Martin resisted the urge to poke at the spattered brains. It was something he'd always wanted to do, but any killing done in his job was either so tidy that there was hardly any mess, or so much of a mess that there hadn't been anything left to really poke at. He resisted all the same, figuring that as long as bashing in someone's skull was part of the curriculum, he'd get his chance. He swung his nine-iron over his shoulder proudly as they proceeded.

"Hey, don't mock her voodoo stuff, man," he said in a half-joking tone. On the one hand, he didn't personally believe in some of the stuff that she did because it was just too far out and there was only so much credit you could give to someone who had spent much time in a padded cell. But on the other hand... he still couldn't cross salt. There was still that. "Some of that stuff... you gotta respect it."

It was not to say that he was oblivious to her remark about 'good company,' but sufficient to say that he didn't know quite how to register it. In other circumstances, he would have tried very hard to impress a girl like Lixi and probably ended up trying too hard. This was different. This was VERY different. Proceed with caution. Play it cool... aww yeeeah...

"But... uh... yeah... Let's see if they've found anything."

Honestly, all this shy school-boy lovey-dovey crap was getting on Vulture's nerves, but there were only so many times she could beat it into his thick skull that angels were bad news. Some things just didn't sink in as easy.

There hadn't been any noise. No screaming or yelling, or even rustling about in the bushes, so it was probably safe to assume that there wasn't anything else outside of the convenience store. Adja and Jason had already gone in, both glaring accusingly at the bell that rang as they opened the door. But even with their presence announced, nothing came at them and they breathed a little easier. They had gone up and down the aisles, brandishing their blunt objects readily, but they hadn't seen anything. The strange thing being, of course, was that there was no one. Not even a foreign counter-clerk or a scared teenager trying to buy smokes without an ID. It was suspicious, but it could have easily been explained by the fact that zombies were a good enough reason for anyone to vacate the premises.

Taking it as a blessing, Jason immediately opened his laptop and began typing away at the keyboard. His fingers were a blur while he worked. Adja didn't so much watch in disgust as much as she did without any understanding of it. Some technology she understood: electricity, phones, television. But when it came down to things that were wireless, she felt completely at a loss. She wondered if it was true that they caused cancer.

All in silence, of course. There was no need for words, and it seemed like this would take most of Jason's concentration. Conversation was the least of their concerns. That, and... with the exception of being carbon based, they didn't really have much in common to talk about anyway.

Lixi contemplated arguing with Martin as to the intent of her tone, for she had no intention of mocking anyone, but figured it best not to waist time debating theology at this point. "Sounds good, we really should get in there. I'm sure we'd know if something had gone wrong, but just because nothings gone wrong doesn't mean things are alright."

She smiled for a second watching him eye up the splattered cranial matter curiously, then turned and headed inside. She pointed at a nearby magazine rack that looked easily movable, and suggested they move it in front of the one large window. It wouldn't do much good to keep anything out, but it should at least block most of the window and keep them from being easily noticed. After that had been taken care of, she remembered to pull the pins that let the heavy doors metal bars slide into the locked position. Well, at least the door will be solid, to bad the rest of the place looks so shoddy.

Two doors split off from the main store area they were in. One appeared to head out into the garage bays, the other into the back storage and office area she guessed. Lixi picked her brain for a moment to remember if the garages large bay doors had been open or shut when they came in, but ended up kicking herself when she couldn't remember. "Damnit." She muttered under her breath as she cautiously approached the door that led to them. It had a small window, hopefully she'd be able to see from that. The door to the back at least had a latching handle, where as this one seemed to swing freely both direction, best to secure it first.

Jason was still plunking away at the laptop, and Adja seemed to be watching him closely enough to get him out if anything should come through the door once she disturbed it, and Martin... well... she wasn't quite sure where exactly Martin was, but she was sure she could here him moving around somewhere slightly behind her. Now was as good a time as any.

Martin had his nine-iron at the ready poised behind his back in case anything should show up out of the blue. It seemed oddly calm inside the store, but he'd seen enough horror movies not to take that as safe. There was quiet... and then there was too quiet. He began positioning the snack stands in a circle around his sister and Jason like a nest, so that if anything should break through the doors or the garage, they would have to climb over a series of shelving units. In theory, this would allow them enough time to come up with a proper plan, which was somewhere in the vicinity of three minutes.

Once he was done with that, there wasn't much to do, really besides wait for Jason to get done with his search. Jason was mumbling something while he typed, making mental notes to himself while trying to dig up old ideas that before now had seemed ridiculous. He wanted to make sure that the place he was looking for was, in fact, a Thelemic temple and not just rumored to be.

Martin stepped in something that made a sickening 'squish' sound. He checked beneath his shoe out of habit. It was something thick, black. Thicker than blood, and more like tar. Against every instinct that told him not to, he put a finger to the substance and smelled the residue. It was tar. That was odd...

Look up, idiot.

He looked up at the ceiling and immediately regretted it: A layer of tar, six feet in circumference, was stuck to the high ceiling. He could not make out what it was in the middle, but there was a lump roughly two feet deep. He thought he saw legs, arms, like a human bundled up in a tar cocoon, but it was moving. Breathing slowly as if it were sleeping. He backed up, mouth agape. "You... uh... might wanna hurry it up, Patches," he said to Jason.

"Why?" Jason replied without looking up from his computer or really giving any weight to Martin's words. Martin didn't respond, but tapped Lixi on the shoulder and pointed upwards.

"What is that?"

So intent was Lixi focus on quietly opening the metal swinging door to the garage that she failed to notice Martins footsteps as he'd edged toward her. The sound of there talking and moving things had become background noise since she'd known what it was. She jumped and almost let out a shriek as she spun to face him when he'd tapped her shoulder. The Bat was raised but lowered just as quickly when she pulled her wits back about her. To her dismay, her back collided with the door with a loud thump. Lixi froze, listening for anything that she may have tipped off, but if there was something there it didn't seem to be reacting in an audible way.

"What are you on about?" she said, a bit more harshly than she'd intended to. Truth was it was frustration at her own foolish reaction that had her pissed, not Martin. She was about to apologize when she looked past him at what he was pointing at on the ceiling. "What the... I... I have no idea... what that is..."

She took a few hesitant steps closer, then noticed the thick yellowy black substance that was still on Martin's fingers. "You touched it? Never touch a viscous fluid darling." She grabbed his hand and pulled it up close to her face, never thinking to get his permission to do so. "What is that? Is that... oil? Or tar?" She grabbed a grease rag from the counter by the door she'd just bumped into and tried to wipe the gunk off of Martin's skin. "Are you alright? Is it causing you any pain?" Realizing she was bombarding him with questions, she finally stopped to let him answer, but slipped in a quick note to Adja before doing so. "Adja dear, anything coming to mind that deals with things that live in or control oil based substances?"

Finally, giving up on the rag, she pulled Martin gently over to the wash sink on the other side of the door and grabbed the canister of industrial strength cleaning powder she assumed the mechanics used to clean grease and road dirt of there hands and sprinkled some on martins hands, turning on the water for her to remove the black grease. She still had no clue what it was, but she knew she didn't like the idea of it staying on her new friends skin, no matter how minuscule of an amount.

"I didn't think it was fucking alive" Martin defended, trying very hard not to panic. It... it didn't burn, but he had the odd feeling that it should have. That something so viscous should have been hot enough to burn him, but it wasn't. It was cold. Cold as Hell.

