Play@YSDC

Tanar eases up beside the drivers window all the while keeping his gun at the ready. He leans to the window and talks to Leroy in his real voice. A voice that he would recognise.

"I know I seem like a freak, but people have been pushing me around and threatening me. Ever since I put this cloak on people have left me alone." He lowers his hood and reveals himself to be Louie the janitor. Being and orderly Leroy would know Louie as a shy, nice guy who is always willing to please. "I've seen things.....terrible things. I don't want anyone else to get hurt. I'll leave if you want, but to be honest I'm just scared."

Louie's face looks haggard, like he's been through a lot. Streaks cover his face where he has been crying, and he looks like he's ready to give up.

There are plenty of first aid items but no fresh water. There is no flashlight in the ambulance.

Leroy tries to stop himself laughing incredulously as Louis reveals himself from under the cloak. He rolls down the window a fraction.

"Louis you son of a bitch! You really freaked us out, we thought you were a ghost or something from the bloody netherworld."

A thought strikes him.

"Blimey Louis, you just blew away Carson, weren't you friends? Whats all this stuff about the undead? And who's been pushing you around? We've all seen nasty things man, and I can't say that its going to get any better"

Some lingering suspicions about Louis mental state prevent him from rolling the window down further.

As Leroy questions Louis about Carson tears start to well up in his eyes again. He shrugs it off and replies, his voice shaking a little like he could cry at any moment.

"That....that wasn't Carson. It used to be Carson but he died, and something took over his body. He's not the first one I've run into today. I went back and checked and Carson was gone. If that was him you tell me how he got back up. I've seen stuff today. I was with a little girl and a childrens performer....we were running. We were running from some paramedic girl who was chasing us. She had blood coming from her nose and mouth. She wasn't human. We took refuge a room, and when we went in there we discovered we weren't the only ones. Ronald got real angry and started yelling at them asking why they weren't helping people. They were just scared too. They helped me with this." Louie shows Leroy the wounds on his arms from where the wires grabbed him while he was trying to save the children. "Ronald got Brianna, the little girl, scared and upset. She didn't know what she was doing....she didn't mean to kill her." Louie is openly crying now tears streaming down his face. "There was a shotgun.....Brianna grabbed it. She killed her.....she killed Dr. Sutcliffe. There was nothing I could do. If Ronald hadn't had her so scared." Louie trails off as if reliving the moment again. "I knocked out Ronald and the rest of them took him and Brianna some where. They promised not to hurt them. Poor Brianna is so scared." Louie looks down at his robe and back up at Leroy. He wipes his nose with the sleeve of the cloak and continues. " I found this cloak. It's made of wool and is warm. It seemed that the undead didn't notice me when I wore it. It helped me be not so scared. I'm sorry I didn't show you my face earlier. I was just don't know who to trust."

"Hey its alright, calm down," says Leroy, trying to take in all the new information. "I didn't mean to have a go at you, its just been hard to figure out whats going on since..well, since the apocalypse landed. We've been chased by that paramedic girl ourselves..or someone like her, but the way we figured it, some infection she'd picked up from the water made her crazy. Thats what happened to Carson, he drank some of it or got in his eye, started bleeding and went all vacant on us. The next time we saw him, well you were there...add to all that we're seeing ghosts." He nods in the direction of the woman outdoors. "See her? Thats Cynthia. Old friend of mine, except she keeps appearing and disappearing. She might be here to help, but well, who can say? You want to hop in the ambulance, I'm going to drive up and have a word. Theres room on the passenger side if Joel squeezes up. That alright with you Joel?"

Cynthia glances up and around as though she had heard her name.

Louie looks over at Cynthia and back to Leroy.
"Why do you think she is a ghost. Is she supposed to be dead. She could just be lost. If she needs help we should help her, but we need to be careful."

OOC: I think the headlights are already on according to Laraqua

"Trust me" says Leroy. "I met up with her earlier upstairs and it was..very weird, and I don't plan on being anything but careful, thats why we're staying in the ambulance."

As an experiment he tries beeping the horn, to see what reaction it gets.

Louie jumps when Leroy beeps the horn.
"Warn me when you do that. I'm jumpy enough as it is. What exactly happened up stairs?"

"Hard to explain" mumbles Leroy. " I came out of the room we'd been hiding in and there were ghostly figures everywhere, but Cynthia was the only person I could make out clearly. She went downstairs and I followed her..it was dark.. and the figures started pressing against me. Where Cynthia was standing there was torchlight so i ran towards her, grabbed the torch and turned around. The whole place was empty.."

He peer out through the windscreen, to see if Cynthia reacts to the sound of the horn.

At hearing Leroy's storey Louie shudders and takes a small step backwards.

"I think that I would like to join you in there after all. Let me in the back and I'll come up through the middle."

Louie turns and quickly makes his way to the back doors and tries to enter the ambulance.

Joel, already in the back, said "No, if you must come... just get in the passenger seat. I'll ride back here. Back doors are tied shut. Keep that bloody shotgun away from me though."

Joel starts calling out the inventory in the back so that Leroy knows what they have. "We have bandages, adhesive tape, rubber gloves, surgical masks, anti-bacterial ointment, burn cream, one of those blood-pressure arm thingies, rubber tubing, syringes, some various medicine - probably nitro to kickstart the heart and pain relievers. No flashlight, no water. I wonder if I can find a tire iron?" He starts lifting hatches in the floor where one might store a spare tire.

Louie nods and makes his way around the back of the ambulance to the passenger door, and gets in.

"Is everybody ready? Then lets go for a little drive."

Leroy puts the ambulance into gear and drives it slowly forward to where the woman leans against the car. He lets it roll to a stop beside her, keeping his feet on the clutch and gas.

"Cynthia?" he asks.


ooc: maybe i should have waited to find out what happened when i sounded the horn before i posted this? oh well, we can always go back and edit.

Cynthia looks over at the ambulance, straightening when the horn blows and cocks her ear to one side as though listening for something. She looks in the other direction, mouthing something, but her lips are too obscured by her hair for Leroy to make anything out. As the ambulance roars to life and moves forward, she frowns, her eyes unfocused as it approaches. She starts to raise her hand as though to reach out, hesitates, then her shoulders slump and she turns away.

"Cynthia!" shout Leroy through he gap in the window."Is that you? Its me Leroy. Are you alright?"

She hesitates again and draws her hand across her eyes as though she has just started crying.

Leory sits there for a moment biting his lip, then puts on the handbrake, slips his mask back on and reaches for the door release. Unless anyone says something or tries to stop him he steps outside.

and he takes the axe, you betcha.

Joel says from the back, "Ooooh, I don't like this buddy boy.... not one bit. If this was a friend of yours, she'd have come to you when you honked or called her name. No, she's lazing around in this deadly dust storm like it's a summer breeze. I think you should skip her."

Joel shivers in the cold and notices that the back of the ambulence has silver blankets. He remembered these were the sort of blankets that the astronauts used, having heard that on a PBS special. He grabbed one up and wrapped it around himself, then noticed that the back of the ambulence was equipped with a heater that the ambulence crew would crank up when they had a hypothermia patient in the back, or if they were just cold. Smiling, he turned on the heat and put it up to maximum.

ooc: Taking some liberties here. My wife volunteered as an ambulence driver, and I asked her what might be in the back of the ambulence for cold victims.