The shack was quiet, filled with lockers, a generator and a meathook just outside the doors that creaked in the fog. Ace had set her down on the floor as gently as he could before providing help with applying ointment, peroxide, alcohol, and bandaging to her new wound. The skin around each bloody tooth mark was already turning blue from bruising.
"Damn, kid. What did you run into?" he asked, picking up her foot by the shoe and rolling it to the left and right just enough to eye the bandaging work. "A bear trap?" Although, that was impossible, considering they were traps to simply hold something in place, not to harm. Claudette watched his face show surprise as she simply nodded. She supposed he wasn't used to the Trapper then.
"No way, are you pulling my leg?"
Claudette managed a sarcastic snort, not feeling up for this kind of questioning. "I would but I don't have the time for that." The older man blinked before officially letting go of her foot.
"Alright, alright, you've caught me there. Sassy little lady." He then stood up onto his feet and held his hands out after she packed up the medical pack. She took his hands, feeling the roughened patches of years of work before standing. To her surprise, she could walk fairly well on her leg and was moving out without so much as a limp, and she made sure she could move well enough by grabbing the med pack.
"Nice work," she said, wiggling her ankle a bit before looking up at the man, who wore shades despite the darkened area.
Ace chuckled and turned, putting his hands on his hips lightly. "I know some things, kid. Now, who else are you here with?"
Claudette regarded him quietly, really wondering if she could trust someone else without the reassurance of her companions around her. However, she shrugged and continued to speak, figuring that if anything happened, they could all run from this guy. "There're four others. One of them has been…kidnapped." Her heart seized up and she swallowed, moving to look around for a generator. And a way to escape the questioning. "We're all human. Younger than you, I guess."
The man started to tsk, clicking his tongue and causing the botanist to give him a sharp look. "That's a pity, that these monsters take kids such as yourselves. Don't even get a shot at a good job or a good party with booze."
Claudette shrugged before she moved to walk past him. "I don't drink anyway. Not my thing." Though, she was sure she could probably be tempted into a shot of whiskey or something after this nightmare. Or maybe just straight-up Nyquil to forget and sleep.
Ace no longer spoke as he followed behind her, seeming to also be on the lookout for generators.
Or so she thought.
"So, what are we looking for? Your friends?"
She blinked and turned, looking at him from over her shoulder. "How long have you been in this kind of place?" As she asked, she could see Dwight and Jake running, and much to her surprise, Dwight was dragging a wounded Jake along. Ace was talking behind her, quietly discussing his "descent into madness" and that he must have been here a year. Even if he had been, there wasn't time to dawdle.
Claudette turned, grabbed the man's sleeve and began to tug him along. "I see some friends. Come on. We need to see what's wrong." Ace barely so much as gave a grunt before he was being pulled along by this slender girl who seemed very focused. Sure, she was nervous, but she couldn't afford to fall behind in this hellhole. They had to stick together somehow.
As they neared their position, the familiar "ba-thump" echoed. She immediately cursed and ducked down, accepting the arm around her shoulders. Even if the guy was probably attempting to get friendly with her at their first meeting, there was an undeniable sense of security in his muscled arm.
Speeding past them only seconds later was the Nurse, wailing in all of her glory and limply swaying back and forth. Eventually, her left hand glowed an eerie orange and she disappeared in a blur of movement and screams. Whether they were hers or the damned was something Claudette didn't plan on learning. Instead of questioning, she brought herself up to her feet and began to head off again, no longer feeling pain in her ankle. It was like a strange blessing.
"Easy there," he muttered behind her, keeping up as smoothly as he could. He seemed to do surprisingly well. "I don't want to go chasing after whatever that was. I know a female, but I don't think she was my type."
Claudette seemed to immediately let a face form on her cheekbones. Lord, this guy. Was he really a survivor or just a figment of someone's imagination? She shook her head and hissed beneath her breath, "I… I don't know. I've never seen that kind of monster before. I thought they were all…all men." Looks like fate took anyone that it could grab at this rate. For whatever sick game this was.
She ducked down after a bit, turning along a wall to run smack into Jake, who caused her to give a soundless shriek from her mouth. Jake immediately put his hands up, revealing the left completely being colored red and smelling of iron.
"Shh, shh! Hey, don't scream, it's me." His low voice, as gentle as a murmuring river, calmed her down rather quickly. She put her hands to her chest and breathed as Ace spoke from behind her.
"Who's "me"? Nice to meet you "Me," I'm Ace Visconti. I'm a survivor like you all." He said this as Dwight poked his head up over Jake's. He seemed white in the face, but otherwise, he was healthy. "Y'all need some help? We've got a medpack."
