Seymour and Mr. Fiddlesworth vs. Zachariah Anderson and Bertie
A flash of light and they were still in the room where they had been when Judge North had dropped them off from their creepy chicken dinner of creepieness. Seymour was already making for Anderson, knife out stabbing and slashing at the other man as he ducked and dodged. "Kill him Seymour, so we can all go home!" Seymour lashed out with a kick that would drive into Anderson's kneecap with the force of a sledgehammer if he was lucky, causing the other man to fall down directly onto Seymour's waiting knife blade.
"Stop you idiots!"
Judge North appeared at of nowhere, grabbing both Seymour and Anderson by their respective heads and tossing them onto the respective cots that they had been sleeping in the night before. "Perhaps this round needs some explaining gents."
"This is not a Seymour vs. Anderson round, no, no, no. This is a Seymour and Anderson round. You two numbskulls are working together to find a rather interesting souvenir for me in the city you will be transported to. Your goal is simple; locate one woman amongst a group of survivors holed up in the city and bring her and her little satchel that she no doubt carries everywhere with her and bring her back to the starting location without getting either of you killed. Portal only carries two people, and the woman has to go first. Now... understand?"
Seymour and Anderson nodded.
"Good." A snap of the fingers, a bright flash of light, and Judge North was gone. The entire room had changed to a rather decrepit area with peeling brown wallpaper and the smell of rotting wood heavy in the air. Dust motes played around in the air, tossing and falling in great clumps. And it looked like Judge North had packed them some bag lunches for them to take with them-
Wait.
It smelled like... like...
Chicken.
"Excuse me for a moment Mr. Anderson." Seymour moved easily off of his cot and to a nearby window. Sticking his head out, he vomited down the stairs and catwalks of the fire escape down into the alleyway below. Wiping his mouth, Seymour did not really feel well when he turned back around, remembering the dinner when Judge North had revealed what had happened to Jobo...
"Ready to go Mr. Seymour?" Anderson was prepped and ready to go, a querying look platered all across his face. He had picked and stashed the chicken lunches quite cautiously already, and had his weapons at the ready.
"Ready. Have any other weapons Mr. Anderson?"
"Does a talking rabbit count as a weapon Seymour?" Seymour thought he was joking, until Anderson pulled out a fluffy white bunny with it's nose twitching. Opening it's mouth it spoke to him. "Proof enough?"
Okay. Anderson won that one.
Starting down the stairs, Seymour led the way, padding softly forward with Anderson tramping behind him in his quaint clothing, Bertie the bunny as he was apparently named poking out of his coat to look around and twitch his nose at everything in the world. Dust was tossed up with every foot step, dust clouds thrown up into the air to be illuminated by the murky grey light of the overcast day. The smell of wood rot and dust was thick and heavy in the air, and other smells as well...
Anderson paused at one of the windows, looking outwards with a mourful face. "Seems like London has gone to hell in a handbasket."
"We're in London?"
"Unless some other place has the Big Ben clock tower inside of the city, I would hazard a guess that yes we are in London."
"You know the layout of London, right Anderson?"
"Yes, me and most likely Bertie know this entire city inside and out."
"Good, that might come in handy."
The door opened and shut, spilling the trio (quintet? if you count Fiddlesworth) out into the streets of London. Indeed, it seemed as though London had taken some hits to it's public works foundation, and by that Seymour meant that the utter hell had been bombed out of the city. Plenty of the buildings were empty shells, scarred by craters and gunfire. Large amounts of rubble were in some areas of the street, and the road's surface had cracked and shattered in some places.
Oh, and plenty of corpses were walking about.
"Are they dead?" Stupid question, and Mr. Fiddlesworth railed against Seymour for that.
"Seem to be so. The Rapture must have happened in the ensuing centuries since I was last in London... look at their eyes, empty and white." Bertie snorted.
"I don't really want to look at them at all really."
The undead were really nasty specimens. Most of them had ruined clothing, and the intact pieces were stained black, brown, and red. Most of them had brittle looking hair and white eyes, their jaws opening and shutting as they milled all around the street, their arms outstretched as they groaned menacingly. Black bile like material had a habit of pouring out of their open mouths, dripping down their clothing as it mixed with blood from recent kills to splatter on the ground. Most of the older looking ones had parched, leather like skin that was weathered and rinkled, while the newer converts to the undead had fresh faces and baby smooth skin.
Several of them were already making their way to Seymour and Anderson. "Let's see if we can find a way around these fellows."
