apocalypsehowcomm | Over the hills and far away LOG [OPEN + Closed prompts]

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Over the hills and far away LOG [OPEN + Closed prompts]

Who: George Milton + various
When: July
Where: Various locations in Gloucester, on the train, in and around ADI
Summary: TDM Prompts + July catch-all
Warnings: scopophobia; paranoia; unnatural animals, thalassophobia; mild scopophobia, bodily harm, stalking, bullying, altered perception, alcohol abuse, discussion of mercy killing/murder, mob "justice," gun violence

Train Home

George can be found in various parts of the train throughout the ride home, the dining car, the passenger area, the scenic window look-out, or the sleeping cubbies when it's dark and late. Pick a place if you want to talk to him about the events in Wolf's Pen or anything else. He's quiet and a little subdued but approachable and willing to talk.

Birdswatching

Maybe it's because he has spent so much of his time outside in his life, or maybe it's because he has always been extra wary of eyes on him, but it doesn't take George long at all to notice something is very off about the birds in the trees and in stealthier spots beneath bushes on the ground watching.

He pulls the brim of his LA Dodgers ballcap lower to conceal as much of his face as possible when he faces you and says, "This is a new one. What do you make of it? Think we ought to cut patrol short?"

If they're just watching, that's one thing. There's no guarantee they'll keep it to that. In his thin, short sleeved t-shirt and jeans, he doesn't feel nearly protected enough from sharp beaks or swarming talons. Not all of those birds are small or harmless, if they got it in their heads to get punchy.

Current Events

Riptide

((OOC: Please note, I'm doing 2 of these. 1 rescuing someone else, 1 being rescued. After that, George would be getting out of the water and not getting back in. First come first serve.))

1. Rescue

George has been enjoying himself in the water, a good swimmer even if being in the surf is new to him. He's swimming slow laps out beyond the breaker line when he notices you shoot past him, and whether you realize you're in trouble or not, he realizes it. "Hey!" he shouts, changing his trajectory almost immediately.

"Hang on! I'm coming for you!" He picks up speed to cut through the water to catch up.

"Relax if you can. If you fight me, we's both gonna drown."

2. Help!

Well, he'd only just managed to get someone else to safety. Whether the current shifted or he somehow managed to get further to his left than he intended, he feels himself very suddenly in a strong pull and sweep. Instinctively, he goes to his back, face out of the water and as little of him under as he can manage. It's still very fast, very far, and he's feeling both nervous and a little queasy when he looks back toward shore.

That's a long way to swim when a body is already tired out. He's looking for anything he can grab onto, and if not, trying to scull sideways to get out of the worst of it.

Poseidon Quivers

George is no artist. He'll be the first person to say it, but building sand castles isn't half bad. He's enjoying himself except for his legs going to sleep under him. He has just finished a rounded turret with a bucket when he's standing up and trying to walk it off. "Damnedest thing," he mutters.

He's wearing a LA Dodgers baseball cap, a plain pair of red swimming trunks that hit mid-thigh, and a cheap pair of sunglasses. His unfortunate permanent farmer's tan and very white legs are on full display, the latter covered with sand.

We Feast upon the Flesh

"You little bastard!" George is swatting his ballcap unsuccessfully at a seagull that just lunged in and stole his entire hotdog out of its bun. "Did you see that? Unbelievable!"

OR

George is sitting on a lounge chair hunched over a plate of food protectively and watching out for any sign of bird movement with paranoid eyes. He's eating in quick, decisive bites. If you draw close, he says, "Better watch your food. Those damned birds are out for blood today."

Spot the Difference

((OOC: Just one thread for the actual artifact, please, since it doesn't make sense to me he'd continually handle something that hurt him. I'll take repeat threads for the other injuries appearing later. First come first serve for the knife part.))

Wearing a pair of thick leather work gloves, George has picked a box and begun carefully looking at, taking pictures of, and cataloging the items inside. He's not keen to discover any weirdness. It's part of the job, and after the events in Wolf's Pen, he's both more resigned to this aspect of it and a little more confident in his ability to handle things.

He has a knife in gloved hand he's turning over to look for odd markings on the blade or handle. A strange sensation stabs through him. He glances down to see a spreading red stain on his white t-shirt on his right side over his ribs. "What the Hell?"

Setting the knife aside, he untucks the shirt and begins rolling it up carefully. There's a five inch gash across his ribs, not quite deep enough to need stitches. "You got a better angle on it. How bad is it?"

OR

It's lunch at the cafeteria. George is digging into a sandwich and some chips when a long wound opens across the back of his left hand. He drops the sandwich and grabs his hand, grimacing in sudden pain. "Aww, Hell, not again. Don't suppose you could grab me a handful a' some of them napkins, could you?"

He's bleeding onto the tray and table despite efforts to stop it with one hand clamped hard to the back of the other.

