entranceway | [Video] Entry #2

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[Video] Entry #2 - Event Day 3

[The camera's pointed at Jay's shoes. Wherever he is, it's carpeted, and it's at least somewhat well-lit. When he finally speaks, it's at a whisper and oddly flat.]

If anyone was thinking about using the last house on...Lakeview Drive for shelter...

[A gas can swings into view, and a narrow stream of gasoline leaks from the spout onto the carpet. The camera tilts for a second, revealing a well-furnished suburban bedroom with lazy gasoline loops painted across both the floor and the bed.]

...Don't.

[Jay starts down the stairs, trailing fuel behind him.]

Don't get anywhere near this place. If you're looking for me, [He tries and fails to suppress a cough. The fumes must be getting to him.] I won't be around either.

[He's in the living room now. Jay pans the camera across the room--couches, coffee table, TV, stereo--before dribbling the last of the gasoline across the floor and up to an open window. He tosses the can aside.]

Last warning.

[Jay reaches up to the inactive stereo, twisting the volume dial as low as it can go. Hand visibly trembling, he switches it on. Nothing. Good. He switches the input to "radio". His breathing is audible now, high and ragged.

He twists the volume knob, and the speakers come to life with the deafening roar of...well, you win some, you lose some.

Jay bolts from the house, leaving the front door hanging open.

There's chaos for a moment, leaves hit the camera lens, and then Jay's looking down from a reasonably sized oak tree. A corpse shambles into view, heading straight for the house. Jay cuts the feed.]

[OOC: Jay has just attempted to create walker-bait out of the last house at the end of a dead-end street. Very loud, very flammable walker-bait. He's stolen Tim's lighter, and he's planning to shut the front door and light the place up through the window once enough bodies find their way inside.

Feel free to use this post to yell at him/cheer him on/try to stop him/try to help him.]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

wait up here until enough of them find the front door that i'm able to climb down

[Jay hears a small object--a ball or a rock or something--hitting leaves, and he watches as a couple zombies break off from the group to investigate.]

wait was that you

what are you doing here
go back
there's somebody else coming
somebody else from here

who

[He's already here. Might as well help. But if there's someone here who can help, someone else, then maybe there's a greater chance of getting Jay to fucking safety.]

don't know their name. only spoken over text so far.

they're bringing stuff to make us both uh

smell like one of those things

so we don't get targeted

the person called them 'walkers' so i assume they're from here

[The more the merrier. As long as Tim doesn't get himself killed.]

GREAT

[He hopes you can hear the yell through the screen, Jay. He so hopes.]

if you die i'm gonna kill you

likewise

you stole my lighter

what was your plan
did you think they were gonna file right in like it was a ride at disneyland

[Jay shoots his phone an ugly look. Like either of them have even been to Disneyland.]

i'll give it back when i get down

i thought if they kept milling around long enough, they'd eventually find their way in.
clearly hasn't been long enough.

they can smell you or see you or both
youre stuck dumbass

[Zombies might have one track minds, but they're sure as hell smarter than that.]

yeah i guessed that but thanks

least they can't climb trees

don't jinx it

["Shh! Don't jinx it."

A million years ago, when they'd had some sort of rapport approaching friendship, before everything else had promptly gone to shit, he'd said the words with almost a lighthearted lift to his usually dour tone.

He stares at the line of text for entirely too long before hitting the delete key, over and over, until it's completely erased.

He settles for peering over the edge of the car instead.]

how many would you say there are right now

eyballing it, somewhere between thirty and fifty

might be way off though

[It almost feels like they're just talking. Like they're just passing the time by sending messages back and forth rather than sitting in sullen silence.

Jay thinks they did this a few times before things went to hell (or even further to hell). The messages were about the case back then, but it felt similar. Passing the time. Throwing ideas back and forth. Trading insults.]

shit.

[Thirty to fifty zombies. Jesus christ.]

and the music's not working

[Thirty to fifty zombies stuck in a house would've been great. Thirty to fifty zombies on the front lawn of the house is terrible.]

looks like it's bringing in even more of them

i'm getting really sick of 80s pop songs up here

i'd say to turn off the stereo but that's a terrible idea

[Great. That's good. That's what makes all of this even better, honestly. The fact that, not only is Jay probably going to die, but he's going to die to the dulcet tones of Rick James.]

well then hold on

[This is...really stupid.

Really stupid.

But he's gonna have to come up with a better distraction than a rock or two, so he scrambles into the car he's been camping out behind and wrenches open the hatch mounted at the steering column.

Time to one-up Jay in terms of poorly thought-out plans.]

[It takes a moment for the gravity of what Tim just said to sink in.]

whatever you're planning, don't
tim
tim seriously don't the house is surrounded you're not getting in

[Tim only spares the message a glance before slipping his phone into his pocket. The wires are a dusted Gordian knot in the steering column and he's not perfect at this, but any hope of setting something on fire for a distraction has vanished along with his lighter. He watched Seth do this once, and even if his memory isn't the greatest, he's gonna do his damnedest to try and replicate what he can.

He still has a flip-knife, even if it isn't much, and the blade makes short work of the insulation. The live wire hisses as it sparks. The process to actually drive the car properly is, if he recalls, more than a little involved, but he's not trying to drive it. He's just trying to make it go.

Ignition and battery twining together in a blend of red and green. And then he just has to rev the engine, and -

And the car roars to life with a throaty gasp of gasoline.]

[Tim's not answering. Tim's not answering, and he needs to answer, because Jay needs to know what he's planning. Jay needs to know what he's planning so he can stop it, because Tim can't get near the house or he'll die.

Jay sees him, barely, hunched over the steering wheel of a car.