Moving along the edge of the crowd, Seymour and Anderson were walking so close that every step had to be perfectly measured to prevent them from tripping over each other. Several of the undead threaded their way through the crowd, shambling slowly towards the pair that was Anderson and Seymour. Most people might think that it was stupid to pick up the pace there and move faster; those people would have done the same in the situation Seymour and Anderson were in.
"I've got a supply cache near by. Need to look for it real quick." Anderson bent down to the ground, Bertie hopping out to snuffle at the ground as Anderson started removing bricks from a particularly old domicile.
"Please hurry Mr. Anderson." Seymour was antsy and had a right to be after all. "I would prefer spending as little time out here with these creatures as much as possible..."
He broke off abruptly. Feeling a hot puff of breaths blowing against his neck, he turned around.
A particularly nasty specimen stood before him now, dressed in a business suit with trimmed and neat black hair matted with fluids that had dried out long ago. One arm was missing, as well as half of it's lower jaw, with it's tongue visible to the world to writhe like a snake on hot coals. Black fluid and blood dripped out of the things mouth to go slowly sliding down Seymour's jacket on his left shoulder as those white souless eyes looked at him.
One fluid motion and the thing was kneeling on the ground, it's head rolling down the street like a demented bowling ball as it's jaws weakly snapped shut and open continously. More fine examples of the undead were coming towards Seymour now, their mouths open wide to reveal black maws of crackd and yellowed teeth stained with blood as they reached outwards.
Knives out, he cut the restless dead down left and right. Blood and bile splattered everywhere around Seymour as he sliced and slashed at every point he could get to for the undead. Limbs and fingers went flying off with hands, with heads going as well. One specimen had it's lower abdomen cut open, trailing it's snaky entrails until it was put out of it's misery.
One shot, two shot. Anderson fired off two pistol rounds at two different zombies, dropping them to ground instantly as they approached Seymour. Seymour nodded in thanks and continued to slash at zombies methodically as Anderson picked up Bertie the rabbit as they went on and on and on about some fellow named Jonathan Swift who thought Irish children were a delicacy. Seymour didn't know who Jonathan Swift was, but sounded like the greatest friend a person could have and the creepiest neighbor akin to the man who stockpiles blasting caps and herbicide.
Anderson dragged Seymour with him as he went into a nearby, mostly intact bar, yelling a variety of curses at the zombie horde. Flinging Seymour inside, Anderson slammed the door, padlocked it, locked the deadbolt and put in the little lock on a chain thingy, barricaded it, blocked it with some extra chairs and balanced a tea cup on top just to be sure. After doing that, with the undead horde hammering on the door from the outside as they moaned and groaned to be let in, Anderson sunk into a chair to reload his pistols as Bertie popped out of his jacket to scamper across the bar in the center of the room.
"Okay, so the streets are out of the question for right now."
"Yes, I believe that they rather are." The dry quip from Seymour brought a smile to Anderson's face as he finished reloading. "Do you have a plan at this point Mr. Anderson?"
"Not really no."
"Neither do I, so I can't critique you on that. We need more weapons though, and we need to know the location of Judge North's primary target, with her little satchel and all. Do you know how we could possibly find out where to start searching?"
"Perhaps Parliament building or Big Ben itself? Both of those places are heavily fortifiable positions... she and some survivors could be holed up into there."
"Mayhaps." Bertie sat on his hind legs, watching both gentlemen carefully. "But if you haven't noticed already, we need to find an alternate way over there. I've beens searching around a bit, and apparently we are on the wrong side of town from Parliament. We could take the sewer lines and tunnels to the streets around Parliament, or we could try to travel by rooftop. Either option is good, though I am a little less interested in both of them for different reasons."
"Sewers I can understand." Anderson shuddered. "In my time, the sewers of London were filled with the homeless and an endless stream of flowing filth and ruin. Plus; body snatchers. They would slit your throat and take you to some doctor aboveground to have them cut open you entire body as they probed it repeatedly doing god knows what... then again it beat skirting police, or so I am told by some people."
"Rooftops would be good except for one reason." Bertie looked at Seymour. "You don't have any fear of heights do you Seymour?"
"None."
"Well that eliminates that problem, though we still have the issue of finding material to bridge ourselves across the street." Louder the undead banged upon the door. "We have no material to do so, but if we go down into the sewers we also have no light to go by."
"Did you check any of the cabinets around her Bertie? There may be some flashlights and guns around here."
"Good idea Seymour." Bertie beamed at him as he twitched his nose.
