tyler_gone | 25 Unicorn Street, Sunday Evening

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25 Unicorn Street, Sunday Evening

The zombie had spent an indignant day locked inside a reinforced closet, alternately chowing down on pork brains and trying to chew or claw his way through the door. He was missing the battle, and that would displease his master.

He was still pounding at the door with fists that had long since turned to mush when the curse lifted.

The fists became living, if scarred, flesh and bone once more, but Tyler kept pounding at the door for a moment.

Then he stopped. Maybe if he closed his eyes and didn't move, people would forget about him entirely until he had actually died of embarrassment. He sat on the closet floor, wishing he had some gum or something to get the taste of pork brains out of his mouth.

And he really didn't want to know why his pockets felt so lumpy.

[OOC: For anyone who lives there, or who might otherwise want to let him out.]

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"Coming right up," Nathan said in a moment of entirely poorly picked words as he reached for his wastebasket and handed it over. Shock was the way of the worst of where he'd been, and he couldn't even imagine where Tyler's head was after so many days of that.

Tyler didn't dare speak thanks. He nodded, hunched over the trash can, and emptied his stomach, then pulled off his shirt to drop it over the top of the mess. "Don't look," he warned. "I'll clean it up."

.. later.

"I killed two people." At least two. Two who he recognized. "What - what is this?"

"This?"

Nathan had killed far, far more than two people. Maybe if he'd bothered to look, he might have recognized them, too. But he learned a long time ago that trying to recognize the people you were killing was never a good move. Not unless you were hoping it was them.

"It's over, whatever it is."

Edited 2009-04-06 01:31 (UTC)

"Over," Tyler echoed, running a finger over his tongue as if that would scrape the taste out. It was easier to focus on that than to focus on the horror movie playing through his mind.

"How am I back in one piece? Is everyone?"

"So far as we can tell, yes," Nathan agreed, motioning to a chair, should Tyler need to make use of it. "It was a curse of some kind. Voodoo, apparently. We took out the source today, in the woods."

He offered a wry sort of smile, at that. "Whatever damage was done, it looks like the worst of it from here on in is going to be what's in the mind."

"Right. Voodoo curse."

A chair. Sitting. Sitting was good. "It's pretty fucked up, in my head," Tyler cautioned, closing his eyes, then blurted, "... I sacrificed a deer for the voodoo priest."

And the other voice in his head was having itself a nice long laugh at his guilt. He firmly shoved it back.

"There are worse things to sacrifice than a deer," Nathan noted, ever the realist, here. "Can I get you anything else, Tyler?"

Look, he'd locked the guy in his closet overnight. He would investigate the door when he had the stomach to do so. "A glass of water, or something?"

He had almost said 'whiskey.' He'd get to that after the water.

"I need to take a shower and stop smelling like this," Tyler said. Even shirtless, he was pretty rank. "Then some clean clothes and ..."

He couldn't say water. "The largest glass of booze you can pour me. Please."

That was why Nathan liked Tyler. The man knew what he wanted.

"The shower is down the hall. I think the Armani should fit you decently until you get into your own clothing. And if you don't mind whiskey, I can provide."

Tyler nodded dully and, without another word, disappeared into the bathroom.

He came out 20 minutes later, after the shower started to run cold and he'd dressed himself.

"Tell me everything," he said. "Whiskey first, but then I want to know everything since I was chewing on Tony's mask."

A grimace passed over his face at that lovely memory.

"I'll do you one up and begin at the beginning," Nathan decided, passing the entire bottle over to Tyler. He'd grabbed it while the man was in the shower, and then he'd contemplated it for himself. And then he'd decided to sacrifice it for a noble cause. "Because there are some parts that I think you may have every right to punch me in the face over."

Like the whole 'knowing about zombies and then not saying anything about them' thing.

Tyler took a long, grateful sip. The alcohol burned, but it was still a benediction, a welcome back to the world. "Can't promise I won't," he said. "I already tried to eat you, though."

"I wouldn't have tasted so great anyhow," Nathan replied dryly, and then he took a breath and lifted one shoulder in a half-shrug. "I have this wild notion that the monsters showing up on the island in the first place were, at least in part, somehow my fault."

Edited 2009-04-06 02:14 (UTC)

"You had brains that weren't wrapped in metal. You would have been a fucking banquet," Tyler said, tiredly. "How was it your fault?"

Algren was making a mental note. Next time the island happened to be invaded by zombies, wear a tin can on his head.

"The field trip on Monday, for the school's gun club. It was a good idea. Go to the mall. Play paintball. The zombies weren't invited, but they showed up regardless."

"How'd you guys get out?" Tyler said. "And wait, how come you didn't tell anybody?"

Because that would have been smart, Tyler.

"We fought our way out. Baseball bats and axes and whatever else the mall could provide to be used as weapons, and everyone made it back in one piece. I stood by the portal. I thought it had closed."

The more he spoke, the more he figured that he really, really wanted to borrow that bottle back.

"Maybe it did. Maybe these are different zombies with very lousy timing. I doubt it." Nathan shook his head, keeping his eyes on Tyler if only because staring at the floor would have seemed entirely too much like he was trying to dodge the blame. "I should have told someone. Looking back, I'm not entirely certain why I didn't."

Aside from the hiding in a bottle and the freaking out and... Well. And the dancing. All flimsy excuses, so he'd suck it up and admit that he had no excuse at all.

Tyler bounced the bottle in his hands, imagining for the briefest instant what it would feel like to crack it over Nathan's head.

