shatterverse | (no subject)

Entry tags:

dacemegen-a

(no subject)

New York-- or what's left of it-- is starting to piss Jennifer off.

At least, this year her name has mostly been Jennifer.

She's gone by others, in the past. A lot of others.

Getting back to New York, however: first of all, it's New fucking York. Not Norak, not Station Twenty-Eight-- New York, with cars that run on gasoline and no buildings higher than about a hundred stories. (She hasn't bothered counting, and anyways, half of them appear to have fallen down).

The second problem is that it's full of carnivorous plant life. She lost her shoes the first day and switched out her gloves the second, because the advantage her fingers and toes give to climbing is severely hampered by any attempt to hide them, and currently being inconspicuous is taking a backseat to being alive. So fingerless gloves and toe socks with the ends cut off it is.

Which is how she's currently dangling from a rooftop by her feet, staring down at three rustling green things and calculating her odds of survival if she tries to take them on all at once.

It doesn't look good.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

"I don't think a census would matter. Anyway, shouldn't we go?"

"If we're feeling like especially morally upright citizens, we should probably search the city for more survivors."

"Isn't that the army's job?

"And if they couldn't do it, what makes you think we could?"

Except maybe the finger woman.

"I've been here a week," comments DMG-A. "There are no other survivors."

"You've seen the whole city?"

"What's left of it. There's a whole lot of blown-up nothing out that way, stuff gets a little more intact over there, and that's the ocean." With nods in the appropriate directions.

"Don't go near the ocean. There's things in the water. I wouldn't bet a gnat's fart on the life of anyone who stayed there for longer than it takes to see the water and get the fuck out again."

"So... we're stuck. Until we die."

"Such a chirpy girl. If we're stuck here, then we should find a shelter. Fortify it, see if we can get water. Carnivorous trees for stew. We may die of malnutrition."

"I tried the fortification thing and it didn't go so well. Maybe now that we've got more manpower we'll have something of an advantage. Better than sitting on our asses and waiting for the trees to get us, at least."

"I don't suppose we can call out on a cell?" That would involve something good, which is apparently against the laws of the universe here.

"Or find some cigarettes, at least. Either way, we're going to have to search for a place with clean, running water if we want to survive. I don't think most of the taps here are still intact."

"There's decent water every couple of buildings. It gets better as you go out that way, but there's also an increase in man-eating plant activity."

"Of course."

She flips open her phone anyway, just in case there's some magical Bars Fairy that wants to bless her with reception.

No, no, of course not.

"Weed killer."

"We can handle the man-eating trees. Weed killer might help! Possibly. Maybe."

"You should've seen them coming in. I thought about leaving the city, but I didn't want to chance camping out at ground level with nobody to watch for dangers. And when they get into concentration, they're pretty scary."

Another moment of thought.

"Map. Several. If there are any. Where is this, anyway?"

"We can take watch duty, if we find somewhere. Wake each other up if there's a sudden attack of carnivorous trees en masse." Tomas peers around. "New York, I think?"

"Yeah, New York. I got out far enough to see the signs at the city limits, once."

"Couldn't get farther?"

"Nothing high enough to keep the tree-things at bay. Had to come back, get to high ground. They don't do so well with climbing."

"Well, at least we'll always have a source of vegetables."

"What about subways? Plants need the sun, right?"

"Not at night they don't," points out DMG-A sensibly.

"Subways are easy to defend, though. Not many entrances, trains to get in and close if we need to put a barrier between us and them. If the trains are still working we can flee at any time."

"All right, you've got a point there. We can try it, at least."

No need to point out that if they try it and fail they're all dead.

At least, she assumes there's no need to point that out.