Adja had, as well, been trying her best not to panic. She had never encountered, never even dreamed that something like this existed. Her mind was racing, trying to remember if there was anything said in... in anything about this. But there wasn't anything in her memory about breathing tar. "No," she said, staring at the giant black spot on the ceiling, praying that it couldn't hear them. "Nothing. I... I've never even seen anything like this." She had salt, she had sage. Those were her failsafes. She could smoke it out with the sage, but it would just roll off its oily surface like it would have water. Salt did nothing in terms of banishing something other than keep a nice wall between them, and even so it was on the ceiling. And it was made of tar. "I... I think its a demon. Not... not like the zombies, but actually from Hell. " Which means that the Hell's Mouth isn't just filling up, its spitting things out to accommodate, she added silently.

The Tar Demon rolled, as if awaking from its slumber: compressed as if wanting to sleep longer, then opened its single red eye. The eye rolled around in the vaguely humanoid mass of tar before deciding where it wanted to stay. It saw Lixi and grew wide, hungry. An arm formed and shot forward like a whip, wrapping itself firmly around Lixi's arm and pulling her towards it.

"SHIT!" Lixi yelped as the oozing blob of an arm wrapped around her. She could feel the cold of the creatures oily form even through her coat. The leather surface of the coat slipped forward around her arm as the creature tugged her forward. She'd already dropped the bat to try to help Martin, and now had only the cleaning powder in her hand. She already knew it wouldn't help, but desperation made her open the container once more, and toss the whole thing squarely at the red eye that had settled it's gaze on her form. The creature a sputtering unnatural sound in aggravation and pulled at her even harder, yanking her forward enough to loose what meager footing she'd had.

Once her feet were gone and she lost resistance it pulled her a matter of yards in a the span of a second. By the time she caught one of the racks with her free arm and twisted enough to get her in the right direction to brace against the now slowly skidding metal she was already half way across the room to the creature. Her coat was still sliding, worst case scenario she could probably slip out of it, but she needed to be sure the thing would retaliate by grabbing one of the others, or just grabbing her with a different tarry arm. She needed a better plan first, and she'd be damned if she was gonna loose her trusty coat to a greasy blob of demon shit.

She looked back at the others and locked eyes with Martin. It took everything bit of willpower she had to calm herself enough to concentrate to getting a silent thought into Martins head. She only prayed the creature in him would let this much get through for sake of preserving him and the rest of the group, even if it would prefer she fall here.Quick, Martin, head into the garage, give it a once over and make sure its clear! Take Adja and Jason with you! Start trying to find a torch, or some gas cans. This thing has to be flammable. Demons are trying to get out of hell for a reason, and even if the fire won't destroy it, it should slow it down. But remember, there could be more out there, so BE CAREFUL! Please Martin, GO!

It took him nearly a full minute to grasp that she had been speaking telepathically. He shook himself as it registered. "Jason, get your ass up and lets burn this thing!" He grabbed Adja by the wrist and pulled her out to the garage, Jason following closely behind, but keeping an eye on Lixi and the tar monster in case... well.. he didn't know what. Was it going to eat her?

"What are we looking for," Adja exclaimed as Martin began searching the garage for something.

"Something to set this fucker on fire. Gas, Kerosene, a bottle of Jack, ANYTHING!"

"What good is setting it on FIRE going to do?" Her skepticism, however, did not keep her from looking. She spotted two red gas cans along the wall, and rushed towards them as fast as she could without tripping over the spare parts in the garage.

It can't move if its just a puddle on the floor.

"Melt it. Fire will melt it!"

Each with a can of gas in hand, they made their way back to the monster.

"Everybody hold your breath," Jason called out as a warning. "Close your eyes, Lixi!" And they proceeded to throw about two gallons of gas each onto the writhing mass of tar. Fumes filled the air. Martin grabbed a cheap Bic lighter from the counter (there was no chance he was sacrificing his nice silver lighter, not even for a girl).

He lit it, the flame growing so tall and hot that he was afraid the cheap plastic would melt, and chucked it at the monster.

The smell of the gas caught her long before she fully registered what they were doing. Gas splattered over everything around them, including herself. At least he got the message. Sorry coat... She tried to breath a sigh of relief, but choked on the fumes instead. Truth was angels were none to fond of true flame fire themselves. She watched carefully, still fighting with the now shrieking tar creature to hold it's attention, until she saw Martin spark the lighter. As he threw it, she twisted her shoulders and slipped gracefully out of her coat. The air around them wavered and fluctuated as the fumes ignited. The world did that horrible slow motion thing that often happens in moments when adrenaline is high, and the time it took her to dive across the room into Martin felt like it took much longer than it really had.

Spreading her arms wide, she made solid contact with his body, pushing him backwards into the door frame where Adja and Jason stood. The contact with his body combined with the force of the inferno sparking to life behind them sent all four of the sprawling to the floor in the garage. From within the store the sound of the creatures shrieks could be heard through the roaring of the fire.

Lixi picked her head up and looked around. Jason and Adja both appeared to have just been knocked on there asses by all of it, and from what she could tell seemed unscathed. Martin however... oh poor Martin. She'd landed squarely on top of him, and the poor guy was now flat on his back on the concrete. She scrambled up to sit beside him so her weight wasn't squishing his lanky frame to the concrete, then slipped one hand behind his head to lift it a little. No blood seemed to be coming from the back of his head, which was good at least.

"Hey! You ok? I'm sorry, there just wasn't more time to tell you to move. Thank you... Thank you for hearing me." And thank you for letting him hear it Vulture... she thought the last part more internally than projected, but she still had a feeling the creature in him would know. "Everyone ok? Jason please tell me you got something out of all that. I don't know about anyone else, but I certainly don't wanna stick around her any longer than we have to now."

--

Jason sat up, quite startled, and looked at Lixi as she spoke to him. He heard her ask if he'd gotten anything, and was met with the sudden realization that the'd left the laptop on the counter inside, and his bag was behind it. "Shit! My stuff! It's all in there! All I got was an address on the author, nothing authentic enough to pursue as far as the church went. And the worst of it is that the author lives right in the heart of Squirl Hill. That neighborhood will be fucking impossible to get to if the zombies are anything like you're describing, and it's all old row houses, so it's not like we can even pull some super ninja rooftop climbing crap." He stood and edged closer to the door, wondering if any of his things would have survived the blast. His laptop was supposed to be shock resistant, and it was military grade. His hopes raised for a moment, only to be squashed immediately as he felt the sweltering heat coming off the door before he'd even gotten within a yard of it.

A twinge of annoyance showed on Adja's face. An address? She could have found that out with a phone book. Granted, she wouldn't have known what neighborhood it was in or what sort of houses they were looking at or really anything further than the address itself, but she felt a bit like this outing so far had yielded nothing. A large part of this temperament had to do with this being the first time out of the house in a good while, and having to deal with people, of all things. But she gritted her teeth and held her tongue. She tried to look for the silver lining: well... so far she had survived an exploding gas station. Sheltered or not, even she had to admit that was really cool.

"Do you suppose we just walk up to his door and ask?"

Martin was in a daze; more than a daze, really. He hadn't expected to be quite as big as it had been. Of course, he'd expected it to be big... it was always big in the movies, but that's usually an entire tanker of gas, not just a gas-filled room. Pff... physics he thought dreamily. He was vaguely aware that he was on his back, and quite very much aware of a weight on his chest. But his eyes were off in the middle-distance seeing only vague colors and shapes. Whatever was weighing him down was reddish and it was missing its coat. He opened his mouth to reply to the muffled noises, but all that came out was a nonsense sing-song. "Ne me dis pas... oh, this fucking song... build a little birdhouse in your soooooul..."

How lucky it must be, then, that Martin was not the only one taking up residence in his skull. Vulture felt around in his brain, a way to pull the strings, perhaps: to find her way to his feet, his hands...

