( Gone ) Puck

[genevieve amelia ashford]

( We've come so far in this desert. How we blossom and we cease;
--------------- - - - - Tell your story now, we have so much to know )

Daylight broke through the windows of the second story, stirring the blonde within from her slumber. It had been another night of unrest, which wasn't particularly surprising, but still rather exasperating. Placing her aching hands against the cool floor, she pushed herself slowly into a sitting position, the the blanket she had swiped from an apartment earlier falling into her lap. The first thing she noticed was how very bright it was for an autumn day, the second thing came quickly to her.

Genevieve slowly rose to her feet, every bone creaking and protesting as she went. She was nineteen years old and felt like she was nine hundred; not a good sign. As she padded over to the window, her stomach joined the complaint. How many days had it been since she had had food? She didn't know, which wasn't a good thing at all. At the moment, she wasn't even entirely sure how long one could go without food before starving to death. A week? Three days. If it were the latter, she figured she would be dead soon. It didn't seem to matter anymore, anyway. Everyone she knew was dead.

Shaking her head, she ran her hands over her aching stomach, then touched the hem of her stained and dirty shirt. Hesitating, she took a moment and then finally lifted it, tucking it under her chin as she did so. She remembered being at what was considered a healthy weight, once. Barely, anyway. All of her memories seemed to distant now. She had been back to her old family home about a week previous. Genevieve knew her parents and siblings were all dead, but it still bothered her to stand in an empty house. She didn't know whether it was the fact that they were dead, or that while the quarantine was still active they had cleaned the bodies out leaving her house hollow.

Shrugging her shoulders irritably, she touched her ribs and swore she could count them. But instead of dwelling on the subject, she let the shirt fall back into place and smoothed it over in an attempt to look at least slightly dignified. Not that that mattered, either. No one was around to tell her how bad she looked. With a sigh, she wandered over to the area which had been her squat for the night. She would leave the blanket behind, but the other things she would take with her.

First she picked up the hammer she had been using both as a weapon and as an object to gain entrance into various places. Then the Bowie knife, which had sliced through the plastic and allowed her access into this particular building. Finally, she scooped up the candles, box of matches. For a moment, though, she hovered over the only two objects which mattered to her anymore: her family portrait, and the bible that had belonged to her mother. Now, neither of these were essential to survival, but she couldn't bare the thought of losing them when someone came across her home and decided to use them as fire lighter.

She snatched them off the floor and hugged them to her chest. That's when the idea popped into her head. The church! Why she hadn't thought of it before seemed absolutely ridiculous. It had been a second home to her while everyone was still alive, and maybe — maybe Father Oran... Genevieve took off on a run out of the door, down the stairs, and outside. The sunlight hit her harshly, but didn't care much. The Sacred Heart was close, and she knew that if she got there nothing else would matter. Looking left and right for raiders, she turned on heel and made a mad dash to the left, ignoring the ache and burn in every part of her body.

word count be's 670. and puck got tagged. here is the outfit. i'd also like to say dead bodies, ahoy!.

[puck byron wakefield]

I've got time just to waste, if you would be my new escape.

Puck wasn’t quite sure what drove him there. It wasn’t like he really felt welcome in the church anymore. He hadn’t felt like he was since before the outbreak. Before everyone died, and before he lost his faith. He supposed that that wasn’t exactly a good term for it; it wasn’t that he didn’t believe. He did. But he no longer felt that comfort in God that he used to. No, God was punishing them, that much he’d figured out for himself a long, long time ago. Not that most people would agree with him. But he didn’t care. They had their own opinions, and he had his.

Anyway, the point was, Puck found himself heading straight for his old church. Maybe it was some old habit pushing him. His parents used to tell him that if he had any problems, and they weren’t there to help, to go talk to Father Oran in Sacred Heart. He’d help. Of course, the priest was probably dead, just like the rest of them. But that didn’t seem to matter to Puck as he stared up at the old building. Just stared at it for a while. He didn’t think he could work up the nerve to actually enter the place, not yet. He was too afraid of what he’d find in there.