He repressed that hot flare of anger, too.

"You thought it was over," he said. "Anyhow, maybe there's nothing anyone could have done. Not like we can go back and change it, anyhow."

"No," Nathan agreed, and he had been expecting that bottle to swing at his head. He had found himself surprised when it never came, as well. "We can't. And I did think it was over. And it never is, when you think it is. The best I think can do at this point is to not make the same mistake again. And pick up whatever pieces are left to pick at."

He wasn't going to say he was sorry. He didn't deserve the self-indulgence that an apology would bring. Not in the face of what Tyler had been through. Saying he was sorry was too much like asking for forgiveness, and that was something he would never beg of anyone.

He had a slightly twisted view of the world.

"No more luring zombies back to the island?" Tyler asked. He knew what Nathan meant; he just couldn't deal with a real, serious, thoughtful answer. "Sounds like a good resolution."

He took another long pull from the bottle before offering it over. "We must have come close to losing the island."

It took great, great resolve to actually take the bottle in a controlled and sane sort of manner.

"Entirely too close," Nathan agreed. And then he allowed himself to take a long pull of whiskey. "There was an assault taking place on the dorms while we were storming the priest's lair. Every day, the radio read off the names of the casualties."

He didn't need to add that it was a nightmare. Tyler probably knew that first-hand.

"I don't remember it all," Tyler said. "Bits. Pieces. I -- I wasn't there." And that was the most horrifying thing to him, really.

"Did anyone die?"

"Permanently?" Nathan considered for a moment- a process that required another long, deep drink, and then shook his head a little. "Not that I'm aware of. Everyone who laid siege to the source of it made it out more or less in one piece. Radio tonight will let us know if the students at the dorms have suffered any casualties."

He took one more long drink, effectively draining the bottle do just about its halfway point (he was going to feel it hard and fast and right away, and he was just fine with that), before holding it back to Tyler.

"That's something."

Tyler took another long sip; thanks to his empty digestive system, he was already tipsy.

It wasn't exactly making him feel good.

"Students always end up fighting in things like this," he said, concentrating hard so he wouldn't slur. "Dunno if it's the right thing. Good they have real battles to fight, but -- not like this. But it's like I keep telling Tony, they aren't exactly kids."

"They've had to grow up too damn fast," Nathan decided, with a thoughtful sniff and a bit of a weave where he was standing. "It probably isn't the right thing, but what else can we do?"

The two students who had been on his team had fought very well. He knew better than to think for a moment that either of them were even remotely new to a battlefield.

"Nothing," Tyler said. "Not when zombies are chomping down on teachers, too. Better they're strong. World's too damn soft sometimes. That's why I started fighting."

"To toughen it up a bit?" It was fortunate that the alcohol hadn't hit him hard enough just yet to make him make the obvious crack about how if you beat on meat, usually you're tenderizing it, not making it stronger.

"I've heard of worse reasons to start," he decided to say, instead.

"My mom died. I wasn't sleeping. Fighting was something I could control. I needed to be more than I was." Tyler shook his head; he knew he was rambling, but he couldn't stop. "I'm not one of the ones who started to save their fucking planet. My planet is as fine as it ever is."

Nathan didn't mind a little rambling at the best of times, he wasn't going to be bothered by it now, and certainly not after he'd drank as much alcohol as he just had.

"As is mine," he decided. "I don't think I appreciated how bad other places might actually have fallen until showing up here. And I appreciate it now more than ever before."

He wasn't allowed to reach for the bottle back.

"The gremlins helped, too."

"That was you in the skirt!" Tyler accused as he made a connection. "I wasn't going to ask. I thought the whole thing might have been a vivid zombie hallucination."

Oh, come on, admit it, Algren made the poodle skirt look good.

"For the sake of what little is left of my dignity, I would prefer you continue thinking that it was a vivid zombie hallucination," Nathan replied. And that wasn't a pout. It only looked like one. "Actually, I was referring to the siege on the priest's lair."

"Wait, you got bit twice?" Tyler winced. "I'll think the first thing was a hallucination if you tell me about the second one."

"No," Nathan shook his head. "I was only bitten the once. The gremlins actually joined us to defeat the... guy."

Hey. The whiskey had just kicked in!

"There was a... gremlin... anti-voodoo good-karma witch-doctor chant thing." He swayed for a moment, and then decided that now was as good a time as any to find a place to sit. "And I was a tiger."

That was not at all what Tyler was expecting, but it had the welcome outcome of making him laugh.

"That's pretty fucking hardcore."

"Deadpool was a sheep for a while," Nathan added, grinning slightly at the laugh. "It was a very unique world-saving sort of mission. I'll probably talk to people on the other teams to see what they had to go through, later."

He'd need the devil's own luck if he wanted to drag what had happened out of the West Team, probably.

Tyler snickered again at the image of Deadpool as a sheep.

"You should. I appreciate you and Tony and Steve sticking me in the closet before I could bite anybody else," he said. "That saved my world a little, right there."

Nathan nodded almost soberly at that.

"I would expect it was something that would have been done for any one of us, were the situation different," Nathan decided. Or, at least, he hoped that they would.

Tyler nodded. "It's a good thing to have friends who run around in costumes fighting crime," he decided. "Even when the crime's you."

"But for the record," Nathan noted, "I'm not rushing out to make myself a suit of armor or anything. I'll settle for being bait and letting the people with the strange clothing deal with the rest."

Said the guy who dressed in a wardrobe that originated in the mid-to-late 1800s.

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25 Unicorn Street, Sunday Evening

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