"You're welcome," she said, not recognizing her host's voice with the amount of smoke and dust. Perhaps Lixi would be too distracted by that to realize who was speaking. She coughed, an unforseen circumstance of taking control of a body only minutes from explosion. She turned his head, trying to get him to focus his eyes. A futile attempt, for there were still some things that she could not control. But she could feel his fingers, flexed them out of curiosity. Lifted a hand to look at it with his unfocused eyes. Glorious! I don't have to be locked up in this hoodlum's head all day.

"Well, at least you seem functional..." Lixi muttered as she stood up. She reached down and grabbed the hand he was holding in front of his face. "Come on now, can you stand up?" She gave a little tug to try and help Martin to his feet. After helping him get righted, wobbly though the boy was, she spun back to Jason.

"Stay here. I'll go check and see what's left in tact in there once the flames dull down a bit more." She looked at there surroundings, and was happy to notice the garage bay doors were, in fact, closed. Walking over to the nearer of the two she peeked out the windows. She frowned to find that her suspicion had been correct. From what she could see 3 Zombies now hobbled there way from the directions she could see. One of them was a good way across the empty field across from the store, another was on the road, and the third was still at the far side of the parking lot. The explosion must have drawn them out. She glanced back at the still bewildered looking Martin. Great, now's about a peachy time to have him knocked out of his wits. Least he's alright. The doors to the garage looked heavy enough to keep a fair number of those things out, but she'd rather not wait around to find out.

A small man door to the right lead out to the lot without passing back through the main area. Perhaps it would be better to have the car in here when they were ready to go. After all, it was only a few yards away from the tire bay, no reason she could hurry up and pull it in, then shut the doors back up after.

"Adja, would you be willing to lend me a hand?" Her voice echoed in the empty garage as she called across it to the girl. She eyed up the swinging cable with the control for the doors on it as she waited for the girl to come closer. "I wanna bring the car in here before the crowd out there gets any worse. I'd rather be in it should we need a forced exit than trying to force our way out to the car. If I go out that man door, try to kill off anything in the immediate area, then hop in and pull the car up to the door, will you open it till I pull the car in, then hit the red button to make it do the emergency drop close?"

Adja took a deep breath and nodded. She could hit a button, sure. It was defending their little stronghold that seemed a more daunting task. She held her frying pan firmly with both hands and kept it poised for an attack. Her mind was racing at the thought of what might happen next. It was becoming more and more of a mystery and that scared her more than anything else. Nothing she had studied would have prepared her for what she was doing now. She promised herself that if she made it through this ordeal that she would never leave the house if she could help it.

Yes, Martin was standing upright, but he stumbled around when he walked; feet feeling as if they had balloons attached to their soles. Vulture was helping as much as she could, but was severely unused to having legs. It was best to lean up against a wall, and so she ordered his body to do so. She flexed and contracted his hands, trying to figure out how muscles worked. She enjoyed pretty much having his body all to herself, but the adjustment period was frustrating. It didn't help that his legs were unnaturally long and she kept tripping over his giant awkward feet. But after a few moments of figuring out which strings pulled what limb on this meat puppet, Vulture had significantly more control. She stooped low and picked up the nine-iron that he had dropped when he picked up the gas can.

Adja's back was turned, and with the exception of the weak human weeping over the loss of both his laptop and his girlfriend in a 24-hour period, she was alone, now that Lixi had left to get the car. Using the nine-iron as cane, Vulture clumsily crept up behind her. Hatred filled her as she raised the nine-iron from the floor to rest in his opposite hand. I could have been you, she thought bitterly. And we could have ruled this city by the time you were fifteen, this world by the time you'd turned twenty. If you hadn't cast me into this clumsy fool, you wouldn't need your precious research: the knowledge of the Universe would have been ours. But this was your choice.

The golf club was raised over his shoulder as if ready to strike, but his hands shook the moment Vulture's intent became clear. It felt heavy in his hands. It was not that it was physically weighty; it was the same as it had been before. But now the head of the club became heavy from the promise she had made, the orders she had been given. She tried to push his body forward, but it was like trying to walk through a wall.

I'm a human head/ and my best friend is also a head... Man, this radio station loves TMBG... Martin's sing-song voice began to resurface from sleep, but faded just as quickly. She took a step backwards, lowered her weapon, and forced a heavy breath. That stupid condition, she thought. It was clear to her that if there was going to be revenge, it would have to be indirect. But for now she had control of his body, even if for a short time.

What Jason had seen when he looked up was Martin raise the club against his sister, and his first reaction was to jump up and get between the two of them. There was no indication of any internal conflict from his viewpoint. Angrily, he shoved Martin out of the way. "What the HELL is wrong with you," he demanded.

Martin stumbled backwards, Vulture suddenly realizing how sore her new body had been made from when Lixi shoved him out of the way of the explosion. She tripped over his feet a few times, but steadied herself by hunching his back. She had better come up with a good explanation quickly or this would be a very uneasy ride. "Bump on the head, you know," she explained. "I couldn't see properly and thought she was a zombie." Martin's eyes flashed, narrowed. A smile curved on his thin lips. "Its okay. I see better now." She brought the golf club back down to be used as a cane.

Jason thought something was odd about this, he was acting strange. But Martin's excuse made sense, about as much sense as anything else lately. He stared at him for a moment as if to say that he would be watching him from now on, but left it at that.

Adja, hearing the ruckus behind her, whirled around to see Jason attacking her brother. She still had the frying pan poised in her hands. But never one to take things at face value, she kept her eyes on her brother instead of immediately confronting Jason. Martin's eyes had that animal glow to them again, something that she'd only seen on the worst of days. And his speech was different. She didn't know exactly what was going on, but she had an inkling. "Let him be, Jason," she said, positioning herself so that she could keep an eye on both the two men and anything that seemed intent on coming through the door. "He's just disoriented and doesn't know what he's doing." Now would not have been a good time to tell the least-prepared member of their rag-tag team of misfits that one of them might very well be intent on murder.

She was, though, intrigued that the voice in Martin's head had not succeeded.

No sense hiding anything anymore. Lixi inhaled deeply before she opened the door, and let go of the facade she maintained. It wasn't a difficult thing to do, but it still held some sub level of her concentration in capture. The zombies probably wouldn't be to bad, but you never can be to careful. Eyes closed, she tried to muster up some of the old perception she used to hold, some heightened sense of awareness. All she could feel out at the moment though, was Vulture. A swirling deep green vortex of what felt like pure anger and wrath, wrapping around the human blip she knew to be Martin, though she couldn't feel him through his parasite. A little more focus felt out the fringes of Adja's racing subconscious first, then the sorrow pangs of Jason's current state. Guess that won't help much, best to just go with what's dominant. She took one last breath to steady her hand, picked up the excessively long, heavy wrench she'd spotted on the floor, and grabbed the door nob.

Pressing her ear to the door she tried to still her breath and listen. Nothing seemed to be making and kind of noise close to the door, but one of the approaching zombies, probably the one in the parking lot judging by the volume, was making a loud gurgling noise. Lung trauma to the corpse more than likely. The door made a loud screech as she tried to open it slowly, and one of the creatures outside squealed, fallowed by slightly faster scuffling. Abandoning the slow idea, she hit the lock button on the handle of the door and slid out, closing it heavily behind her.

The closest of them didn't appear to be moving very well at all. Car crash victim as well? Closer inspection showed it, or what used to have been an older women, was missing one arm, and most of her torso had been shredded by very human looking claw marks. Guess it makes sense that the elderly and the helpless would be first to go. She cringed when the reality of that thought crossed her mind. If there was one thing she'd always had a week spot for, it was children. She couldn't stand the idea of a child suffering, so much so that she'd even turned on a religious charge and let them fall quickly into madness after they'd abused their own small son. She shook her head violently to chase of the thought of any o the children, and worse, infants, that had been harmed by this, and reminded herself that when they were that helpless, they would have been carried off to wait in a glorious plane of existence filled with all a child's dreams till they could be sent back in a new body for another try.