Jake seemed to be the most suspicious as he narrowed his eyes, looking also extremely displeased at the pun. "How can we trust you?" Claudette then eyed him, taking a long glance at the deep slice in his jacket that poured crimson. She winced out of habit and inched forward, softly attempting to pull his jacket to the side. He seemed to pay her no mind and she took this as a cue to tend to his wound. The female picked away the clothing, seeing that it was definitely new and it was awful.
It wasn't a clean slice. The jagged ends of his open skin caused both herself and Dwight to flinch. Without a word, she tended to him with her remaining bandages and patches. To be on the safe side, she also applied ointment, in hopes of preventing an infection.
"Trust me? Well, that's a good call, kid. I did bandage up your friend here," Ace said, motioning to Claudette. She felt her cheeks flame red from the brief attention but she ignored it to the best of her ability. Every now and then, Jake flinched or twitched from the pain but otherwise didn't say anything at all about it.
Ace continued. "I'm not here to entertain you kids with answers. Don't you have someone you need to be rescuing?" By this time, as they fell silent, Claudette was finally wrapping bandaging around Jack's side. She, shamelessly, eyed his torso and admired his pectoral muscles before she glanced up at the rest of the boys.
"Meg. We don't know how long she's been here, but…"
Dwight cut her off with an agitated and nervous whisper. "When we got here, the…the killers were waiting for us and ambushed us." He looked around. "And we don't know where Nea is."
Ace folded his arms, seeming to take in the fact there are two other survivors. Claudette took her eyes off them and ripped the wrapping bandage, eyeing her work. It looked clean and it seemed pretty good too! She seemed proud and patted Jake's shoulder.
"There!" She gave a small smile and she felt a little flustered when he smiled back.
"Thanks, Claudette. But let's see if we can devise a plan."
Dwight seemed to get excited and was immediately grabbing a nearby branch and attempting to carve into the dirt. "I have an idea! I-It's not maybe the best but, I guess it's all we've got."
They all stood around the makeshift map that Dwight was drawing. It was always surprising to see Dwight focus so well on projects like these. It was, supposedly, safe to say that the man really focused whenever it benefited everyone.
"This is where Meg is," he began, pointing with the twisted branch at the crude dirt drawing. For emphasis, he made a hook-like shape and then wrote "Meg" to one side. "And here," he began, drawing once more, "is where we are." With small movements, he wrote down "Us" and then sat the stick in his lap. "If some of us can manage to keep ourselves hidden and draw close to Meg, maybe some of us can distract. Maybe we can find Nea, too?"
Jake seemed to take this idea steadily, and Claudette could see the calculations in his eyes which stared intently at the scratched dirt. The botanist watched him glance upward, eyeing every figure in front of him, despite the heady fog attempting to wipe away any trace of perfume from their form. With a gloved hand, he pointed at each one of them, his voice low, meticulous, and thoughtful.
"Claudette, I want you to be a decoy with Dwight." Both simultaneously paled and looked to one another. Before they could question, he continued.
"Both of you run fast and are more easily scared. You push more adrenaline because of that fear, making you flighty. Neither one of you have steady hands, and I'm going to rely on Ace to help me get Meg down." Questioningly, as if to mutely ask Ace's strength, he looked at the elderly male, who simply grinned and flipped a coin between his fingers. With a sharp ring, it went up, twirled, then fell back into his palm.
"Sounds like a plan to me. Let's get to it. You got a route we can take?" Jake glanced to Dwight. The male moved to his knees and peered through the shrubbery, soon pointing out the countless barrels, debris piles, and the several placements of odd-and-end walls that they could get down behind. Once it had been figured out, the plan was made.
They would get Meg within the next five minutes or die trying.
Nea was exhausted, to put it bluntly. Her side bled over her clothes and skin, sinking down deeply into the pores of her frame like the curtain of an 1870's play. Her clothing was slowly becoming try around the edges, flaking off and stinking the cotton. It was an awful smell, though she had slowly gotten used to it over the years. Mainly though, she was hoping for a lack of infection from the bloodied saw of the Nurse. It never looked clean.
The street punk kept to herself as she leaned against one of the generators, clutching her aching right side. It was cold to her back, but she didn't dare put her inflammed side on it, for fear of further infection. The item itself was grimy and filthy from previous slashings of the past, and the amount of times it had been kicked. There was no way, but she could at least start it up somehow.
However, it was a slow process.