OR

It's another morning heading out for patrol around the perimeter of the dog park. George seems cheerful enough if a little subdued, his left hand bandaged and his ballcap set a bit low. He doesn't like the idea of the birds able to read his expression easily. He's setting a rapid clip until he suddenly stumbles and grimaces.

"You gotta be kiddin' me," he grumbles. "Hold up. I need to check something." He hobbles to take a seat in the grass off the sidewalk and moves to pull off his left work boot.

Studying

George can be caught in various places around ADI with a study book from the DMV. He doesn't try to hide it if he's caught with it but will need to be approached or spoken to if someone wants him breaking away from his work to engage.

SOL/Handwave Prompts

((OOC: Feel free to pick anything from this list as a log prompt if you want something lighter or fill it out if we've threaded at least once before.))

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

"Yeah, I don't know either. I didn't feel nothin' through my hand or arm. Jes' suddenly cut up." He watches him with the med kit, glad there was something like that around here. He supposes it makes sense given what they're dealing with.

"I can't tell if I got pressure on it. Hang on." He carefully peels back the blood soaked shirt just enough to look. "Not as bad as it was. This seems to be workin'." That's a relief. It's a cursed object but maybe not a cursed wound.

As Martin digs around, his head is racing with what that knife could even be. If it wasn't even touching and it cut him-- well, with a cut like that, it must be a Slaughter item. But how are they going to move it? Maybe he can just put a box over it and then shuffle a paper under like a particularly unruly bug. Gosh, he wishes he had Sasha here.

He snaps back as he remembers there is a man bleeding and grabs medical tape, standing again to look at George. "Okay, here, let's-- let's move the shirt and put this on, okay? Just press it down and I'll, uhm, I'll stick it on, and then we can tie it a little better."

"You do what you gotta do, 'Doc,'" he says, trying to put as good a face on this as he can with a little humor. He does as he asks, wincing from the sting of the soaked fabric peeling away after it had started to seal a little.

"Jes' tell me where you need my hands." He'll do as he's instructed and try not to think too hard about how he just got cut by a knife he wasn't even really touching. After a certain point of puppeting vines, staring flowers, rock creatures, and suspicious acting birds, he has it in his head that you just go ahead and accept all of that, one and done, or you drive yourself crazy and get caught with your pants down sooner or later because of denial.

Martin almost pipes up that he's not a doctor and then thinks better of it, because you know what? Very much not going to help the situation right now. Right now he has to focus, so he concentrates on getting as many bits of gauze as he can into one pad for George to press down, and then he's just gonna tape it down as tightly as he can. And then maybe another wrap over that. Yeah. Sure. Okay.

"How do you feel? Are you-- lightheaded, or, uhm-- p-particularly murdery, perhaps?" You know, important questions from the guy in very close proximity right now.

Pulling all of that off later is probably not going to be the best experience he's ever had by a landslide. He can deal. It's preferable to free bleeding for who knows how long? He moves his hands out of the way for the final pressing down of the tape. Small spots of red are already soaking through the gauze. He'll need to hit the infirmary later. Soonish later.

"Naw, nothin' like either a' those. It hurts. Not anything fierce. About what you'd expect from a slash. You OK? I know this was a shock." Not to say they couldn't expect odd effects from handling these sorts of things. It doesn't mean it goes down easy.

Going to a real doctor is absolutely the next step, once blood stops pouring out of George's body and they can do something to notify others of danger of the knife. But bleeding comes first, so bleeding it is. He puts as much pressure as he can to try and stop it, and borrows an ace bandage to just hold it down a bit better without breaking his ribs. It's fine. This is fine.

Martin does have it in him to laugh a bit when George asks about him though, giving him a little smile in a way he hopes isn't rude. "Oh, it's-- it's fine. I've been here for a while, so this is, uh... not, n-not even close to the most amount of blood that's happened to me. Or others."

Truthfully, though, he's thinking a lot more about being back at home, and the last... however amount of time he and Jon spent trudging through the wasteland. Frankly he hopes he never sees it again, and if he does a good enough job here, he won't and neither will anyone else.

"Good," he says. "I seen some stuff. Enough to get a fella lightheaded. People gettin' caught up in them combines, not payin' no attention. Mule kicked. All kinds a' bad stuff." A woman with a broken neck as peaceful as an angel in a sunbeam. He winces a litle.

"I think we prob'ly got this about is pressed in as we's gonna get it. You think you could call me a cab or something? I don't wanna try to walk back like this." It wouldn't be the smart thing to do.

"Safe to say that knife there's one a' the stronger things." He nods toward the shelf with a bit of a dark look. "I'm glad I wasn't down here alone. Thanks, Martin."

He hisses between his teeth a bit at the thought of someone caught in something meant to shred wheat, and ends up settling on something more like Jared's bone garden, twisted living flesh in bits and shreds. Martin swallows hard, trying to get the picture out of his brain, and just reminds himself that's what he's fighting for-- or well, against. That's what he's here to stop.