The zombie that had made the howling noise and hurried to approach was evidently one she hadn't accounted for. She head it's raspy, strained breathing from behind her just in time to turn and bring the wrench she was using as a club solidly against the side of its head. Bone crunched and a large bit of it's already mangled jaw flew off. She made as quick of work as possible of ending it, but the wrench proved a clumsy and ineffective weapon. As soon as it stopped moving, she darted past the next closest one, who was the old women, and grabbed a heavy looking shovel out of the still open trunk of the car. A quick glance in through the windows of the garage as she headed back towards old women was just enough to catch the resolution of the small altercation inside. "HEY! We've got enough to worry about! Don't start killing each other!" She yelled, though they apparently didn't hear her.

She rolled her eyes at the group inside before getting to her work. The old women was easy enough to finish, even with the other two zombies rapidly approaching. The next one became slightly more complicated as the two both seemed to reach her at nearly the same time, but a little cardio back across the road narrowed it down quickly as only one of them could even remotely keep up. Once those two were dispatched she made a quick loop around the garage, but found nothing else. The back entrance to the building was still firmly locked, which was a relief at least. She rounded the front and glanced in through the window of the shop, which had since blown out completely. The remains of the demon that had tried to eat her was still flaming, as were a few items about the shop, but for the most part the fire had subsided.

Lixi headed back to the car, and took one last look around. All seemed a little quiet for now, though the city itself still worried her. Everything had gone quiet already. She'd assumed there would be at least some fighting back still. Instead the whole place was silent. Not even cars were audible from what should be a crowded exit rout on the way out. She thought surely people would have been trying to escape. The phrase "Out of the frying pan and into the fire" came to mind as she stepped over the remains of the first zombie and climbed back into the car.

The short coupe yards from the cars parking space to the door of the garage were tedious. Everything about this vehicle seemed loud to her, and in her mind she was signaling everything in a mile to there presence in this quiet wasteland that used to be the fringe of a town, but she still managed to turn the car and back up to the garage door without much incident. Adja must have been watching, for the door opened, and slammed shut immediately after the nose had cleared it's threshold.

"What the hell happened in here?" She grumbled a little as she got out of the car, but didn't really expect an answer. "Well, nothings in sight outside, but in the time we've been in here, the whole damn city went totally quiet. No gun shots, no vehicles, no sirens, nothing. I can't even feel anything coming from there, and with as much shit as has gone down, you think there'd be a massive output of fear, anger, pain, something. But I'm getting absolutely nothing. I don't know what it means, but I don't like it. The next phase of all this shouldn't have started yet, and even if it had, it certainly wouldn't mean absolute silence. This is all getting even more unsettling than it already was." She glanced at Martin's body, aware now of Vultures control after having tried to push her perception, and pushed roughly past it to approach Jason.

"Come on, I need your help." She grabbed few of the rags laying nearby and looped them around the handle of the door, forming a long leash, then covered her face with the cleanest of them. Handing Jason the end of the rags tied to the door she nudged him towards the wall on the hinge side of the door. "When I tell you to, I want you to open this door, and keep it open unless I tell you to close it. The thing in there doesn't seem to be moving, but that could change. It's barely on fire, so there's no telling how long it will last."

Jason opened the door obediently when she nodded, closing his eyes against the smoke that came billowing out. Even if the flames had died down, the heat from inside the room was still like a toaster oven. To his dismay, the melted chunk of plastic that used to be his laptop was the first thing Lixi slid back out the door. Maybe the hard drive is still in tact. It should have been protected by the outside at least. His bag came flying out next. It didn't appear to be in to bad of shape, but there was no telling what the heat had done to it's contents.

A few more minutes passed with no word from Lixi or anything else coming out the door. She'd found the bag and the laptop within a few moments, so what she was still doing in there was beyond him. Stepping around the door he tried to peak in, but couldnt see anything through the wall of smoke. "Hey! You still alive in there? What are you trying to do?" He wondered if angels could die from smoke inhalation, but was soon answered with a very pissed of Lixi barging back through and throwing a smoldering mass on the floor.

"Son of a bitch!" She kicked the crumpled mass of what used to be leather, and smoke flew off of it. "You can shut it. There's nothing left in there. The thing might be able to reconstitute itself eventually, but right now it's just a giant puddle. I pushed a bunch of ash into it and tossed what was left of a stack of singed newspapers onto it, and it seemed to soak right into them, so my guess is it currently has no control over itself if it did survive." She hunkered down over the sticky black mess that used to be her trusty coat, and tried to pry it apart, but burned her hands right away. The black leather put off a horrible smell from it's charred exterior. Undeterred, she grabbed a screw driver and a pair of needle nose pliers from the work bench, and headed back to work on the coat.

"Uhh... Lixi, I think it's dead. What are you after anyway?" Jason knew he'd been heart broken over his laptop, but this girl was really obsessed with a coat.

She didn't answer him, and instead kept digging until she finally found the opening of one pocket. She bashed it a few times with her hand to make sure the coals on it had gone out, then started to dig. This pocket was the one that had her knife in it, and a small black wooden box, that didn't appear to have any obvious opening point. the box barely fit through the top of the pocket as she took it out and lay it on the floor by the knife. A few more seconds of searching with the tools yielded the other pocket, from which she pulled her very singed, very warm, but miraculously undamaged notebook.

She gave a sigh at the ashes of what was left of the small protective charm she'd carried with her for a few century now. It had been a gift from the ones who'd saved her back in Roanoke, but apparently it's mojo had warn off before today, or maybe just finally been exhausted in the escape from the demon. At any rate, it was gone, and so was the last ties to her old friend, and the last humans she'd truly cared for, until now at least.

"Well, I'm ready to get the hell out of this place. Anyone have any suggestions?"

Adja had returned to her usual paranoid state, keeping most of her attention on her brother now. Between that little exchange and the nagging feeling that something wasn't quite right about him at this moment, she had made a very good guess that her brother was still unconscious. What she did not know was the real reason why he didn't kill her and put it up to Jason's interference. She would have to be careful.

"Jason said he had the address for the author of those articles. Its a start," she suggested rather unhelpfully. Jason was still mourning his melted computer. It occurred to her that perhaps he had not memorized the address and she felt the twinge of regret for her suggestion.

"Who are we looking for again," asked Vulture, trying her best to mimic her host's mannerisms and general state of cluelessness. When Martin had been in control, he'd only heard snippets of the conversation as he'd been ordered about, and Vulture by association only knew as much as he knew. He had been too excited to get started when they'd begun their voyage to the gas station that he didn't ask questions. So now, with the buffoon out of the way, Vulture could ask as may questions as she wanted without being interrupted by his bouts of ADHD.

"Elliot J. Banta," Jason reported. "He wrote some propaganda about Thelemists in the area awhile back. Lixi thinks they might be connected somehow."

"Thelemists," Vulture scoffed, then remembering who she was supposed to be: "What's a Thelemist?" It was then that she noticed what Lixi had taken out of her pocket. A notebook? What was inside it that seemed so important? It was intriguing. She would have to explore this further if she retained control long enough.

