Play@YSDC

"Let's give it a try. Just ler me know when you're ready." When she is ready Roger will remove the planket just enough for Sarah to get through.

Sarah nods. "Where exactly are the controls to turn on the heater?" she asks Geoff softly. "It'll save me precious seconds if I don't have to hunt around for them. Oh, and the power switch for the radio. Might as well turn that off while I'm in there." She takes a surgical mask and puts it on over her face, tying the strings behind her head. Then she roots around, looking for some goggles or something similar to protect her eyes, as well as a pair of scissors just in case she has to defend herself. She tries to keep herself from trembling, terrified of what might happen when she reaches into the cab. The memory of what happened to Karlene is still fresh in her mind. That could have been me, she thinks with a shudder. It still could. She cannot shake the mental image of something awful grabbing her and dragging her off to some terrible fate.

Got to be strong, thinks Sarah. Everyone's counting on me. Once she has found everything she needs that's there to be found and Geoff has told her where to find the power switches, she takes the blanket she had placed over the unconscious man and wraps it around her body, making sure it covers the top of her head and exposes only her face and her gloved hands. I hope he doesn't get too cold. If this works he won't need the blanket any more anyway. She quivers as she approaches the barricade between her and the cab of the ambulance. It's still cold even with the blanket. It shouldn't be so cold in here. And since it is, I shouldn't be sweating so much. She pushes her fears aside and makes herself smile at Roger. "Smoke me a kipper," she whispers, "I'll be back for breakfast." Then she wriggles her upper body through the gap between his blanket and the barricade, reaching into the cab for the controls.

The controls don't respond to her touch. The radio seems dead. The heater seems dead. She remembers the lights failing earlier on. The corpse to her right of the ambulance driver appears to be breathing. She sees no movement of his chest but she can hear it.

Sarah quickly takes the stethoscope from around her neck and tries to listen to his heart.

There is a heart beat.

He's alive! thinks Sarah, excited. But he won't stay that way for long if he remains here. She unbuckles his seatbelt and drags him back towards the makeshift curtain. "The heater doesn't work," she hisses to Roger, "but the driver's still alive somehow! I'm bringing him back!"

On her way out, Sarah looks out the windows to get an idea of the ambulance's surroundings.

Outside there is an oppressive darkness. As she moves backward, flesh sloughs off the ambulance driver, revealing his gleaming jaw bone. Before she can react, the jaw opens to unleash a terrifying scream, revealing a mouth full of fleshy mushrooms. The driver grabs Sarah, hugging her to him in a way that hurts, and attempts to clamp that mouth around hers.

Another scream escapes Sarah's own lips as she tries to break free of the driver's grasp and scuttle back towards the curtain, grateful for the mask covering her mouth and nose and twisting her head to the side to avoid that horrible mouth. She brings up the scissors in desperation and tries to stab him in the hope that it will force him to release her.

Roger alarmed by the sudden noise shouts: "Sarah! What's going on in there?!"

"HELP!!!" shrieks Sarah, struggling with the thing that used to be Mark. She then immediately clenches her jaw shut to prevent it from spitting any of those horrid mushrooms into her mouth, just in case her mask doesn't hold. Her eyes are wide with terror, and tears spill from them and pool inside her goggles. Her face goes pale and her heart pounds in her chest as she fights madly for her life.

Roger tries to pull Sarah out of the cab. "Hang on!" He motions for Geoff to help him.

Geoff, his mind slowed and his body numbed, finally snaps back when he hears Sarah call back. It couldn't be. It is. And what can he do? Hold the doors. Just to be safe. Hold onto the doors. Keep anything else out.

Screw the doors.

Geoff lets go, leaving the torch to hold out the darkness, and heaving himself across the ambulance, he fumbles for any surgical tools that might be used to stab or cut, and moves on to help Sarah.

OOC: Sorry about my recent absence; I've been out of commission lately with a few things.

[OOC: That's okay, and welcome back! You sure picked a good time to return! By the way, Geoff has a +1d4 damage bonus because his STR+SIZ is 25. I decided to go ahead and make my attack roll for this round, since other players have been making their own rolls. Probably would've been better off letting the Keeper do it this time. ]



Sarah tries to plunge the pair of scissors into the creature, but pierces only air. She whimpers in despair, certain that she's done for.