After a while, he finally rolled his shoulders and started to climb the steps to the church. No need to just stand around on the street all day. He might as well wear a sign with big neon letters inviting raiders to attack him. And, while he could probably fend off a couple of them, if the group was one of the larger ones, that would probably get him killed. He had no intention of dying just yet, thank you very much. He’d lasted this long, and he sure as hell wasn’t going to just lie down and wait for the end.

Puck tugged his hatchet from his belt, using it to awkwardly cut open the plastic covering the doorway, feeling as though he was slicing open some transparent strip of flesh. And then, shoving the hatchet back into his belt and stepping inside the church, the stench hit him. It was almost overwhelming, almost enough to send him stumbling back onto the street. But even though he felt the urge to gag, he hadn’t eaten in so long that it didn’t make much difference. Reaching up with his free hand, he covered his mouth and nose before picking his way through the pews and the bodies littering them, feeling like the church itself was some sort of corpse. Emaciated, decaying, and utterly hollow. He used to think it was beautiful. But then again, a lot had changed.

Quite a few of the faces of the bodies he recognized. People that he had at one point laughed and talked with. But he didn’t let that affect him too much. He couldn’t, he should say. If he did, it would probably make him go crazy. So he just stared blankly at the faces, imprinting them into his memory, and moved on. It was obvious that he wouldn’t find anyone living in there. He didn’t know why he’d thought even for a moment that he would. It was pathetic, succumbing to such hopes. The truth was, everyone was dead, and he should just get used to that.

Puck spotted a corpse wearing a cassock lying before the altar, and he blinked down at it for a moment before he crouched and turned the body over. Of course, he didn’t need to see the priest’s partially-decomposed face to know it was Father Oran. But he just needed to make sure.

Heaving a sigh, Puck thought for a moment of leaving again, hopping into his car, and just driving until night fell and he could pass out in the back seat. He threw that idea out almost as soon as it popped into his head. There wasn’t enough gas left to just keep doing that. So, he just walked back over to the closest pew and let his messenger bag hit the floor, then set his rifle aside. Shoving the corpse of some middle-aged man that he didn’t recognize out of the way, he plopped himself onto the bench, then buried his head into his hands, staring at the floor. Blank. He didn’t think he had anything left in him that could grieve.

[genevieve amelia ashford]

( We've come so far in this desert. How we blossom and we cease;
--------------- - - - - Tell your story now, we have so much to know )

When she made it to the church, Genevieve practically collapsed on the steps. Her eyes filled with tears, half from exhaustion and half from relief. Pressing her hands to the cold stone, she smiled and knelt down. "Thank you, Heavenly Father," she whispered. There was something entirely magical about the feel of the stone on her hands. The chill reminded her that she was alive, and that meant that there were still greater plans for her yet.

She waited a moment before standing up. Genevieve stood gawking at the church for a moment. It hadn't been covered up by the plastic, had been somehow exempt from the quarantine. Unlike many of the other older buildings in the city, it still had retained it's beauty. Somehow. By some miracle. Slowly, she dragged herself to the door, and pulled one of the larger doors. It groaned in protest, and Genevieve thought very little of it. Instead, she stepped inside, suddenly remember that it wasn't very intelligent or safe to stand around outside. It hadn't even occurred to her that it might not be any safer entering the church blindly. Well, if she had been meant to be killed, so be it. There wasn't anything left for her in this world.

Genevieve let the door shut softly behind her, slowly turning to find something she hadn't expected at all: bodies everywhere. The ones who were laying face up, she knew. The ones who were face down she was willing to bet she knew, too. Each of them had been to church with her, attended faithfully every Sunday. She had sat next to them, had been their loving neighbors, had prayed and laughed and cried with them. This time, though, she didn't cry. It hadn't quite set in yet, for some reason. Instead, she just stared across what seemed to be a sea of people.