"Thelemists are a group of religious/cultist hedonists that worship self over god and invoke everything from the Egyptian gods, to the great elder gods of lore to help them achieve there goals. Lots of blood magic, sex magic, and ritual. Their temples are usually well hidden in very lush settings. A corporate penthouse, the top floor of an upscale hotel, places like that." Lixi shifted uneasily as she noticed Vulture looking over what she'd been doing. There was something about this creature that made her very uneasy. The idea of it being in control of the body made her nervous on many levels, especially the most basic defense of a friend way. "Jason, do you know the address, or should we start scowering for a phone book?" The last part gave her an idea.

"As a matter of fact, we really haven't tried to phone anything in town yet have we. Maybe we can get a beat on what's going on in there if we can get in touch with somewhere downtown. Police, radio station, anything." She glanced around the room, and seeing no phone, started trying to think what could be a good next choice for both a phone, a phone book, and maybe some food. A gust of warm air ruffled the tattered material that covered her back. And a new shirt... "I'd kind of like to at least try to figure out what we're rolling into before we take off driving into what could very well be throngs of mindless killing machines, but after we exhaust that option, I'm all for trying to see if this guy is still alive. Judging by his articles that you showed me, Adja, I'd say he's probably a pretty paranoid kind of person. Maybe he's stayed locked in and is still alive."

Jason looked at her and racked his brain for a moment, trying to remember the exact street the address had been on. "I think it was on Mayberry... but it could have been mullberry... or manchester? I really don't remember. I'm sorry guys. I wasn't expecting to a see a demon dripping off the ceiling. I think it was box 487 though, and I remember his name pretty well, so maybe a phone book would work. Most of them have maps in the front, so maybe, even if we don't find his address, I could look at that and find out what street it was. I vaguely remember where it was on the map. Also, there's a super store around here somewhere I think, they should have a phones, food, and, if I'm lucky, a laptop I could rip apart and put my hard drive in, so if the phones don't work, we'd still have that option. "

Lixi frowned at Jason's suggestion. Super stores were usually 24 hour affairs, which means they'd probably be crawling with the undead. On the bright side of life, they would have clothes to. A shirt would be nice. Rather than making a decision, she just shrugged and looked at Adja, then to Martin. "Well, you know what we face between here and anywhere. Martin," there was a snide and bitter note tot eh emphasis she put on his name. "You don't look well enough to drive, dear. Best you let me until you get to feeling a little more like yourself. I'd really like for that to be soon, if you could."

A grin a mile wide grew across Martin's face. Oooh, she knew what was up. "By all means," she said quite obviously giving up the façade, but not outright giving up on control. After all, Martin was swirling somewhere only clinging to consciousness by his untrimmed fingernails. She leaned in to Lixi, and whispered. "But I'm not making any promises. " She said this in the most ominous way she could, for she found Lixi's discomfort to be incredibly entertaining. The very idea that she could still make someone feel more than uneasy was something that she'd missed. But though Martin was significantly subdued, he was still there. For someone who personally had little power of his own and was little more than a peon, his consciousness was a strong one. And when he came back, she expected him to take full control of his body once more without so much as even trying.

Though, if they reached the epicenter of this Gate... perhaps the circumstances could change. She enjoyed that idea.

"So we're off to raid a supermarket," Adja asked skeptically. But she imagined that in this sort of situation it was unavoidable, and she certainly didn't have any better ideas. She began composing a list of things that she would need, since there was no sense in having morals about it. She wondered just how her frying pan would hold up against an attacker. She might need something heavier.

They headed towards the car, "Martin" taking the front seat, Adja and Jason taking the back. After the incident with the golf club, she wanted him where she could see him.

Lixi shuttered a little, though she did her best to hide it. Somewhere in her mind she scolded herself for it. What was it that made this creature more ominous than having Arminos, someone she knew full well had nothing but contempt for them all, in there midst. Just before climbing in the car, she hit the button to re-open the large bay door, then nearly dove into the drivers seat. Her hand hit Martins as she did. His skin felt like it was burning up. Perhaps it was just that she'd still been in her more natural form, which made her inherently colder, but this still felt unnaturally hot for a human. She began to wonder what effect Vultures control was having on his body, but so long as she stayed in the marble skinned state, she'd have no way of knowing if she was correct in her observation.

The cars 8 cylinder engine roared to life, and she thought to do one last thing before pulling out of the old service station. The gas gauge was reading a little over 3 quarters of a tank, which should be plenty to get them where they were going, if they ever made it there, even in a gas guzzling muscle car like this one. She hit the gas hard, like she'd always seen the bad ass hero's do in the movies, and tore out of the garage. Gravel and dust kicked up in the stations lot in their wake. She justified this as creating noise and a cloud to draw things to where they'd been rather than where they were going, but the truth was it just felt good, even if she was far to old to get the hype about cars.

"Hey..." her voice was a little less spiteful this time. Concern twinged into the undertones, but only for Martin himself. She could care less of the beast within burned itself out, so long as it didn't hurt him. After shifting into 4th, she lay her hand back on top of his for a second comparison. "Maybe it's just me, but it feels like you're running a little hot. You sure everything's ok?"

Jason rolled his eyes from the backseat, not realizing the hidden intention of what Lixi was doing. To him it was just a blatant display of unnecessary affection, and after loosing his Sophia, the last thing he wanted to see were two other people getting snugly in the middle of an apocalypse. An apocalypse he was stuck in, in the car, with the snugly people at that. His brain clicked into the mind set of a jealous kid wanting attention, and he shoved his torso into the front seat, leaning hard on the two's arms to force them apart. "You did say we shoudl check the radio, didn't you?" He clicked the cars old stereo on and begin trying to tune through stations.

A few emergency broadcast stations were coming across, all talking about some state of civil unrest, and urging people to stay in there homes and lock there doors. Lixi silently whispered a prayer, even though she didn't know who she was saying it to, hoping that most of the people had been smart enough to listen.

They'd been through 3 very similar sounding service announcement stations when suddenly a human voice came blaring through the speakers. "What is up my zomborific friends! This is DJ John-dog still holding out and givign you a big old holla from the WKSS radio station. Now, we've managed to get a few survivors strangling in here, and don't worry, my boys and I aren't gonna shootcha if we know yer human, but we sure as hell aint gonna come get you either. If you can make it past the crowd of zombies we've acquired at the base of the building, and prove to us you're a living breathing human by climbing to the top of the loading docks and successfully typing in the code 43625 in the key pad to get through the doors, then hell, welcome home brotha! In teh mean time, lets keep the hits a comin! Here's soem JAson Aldean and my fa-vo-rite of his songs, titled Johny Cash, comin your way. After that, we'll try and take some callers if any of you still got enough breath in you to call. Let ol' Johny know what your situation is! Cause the police, 911, the fire station, the pope, hell nona them fuckers are listenin to you anymore!"

Lixi Rolled her eyes. "Of course, the first sign of life we get, and it's rednecks. They who have the guns will prevail I suppose. At least we know we can have a back up plan if the Thelema thing falls totally through, though I'm not sure what good these guys will do us."

Vulture pulled Martin's hand back at the coldness of Lixi's marble skin. The temperature change was jarring, as well as she could expect from someone who was for all intents and purposes dead. But yes, much colder than she should expect. She hadn't noticed it before, but he seemed to be running a fever. Beads of sweat were starting to form on Martin's forehead and his hands were shaking. Shaking... not from the movements of the car or from being out of practice... but loss of control. "I'm fine," Vulture snapped, a defense that should have been more than a sign that something wasn't right. She could feel... something...

When you're following an angel/ Does it mean you have to throw your body off a building.... Oh mon dieu... What does this button do? I feel like I'm floooooating...

