May Event - All Too Familiar

[pumpkinhollow]

May Event - All Too Familiar

Content Warnings: Walking dead, character deaths, potential for gore | Special Thanks to Meghan and Kalineh

It was a fine spring day when mysterious letters began cropping up all over Pumpkin Hollow. Letters whose apparent senders do not remember writing them, whose recipients or discoverers were harmed by reading them. Eventually these mysteries, though still unsolved, come to a quiet halt as stealthily as they began, but not before a mail carrier in a cowboy hat trots out to Elsie’s tree with a letter in hand, unmarked aside from being addressed to her.

She gleefully rips open that letter, hoping it's another message from her father. It isn't and, at first, she's crushed. But only until she starts to actually read it.

Elsie,

River la Croix has been hiding something in her forge for a while now. It is called the Book of the Dead. In its pages are hundreds of spells from across time and space with the power to give life to those no longer with us.

Your father is doing his best to revive your mother. But this island’s barrier is blocking his will, resisting his magic. I can no longer watch you suffer in solitude when a solution exists. All you have to do is decipher the text, and its powers are yours. Your mother will be returned to you.

River does not want to part with it. She will become suspicious of you if you ask, and it will become harder to acquire it. You will have to take it without her notice by levitating it out of her forge. She, like many others, is fearful of the Book’s power. This fear isn’t entirely unwarranted for them, but for you, your connection to the Feywilds’ magic will be enough to grant you access to that otherworldly power.

Good luck, and all my love to your dear mother when she returns.

Fond regards,
A friend

Could this be it? Could this be the miracle she's been waiting for? Hope swells painfully in her chest as she clutches the note close. She mustn't celebrate too early. She still needs to get the book. At least her mysterious friend has already told her where to find it. Her jaw sets in a look of determination, and she speeds away into the dusk.

It doesn't take long to reach the forge. River has defended it well, but Elsie slips into her own shadow and sneaks beneath the door without so much as a whisper of sound. Only her hand extends from the puddle of shadow on the floor inside, like a disembodied arm hovering before the flames. Mustering her will, she reaches out to the ancient book and commands the winds to lift it. Sweat beads her shadowy brow while she concentrates, the flames flicker and dance around the slowly levitating book. Just a little more, a little more… There!

It's heavy in her hand, and remarkably cool to the touch despite having been pulled from the fire. She retracts her arm and the book back into her shadow and slips out the way she came. Her heart thumps in her chest as she races back to the safety of her tree. To her mother, who will soon be able to wrap flesh and blood arms around her like she once did. All that's left now is to read. Her friends have been teaching her how. Her mother will be so proud of her.

Carefully now, she opens the book, feeling her skin crawl as a sudden unease grips her very core. No, she will not be deterred. The language is unlike any she's ever seen. The letters, if indeed they can be called that, feel jagged and painful to her mind. Still, she will Not Give Up. She screws her eyes shut, thinks of her mother, and holds tight to her desperate hope to be reunited.

When her eyes reopen to behold the page before her, understanding strikes like lightning. Suddenly, she knows she can speak the words. As they escape her mouth, an unknown magic swells into the space around her, then beyond her. The ground shakes. The air turns foul. And as the trinkets in Elsie’s tree chime together in the unsettling breeze, ringing out with notes more sour than usual, it quickly becomes clear that the advice she received was not from any friend.

The forms of people begin to pry themselves loose from the ground all over town, as if emerging from water, leaving the ground unbroken as they lift themselves out of the ground. They bear horrid injuries, shambling along grotesquely, telling a story of death. However, these are not skeletons from the graveyard, housing the souls of long-dead locals. These are things of flesh and blood, however exposed they might be, wearing newer faces.

Much newer.

Since the barrier went up, many people have died, only to have their bodies vanish and replaced by a new one. Those bodies now walk the town, seeking to unleash a wrath brought on by the corrupted magic of the Necronomicon. Anyone who has died inside the barrier will have a violent, undead copy of themself representing each death wandering the island looking to increase their ranks. Which means that there will be many, many, many Yoricks.

Destroyed copies will remain destroyed for the standard overnight period of any other person. But there are too many of them to defeat this way, and their destruction is impermanent. Thankfully, help is on the way!

In the midst of the undead and their attack on the citizens of Pumpkin Hollow, tiny glimmers of hope appear in the form of folded paper birds. The little gold birds flit from fighter to fighter, small whispers promising that if enough enemies can be felled then the High Priestess can intervene. The necessary number is unknown, but if a bird alights upon someone, they will feel their weariness vanish for a short time, and perhaps, should she feel like it, they may receive a temporary boon to use against the undead.

