Julie Grigio (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
redwinekindofgirl) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
redshiftlogs2019-09-15 10:22 am
redwinekindofgirl) wrote in redshiftlogs2019-09-15 10:22 am
[OPEN]
Who: Julie & OPEN
What: Zombies, farming and getting really, really drunk
When: Septemberish
Where: noted in-post
Warnings: none yet
Format: Prefer brackets but will match.
---
i. way too much like home | SEPT. 01. | "Whole Foods"
ii. that farming life | Agriculture Level
iii. just another tequila sunrise | Bar
What: Zombies, farming and getting really, really drunk
When: Septemberish
Where: noted in-post
Warnings: none yet
Format: Prefer brackets but will match.
---
i. way too much like home | SEPT. 01. | "Whole Foods"
[How can someone used to foraging and scavenging for anything they might find useful turn down a massive supermarket right on their doorstep? Julie... could, and probably ought to, but curiosity is a frequent silencer of good reason and Julie finds herself sneaking into the place with the kind of inevitability that even someone who barely knows her has probably come to expect.
And she's been through this enough now to realise that this entire place probably got here in a similar way to how they did. She knows that, and she knows she might just find something here that could be better than what they have in Anchor.
She might find something worse, too... but such are the risks we take.
In an old, worn-in habit she grabs a basket on her way in, hooking it over her arm. The radiation suit she opted to wear makes it harder to see what might be around each corner, and she pauses at each to check what might be there. Over time, she relaxes, and spends more time perusing the shelves than she does checking for danger.
That's when she spots it. Out of the corner of her eye at first, and initially she thinks it's just someone from Anchor who made their way over here to join her, but... no. There's something wrong. Something about the way it's moving.]
Uh--... [Oh, shit.
She drops her basket with a noisy clatter and starts to run before she even finishes the thought, completely unaware that she isn't being followed with even half the speed that she's moving at.
Zombies! Why is it always fucking zombies!]
((open to her being found at any point in the post))
ii. that farming life | Agriculture Level
[In the upper level of the agriculture area, Julie is sitting on the ground with a small blanket spread out in front of her, carefully sorting through a selection of seeds. Now and then, she finds one that's dried out or showing a hint of rot, and puts it aside.
It's a little like being back home. The planting, the farming... but there's a lot less of them here, and a lot more food to go around. It would be nice, if she didn't just want to go home. But then... there's a lot she'd miss if she went home, too.
Julie tilts her head back, looking up towards the roof and the light streaming in from above her.]
Places like this suck. [She mutters to herself.] Never as easy as just taking the first opportunity to get the hell out of dodge.
[She'd second-guess it now, after so long. It's not fair.
The seeds get her attention once again. Something simple, easy to focus on. She tosses another dud aside.] At least I've got you to keep me busy.
iii. just another tequila sunrise | Bar
[Farming only keeps a person busy for so many hours of the day, and there are only so many times you can go to the spa for a hot soak before it feels like you're just wasting time.
Some people would say that being in the bar getting drunk by yourself isn't a good way to pass the time in any respect, but to those people, Julie really only has one thing to say. It isn't something that can be repeated in polite company.
She's four tequila sunrises in by the time anyone finds her, and is making a move to get behind the bar to make something that isn't a tequila sunrise.]
God-- fucking damn it, I know you have something back here that isn't tequila or fucking grenadine. [The bartender bot, being in no position to really do anything about it, just watches her while she lifts a half-dozen bottles up onto the bar.]
If I ever see another tequila sunrise when I get out of here...
[Much later, when she's been successful in her search and is no longer really capable of getting to the bar, she sits at a table nursing what's left of a bottle of flavoured gin and staring glassy-eyed at the other side of the room.]
It's not fair. [She says out loud, to anyone who might be listening. What's not fair? A lot of things, probably.]
no subject
Then... do you also come from another place where the Old World collapsed and people had to change everything about how they were living to survive?