"Somehow, I don't think they'll appreciate a nerd, a thug, a ginger, and for all intents and purposes, a witch joining them in their apocalypse party." She realized a bit late that she had offended everyone in the car. Her way of dealing with new and frightening situations was an unhealthy one, but it was very hard to stay positive today. It was also not in her nature to apologize. "What? That's all they'll see. And when the situation goes all powderkeg, they're going to be blaming us." She folded her arms at her chest defiantly. "Just saying... we shouldn't put too much faith into it."

Martin wasn't offended in the slightest at being called a thug, but that was far beside the point. He was in a thick fog, but it was getting thinner by the moment. He had the feeling that he was at the bottom of a pool and slowly rising to the top on a giant bubble.

Damnit. He's coming back. She gritted his teeth and tried to push the bubble back to the bottom. But try as she might, he still rose. She could feel her handle on his body slipping. Giving into his persistence, she receded. There would be other opportunities, she was certain.

And when the smoke cleared away, he realized that he was in the car, strapped in... with no idea how he got there. He blinked a few times and the animal glow faded from his eyes.

"WOAH, man," Martin said putting a hand to the back of his head. "Fuckin' weird, I tell ya." He rubbed the bridge of his nose as if that would soothe the headache. He was only vaguely aware of why he was sore all over, and wasn't even vaguely aware of how he'd gotten into the car. He wiped the sweat off his forehead, perplexed. "Did you see that explosion, though? It was like BOOM! So anyway, how did I get in the car? My head hurts like a bitch."

Adja stared at the side of his face for a moment, trying to decide if it was him or if the spirit had just suddenly gotten a lot better at mimicking her brother. "Its good to have you back, Martin," she said enigmatically.

"Thanks, sis. Did I go somewhere?" Something about this wasn't right, he deduced, but he persistently insisted that there was nothing wrong with him and put it up to his sister being weird again.

Lixi smiled at the sound of Martins familiar tones, but kept her eyes forward until she'd worked her way back into the facade. She remembered how poorly he'd reacted to her natural image before and saw no point in jarring him further. She lay her hand back on his for a moment to see if his temperature stabilized from being back in control of his own body. "Glad you're back with us Martin. You had me worried for a moment. You just weren't quite looking like yourself. I think you may have gotten a mild concussion when you hit the floor in the garage."

Jason rolled his eyes from the back again and reached up to slap Martin hard on the shoulder in a gesture he passed off as friendly. After all, he had no problem with Martin, no matter how weird he was acting back in the garage. It wasn't his fault some silly angel was toying with him, for as best as he could tell, Lixi could only be using all of them. What reason would she have to care about any of us anyway? Hell she was only in this spot because Sophia dragged her in, and look what she let happen to her. He gave Martin the quick run down on how they were heading to the local super store to stock up on some stuff, presuming they could fight there way into it in the first place, then they were gonna try and finish finding the Thelema dudes address, and go on a suicide run to his door step in the faint hopes that he was still around. He was just getting to the part about the dj they were listening to when Lixi cut him off, rather rudely in Jason's mind.

"Adja, do you put any stock into scrying or any of the seeing types of spell work? I know this sounds silly to all of you, but we really are nearly running blind here. It'd be nice to get any kind of a prediction of the road to come." Almost as if on que for what she'd just said, the Dj's first caller popped up on the radio.

A frantic man's voice spewed out of the speakers, rambling about how they'd set up shelter in some heavily secured office building down town, but then suddenly some crew of what they'd thought to be military rolled up outside. "It was madness... They all jumped out of a big, green, military truck, like a hum-v or something. They started gunning down zombies, so we thought they were here to save us. A few people ran up to the doors and started cheering them on, and then... they... they... they just shot them... shot them down in cold blood. A few of them came inside and started picking off everyone they saw, even after some of the other survivors had tried to tell them we weren't infected. I only survived because... because I ran. I ran and hid... like a coward. I left everyone else there to die, and I ran into a store closet and hid under some tarps the painters left last week. When it finally stopped, and I heard the truck drive off, I came out, and everyone was dead. They'd gone around and blasted all their heads clean off. I don't know who these guys are, but I've heard other gun shots throughout the day. It sounds like they're going around doing this everywhere they find survivors. What the hell did we do to deserve this? Is,... is this the government? Some kind of super soldiers? I mean, these were big, big dudes. Bigger than anyone I've ever met before. And their faces, they were all, messed up. "

Lixi reached down and clicked the radio off. The only word to escape her lips was just a quietly muttered "Shit..."

"Scrying? Do we have that sort of time?" She knew how, and she had tried it before and the results weren't altogether disproving of the theory behind it. The only way she knew how to scry was with water. And she would require a bowl. And quite some time. "If we're going to do that, it will have to wait. I will need supplies".

"Then its a good thing we're going to a supermarket," Jason retorted bitterly. He was starting to feel very insignificant by comparison with the rest of his company. He wasn't a fighter. He wasn't magic. He wasn't supernatural. All he'd had was Sophia and his computer, both of which were now either kidnapped or melted. He'd been getting left out entirely up until their trip to the now smoldering convenience store, and now that that was done it seemed like the only reason he was even there was so that he could continue to give them information with little to nothing in return. This apocalypse was bogus.

Martin was concentrating on the voice on the radio. "So... what is it? Are they just... mowing everyone else down in case they're a zombie?"

"No... they could care less about the zombies. They're a clean up crew. They're hear to neutralize the threat of exposure. This explains why everything went so silent. If we could get a signal from a radio station further out of the city, I bet you there'd be reports of wide spread wild fires all around the city, or some kind of radioactive disaster, chemical warfare maybe, who knows what exactly, but something that would give an excuse for a full military lock down of the greater city area. It'll be totally locked down by a "private security company" contracted by the government... Both sides of this war infiltrate governments on the highest levels, so I really can't say I'm surprised a clean up crew from up top would be sent in guise of private government sanctioned soldiers." Lixi stared straight ahead as she spoke, and pressed the petal down as far as she dared without jeopardizing control. She wanted off the road as quickly as possibly.

"This is bad news, for all of us. Best case scenario, they find Joel before they run across us, and they either take him out, or he destroys them. At least then we'd be down to only one threat." She clicked the radio back on, realizing that the radio station would most likely be a major target in the near future.

"Jason, if we can lock down the store, or a back office, or something, and get you access to some new electronics, can you run some checks, see if you can get into any national networks? I know this may be asking allot, but if you can get into one of the security companies networks through a ground line, maybe you could get into there system or satellite or whatever you'd need to see if we could get a location on the crew they have in the city, and steer clear? Would they track us from that? I really don't know much about this accept what I've read in some science fiction books and conspiracy articles. I just really don't wanna run onto these guys. I know them. In fact I used to be part of them. This won't go well."



Jason had been quietly listening as she spoke, trying to keep track of the dozen or so different things she just tossed on the table. His disposition did lighten a little at the idea of a new found challenge, though a challenge was exactly what it would be.

"Wait wait wait... bad like, how? Are we talking military arrest bad, or are we talking we all die horrible painful deaths at the hand of pissed of angels bad?" His questions were answered only with a silent, vacant look on Lixi's face. "Ok, gonna assume horrible death then. So let me get this straight, presuming we don't get gunned down by some troop of militant angels first, you want me to survive getting past whats probably going to be a sea of violent undead, help you secure a giant super mart, piece together enough of it's crappy, low grade electronics to pull of a major endeavor, hack into yet another, way, way more complex system, all in the vague hopes that there's still enough network left in all this to try and find them. Then, once I do, you want me to hack into a government level security network, hijack there satellite, get the info we need, and set up some way of tracking their troops, and do it all without getting us noticed or putting a big beacon on our backs that says 'Here we are! Come kill us please!' Sound about right." He paused after this tirade and took a deep breath. "Well aside from the fact that it's damn near impossible, and down right suicidal, sure! Why not. Sounds like fun."

