happily away in a nearby corner, supplying the crop with warmth and light.

 

"Find anything?" came Ez's voice from up the stairs.

 

"Oh yes" replied James. "Just not what we were looking for. Better not let the kid play down here."

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Ez rolled her eyes and started down the stairs.

 

"Could you lay off the kid? I'm sure she's smarter than you thi- Oh." She looked around at what she knew would be the drug bust of the week and smirked. "Yeah. I don't even think I should touch this. Plants die quickly around me." She patted James on the shoulder as she began to go back up the stairs.

 

One of the few relatives that she had actually liked had smoked too much and wandered out into the street in a blizzard. The driver of that truck was fine, but her uncle wasn't. After that, the government of Ontario wanted to crack down on drugs. Her first unit was put on drug cases all over Toronto, helping the police. It was a waste of their time and skills, even if she was still a rookie. She felt her left forearm as she climbed the stairs, remembering her first on the job incident. A defensive wound from a knife going straight through her arm. Hey, better her arm than her chest.

Edited by Quhanta

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Micah rolled his eyes at Erin's challenge, and then, rolling his sleeves up, started digging a little ways away from her. He would turn over several loads of ground with the shovel at a time, and then go through and smooth out all the clumps and roots with the pickaxe. Some time passed like this, as the sun rose higher in the sky and shone down warmly on Micah's back. As time passed, the young man's mouth began to grow dry and he began to feel like he could really use a drink.

 

Looking down at the amount of dirt he'd turned over, fairly significant in size by now, Micah stood up, stretched, and looked over at Erin. "Emily and Petra haven't come out yet. I'm going to go inside to see what they're up to, maybe get a drink while I'm at it." With that, he turned around and went inside the back door, not waiting for the young woman's response.

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Erin just sort of tuned out the rest of the world as she chopped away at the ground, at least until sweat started dripping off her forehead into her eyes. Which made her notice that her back was starting to ache from the continued bend-and-straightening. So she stood to her full height and stretched everything she could manage in one vertical flex and swabbed her face with her arm. Which just ended up smearing the sweat around and streaking dirt across her forehead.

 

Micah said something about going to find Petra, Emily and water and ditched her before she could answer. Rude.

 

She looked around the grass patch to get a feel for how much farther they had to go with the tilling. It looked to be about halfway done overall.

 

Having not put on sunblock and looking to avoid burning her pitiful Irish skin, she balled her cardigan up into a pillow and lay down under a nearby tree, intending to power-nap through the most direct sunlight.

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Reaching the house Mak watched as the gardening squad also decided to take a break, with Erin lying down under a nearby tree and Micah beating him to the house. Mak followed Micah in, hearing Petra and Emily talking further through the house. "Everything going okay?" he asked of their American tourist.

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Ez rolled her eyes and started down the stairs.

 

"Could you lay off the kid? I'm sure she's smarter than you thi- Oh." She looked around at what she assumed to be a functioning herb garden and smirked. "Yeah. I don't even think I should touch this. Plants die quickly around me." She patted James on the shoulder as she began to go back up the stairs.

 

"Nice find. Do you want to alert the gardening squad now or later?"

James stared after Ez in utter disbelief. How the hell could she not recognise a pot farm when she saw one? Didn't she say she was C.S.I.S? He shook his head, internally marvelling at just how bad the authorities were at doing their damn jobs. No wonder people like Mr Durham had found it so easy to carve out their own little empires.

 

James and his brothers had never gotten involved with drugs. Things got far too touchy over control and money and people often ended up dead or worse. The brothers didn't really like killing people unless they had to, so they stuck to much lower risk activites.

 

Returning to the situation at hand James began to look under the tables and between the rows of plants for anything else out of the ordinary. Even down here everything was meticulously kept clean. Someone must have had OC or something.

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Emily continued to talk to Petra about the layout of the garden. Both gave their opinions on where and what should go and both came to a decision on how the layout of the garden should be. But when it came to the conversation of livestock Emily frowned a bit. It’s going to take serious planning on where, how and what. Not to mention some building and securing the area. She really doesn’t want to meet a leopard again. Not unarmed, that’s for sure. She is a good tracker and hunter but with the world in its current state she was a bit unsure of herself.