Though Nea felt the time to work on it now was fine, there was also the fact she was handicapped as of right then. It was feeble, painstaking work. Fingers twisted and looped the twisted cords like a tongue with a cherry stem for the first time. Red went to red, blue went to blue and then- What the fuck were some of these? Nothing was easy, and it wasn't going to be, not with one hand. Not only that, but some of the innards of this mechanical beast were heavy and had to be screwed in by the broken fingernails of every survivor.
Ba-thump.
"Fuck," she hissed, gasping for a bit more extra air before pulling away from the generator. It sputtered at the first valve, but seemed to hold itself up as she limped away, praying that if there was anything else in this world but death it would help her for a bit longer.
This damn Nurse, she thought. She wasn't even near where Meg was. Was she waiting for us to split like a bunch of rats? This seemed like a logical idea. These murderers weren't stupid. In fact, they were highly intelligent monsters, who loomed wherever they pleased and snatched up your body like it weighed nothing.
Nea's foot rolled as she stumbled to her left. A sickening crack caused her to gasp and fall furthermore to the ground, in hopes of keeping all weight off of that foot. Adding onto the inflammation of her side was this brutal heat that swept its way completely to her hairline, causing her skin to shudder with goosebumps.
She held her breath as she laid in the tall grass, pinching her lips together to not scream or wail from the pain as the heartbeat echoed in her ears. It hurt so much, but she knew if she made too much noise, then she would be even worse pain.
Or death.
She was afraid she wouldn't even get the sweet release of death, seeing as Claudette had supposedly came back from the dead. Nea knew she had to fight, at least for a little longer.
Oh so softly, she could feel the brushing of something on her broken ankle. She felt her teeth dig into her upper lip as she waited for it to pass. As she attempted to peer through her peripheral vision at this oncoming servant of death, a red spotlight brushed directly past her, followed by the beautiful, tormented hem of the Nurse's uniform as she swept on by, wheezing.
Nea felt goosebumps smother her skin as a cold chill embedded itself into her body like broken glass. It was as though she had truly brushed against death as she watched this scarlet spotlight dart around, searching, scanning...
The street punk no longer felt the awful ache in her ankle. It was only a dull pulse of pain as she realized that there was nothing more painful than being stuck on a meathook and being sacrificed to some sort of God of death. There was no way. There was no damn way. Grabbing fistfuls of grass, she moved to scoot herself with her good foot with all of her might and drag her torso as forcefully as possible.
I'll be damned if they take me now, she thought as she began working on her generator from before. Some broken foot wasn't going to drag her down.
Meg glanced up, feeling absolutely nothing in her arms as she looked over the endless, foggy fields. It was as if it was just a joke to death to keep them all here. A soft snort came from her at the thought before she shook her head, feeling her shoulders ache and whine in numb agony of being stuck in one place for so long. It was painful, but she supposed being stuck on the meathook itself was worse. Or being dead, of course.
At the thought, she let her eyes close again, hoping to sleep away the pain and the despair of her friends most likely now remaining dead.
Fast footsteps shocked her awake, more so than ever. There was no way that these beasts could run, only except the Hillbilly, but only when he revved the chainsaw. She remembered. Much to her surprise, she saw Dwight and Claudette both b-lining for her position.
For a moment, Meg began to panic, wondering if they were going to try and commit suicide. Even now, she could see the Trapper off to one side, having made sure to return so he could follow their movements. He began to move towards them with no remorse. The only thing that kept Meg from now flipping every sort of shit she could give, she noticed two figures in the distance. She originally assumed it was Jake and Nea, and sighed in relief early. However, that wasn't Nea at all. The figure wasn't feminine at all!
Dwight and Claudette looped fingers and darted in one direction, speaking loud enough in frantic tones that she almost laughed.
"I'm going to kill Jake for this," Dwight hissed.
"If I see that Ace guy again and if he tries to get handsy, I'm going to feed him to the wolves."
"Me first."
"Do you already hate him?"
"No, I'm just a little overprotective."
Their conversation only mildly continued as they sprinted away, soon stopping at a tree and glancing back. Confirming the Trapper was now coming after them, they sprinted away.
Meg simply watched them and then decided to breathe in through her nose and close her eyes. If she looked like she knew something was up, then he would just loop around back again and more than likely get everyone in trouble for this plan. But, she did question as to what these two were going to do. And who was the one with the red cap?
As their footsteps crunched quietly on dead grass and leaves, Meg opened her eyes, observing the two men in front of her. Jake was holding a scalpel in his hand and was immediately cutting through rope piece after rope piece. The older man didn't say a word either, and simply moved to loop an arm near around her back, aiming to catch her if she fell back.