"You two go up onto the rooftop and see if you can see any sign of survivors. I'll searchd down here for weapons and whatnot. Deal?"
Anderson and Bertie nodded.
Twenty hectic minutes of searching as the zombies knocked and banged on the door furiously, Seymour had hit a relatively nice jackpot. Five pistols, about a thousand rounds, two flashlights, a shotgun with semi automatic firing and about two hundred lightweight shells... they were golden. Seymour could not help but smile to himself.
One undead being stuck it's head through a window.
One undead lost it's head from a pistol shot.
Seymour continued to smile, and Fiddlesworth cackled away inside of his head. Whoever said insanity had no benefits never tried it out for themselves.
Up the stairs he went.
"Found anything yet gents?"
"We found the direction Parliament is in. We also saw a flare go up." Bertie was in Anderson's jacekt again, his little head poking out to look at the world. "Looks there may be people in there after all."
"Good. I have a variety of weapons and munitions with me. And some flashlights." Seymour dug the material he had for Anderson out of his assorted hidey places, handing the spoils over to the other man. "Are we ready to go?"
"Yes. I have also identified that there is a sewer line that runs directly underneath the bar down below, so we can travel along it to get to our destination."
"This is working out perfectly. What do they call these things in books when something just magically happens?" Seymour smiled as he patted a pistol.
"Deus ex machina I believe, though I could be wrong. 'A god from the machine'. Quite nice really. But then again, we are not in a story now are we?"
"So be it. Let's get going then." Anderson was apparently very eager to be off to finish up this particular assignment.
"It rather reeks down here." Bertie had popped his little head up from the coat that Anderson was wrapped in, and spoke in a mild voice. It did not merely reek down here in the sewers, it absolutely smelt disgusting. The sewage lanes had shut down long ago, but what had been left behind was something that was indescribable unless you yourself were there. Rats scuttled along in the darkness, horrid large ones with milky white eyes and their freakish bodies the size of German Shepard one year old puppies. Quite a few of them were stabbed to death if they happened to bump into Seymour and try to start nibbling on his boots. If there was one thing he detested more than anything else in the world, it was rats and filth, and that was from the spleunking days he had done before he came to this thrice damned tournament.
"Understatement of the finest order Bertie." Anderson cracked a smile at that, chuckling to himself. "Thank God that there is not a single one of the unraptrued souls down here. That would be terrible."
All three (four?) of them paused and listened carefully as they continued to walk. Not a sound except for them and the rats. Anderson's tempting of fate had worked out this time.
"So what's your life story Mr. Seymour?"
"Not really an interesting subject." Seymour punted a rat for good measure, it's little body sailing down the passageway to thunk heavily against something.
"Everyone's life story is interesting, is it not?"
"My own is not. I was just a good man doing a good job until I lost it all one night and then ended up how I am now. Armed and dangerous, with a passion for money. Food also helps that." Anderson and Seymour laughed as Bertie eyed up Seymour carefully.
"I would ask you your life story Mr. Anderson, but I am afraid I would get the run around in it, same with what I said, right?"
"Mayhaps."
They walked in silence for another half hour, the rats slowly learning to move away from their heavy boot stomping. As a result, less squishy rat bodies went sailing through the air as Seymour infrequently lashed out with his foot to knock them away.
"Seymour, I think we are underneath the Parliament building right now." Bertie snuffled and pawed at his face. "Think we should take a look?"
"Most likely yes. We do need to know where we are going after all."
"True enough, yes."
After several minutes of locating a manhole cover, climing the ladder and preparing himself, Seymour lifted the lid and had a gun drawn, just to be sure. He did not want any surprises.
He go one anyways. The entire street that this manhole cover was one was completely empty and devoid of all life... live or undead if you wanted to be really specific. Indeed, only rotting corpses that buzzed with flies remained upon the ground, blacka and bloated in the muted sunlight. This was relatively good, all things considered.
"All clear guys."
Anderson climbed up with Bertie in tow, his guns also at the ready. "We seem to have a bit of luck at the moment, don't we Mr. Seymour?"
"Indeed we do. Let's get going before the Horde shows up to mess up our day."
They scrambled into the Parliament building, Fiddlesworth laughing all the while.
"Down on the ground right now, or we will blow your effin' heads off!" The wiry man with the black t-shirt had the shotgun at the ready as more living people stepped our of hidy spots in the building, more handguns at the ready. "Do not even attempt to screw with me right now, or we will hang you outside for the geeks to come and get you!"