The car sputters to life, and Jay decides that since the walkers already clearly know where he is, what with the crowd that formed around the base of the tree, it's not worth keeping quiet anymore.

He whistles, high and piercing. If Tim looks up, he'll see an indignant Jay, pointing at the car and trying to communicate, "What the hell are you doing?" with hand gestures.]

[Tim looks up through the windshield and he glowers - hard and furious enough to melt lead, and hopefully pointed enough for Jay to realize full well that he has no right to be indignant when it is his bullshit plan that Tim is saving him from.

He slams his foot onto the gas pedal. The thing rumbles forward, picking up speed rapidly, with more and more of the zombies turning their attention to both the motion and the sound. The car impacts the first of them with a meaty crunch that sends the thing slobbering and clawing at the window. Tim ducks; the window's shattered clean through and offers no protection.

He's got no clue how to break the steering lock, so the car's just rolling straight ahead without stopping.

Right for the house.]

[No.]

"Tim!"

[The car's heading straight for the house, the house Jay filled with gasoline, and there's nothing he can do to stop it.

All he can do is watch. Like always.]

(OOC: Clementine's going to hop in after this post, so as to watch the chaos and help as much as she can.)

"Oh, for fucks sake."

Clementine hisses out a low breath between her teeth as she comes upon the scene, because what became a one-person rescue mission has now escalated to a two-person rescue mission. Jay yells Tim's name, and she thinks she has an idea of who's in the car too (and goddamnit, no). She doesn't do rescue missions in her fucking world, because it means dying. She's trying to do better or be better and not just be someone who survives at any cost to those around her. She also has no idea what to do when a car is driving straight into a house full of gasoline, which is why she's trying to make her way to the guy in the tree while lugging half a walker corpse behind her and hoping the whole place doesn't explode.

This is. Great.

The car's pretty much shooting ahead at full speed, and even if Tim did take his foot off the gas pedal, the momentum is gonna carry it straight into the zombie nest.

Which is when the radio picks that particular time to change its tune.

Tim wrenches the car door open and leaps, rolling awkwardly across the concrete. His legs and shoulders burn from the impact as he tumbles. There's an awful snapping sound mere inches from his ear, and he kicks out wildly, catching the walker in the thigh and knocking it back several paces.

He scrambles upright, panting hard, heart thumping. The zombies have encircled him almost entirely. He gets roughly ten seconds to think oh, shit before the car slams into the house.

The force of it blasts Tim forward, along with most of his undead entourage, nearly taking the skin off his palms as he lands. His ears are fucking ringing like they would after a gunshot, and all he can think is the fucking fire at his back, the heat of it feeling ready to sear him to cinders at a moment's notice, the way hospital bedsheets caught flame and licked up to the ceiling and he needs to get out of here.

He needs to get out of here before he's bitten, or worse.

Tim's out. Tim's out and alive and--

Jay barely gets a second to think about it before the collision. There's a deafening sound and his hand scrapes against the bark of the tree and Jay's blinking, splayed flat across the...oh. That's not good. He should move.

Jay pulls himself to his feet, but it's harder than he remembers. It feels like everything's been tilted by a few degrees, and standing's hard enough without those two pairs of milky white eyes watching him stumble. The leftmost one starts toward him, and Jay sways on his feet. He has to get away. He has to run.

Wait. Tim.

Jay lurches sideways, giving the two after him a wide berth and circling around to the opposite side of the car. He blinks, but it's like someone's stretched plastic wrap across his eyes. Where's Tim, where's Tim, where's Tim?

There. Crouched next to the car, pulling himself upright. The walkers around him look worse off, but not by much; a few seem like they're starting to get their bearings. He has to move now.

Jay darts in, grabbing Tim's arm. "Come on, come on." He pulls, tries to get Tim on his feet, and nearly loses his balance in the process.

Behind them, the stereo's started to fail. The sound's distorted, crackling at the edges, but still unfortunately recognizable.

What the fucking fuck, she thinks. This is why people don't do rescue missions.

The blast sends Clementine back, but she's far enough away to not be nearly as affected. Her hands scrape against the pavement, breaking skin, burning. She shoves herself to her feet, gripping hold of her ice pick. There's no way those two are going to survive. They're fucking surrounded still. Every instinct in her screams at her to run, but she pushes forward instead.

She takes out the walkers on the way to clear a path to them so they have a clear path of escape. The blast's drawing more walkers in because it was loud as hell. The walkers can smell their human flesh. They're screwed unless they get somewhere safe or cover themselves in guts fast, but it's hard to do that in the middle of a horde.

God, they're going to die.

She kicks out the walker's knees directly in front of them. It drops to the floor, and she shoves an ice pick through the skull.

Her gaze says it all Move. Now.

There's an arm hooking around his, and he can't see, can't think for the hammering in his skull, the high, bright tone drilling at his ears. There's the shambling and groaning, the thicket of graying limbs shifting ever closer, but then there's someone else -

He's going to die, it occurs to him dazedly. He's going to die, and it'll be to the horribly ironic sounds of Michael Jackson howling about evil things lurking in the dark. He's coughing raggedly, groping blinding at Jay for support. Every muscle shrieks in protest, his jeans and skin abraded with the dark streaks of his own stupid, stupid plan.

There's someone else, someone besides his partner in idiocy. And despite the way he's moving dazed, only barely able to duck out of the way of lurching, snapping jaws, he manages a disbelieving stare in Jay's direction.

"It's a fucking kid." This. This was Jay's master plan. "You brought a fucking kid."

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action

action; alex's cameraman is a Criminal

a SMOOTH CRIMINAL

action; that is now playing on the stereo. confirmed.

action;

LAUGHS

three hun-dred six-ty five de-grees. BURNIN' DOWN THE HOUSE.

CRIES

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