He wasn't wrong, as Meg's feet formally touched the floor and her body reacted like a body bag. Her arms fell faster to her sides than she thought was good as she leaned against the man's arm. They wasted no time in immediately moving to get away, hoping to take refuge at square one of their plan's beginning point.
It was a race, but they were also forced into a quiet state. They had to tread carefully, and Meg couldn't hold herself up. With one numb arm positioned over the back of the newcomer's neck and his arm around her waist, all she could do was carefully trot away with him acting as her new arms. At least for now. Whoever he was, he was saving her life, and she couldn't say anything negative about it either.
Eventually, she felt the bliss of sitting on the ground as Jake moved to rub her arms, hoping to bring blood back before they were seen.
"Good job, Ace."
Ace, was that his name? She let the elderly man take out the gag from her mouth and she had never felt in more need of a drink of water than right now. Or vodka, because fuck this.
"You too, kid. We need to lay low for a while then?"
Jake nodded twice and then glanced to Meg in such an endearing way, she immediately felt safer than beforehand, no matter the dangers lurking around. "Are you okay? I bet you're pretty sore. We haven't seen Nea in a while, so, there's that problem."
Meg nodded, heaving a small sigh before speaking, feeling liberated. "Let's wait for the others for a bit, see if they can come back up here." With a nod, they did just that, rubbing the athlete's arms in hopes of getting bloodflow back in quickly. By the time the cold numbness of her nerves coming back to life made its presence, she heard sprinting and could only assume that it was their favourite duo.
They all looked up and eyed the sweating, wheezing pair, who looked like they just took their first marathon without having ever practiced for it. The closeness of what happened, and this thought, brought a small smile to Meg's face before she carefully stood up, moving to embrace them both as best as she could. She was met with a quick group hug, filled with sweat and rapid pulses that she could feel all the way into her own chest.
Dwight pulled away first, moving to use his tie to wipe off his steamed glasses. "We... We need to...go. They're...really angry. And...Nea's injured." He then held up a hand, stopping Jake from speaking too quickly. "But," he panted, "she found a hatch. We think...it's the...way out." He bent over and wheezed a little more before Claudette, sounding a little better, spoke as well.
"We don't know why. But, we just got this feeling. We can't see the bottom of it, but there's no way we can get all of them done in time with this many murderers roaming around. Let's go." They all shared a glance and then seemed to share a mutual agreement just by the eyes. They needed out of here before more shit happened.
Claudette grabbed Meg's wrist and began to gently coax her along, ducking down with Dwight who was still trembling from adrenaline. It was like the poor guy had a stock of it saved in his stomach or lungs.
Sure enough, as they moved their way through the fogged trap yard, she could see Nea sitting there in the tall grass, her ankle grotesquely twisted to one side and her face as pale as the moon up above. She didn't look good, and because of that, she crawled into the trap door and fell into oblivion. Like it had been stated before, it was a black pit of, well, nothing.
"Well, she wasted no time," Ace said, glancing down by leaning on his knees. "Who goes in next?"
Meg breathed in through her nose and followed hotly after Nea, jumping into the pit without a second thought on her mind. A wave of darkness and fear washed over her before a sudden blissfulness swarmed her body.
Against her will, she felt her body grow heavy and every ache and pain subsided. She slept in the darkness, feeling embraced by temporary freedom and a tender blanket of nothing more than just space. Who knew floating in nothingness would be more blissful than living in hell?
It felt like gracious eons ticked by before she found herself opening her eyes, hearing soft music and the wind through trees. Dark skies stretch, but the accompaniment of twinkling stars seemed to make it peaceful.
"So, you're sure you're all on my side? In this...this town?"
She glanced up and off to the side, eyeing Ace crouching to one side and a young woman also sitting nearby. She looked like them, with her wild eyes of blue and her hands clutching one of the biggest kitchen knives she had ever seen.
"Yes, we are. We just recently escaped from somewhere and ended up here. Can you tell us where this is? What are you running from?" He then corrected himself, holding up his hands and clearing his throat. "No, no, actually. What's your name? I'm Ace. Ace Visconti."
She fiddled with the knife between her fingers before she spoke. "My name is Laurie Strode. And, I don't know, but my hometown streets are empty. Save... save for you all."
Meg slowly sat upright, frowning heavily with Ace as he questioned once again. "And what town are we in?"
"Haddonfield."
By now, the others were clued in, having started rising about the same time, or earlier than Meg. Something didn't make sense and she couldn't blame Dwight from immediately wanting to go into a home, and taking refuge there.
For now.