[ Then, to give her time, and pre-empt the most obvious of the questions: ]
It was an Illness, where I'm from. One that spread everywhere, and killed nearly everyone, or worse. Left them... monsters. And there were famines, because my island - Iceland - we weren't growing enough food without bringing anything from abroad, and fishing wasn't an option because of beasts in the ocean, so - we had to learn how to grow enough food for everyone. All this happened before I was born - almost 100 years before, but... what you said, it sounded. Familiar.
no subject
Yeah-- Yeah. It all started happening when I was a kid, and it just... got worse.
[She wishes it was a hundred years behind her. Maybe then there would be some good chance of seeing progress in her lifetime. Right now, everything just seems to be so bleak... it's hard to visualise a happy ending to it all.]
People started dying, only they didn't stay dead. The government tried to keep it from us, but it got too big for anyone to ignore... and by then it was too fucking late to do anything about it.
no subject
[ Reynir says it quietly, without meaning to, hands dropping to his lap, full of half-sorted seeds. As soon as Julie explains that in her case, she's living during the collapse itself - well, that changes things. To Reynir, his world just is the way it is. He can't remember anything different. And sure, he's seen some awful stuff, since he ventured into the Silent World. But that isn't the same as living through the world he knows crumbling around him. ]
But there're survivors, right? You said you lived in an enclave, and - people must've worked out quarantines and ways to tell who's infected and who isn't, and how to fight off the trolls or- whatever it is they call them in your world.
[ It might be too late to save the Old World, but then, things must have seemed very bleak in those first years in his own world, too.
As if sensing something is not quite right, Kisa has stopped washing herself and gotten up, stretching and walking over to the both of them, and is currently sniffing at Julie's knee with interest, before rubbing her cheek against it, tail held high. ]
no subject
[For what that's worth, and... god knows what they're going to do now Axiom's shown up on the scene. That's the part she never normally gets to when she's talking about where she comes from, because the context needed is usually more than she wants to explain, but maybe Reynir would get it.]
And there's a Cure, but it's slow, and the Dead still outnumber us by... a lot. [Shrug. They're not the threat they once were, but there are still so many.]
A bullet to the head works. [And she trails off when Kisa approaches, muttering out a low, cooed 'hey, kitty' as she reaches out to pet her.] And now some creepy fascist militarised corporation from the Borough Conflicts has crawled out of the fucking grave and... I dunno. ... I dunno.
cw brief suicide mention
You... have a cure?
[ Julie can't be older than her 20s, so if they'd found a cure that quickly, maybe things wouldn't stay bleak for long. Even if it took time, to undo the damage - it could be undone. And maybe, the fact that no one has come close in almost 100 years means there never is gonna be one, in Reynir's own world. No solution but hunting bands killing trolls, and programs to ensure more and more babies are born immune, and burning down the entirety of the Old World, and losing all that history, forever. ]
There isn't one, in my world. If you're infected... it's better just to die, as quickly as possible.
[ He doesn't know what a Borough Conflict might be exactly, but he's pretty sure corporations are big companies or something? And the military, that he gets. But none of those are things he can actually imagine being infected and rising from the dead.
Furrow between his brow, he asks: ]
Wait, crawled out of the grave... metaphorically?
[ When she's talking about actual zombies it gets confusing okay?? ]
no subject
[All at once, and she'd never really understood why. Too young, then, to really think about it. But they'd gone, and suddenly...]
But then we were on our way back to the enclave, and these fuckin'... helicopters flew over. I couldn't remember the last time I'd seen a helicopter. The people they'd sent... I got a really bad feeling about them.
[And she hadn't been able to figure out just why that was, but she has a feeling that R has a better idea than she does.]