Eventually the High Priestess will show herself, making good on the promises of the little birds. With a smile, her magic will wrap around the remaining undead, returning them to the unseen graves and binding them into Death once more, leaving the living to pick up the pieces.

Comments

Major Margaret Houlihan | OTA

[soldierslikeus]

When Margaret arrives at Baker Ranch—having decided it only makes sense to take Radar up on the offer and get away from the worst of things downtown—it's with a bag full of first aid supplies from the clinic. With people fleeing the undead horde it seems only sensible to be prepared to treat any wounded that make it to safety, and it's what she's best equipped to do. No different than any particularly rough day back in Korea, really, is it? At a certain density of casualties, it's not entirely unlike being swarmed by a hoard of the walking dead.

So she gets herself to the ranch, checks in with Radar, and sets up a small first aid station that she mans on-and-off through the peaks and lulls of activity, keeping an eye out for new arrivals that might need it. If you come to take shelter at the ranch for any length of time and seem to be injured, you will likely be accosted by an army nurse insisting you come get checked over. ("You're no use to anyone if you die of infection and add another body.")

When unneeded as a nurse, she flits between trying to make herself useful elsewhere and sitting tight enough to strangle her seat. The worst part of any onslaught (besides, well, either the falling bombs or the zombies) is the waiting it out until the all clear comes and things can get back to what passes for normal. But she's used to it, by now. Still, it's unpleasant. Last month's quiet seems to have been a rare reprieve in the onslaught of strange things happening around here. ("Is this really what it's like around all the time?")

[cyansoldier]

Of the group who gathers at Baker Ranch to collect their bearings, and who neglect to have their wounds properly seen, Carolina is among them. She posts herself up on the porch between bouts of fighting, clutching her rifle in ready-position like it might sprout legs and run away from her. Peace is a luxury that will come later. Among that luxury is having her wounds seen.

In the several hours she's spent in combat, Carolina garners quite a collection. Most notably are the red nail-tracks down each forearm, ending at the backs of either hand. Her skin has the appearance of freshly sowed dirt, outer layer pushed aside in long lines to reveal a deeper, pinker inside. On one forearm is a bite mark, deep enough to have broken skin. Her nose is bruised, but no longer bleeding. It's a miracle her hair is still up. One hell of a hairband, that is.

What had once felt like sawing knives now has the quality of a persistent yet ignorable ache.

Apparently, the blonde woman who comes up on her right agrees to disagree. No, actually— she disagrees twice over, and demands that Carolina follows her to a makeshift medical cot.

"I'm supposed to be watching the perimeter," She says, absent of the energy required to sound stern and begins to follow anyway.

[soldierslikeus]

"We have plenty of able-bodied men to keep up the watch while you get seen to," Margaret insists in a tone that straddles neatly between military discipline and medical professional. On her collar, she still wears the gold maple leaf of a Major, paired with the gold caduceus staff of the nurse corps—even here, stubbornly clinging to her hard-earned rank and qualifications. "Look at those arms—if those wounds get infected you'll struggle to even hold a weapon."

Infection is bad enough a concern with human bites at the best of times, let alone when the one inflicting is it undead and rotting. Margaret is already thinking about how best to handle the damage before she succeeds in getting Carolina to sit herself down.

She pulls on a pair of gloves and beckons. "Let me have a look."

[cyansoldier]

Carolina doesn't protest. She stares at the insignia pair on the woman's collar with remote interest until the two shapes blur together into one shiny mass. They're ancient, outdated symbols no longer in military rotation, but nevertheless impressive. A piece of history. Had she a little more bandwidth, she might have recited a lesson from her school days; of the Battle of Kapyong and Old Baldy; of Korean Soviet-made infantry and M1 Garands stripped of their cosmoline.

They saved old histories for the children; an age they could be readily forgotten and replaced.

"I've had worse," She says unconvincingly. Perhaps because she sounds so tired. Had she always felt this tired? Or has the opportunity to finally sit down rendered her so?

"A tight wrap and I'll be fine."

Carolina sits, doubly weighted and stares down at her firearm. She doesn't want to let it go. High alert. Steps around the corner. Not their corner, but a corner. Danger everywhere. Can't rest. Not for a second. Hollow eyes shine in a dark place she can't see. She's certain.

[soldierslikeus]

"I'm sure you have, but unless you're interested in experiencing worse today, you need to let me do my job."