 

“Building a pond where we can catch fish is fairly easy. Or we could go to the river and set up lines there. My concern is with the other livestock. Chickens are easy. We can even convert one of the houses into a chicken coop and just secure the building. I don’t know about you but I don’t know if I can live off chickens and fish every day.”

 

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(I could have sworn that you said it was an herb garden! I read it wrong. I'm sorry.)

 

Ez shook her head when she got to the top of the stairs. Pot. Row after row of weed in the basement of the most OCD clean house she'd ever been in. She didn't know why she reacted that way anyway; just pretending not to notice and getting out of there as quickly as possible. Hopefully he'd just think she was stupid and not ask. If he did, she'd have to lie because that was a story too personal to tell a stranger that didn't even like her.

 

Before she realized it, Ez had been standing in the doorway at the top of the stairs, facing out. Her hands were clenching the bottom of her shirt, pulling it down like she had before, and she stood staring at the grass in front of her toes.

 

Once she realized what she was doing, she unclenched her fists, looked up, and stepped away from the door frame, all the while hoping that James didn't notice anything or get too suspicious.

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Eventually James was satisfied that the cellar was clear, at least of gremlins, and headed upstairs to find Ez. He found her waiting outside doing nothing useful. Typical.

 

"Well that's one house down" he said walking over to her. "Do you want to move onto the next one or check back in with the others first?"

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(I fixed my earlier post in a way that you don't have to change yours.)

 

Ez cracked her neck as James spoke. He didn't look too impressed with her, but she was running out of f**ks to give for the day due to her lack of sleep.

 

"I want to move on to the next house. What do you think?" She sounded calm, for the most part. Ez just wanted a place to train so that she could blow off steam. With everyone stuck in the neighborhood, due to potential monster/alien attacks, she had nothing to punch and no privacy to train. Her mind was stuck in reality, so she just moved on.

Edited by Quhanta

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"At least with me and Erin," Micah said to Mak as he met up with the other young man. "I'm just going in to get some water - it's hot out there, and digging up soil is hard work. How's things on your end?" he then asked, eyeing Mak up and down a bit suspiciously. Mak didn't look any the worse for wear, so Micah assumed his dissection of the demonic intruder that he had shot earlier had gone all right, but after the events of the previous night he wasn't going to be too quick to assume anything.

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"Fine with me" replied James.

 

He set off, walking past Ez and towards the next house in the row. The door to the second house wasn't locked, so James carefully pushed it open. The hallway beyond was clear, save for a table with a vase of flowers and a coat stand with several jackets hanging off it.

 

"Same operation as before?" he asked looking back at Ez. "I'll go below while you take the top?"

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"Well, I can tell you that it was alive before you shot it, and it is now definitely dead," Mak replied to Micah with a sigh. "I'm an admin assistant, not a doctor, so aside from telling you that it mostly looked like the insides of other animals I've watched or helped dissect I couldn't really tell you more about it. But everything's wrapped up and binned safely away, I managed not to spill too much, and while I do like the refreshing sensation of my skin burning away from the bleach I can at least be assured that I shouldn't be contaminated any more than the rest of us were last night."

Edited by Kestra15

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Following James to the front door of the next house, they found that it was unlocked. Ez nodded in agreement to his plan and climbed the stairs just as cautiously as she did in the first house. This house had a very similar layout to the previous one. She checked the closet. The lopsided towers of decently folded towels was monster and OCD free.

 

The first bedroom was that of a young child. The floor was covered in spilled Lego and scattered toys. There was one empty spot on the floor in the middle of it all where the child likely disappeared from. The closet, under the bed, and behind the dresser were all free of alien monsters, so she locked the window and moved on to the next room.

 

A teenager lived in this room. It smelled, the bed was unmade, there were grunge band posters covering the walls, there were dishes and old pieces of food scattered about, and the room was darkened by a thick curtain. Ez yanked the curtain down and dust flew all about. She coughed a couple of times and locked the window, having to climb over the bed to do both. The closet was far from clean, but monster free. Under the bed was too cluttered to have anything under there, but she hauled everything out, just to be sure. Under the desk and behind the dresser were all creature free.