"That's the spirit," Martin said exuberantly, completely missing Jason's sarcasm. After a pause, he realized that he and Jason didn't share the same disposition. It amazing how someone could stay so obliviously positive in the middle of a war that essentially meant that no matter who won the people in the middle would still get screwed over. "So... angels in the military, huh? I bet that was a bitch during Don't Ask, Don't Tell." He waited for positive feedback on his, admittedly, lame joke; but was met with silence.

Adja rolled her eyes. "Now is not the time. Martin." She sighed. "If we can salt the perimeter, that will take care of anything that will want to come inside and we'd just have to deal with any monsters that are left indoors. I've never smudged a place of that size before, but as long as I keep sage burning it could disorient anything on a lower tier of corruption long enough to keep them at a manageable speed." That was all she had to offer for now, aside from chants and things that were of questionable usefulness. She didn't have anything for the 'cleanup crew.' She didn't even know where to begin.

"Well then, I guess lets do what we have to do and move on. Getting out of this city alive just became a non option. Guess we have to figure out how to get by in the city... well, presuming they don't carpet bomb the whole place and gas the sewers... wait..." Lixi wanted to smack herself for not thinking of it sooner. "Jason! I know I've asked you to do allot so far, but maybe we don't have to do much more than find this guys house. This town is old enough that it should have some really old, sizable sewers right? I mean didn't the rivers once almost pull a lake Erie and catch fire once because of all the pollution running right out of the city into them?"

"Err... yeah.. I guess. Why?" Jason didn't like the sounds of where this was going, but if it meant he didn't have to hack into a network that could get them spotted and killed instantly, he'd take it.

"Maybe you can just pull the schematics for the sewers and any service tunnels and we can work our way through down there. Yeah there might be a few walking corpses, but at least there wouldn't be streets full, and probably not a trigger happy sweeper clean up team." She slowed the old muscle car a little as they turned into the parking lot of the giant super store. The employee end of the parking lot had a dozen or so cars, but otherwise only one or two were in the regular lot. Maybe they'd get lucky and not get to many creatures inside from it happening so late. A few zombies roamed the lot, but not enough to worry to much about. She ran one down that stepped out in front of them. Poor car. She thought as blood, hair and some purifying flesh splattered up over the hood and windshield. "Adja, I'd just like to say I am so glad you're here. Anything you can do to give us an edge and buy us some time is fantastic. Jason, you're the key component once we get in there. And Martin, well, you know what we do." She smiled an almost sadistic, cold smile. She'd forgotten how much stress a little of the old ultra violence could release. She killed the engine as she hit the shifter to slide into neutral, then e braked just as they took out two flimsy aluminum poles meant to stop cars from coming up the handicap raised ramp onto the sidewalk, and cut the wheel to slide the back end practically up against the door. "Lets deal with the remaining ones in the parking lot since we already have there attention, then we'll head inside. Here we go."

The both of them cringed as the car broke through the flimsy barrier. Did they really think that something as frail as that would bar destruction from human stupidity. That certainly shows a considerable amount of faith in humanity, Vulture commented quietly. There was no response from Martin, who was busy just thinking how incredibly cool this was. He felt indelibly significant in his role during this apocalypse scenario as what was quickly becoming the 'badass fighter.' He liked that. He liked that a lot more than he liked being a messenger boy. As the four of them vacated the car, he twirled his golf club proudly in his hand, a grin forming on his face.

Adja, on the other hand, was nervous. She clutched her frying pan closely to her body, trying with all her power not to shake (which, incidentally, only made her shake more out of spite), and running a set of calculations in her head. Though she would never admit it to herself, she was jealous of her half-brother. It was so easy for him to adapt to this, whereas she was constantly having a nervous breakdown. Killing didn't come naturally for her; it seemed to for him. Though, she supposed that he had plenty of help in that area; both internally and externally. Knots formed in her stomach when she thought about it: would he have become the criminal he was if it weren't for the thing inside his head?

But these thoughts were for another time. Zombies were advancing. This seemed more important.

A shambler limped its way towards, wearing a reflective vest. Presumably, one of the cart pushers from the store. Martin thought about making a joke about how there wasn't much difference between a cart pusher when they were alive and a cart pusher when they were dead, but he had trouble composing it in his head and concluded that his joke would probably not be well-received after his last attempt at humor. Some other time, he supposed.

It lunged for Adja, probably sensing her as a weak-point in the ensemble, and she was slow to react. The zombie caught her in mid-swing, latching onto her arm with grubby fingers. She shrieked and shook, which only encouraged it to cling tighter, trying to pull her closer for a bite.

"Sis!" Martin hesitated to fight it. His usual take on this was to face it head-on with as much force as he could and it had worked for him the past few times. But he couldn't take a swing and risk hitting his sister or pushing the zombie closer to her. He held his club ready for an opening, but the flailing was making it hard to get the opportunity. "Shit."

Meanwhile, Jason had a better angle and a different weapon: he almost always had a view of the zombie's exposed side, and a curtain rod. Temporarily discarding his normal role as 'the tech guy,' he backed up to gain momentum and ran full-speed at the zombie, thinking that he could use it like a spear. The not-quite-sharp end of the rod drove into the torso of the zombie, just below the ribcage. It didn't kill it, unfortunately, and he had not expected it to. What it did do was loosen its grip on Adja's arm, and her flailing sent it enough distance away to get a clear shot. She hit the zombie's face with a powerful backhand, making a resonant "Paaaaaaang" as the frying pan hit the crumbling bone of its jaw.

Jason swung the curtain rod, the zombie still attached but fighting, guiding it forcefully to the ground. Bone hit pavement with an angry CRUNCH. The zombie tried to get up, but its legs were attached only by failing ligaments. It turned its gaping mouth towards him as he took the curtain rod from its chest cavity, and tried to attack him instead. But leaving its mouth open gave him a chance to destroy the head. He positioned the curtain rod firmly in the zombie's mouth, pinning it to the ground. With one forceful movement, he pushed down as hard as he could: the rod pushed through the zombie's mouth into its brain, and the clawing slowed, then stopped.

It was about the time that Martin had said "Shit" that a second zombie (this time a woman who he was sure didn't have all her teeth before she became a zombie) decided that he was her target. They had been circling each other, the zombie wanting to make the first move but with Martin keeping a fairly safe distance from her it was proving difficult on her end. Finally, she lunged at him in a moment of desperation and he took a heavy swing at her. It knocked a lovely hole in her face and slowed her down, but she was still after him. He dodged out of the way with surprising grace for someone with such long legs and took a swing from the back, aimed at her head (which still held remnants of the most hideous weave he had ever seen). Her head snapped around, but that only served to show her where he was. "God damn this one's got gusto," he said, gritting his teeth. Finally, he used one of his giant awkward feet on his long awkward legs and just kicked the zombie woman to the ground to hold her in place. He pulled his club back. The force of his swing ripped the woman's head off, but did nothing for destroying it.

"SOMEONE GIT THE HEAD," he called out as it rolled around on the ground, trying its very best to look like the most frightening thing to ever come out of the trailer park. Adja took care of this by smashing it repeatedly with the frying pan, holding all the grace of an enraged drunk gorilla. When the deed was done, she refused to look at it.

"That was two," she said grimly. "How many are left?"