She takes one of Carolina's arms by the wrist and elbow and examines her wounds with the clinical eye of a nurse, brow furrowed with study. Nasty, nasty things—not the worst she's ever seen, either, of course, but bad enough. She grabs a cloth and soaks it in a bowl of saline she has on hand, and starts to clean the nail tracks. No point in bothering with the 'this might sting a bit' with this one, she thinks, tough as she's making herself out to be.

"I see that allowing women into combat roles hasn't made for any less bull-headed soldiers," she comments almost idly, as she dabs away. A guess, but one she doubts is off the mark—she knows a soldier when she sees one. "I suppose we have always been a stubborn breed."

[cyansoldier]

She can't argue with that.

Relenting then, Carolina sets her rifle down. Rests palms-down on her knees and goes limp under the nurse's scrutinizing eye, the way a child might immobilize herself in preparation for a shot. Abiding, but in no way pleased about it. Saline hits her skin, cold and cruel. Swells into the makeshift gutters down her arms. Old blood comes away in pink washes. Her lip curls, but otherwise she makes no noise.

"No. In fact, we're worse. We care too much, probably."

Pain radiates hotly from her arms, dull ache goaded to sharpness by saline and handling. Blood has never particularly bothered her. It borders on mundane; a pilot's kerosene. Therefore, her scratches and blood-soaked clothes aren't remarkable. The bite-mark, however...

A wrongness that cannot be ignored.

Continuing, so as to distract herself, "Men treat these things like a game. Like fun. That's why they die."

[soldierslikeus]

"I dare say you're right about that. If it isn't themselves it's someone else."

She has great respect for the Colonels and Generals that keep the army running, but at the 4077 they've seen more than their share of those whose use of their rank leaves a lot to be desired. Those who treat the fighting like a game they're trying to win, a record to beat.

Every now and then she cleans or swaps the cloth out for a fresh one, making sure to get every inch of the open wounds cleaned out. The bite wound continues to be of particular concern and she spends a while examining it, debating if it needs stitching or if simply bandaging will do.

"I made the mistake of entertaining one such man who had his rank busted down so many times they started calling him 'yo-yo'." She shakes her head with a scoff. "He thought that was funny."

[cyansoldier]

Carolina sniffs. Her obliques ache with the effort. "He thought that was funny? I would have been furious. He sounds like he didn't care about the rank at all."

Men rarely do. They care too much or too little with no in-between. The men who care too much— men like the Counselor and Chairman, who build themselves up on stilts— suffer long and terrible falls from grace. They want everything and leave with nothing.

Other men— her father— care too much about the wrong things. About lost things, and lose themselves within them.

The men who don't care (far outnumbering the men who do)— like York— have nothing and die as nothing.

"Why go through the effort of earning it again knowing you'll lose it?" She adds. Maybe there is no reason. They don't care much for that, either.

A pause, deliberating what to share and what to keep close.

"...I had one of those. If he followed orders as efficiently as he followed me around, things might not have ended so poorly for him." Never mind the fact that said orders were fatally flawed to begin with, on both sides. "He was the rare kind that preferred to talk through every conflict. It was exhausting. Exhausting because he could be so convincing. I hated him for that."

[soldierslikeus]

"Ah, I know that type. My unit's best surgeons are also the mouthiest men I've ever met. I've rarely known peace and quiet in the OR. But sometimes it works even on me."

Hawkeye and BJ have grown on her over the months, Hawkeye particularly, but there's still times their jokes and commentary make her wish their surgical masks did as good a job shutting them up as they did maintaining the sterile field.

No stitches, she thinks. If this woman plans to continue being as active as she has thus far they likely won't do much except get pulled out again. Better to bandage tight and check again after the crisis is over—if she can get her to stop again long enough for that.

"I honestly couldn't say why Scully thought so little of his rank. Or— no, if anything I think his own rank was the only one he respected. As far as he was concerned me being a Major meant about as much as pinning the maple leaf on a child, as if I hadn't earned my commission same as any man."

[cyansoldier]

"Do any of us really know peace and quiet? I always thought it was like the tooth fairy. Something you tell your kids to make them behave. Shut up while we pull your teeth out and maybe you'll get five bucks."

Fight this battle, and another and another and another, and once the war's done you'll be kicking up your feet for good, we promise. Another never stopped, they'd simply turned their distrust inward. She'd never needed peace and quiet, anyway. Turned her nose up to it.

"I hated that. Why give a kid five bucks for losing a tooth? Everyone loses their teeth. You don't need to be congratulated on something everyone does."

Okay, maybe she's in a bad mood; all this talk about what she hates. What she really hates is that she's still in this seat. That her palms and fingers are without the cool press of gun-steel; her brow without its fresh sheen of sweat.