He shakes himself out of it as George starts speaking again, and nods hastily. "Yeah, that's-- wouldn't want you walking down the street like that." Martin fumbles for his phone, but as he's putting in the information, he looks back up towards the knife.

"What are we going to... do about that, exactly? We can't just leave it here for someone else to find."

He looks around for any boxes and packing material, seeing one medium sized ones and a sack of styrofoam peanuts. "How 'bout we label it and knock it into a stuffed box? Tape it over? I don't mind bein' the one to do it, since it awready got me once." There's no sense in two of them getting cut up.

A little more digging turns up a sharpie. He moves to write on the top of the chosen box, Curst knife. Do not touch. Works threw gloves. Cuts without touching. "This look OK to you?" He decides to add, Ask George Milton or Martin Blackwood for detales.

After throwing some of the peanuts into the box, he takes out his own folding knife to open and use it to knock the knife into the packing, gives it a shake to settle it deeper, and holds the flaps shut for taping.

Martin watches as he writes, biting his tongue to say anything about the spelling. George has said a lot about him being a very easygoing guy, and it's not... bad. Just different. Hell, Martin's spent a lot of his life pretending to be some kind of collegiate expert as a high school dropout, so if anything it makes him trust the other man a bit more.

Thankfully he doesn't linger, giving a sharp nod and retrieving the tape to seal the box up. "That should be alright, I-- I hope so, at least. Once you're, uh-- I mean, here, let me get a car, and we'll get you somewhere safer, and, and then I can come back and p-probably put it in about six more boxes." As he talks he's already opening up an app on his phone. "Just, uh, focus on not dying for right now? Please?"

"Think I can do that much," he says, not quite smiling, but it's briefly closer to one. Now that the adrenaline is wearing off, it stings something fierce. He wants to get it cleaned out better. He's seen too many men go down from a wound gone bad.

Once Martin has the car summoned, he gestures toward the door. "How's about we both get outside and wait? I don't think anybody oughtta be totally alone up in here." If something else happened, who could help?

Don't worry George, the miracles of modern medcine are here for you. Isn't that a good thing? Frankly, Martin was expecting to just sort of keep going initially after making sure George was set, but he also isn't going to leave the other man alone right now with a bleeding chest. So once he's addressed, he gives a little nod, hurrying across the room so he can get the door for the other man.

"Yeah, it-- wouldn't want you to accidentally get hit by something else, after all." Of course the focus isn't on Martin in all this, so why should he worry about himself? He's done this before. It's fine. "It should only be a few minutes anyway, hardly enough time to, uhm, d-do anything."

"Jes' the same, I don't want either one a' us gettin' messed up in there alone." Once they're outside, he eases himself down to a crosslegged seat on the ground with his back against the warehouse, wincing a little bit until he can get settled.

"You know if anybody else comin' to spell you? Should I call somebody to come take my place while we's waitin'?"

Martin has to suppress the reflexive urge to laugh at George's question, because of course his caretaker instincts are taking over and he would never ask anything of the other man in his current state. "Wh-- No, it's-- you don't need to be doing anything right now that isn't, you know, staying awake? I'll let ADI know and, uhm, someone else will come out."

Besides, Martin knows he can handle it by himself if he needs to, and George doesn't need to worry about him. He'll manage. He always does.

"Awwright." He takes him at his word, resting his head back against the building and closing his eyes. It's not the worst he's ever been hurt by far. It does burn, and now that the adrenaline is wearing off, he feels shaky and a little sick.

"Thanks for helpin' me out. I know you's gonna say no need for thanks. Take it anyway. Plenty a' people don't look out for nobody but themselves. I knowed more a' them than I ever wanted to. You's awwright, Martin."

A couple of minutes later, the car pulls up and the passenger gets out to help George into the back. George makes sure they know Martin needs backup. Once he's settled, he waves at him from the back window, and then they pull away.

It's a bit nice that George just does it when Martin asks- he's very used to taking after people like Jon, aka the kind that are deeply determined not to listen, especially when injured- so he lets the other man rest until he speaks. He's naturally prepared to protest when George starts talking nicely of him, but he shuts his mouth tight when he's called out. If George can listen to him to be careful, he can listen to George and accept praise.

In the end, he just nods. "Of-- of course. We have to stick together against these, these things. It's all we've got." And it keeps them human. Tethered. Properly and fully present, like Martin needs more than most.

When the car arrives he helps George up and into it, giving him a little squeeze on the shoulder before he sets off. Once the car's departed, he simply takes a breath and goes back in- someone needs to add another six or seven warnings to that knife, after all.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Over the hills and far away LOG [OPEN + Closed prompts]

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i'm good with wrapping here unless you have other ideas!