Room 508, Tuesday Afternoon

[spin_kick_snap]

Kathy was hunched over her computer, muttering to herself. "Raven, what the hell? Don't wander off! No, get back--Dante, how do you have dysentery? Again?! No, I am not stopping this car, there are too many--Dammit, Ringo, how did you break your arm?! Were you AT-ing during the zom--DANTE YOU ARE NOT ALLOWED TO DIE, YOU JERK! Anders, you're a goddamn magic-user, heal somebody! OH MY GOD, DON'T MAKE ME TURN THIS CAR AROUND AND DRIVE BACK TO THE NUKES, SO HELP ME!" A moment of quiet and then, "Hey! Somebody stole my last battery!"

Someone had discovered Organ Trail on Facebook. And had foolishly decided to play using the names of her friends. And had nearly decided to give up on this carful of people and try again. Surely Kira and Ezra would be more sensible during the zombie apocalypse.

"Raven! I said not to wander off! Great! Now you're dead and I have to start over!" Kathy didn't believe in leaving anyone behind. Even in the pixelated apocalypse.

[Open! Link to the conversation with Dante]

Comments

[spin_kick_snap]

Captain of the Obvious, that was him.

"You've gotten typhoid like a hundred times! And a bunch of other diseases. This game thinks you're a frail and precious flower, Dante. I should put a fainting couch in the backseat of this car for you to swoon onto."

Kathy wasn't sure what algorithm was in charge of divvying out the incidental events in this game, but it was amusing her greatly.

[rebelseekspizza]

Dante heaved a big sigh, nudging her door out of his way as he made his way into the room. "I don't get typhoid."

[spin_kick_snap]

"You've also gotten food poisoning," Kathy declared from her desk. She nodded over to her bed and the mini-fridge next to it. She figured he knew where the drinks were by now--hopefully he wouldn't notice the small bottle of vodka in the tiny freezer.. "And cholera. You're a damn mess."

[rebelseekspizza]

"How the fuck does anyone even get all of those at the same time?"

Dante ambled towards the mini-fridge. He was probably too bleary to see where the vodka was, but you were playing with fire here, Kathy. "Is that even possible?"

[spin_kick_snap]

"You've just gotten them all right after each other," Kathy explained, leaving off the part where this was from a silly Flash game. "And--under the right conditions, it probably could be. The existence of on horrible disease doesn't negate the possibility of others. Though odds are good you'd die faster than from either one alone."

This was going to be an important point one day.

[rebelseekspizza]

For one of them, anyway.

"Why are we talking about killing me off with a whole bunch of diseases?" Dante asked, snagging a soda from the mini-fridge.

[spin_kick_snap]

"Juice will make your head hurt less," Kathy advised. "And we're talking about this because your cute butt keeps coming down with random diseases. It's very irritating, because when you're sick, you go through rations faster and it's not like there are a lot of those to go around. I'm constantly having to stop to scavenge and that's hell on gas."

All of which made perfect sense, really

[rebelseekspizza]

Dante held up the soda and opened it, then took a demonstrative swig.

He was just hardwired to be contrary.

"Are you playing a video game or something?"

[spin_kick_snap]

Hey, it was his headache.

"Why, are you worried about getting the sniffles?" Kathy asked, turning to waggle her eyebrows at him. "Yeah, a silly zombie Flash game. It's like--" she paused, realizing that he'd probably never played the original Oregon Trail. "It's a carful of people, trying to make our way across zombie-infested America. You, me, Anders, Raven, and Ringo."

[rebelseekspizza]

"Why are we trying to get across America?" Dante asked, squinting at her. "Why not stick around and just kill a shit ton of zombies?"

[spin_kick_snap]

"Because DC is getting nuked," Kathy explained. "And the problem with staying in any densely-populated area is that the zombies tend to outnumber the ammo."

[rebelseekspizza]

"So you grab a sword or something," Dante said. "Zombies don't do good without braaaains, right?"

[spin_kick_snap]

"Not all of us are amazing sword-wielders who can fall back on guns that don't need actual bullets and can ignore gravity for a little while if we get caught in a tight spot," she reminded him. "I mean, yeah, I'd be fine in a zombie outbreak, but not everyone has our kind of skills."

[rebelseekspizza]

Dante tilted his head, which made it hurt, so he tilted it back with a wince. "Baseball bat?" he offered.

[spin_kick_snap]

"Requires strength to bash through the skull," Kathy pointed out. "It's the hardest bone in the body for a reason, Glowstick." She paused, considering. "Or momentum, anyway. You put a rock in a pair of nylons and whirl that into somebody's head and that'll smash through easier. But that's slower, won't help much if you get surrounded. Crowbar might work, since it's heavier."

[rebelseekspizza]

Dante shrugged. "Still better than running around in the middle of nowhere, spooking when those things get near you," he said. "Probably wouldn't get that many diseases that way."

[spin_kick_snap]

"Presumably you'd have fewer zombies to kill in the middle of nowhere," Kathy countered, leaving her game behind to face him, straddling the back of her chair. "Fewer survivors, too, probably, which means less competition for resources. We still gotta eat, after all."

[rebelseekspizza]

"Yeah, but then why keep going?"

Dante sat down on a bed. Pretty sure it wasn't Kathy's. "Why not get outta DC and then park your ass?"

[spin_kick_snap]

It wasn't. Sigh. Sorry Raven.

"Because the original game this one is based on was about traveling the Oregon trail. This is a version of that old game, only instead of being a settler in a Conestoga wagon in 18-whatever, it's a modern day zombie fest." She grinned at him. "Maybe there's a safe zone there or whatever. But hey, I promise--if there's a zombie outbreak and we have to leave before we get nuked, we can find a nice place to hole up that's not on the other side of the country."

[rebelseekspizza]

"Always gotta fight back with these things," Dante said, with all the wisdom of his barely 17 years, and took a swig of his soda.

[spin_kick_snap]

And his extensive zombie-killing experience, too!

Not that Kathy had any more, other than reading Max Brooks a few times.

"All right, question for you," she asked, resting her chin on her hands and smiling a bit. She was enjoying the conversation. "How do we handle other survivors? Hide? Let the join? Make them join? Refuse to let anyone in at all? You're in charge, General Dante? How do we handle other people?"

[rebelseekspizza]

"See who can pull their weight and keep those," Dante said. "Tell the rest to fuck off."

It came out easy. Largely because he hadn't ever been in that situation. Or anything like it.

[spin_kick_snap]

"So, like, we tell little kids to fuck off?" she challenged. "Pregnant women? How long is the probationary period before we tell someone to fuck off? A day? A week? How long do we live with someone before we tell them they're not good enough to stay?"

[rebelseekspizza]

"Five minutes?"

He shrugged again. "Who the fuck cares about their problems? And who's getting knocked up during a fucking zombie apocalypse anyway?"

[spin_kick_snap]

And this was why she was the leader in Organ Trail, Dante, and not you.

"You think condoms or birth control are going to be high on anyone's list of supplies to grab when you're being chased by zombies?" Kathy asked. "But people are still going to have sex. Biology plus adrenaline is a pretty potent mix." She raised an eyebrow at him. "Would you stop having sex because there were zombies?"

Kathy highly doubted it.