Roger struggles to pull Sarah out but the sedatives from his recent suicide attempt weaken his limbs and make him incapable of it.

Geoff instinctively reaches for one of the surgical knives kept for emergencies and lunges forward towards the struggling pair. His knife catches Mark across the back of the shoulder and draws it upacross the back of the man's neck, releasing a torrent of thick, white pus and blackened blood. The stench is terrible.

Mark utters a terrible screech and lunges forward again, managing to latch his mouth against Sarah's mask. His breath is foul and fetid and his saliva dampens the mask and runs into her mouth. She goes limp as a parlysing effect flows through her limbs almost instantly and is powerless as the grotesque mushrooms begin to tear apart the mask itself. Mark's body quivers, trembles and moves in a bizarre parody of sex as though their mouths rather than genitals were involved.

The child lunges forward and grasps the scizzors that Jill drops, attempting to stab Mark through the ear but Mark moves and the scizzors brush harmlessly past his skull.

OOC: All but Sarah can still attack.

Geoff winces and tries to hold back the urge to vomit - he just cut open Mark! His friend, sliced open at the neck and-
It isn't Mark! Mark is dead.. and.. she will be too soon! Do something!
Steeling himself up, Geoff moves to strike again; wrapping both hands around the handle of the knife, he tries to thrust it into the thing that was his friend.

Roger desperately tries to pull Sarah out of the cab and away from that... thing.

Roger's flails aren't powerful enough now that Mark is firmly in place over Sarah.

Geoff's blow is far more severe, striking the creature between the ribs to where he knew the heart lay, managing to get it deep within its chest. The creature falls limp and trembling.

The little boy attempts to strike himjust as hard but his attacks are clumsy and weak.

God, NO! thinks Sarah as Mark presses his lips against hers through the mask and crushes her in his rough embrace. A wave of numbness washes over her, and she is unable to move a muscle. She involuntarily tries to scream, but nothing happens. When he pins her down and their bodies begin to convulse as one, Sarah suddenly finds herself back on her bed in her old flat on that terrible night, with Lyle on top of her, pressing her down, his lips locked over hers. Only this time she can't fight back. She's completely powerless, alone, and without hope. I imagined all of this! I've been dead the whole time. Lyle raped and murdered me, and this whole thing is just my brain's feverish imagination as I lie dying...or some kind of hellish afterlife. Am I really such a bad person that I should go to hell? I tried to save my mum, I tried to save all the people I lost. I tried my best. Why? WHY? ...I love you, Daddy...

Then Mark stops moving, and Sarah snaps back to reality. I'm not alone, she thinks. I'm not dead...not yet. But those mushrooms are still pressing down on her mask, bulging into her mouth and threatening to rip through it and spill down her throat...and she's still powerless to stop it...

His brain partly locked up with fear, Geoff tries to pull the shuddering body from Sarah, mumbling to keep himself under control.

Sarah is still unable to move, her body still numb. All she can do is stare straight ahead, wide-eyed. Gratitude flows through her for the miraculous rescue and this second - no, third - lease on life. Please, she thinks, get him off me! Hurry! She is relieved that Mark is no longer thrusting up and down on her, but merely having him shaking on top of her and having his mouth on hers sickens her, as does the saliva dripping through the mask and into her mouth and the mushrooms weighing down on it. She feels so dirty, so violated. This is even worse than what Lyle had done to her. At least he had been - technically - human at the time.

Sarah takes reassurance at the sight of Geoff crossing her field of vision and trying to pull the thing that used to be his friend off of her. She had been leery of him at first since he had grabbed her by the shoulders in the parking lot, but now she realizes that she had misjudged him. He has such a good heart, she thinks. He's a true hero. He even managed to plunge a knife into Mark in order to save me - just like I had to stab Lyle in the heart even though I had once cared for him. She feels such a strong connection to Geoff. There is so much she wants to say, but her vocal cords, like the rest of her, remain frozen.