"We aren't coming here to shoot at you fellows!" Anderson had his guns raised, Bertie limp against the man's chest as if he was trying to hide himself right now. Seymour had his two pistols up and pointed at two different targets. If they wanted a shooting match, he would by god give them a shooting match.
"Then what are you here for!" Clickings sounded as the safties were flipped off. Seymour could have shot himself right there for not contemplating if they were just screwing with them. "Last seven guys that tried that shtick with us ended up pulling guns on us! We lost four people before they went down in a hail of bullets themselves! Why do we have reason to trust you?
"Look man," Seymour said now, watching as two hardened women turned their shotguns on him. Murder was in their eyes there. "We just came from a friend of ours... he says that there is a woman here in the city with a package, black satchel. You know her?"
"Who, Liz?"
"Shut your mouth." Someone else's voice from the back.
"Listen, we just need to escort her back to the safe place... really, this guy said we would die if we didn't bring her and the satchel back." The fib was easy to say and came naturally to Seymour.
The man in the black t-shirt lowered his weapon. "Why should we trust you?"
"You have our word that she will get back safely. Don't know what this guy needs her for, but I'd rather stay alive than ask and answer questions." Anderson looked pointedly at him.
The black clothed man seemed reluctant but motioned with his head. The woman named Liz walked up, satchel in hand and a grim look on her face. "Ready to go gents?"
She was pretty in an odd sort of way... she wasn't plain nor on the goddess tier, but she had that certain look about her that you just knew would make quite a bit of men fall for her, if most of them weren't already falling over due to decay and rot. "We're ready to go. What's in the satchel?"
"None of your business." Out the doors she went, followed quickly by Anderson and Seymour.
"We are going to be kind of traveling together, so it would be nice to know a few things just in case someone dies. After all, would it not be good to get to know each other well before we happen to die in any case?" Seymour had to walk fast to keep up with the woman's pacing. Anderson had already loped ahead with Bertie and was getting the manhole cover up.
"First name contacts and knoweledge of each other typically ends in a person that you grow close to dying. So no, I'm not interested sir."
That set the mood for the rest of the journey.
"Erm, Anderson."
"Yes?
"I just thought of something really odd here..."
"What is it?"
"We set up a barricade right? In the bar. And the zombies will eventually break through it... right?"
Silence. Then; "Oh hell."
Running down the long sewage tunnels, you know that you would have to squish quite a few rats here and there.
Bursting into the bar, you know that you have only one option. Fight. Guns out and blazing, knives slashing, and demonic laughter in the air... piles of undead stack up before you as you cut your way through it all, sending the undead through the churning meat grinder that is your blade and your gun. Anderson is a good fighter; he wields the pistols well and quite efficiently and guns everything down left and right, and the woman Liz is quite a capable fighter as well. Black bile like material that is commonplace with this zombie horde drips and dribbles out of the dead corpses with the red blood, turning into murky colors.
The street was crowded with the buggers, so many of them that they surged forward to meet us all, the quintet of living people if you discounted Fiddlesworth. The latter screamed and raged with a bloody fury as each kill was racked up by each person in the group, a trail of bodies and bleeding corpses left in their wake.
It was about the time they reached the door of their starting location that they ran out of bullets.
"Perfect, just perfect!" Seymour tossed the guns at a zombie, smashing it's head open like it was a pinata while Anderson said something to the same effect. "Time to make a tactical retreat fellows!"
The door could not open fast enough to let them all in... with the zombies hot on their heels. You could here them behind you, plodding up the stairs in a sort of limply running fashion as they threaded their way up, closing in behind you. You didn't dare look behind you for fear of what you would find.
"North, get us out here!" Seymour howled at the cieling as trapdoors they had missed earlier swung down over the staircase. Bertie and Anderson were quite calm at the moment, discussing something with each other as the zombies pounded on the door with a fury, Liz standing by looking placidly terrified, if that was possible. "North!"
Cracking noises over by the staircase, the doors could not hold very much longer. The few remaining bullets they had left were bein expended very quickly on the zombies, Anderson taking dead aim at each of them as he eliminated them one by one. "Rest in peace, tortured souls." The cry was repeated several times with Bertie's ears twitching.
It was hopeless. North had left them here to die.
Seymour strode over to the staircase to stand beside Anderson, shoulder to shoulder. If this was their last stand, he was going to make it a good one.
"You rang, contestants?"
A bright flash of light in front of Seymour's eyes blinded him with the fury of thousands of suns as he cried it pain, lashing out in front of him as cracking and splintering noises echoed out. Then...
Nothing.
hmm