Carolina opens her mouth to ask what the hold-up is, 'are you just going look, or are you going to do something?', then shuts it. No reason to bitch at a poor woman who's only trying to do her job. Who talks now of egregious lapses in respect, despite having earned it.

She tchs tongue against teeth.

"You probably worked twice as hard to get there, and they'd be none the wiser."

[impostor_syndrome]

"It's fine," Purple insists, with what appears to be a fossilised segment of a long bone sticking out of their leg just below the knee, snapped off sharply at both the front and back end. There's a thick scabby crust around the entry and exit wounds. "I can make the most of it. I'm not going to get infected and die in the next five minutes."

[soldierslikeus]

Margaret, not even blinking: "And what about beyond the next five minutes? I dare say this is going to last a lot longer than that."

[impostor_syndrome]

"I'll burn that bridge when I come to it," Purple says, crashing one figure of speech into the other on purpose. "In the meantime, think about how many zombies I can spear on this thing!"

It's definitely not sticking out far enough to spear more than one zombie at a time. Also, they've already got a bloodied shovel slung across their back and a sheathed knife on their belt, raising the question of how many more spiky bits they could possibly benefit from.

[soldierslikeus]

She folds her arms. "Do you often run around spearing enemies on broken body parts?"

Possibly this should be stranger to her than it is but, frankly, people being stubborn in the face of serious injury and strange circumstances isn't all that different from her usual. There's almost certainly at least one over eager soldier out there who'd say something similar.

[impostor_syndrome]

"Yeah, it's one of my favourite hobbies," they say, in a dry sardonic tone that clarifies nothing about their level of sincerity. "I was gonna go pro but they said these days the money's in hitting people over the head with a big stick."

[soldierslikeus]

"Very funny." Truly, she's less certain of their seriousness than she was before. "Now, look, if you really don't want any assistance, I can't force you to accept it, but I can say it seems like a poor decision."

[tehilim127_1]

By the second or third day of this, Zivia's started making the rounds of all the safehouses -- passing on Amarantha's message more directly than by sending stone, carrying needed supplies, and supporting the defenses as needed. This afternoon Baker Ranch, not in need of foodstuffs or soap or medical supplies, gets mostly a few treats for morale: a bag of assorted candy and a stack of light reading checked out from the library.

Pausing by the first aid station, Zivia slows at a familiar face. "Hey, Margaret. How're you holding up over here?"

[soldierslikeus]

Reflexive, at first, Margaret says: "Oh I'm holding up just fine—nothing more familiar than work to be done."

And then her eyes and brain have a catch-up about why this woman's face is familiar and she blinks. Ah. Yes. "...Zivia. That's right, isn't it?"

[tehilim127_1]

"Got it in one. They said you're good for medical supplies, for the time being?"

They never really did get a chance to talk, after the nightmare visit. Zivia's going to let the other woman decide whether or not to bring it up.

[soldierslikeus]

"Yes, yes, I brought as much as I could carry from the clinic and it's not depleted itself too quickly so far. I'm used to making things stretch."

The 4077 had their fair share of supply shortages, you learn to make do. This is no worse than that.

There's a short stretch of quiet where she considers what or how to say anything, before for now simply settling on, "How are things going out there?"

[tehilim127_1]

"Not as bad as they could be. Most of the town's hunkering down in one safe spot or another, like this. The undead aren't making a concerted effort to break into any of them, they're just going for anyone outside." A considering pause. "Which is also not as bad as it could be, given that most of the folks outside are out there looking for undead to take down."

[soldierslikeus]

"Good. Or— no, not good, of course, but better than I feared. If what they dead would do was easily predictable they'd still be dead."

Even a few months into being here she's not quite adjusted to the supernatural, undying nature of it all, and this flies in the face of even the few things she'd started to wrap her head around.

"It really is one thing after another with this town, isn't it?"

[tehilim127_1]

"Oh, it really is," she sighs. "And sometimes the damn things overlap. And I thought things were nonstop back home."

[soldierslikeus]

"Things were definitely non-stop back in Korea, but it was a familiar sort of non-stop. This is a far cry from the chaos of even a MASH unit. It's all so— strange."

An understatement, really, but she can't find a more fitting word right now.

[tehilim127_1]

"Yeah, I think it's easier when it's familiar. We got both kinds of chaos back home, regular recurring stuff and then every so often something just weird as hell. Kind of thing where you don't know what to do because nobody knows what to do, and the first step is figuring out how to even start figuring it out."