 

The next room was fairly clean and, more than likely, only used for seeping. The large bed had no monsters under it, the closet was cluttered and free of creatures, the window was locked, and the dresser had nothing behind it. When leaning over the dresser, however, something made a heavy sound and it was like metal was hitting together. She opened the top drawer carefully and sifted through the socks and underwear. There they were, a set of police grade handcuffs. She pocketed those right away. Further sifting lead her to realize that there were no keys in with them in the drawer. Ez sighed and moved on to searching the bedside tables for the keys. No luck, but upon re-searching the closet, she found a neatly pressed peacekeeper’s uniform. Not a cop. Maybe his keys were downstairs.

 

The last room was a small bathroom. The window was locked, the cabinets were cluttered, but otherwise clean. The bathroom was monster free. Ez went to the top of the stairs.

 

“All clear. I’m moving to the attic.” She yelled. Ez thought she’d share her find when they regrouped.

 

------------------------------

 

"I like chickens!" Arwen piped up from between Petra and Emily. "Nanna and Pappy had chickens and I got to help feed them and pet them. They had cows and piggies too!" She grinned widely and looked at each of them.

 

"Ooh! Papa taught me to fish a couple of months ago. I'm not very good, but if you tell me what to do, I can help."

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Wisperlee surveyed her work with satisfaction. The emergency signal was set up to broadcast on both the emergency channel and the popular local radio frequency. The message instructed survivors to go to a nearby house - close enough that they could check on it daily, far enough that ill-to-do'ers wouldn't immediately find the group. She'd even left a message telling the parents of "the Tolkien named girl" that she was safe.

 

She secured the door and windows to make sure none of the creatures would be able to get in, then returned back to the group.

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As the day ground on Mak made himself useful; preparing jugs of fresh water for those stuck with the manual labour, making an attempt at sorting and arranging the supplies they had accumulated over the past week, making a ham-fisted attempt at trying to keep Arwen occupied which was less than successful. Mak wasn't brilliant with children, let alone a stranger they had found in a creepy abandoned hospital. After being rescued from his temporary baby-sitting duty he thankfully made his way out to the field behind their row of houses once more and spent an hour or two digging a shallow pit for rubbish to be buried in, before finally moving some of said rubbish into the bin.

 

As the afternoon drew on he found his back and shoulders complaining more and more, and eventually succumbed to his body's protestations. He didn't want to be seen as a free-loader on the team, dead weight that did little more than feed off the efforts of others, but nights of poor sleep had left his body aching and mind weary. Throwing the last bag of refuse into the pit Mak sighed, stretched, and returned to the house.

 

By now it seemed like most of the teams were wrapping up their jobs for the day; Wisperlee, James and Ez had all returned from their respective hunts, the gardens had been stripped and were well-turned, and an attempt at a second layer of fencing around the main perimeter had been started. All of the group were tired to various degrees and it had been almost by a subconscious common census that they were slowly drifting indoors. Fitting to their rural setting work had ground down as the sky started to show the reds and ambers of an impending twilight.

 

Looking for a change of pace and scenery, Mak had once again made dinner for the group but this time took advantage of the clear evening, warm summer air and general feeling of well-being that came with being focused on a job to set up dinner outside. Raiding the sheds and garages had revealed a few plastic garden tables and a variety of garden chairs, from small plastic seats to folding recliners. The food spread consisted of chopped fresh vegetables, large bowls of cold pasta with dressings from mayonnaise to oils sat in their bottles next to them, and the last of the sliced cold meats. A few cool bottles of beer, cider and soda had made their way out next to large pitchers of water. It was a fair attempt at a garden party, and he even managed to find a pair of iPod speakers that ran off battery so they could enjoy some music without having to fire up the generator, which would not only waste fuel but also drown out the music anyway.

 

By the time others had drifted over to start eating, Mak was asleep on a recliner, half a glass of water on the grass next to him.

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