Lixi had grabbed a tire she'd found under the front seat and dove out, making it a few yards from the car before she heard Adja's cry. She'd been quickly moving to meet the only zombie in the lot that seemed capable of running, or as close as they seemed to get, thinking the fastest ones the most threatening as none of them were exactly rational or intelligent. She turned to the side in time to see a shining neon blob grab her companion, but Martin and Jason both seemed to be on it. The footsteps of the advantageously dexterous one she'd been heading towards were almost to her even at it's shambling gate. Better deal with you first. Lixi turned back to it, whipping it solidly across the jaw with the wrench she still had not replaced, then bringing her other hand, now equipped with the tire iron, up from the other side. Unfortunately, the tire iron proved to be an even less effective weapon than the wrench, as it's cross shape made it bulky without much weight.

One of the bars of the iron caught on the zombies puffy vinyl jacket, throwing off her swing. The motion failed to make contact with the creatures bandanna covered head at all, and instead lodged in the side of it's neck after tearing a hole in the over stuffed fur trimmed coat. The zombie looked to have been someone in his late 20's, extremely white, but trying very hard to look like a late 90's rapper. White fluff exploded from the cheap jacket, and thick, darkening blood oozed out of the wound in the creatures neck. Either it's spine or it's jaw made a cracking sound as it righted the direction of it's head, though not the angle, and glared with fierce empty eyes at Lixi for a moment before lunging at her.

Loosing her grip on the ineffective tire iron as the corpse launched forward, she abandoned it, and stumbled backwards, twisting to keep the would be gangster body from getting a solid grasp. She swung again with the wrench, this time making a fairly solid contact, which seemed to stagger her target. She used this to her advantage and quickly brought it down once again on the creatures head, from the top this time, and finally heard a satisfying crunch as the skull cracked. It made one more lunge at her, making just enough contact to push her backwards as she brought one last strike down onto it's head. A small chunk of scalp and bone flew as the wrench sunk deep into the gray matter, then made a it slid back out of the falling corpse.

Lixi stopped and looked around for a second, seeing Martin chasing a head about the parking lot, and Adja still in tact, and only about 3 more zombies left. "Oy! Everyone alright? You've got two slow movers heading your way, and it looks like the only other one is stuck in that car, maybe we'll save him for last. I'm gonna take a quick peek around the corner to see what this sides like, then I'll come give you..." Her words were cut off by as quick intake of breath as she felt cold hands on her shoulder. Idiot! Look first, then talk! she thought as something dragged her backwards between two truck trailers. that were pulled along side the building.

She twisted in the things grasp, struggling to free herself. Turning enough to give it a quick kick to the side of it's legs, she managed to at least get enough leverage to pull back far enough to turn and see what she faced. A tall brutish man in a dirty stained wife beater, at least 6'3" and well over 200 lbs of both bulk and brute had been shot cleanly through the chest, leaving most of his body fully intact for the zombie to utilize in death. A blue tarp hung in shambles from a cord around his midsection, and judging from the deterioration of his skin, he'd been dead long enough that he'd barely missed the cut off for getting into hell before the gates closed. Poor fool must have been shot, and someone was trying to hide the body.

the thought of 'Poor fool' vanished from her mind immediately as the hefty creature now bore down on her with all it's force, throwing her to the ground and landing on her with all it's mass, arms slashing violently at her, teeth bared. It was everything she could do to keep it from tearing into her face with it's teeth. It's cold fingers clawed viciously at her skin, sinking in deep enough that she felt blood forming in the gashes it left in a few places, while bruising and battering her ribs, arms, and chest the rest of the time.

The creatures growling, putrid mouth was gnashing less than 4 inches from Lixi's throat now. She creamed from the pain of the things beating on her torso as she fought to push it off, arms already shaking and exhausted. Suddenly, blood and bits of bone and tissue splattered across Lixi's face, and the thing went completely limp, slumping down over her arms like a ton of dead weight. Lixi hurried to shove the corpse, now missing the entire back half of it's cranium, off to one side. As soon as she did, she found herself looking directly up the barrel of a silenced TAR 21 assault rifle a mere couple of feet in front of her.

She froze, instantly recognizing the symbol on the full body suit of combat armor. Confusion set in when she realized there was only one person that she could see. The sweepers were usually just that, in a sweeping formation. By the time you saw one, you'd see a whole line of them. Her curiosity was doubled when the rifle lowered and the person holding it stepped back a few paces, then reached for his mask. The over sized militant towering over her pulled the small voice sensors off his throat as he pulled the full face gas mask off, leaving both to hang off his uniform.

"You have GOT to be fucking kidding. Lix? Why the hell am I surprised. Joel's behind this, so of course your not far behind. I thought you'd be dead by now little sis." The soldier extended a hand to her.

"Jeremiah! What the hell are you doing on a sweeper team?" Lixi leaped up without his help, and tossed her arms around her older brothers neck. "And for the record, Joel and I parted ways a few millenniums back." He pushed held her for a moment, but then grew serious, and pushed her back, holding her at arms length.

"God Lix, if you were as smart as you are stubborn you wouldn't have to ask. I couldn't rank high enough to get any other missions down here. How else was I gonna check up on you. What the hell are you doing in all this anyway?" He'd been about to say more when his look went blank and he touched his free hand to his ear. He quickly grabbed the voice sensor and pressed it to his throat. "The stores been cleared out sir. Nothing but a few roaming dead left in the parking lot. Some street thugs rolled up in stolen car, but they've been taken care of. I picked off everything inside, walkers or living, just to be certain. Proceeding east to rendezvous." He let it drop again and looked at her once more. "Look Lix, I don't have time to explain or even to talk. There's about a dozen of us out here right now, split up to sweep the outskirts. Therms showed this place had some survivors, so I got sent here. Do me a favor, get inside the store, I already wiped everything out. In the sporting goods area they should have some of those thermal blanket things for extreme cold, grab a few. If you here a helicopter coming, take cover, and wrap up in one of those to dodge the thermal sweeps. Stock up, and for god sakes, put a shirt on, and then get the fuck out of here. We'll deal with Joel. You can't fix this this time. Get out of here, and get far far away. If anyone else from the house sees you... well... you know what they'll do. I already took enough beatings for having a traitor for a sister, I don't need them finding out your alive." He started to march past her, never looking back. Lixi thought about what he said and looked down, realizing what was left of her shirt was now hanging off her in strips after the last attack.

"Wait! Miah!" He looked back at her sternly. "You... you got punished, because of me?" He turned away and kept walking. "Hey! There are 3 people up front of the store, they're with me. Please... don't hurt them ok?"

"I know, and I won't. Ditch the car, go low profile. And sis... you're welcome. I can't agree with what you did, but it doesn't mean I'm not still your brother. Gotta watch out for my little sis and her dumb ass standards." With that he turned and headed toward the back of the store quickly without giving her time to say anything more.

In the midsts of using the crania of undead as practice for his short game, Martin heard silenced gunfire. Funny thing about silencers is... they don't actually silence anything. Guns still make noise, and it was a noise he was used to. He noticed that Lixi was missing. The very first thing that he assumed was the cleanup crew Lixi had been talking about, but his brain skimmed over that quickly enough to jump to the worst possible scenario: the zombies had learned to use guns.

"Shit," he said, and quite impulsively leapt over the twitching carcass of his victim and ran towards the two semi-trucks where the sound had come from. Oddly enough, his long legs did not mean that he could run fast: they meant that he ran awkwardly, although with bounding steps. With his nine-iron ready for action, he slid underneath the semis and through to the other side, poised and ready to defend Lixi from the gun-wielding monsters.

"Alright, where is it," he declared while rolling through to the other side. But when he got to there, there was only Lixi: for the most part unharmed. He pulled her into a protective embrace the very moment that he managed to stand upright, ignoring how cold her skin was.

And at the thought of skin, he noticed that her shirt, which had already been torn when he'd met her, was almost completely gone. It hadn't been so noticeable when she had her coat, but the coat was now long gone. At the touch of her stone-cold skin, his face began to turn pink.