They were just so fake. All plastic smiles and creepy, circular platitudes. We didn't know what they wanted, and then they-- [Her voice sticks for a moment, and the seeds in front of her are suddenly incredibly interesting.] They killed some people. It was so fucked up.
no subject
[ Corporations aren't really a thing in Reynir's world, so all the sinister connotations that Julie is working with aren't there for him. Even so, fake people with fake smiles talking around an issue and not being direct and killing people? That's scary as hell. He thinks of his conversation with Deputy Pratt, the cult he'd told Reynir about, the killings. It would seem, just from the few people he's met already, that people just kill other perfectly healthy people a whole hell of a lot in other worlds. Which... he supposes makes sense. Perhaps taking life didn't have quite the same weight, in worlds where the human species isn't poised on the very brink of extinction. Or maybe it does have weight, but there are just more people, and therefore, statistically speaking, more murderers.
He sets the unsorted seeds back into their pile and gives Julie a very earnest look. ]
You should trust your instincts. Always. That bad feeling they gave you, that is a sign. I - don't know if you're a mage and get omens but even if you aren't, the universe can tell you stuff. It was telling you not to trust them. So you shouldn't.
no subject
[But... that guy, the one who looks so much like Perry that it had made her heart stop... He'd got them out, but was he with them?
God, she's afraid to go back, but she has to go back. Her story is nowhere close to being over. She's sure about that.]
Sorry-- you didn't ask for all that. It's just... having a cure doesn't fix everything, you know? You dream it will, but it doesn't.
cw brief suicide mention
[ Reynir sounds so honestly confused and hurt, hearing what Julie says about what these people had done. Like he really can't imagine such senseless violence. In a distant way he knows there was a lot more conflict in his own world in those first few years after the collapse of the Old World. And he also knows that in other places, in bigger cities, there is crime, violence, etc. But even if he's less naive than he once was, he is still pretty damn sheltered. ]
No, please don't apologize. You're right - I guess it's more complicated than that.
[ Then, without really planning to, because she'd just talked about losing her friend and being imprisoned and these ongoing threats in her world, he blurts: ]
One of my friends died, too. A troll broke through the floor of our vehicle and she... got infected. Once she knew for sure, she killed herself before it could change her.
[ Reynir gives a tiny, sad shrug. He thinks the rest goes without saying. Without a cure... Tuuri hadn't really had any other options. ]
no subject
[Yet. Yet, but she's going to. She's not just going to let this lie, or let the deaths of her friends go unavenged. Things don't look good right now, but she's not going to stay stuck in the back of that jeep forever.]
... Sorry. [She says then. It feels hollow, but at the same time what else do you say to someone who tells you something like that? She gives the cat another gentle pet, and shakes her head.] I've lost a lot of people, too. And the Cure... it isn't an instant fix. Sometimes they can't take it, when the memories of who they used to be start coming back.
no subject
[ To Reynir, the words are not hollow - precisely because he knows Julie understands. She'd lost her friend - and more from the sound of it. She knows that the words aren't going to fix anything, and won't be expecting him to pretend they do. But it's nice, to say something.
He tilts his head to the side, a little confused: ]
You mean they go insane?
[ He isn't sure he's understanding, entirely. Perhaps it is down to some difference, between the Illness of his own world and the one that had ruined Julie's. Reynir can understand how it would be a difficult transition, after all that torment, and finding out how the world had changed. But why would restoration be something someone had to bear? Wouldn't it be an end to suffering? ]
no subject
I guess. When they died, it was like their whole memories got wiped. Everything, even their name.
[And some of them never really remember their name at all, like R.]
So when they get cured, and those memories start coming back... I don't know. It's like someone they don't know is invading their brain. Some of them can't handle it.
no subject
Of course, she had been an exception to the rule in a lot of ways. It's not hard to imagine that for others, the transition back to human from troll would be traumatic in the extreme. Maybe enough so that they would simply want to die still...
He quietly goes back to helping sort the seeds, shaking his head (a gesture he doesn't quite realize he'd picked up from his mother, that he looks just like her when he does it). ]
I can't even imagine.