The Mount, Ex-Los Angeles

[spin_kick_snap]

The last time anyone from Fandom had been in Kathy's LA, the heroes had been living inside the walls that surrounded Paramount Studios, with the exes and the South Seventeens laying claim to everything else. Since then, they'd expanded; the Big Wall pushing the borders out almost a mile in all four directions. In some spots, it was hard to tell that there had ever been a zombocalypse; the streets were clean, the buildings repaired, the blood all scrubbed away. There was a proper school, lots of farms and gardens, several churches, and even a small library. The studio was still the heart of the community, but people had started to spread out and settle. It was still a tight fit, several thousand people into one square mile, but honestly not much worse than Los Angeles used to be, back before the world died and reanimated again.

Life had fallen back into a rhythm again. People got up, got ready for the day. Kids were sent off to school, adults took themselves to various jobs, though there were fewer sales people, baristas, and aspiring actors and a lot more guards, scavengers, and farmers these days. There was a brewery down on Larchmont and a still over on Monroe. Burns Park let people enjoy a bit of nature where the kids could run around and burn off steam and a Gold's Gym practically against the Big Wall. That was where the Unbreakables spent most of their free time, with curious gawkers watching them put more and more weight onto the machines.

It was a bustling little community of survivors, as safe as a place could be, surrounded on all sides by millions of undead waiting to find a way inside to devour them all.

[For them that are there! NFB, and please wait for the OCD is up! Previous entry Next Entry]

Comments

Re: Thursday

[hollywoodex_tras]

Max nodded, for once not making a snide comment. Instead he opened the door and glanced down. "Uhh, so there's no floor here in the hallway," he mentioned idly. "Looks like it starts up again a couple of yards down towards the...living room?"

He was guessing.

Re: Thursday

[rebelseekspizza]

Dante glanced past him. "You can stay up here if you want," he commented. "I mean, this is my deal."

Re: Thursday

[hollywoodex_tras]

Max was looking around the room, his back to Dante. Maybe that's why he quietly answered, "She was my - not my friend. Never really my friend. But my teammate. She and St. George were the good ones. We were the good guys, but they were good. I guess..."

It just seemed right he should help, since he was the reason she was back.

"Besides," he added, turning around and giving Dante his trademarked cheeky grin, "let you miss out on my witty commentary? No deal."

Re: Thursday

[rebelseekspizza]

Dante snorted softly. "Suit yourself," he said, though for once, he sounded genuinely amused.

Re: Thursday

[hollywoodex_tras]

"Also," he said in a conspiratorial whisper, "I like it when you hold me."

Not that that was exactly necessary here. There was about a foot of space between Kathy's side of the hall and the gaping hole in the rest of the it. Looking down, it was easily a twenty foot drop, as the floor of the apartment below them was mostly missing, too.

Still, the floorboards creaked alarmingly under their feet and sagged as they stepped. Not a trek for the faint of heart.

Re: Thursday

[rebelseekspizza]

"I think you can make that," Dante said, rolling his eyes as he glanced from Max to the hallway on the other side.

... He was still getting ready to snatch Max back up if he fell.

Re: Thursday

[hollywoodex_tras]

"You have no romance in your soul," Max informed him, inching down the hall towards where the main rooms likely were. Christmas ornaments would probably be somewhere thataway, right? Because if there was some kind of shared attic or basement storage space, he was letting Dante check that on his own.

"She ever mention where they kept this stuff?" he asked, back flat against the wall. "Ever just randomly mention that ornaments were always kept in the hall closet under the towels or something?"

Re: Thursday

[rebelseekspizza]

"Nope," Dante said. Keeping up the rear - no pun intended - as he shuffled after Max. "Living room sounds like the right idea, though. I don't think this place was all that big..."

A beat.

"I don't know. Where do people keep Christmas shit anyway?"

Re: Thursday

[hollywoodex_tras]

"Most of these places aren't," Max agreed. He was familiar with the LA version of 'shitty old apartment,' even if this was the first time he was in the Koreatown version of it. "Most families have a closet somewhere to stash holiday shit." Or a chest somewhere, but if that was the case, they were probably fucked. So he wasn't going to mention that.

"Where does Kathy keep her Christmas shit? She probably keeps hers in the same place her family did. Most folks who grow up with families do shit like that."

Re: Thursday

[rebelseekspizza]

"And suddenly I feel like I'm about to fail a relationship pop quiz," Dante muttered. "Um..."

Right, think back to last Christmas. "...Living room, yeah. I think."

Re: Thursday

[hollywoodex_tras]

"Okay, now what's her favorite color and what does she do when she's feeling sad," Max asked, because he was an asshole.

The hallway wasn't particularly long, ending in a T with the kitchen off to the left and the living room directly in front of them. The living room was in shambles and the fire had raged long and hot here.