There were people in the pews, too, their heads bowed in prayed before they had slumped forward. This holocaust had spared no one: mother, child, elderly man. There was an example of every one, at least once, speckling the church. The smell. It was horrible, but brushed past her nose without Genevieve thinking much about it. No, she was concentrating mostly on those lifeless prayers. Had they been repenting? Had they known that Judgment Day was coming and chose to come to the one place they felt safe; close to God? Had they wondered where he was in their time of need, just like she? Where was their God now?

Genevieve felt suddenly disgusted, at this scene and at herself for thinking such blasphemy in the House of God. Shaking her head, she wrapped her arms around herself and began tip-toeing her way through the array of dead, taking extra care not to step on anyone's fingers or hair. There were times where she had almost fallen, come literally face to face with her own mortality. Each time, she picked herself up and continued on until finally, she was standing before the outstretched arms of the Son.

Kneeling as she had done on the steps, she pressed her hands together and bowed her head. She said a prayer for each soul in the church, knowing them all by name, first and last. Then she prayed for her family, and the one who had invited her into her home to take care of their children. She prayed for her own soul, and for the salvation of what was left of mankind. All the while, however, she couldn't help but wonder silently who she was praying to.

word count be's 636. and puck got tagged. here is the outfit. i'd also like to say baaaawww, somebody call the waaaahmbulance!.

[puck byron wakefield]

I've got time just to waste, if you would be my new escape.

Puck thought for a moment that he’d heard something like the sound of the door opening, but he immediately threw out the possibility. Everyone else, apart for some raiders, was dead. No amount of wishful thinking would change that. And if he was hearing things, it didn’t surprise him. He was probably a bit unhinged after everything that’d happened. After all, everyone he’d ever known was dead, rotting away in the church or their homes. Most of them probably hadn’t even had a proper funeral.

Lost in his thoughts, it took Puck a moment to realize that he was hearing things again. Not a door this time; no, this time it sounded like footsteps that echoed off the high walls of the church. That was entirely ridiculous, of course. No one would be walking through the church. No one could. So, he just kept his eyes on the floor and tried hard to ignore it when the footsteps didn’t go away. On the contrary; they seemed to be getting louder, like someone was actually getting closer. But, no, that wasn’t possible. It was best just to ignore it.

With his head in his hands, he continued to study the floor, wondering to himself if he actually was going stark raving mad. Maybe he was just hallucinating because of fatigue and hunger. He’d read about such things, back when he was in school and books were readily available. Before the proverbial shit hit the proverbial fan. People would go for days without sleep or food and they’d just start seeing things, hearing things, and in general just losing their minds. Temporarily, of course. Then again, maybe God had decided to take one last shot at him and actually make him a lunatic. That wouldn’t surprise him one bit.

And then, when the footsteps passed him and came to a stop, he finally couldn’t take it anymore. Picking his head up, he looked around for a moment before he finally saw her. And then he was sure he was out of his mind. If he wasn’t completely mistaken, he thought he saw a girl kneeling there. A girl whose back he just happened to recognize as Genevieve Ashford. But no, that couldn’t be true. He was sure it couldn’t. After all, she was probably dead, right? The chances were overwhelming that she was. But there she was, too, right before his eyes. So, not quite sure what to believe, he sat there staring at her for what seemed like an awfully long time.

Well, it couldn’t hurt to check, could it? Puck rose from the pew, still staring a bit incredulously at her, then moved so that he could actually see her face. Only to confirm that it was, in fact, Genevieve. Or, at least, her image projected from his subconscious onto the outside world. But either way, he couldn’t help but feel a bit relieved. “Vivi?” He said, finally finding his voice after the shock of finding her there. Not that he was sure that she was really there, not yet. He highly doubted it, actually. But hell, it was still better than nothing.