But not hot enough to completely destroy a giant, hardwood table, still surprisingly sturdy looking. And not hot enough to completely destroy the two skeletons by it, one wearing a mostly-melted sneaker that was still pink under the ash and dust.

"Fuck," Max said softly.

Re: Thursday

[rebelseekspizza]

Dante's mouth curved in the wannest smile it had carried in a while.

"Her dad went zombie right after she died," he said. "Raven had to kill all of 'em."

Should he bring the shoe, too? Maybe not. Too morbid to be a momento.

Re: Thursday

[hollywoodex_tras]

"Jesus," Max said again. "Her sister was just a kid, right?"

Not that they hadn't seen hundred of child-zombies, maybe thousands. Still, this slight skeleton had Max's...stomach...twisting. Yes, definitely stomach. That was absolutely the organ that was hurting right now. "Let's just find these ornaments and let's go," he said.

Fuck, if he'd known they were walking into the mausoleum of Kathy's family, he never would have suggested this little pleasure jaunt.

Re: Thursday

[rebelseekspizza]

He had no one else to blame for it but himself, either. If he hadn't brought up knowing where Kathy lived, Dante would've just broken into some Korean-looking store and grabbed something.

"Huh," he said, shooting Max a thoughtful look. He wasn't going to admit the guy had shot up by a few... points of a point in the last few minutes, but still.

Instead of saying anything else, he picked a cupboard that looked... vaguely structurally intact, and started to rifle through the debris.

Re: Thursday

[hollywoodex_tras]

Jesus, how fucking low was his opinion that Max just not saying something dickish over the body of a kid counted as surprising enough to be worth points?

Max poked around a bit himself, not that there was much to see. This place had been hit harder than Kathy's room had been and almost everything had been destroyed. More books, a TV, a bunch of little side tables for what had probably been knickknacks and the like. "How long had her family been in the country?" he asked.

Re: Thursday

[rebelseekspizza]

Please. Max had possessed a demon lord for shits and giggles, and used his powers on people just to get his rocks off. It'd been easy to think of him as nothing more than an asshole, without a scrap of real humanity.

Dante couldn't have been the only one going into this with that image in mind.

"A while, I think," he said. "Kathy only remembers Korea from family trips." His fingers hit on something metal. Huh.

Re: Thursday

[hollywoodex_tras]

"So at least one generation, maybe more," Max said, studiously drawing lines in the soot on the table. "I guess that makes sense. It's the older part of Koreatown you go to for the more established families, the ones who have been here since the nineteenth century or earlier."

He paused, realized he'd been talking in the present tense. "Well, went. I had some contacts in here for supplies."

Re: Thursday

[rebelseekspizza]

It was a box. Or a tin, Dante wasn't sure. He drew it from the wreckage.

"You spend a lot of time here?"

Re: Thursday

[hollywoodex_tras]

"Nah," Max said, finishing the symbol he was making. It was an odd thing, of twists and turns and lines. "My magic is a lot more Western than Eastern. But only an idiot ignores a third of the world's magic just because it's different."

He looked over his shoulder. "You find something?"

Re: Thursday

[rebelseekspizza]

"I think so."

Dante pushed off the lid, looked inside, and found...

"Yeah. Yeah, I think I have it."

Re: Thursday

[hollywoodex_tras]

"Well, what is it?" Max asked, wiping off his hands on his pants, leaving dark smears behind. "I'm getting cancer just breathing in here, I at least wanna see."

Re: Thursday

[rebelseekspizza]

Dante rolled his eyes. He held the tin open and up grudgingly, just enough for Max to see.

Re: Thursday

[hollywoodex_tras]

It was one of those tins that were supposed to hold cookies but inevitably just held sewing supplies, or, in this case, small ornaments. The decorative layer had melted away and the whole thing was malformed, like it had gotten incredibly hot and then left to cool. If Dante hadn't been stronger than he had any right to be, the lid probably never would have gotten pried off.

Inside were the remnants of a bunch of different ornaments, mostly homemade. There were a few charred wooden ones, the kind you bought and painted yourself, and wisps of fabric that had once been bows or angels or god only knew what.

There were only two ornaments that had survived relatively unscathed: a glittery, green vaguely-triangular blob that was blackened on one side and a collection of delicate little fans that had somehow escaped being warped by the heat. They were lying loose now, but all of them had small holes at the base where a string would tie them. They looked very old and worked by hand.

"This one, one of the girls made in school I bet," Max said, pointing to the green blob. "I made something like that myself when I was a kid. It's meant to be a little Christmas tree. And these ones...they look old. Probably came over from Korea with them."

Re: Thursday

[rebelseekspizza]

Dante pressed the tin back shut. "Good," he said, raising to his feet. "I don't know shit about Christmas stuff."

Re: Thursday

[hollywoodex_tras]

Max shrugged. "It's not really my bag, either, but I remember enough about the trappings to fake it. Ready to go then?"

He was.