Chapter Seven

"Ow!"

"Well, hold the hell still, D!"

"I' hurts!"

"…you were mauled," Russel said, expression deadpanned as he stared up at 2D from the young man's torn up arm to which he was currently tending, "Of course its going ta hurt. However, you're going to bleed ta death if I don' DO sum'in about it, so quit complainin' and let me do this."

2D whined, shifting on the stool that he'd been instructed to sit on behind the register and counter of the store. After realizing that the thick darkness outside wasn't going to dissipate any time soon, the group had resigned themselves to sticking around the mini mart for a while, which gave Russel ample time to keep 2D's arm from getting in any worse condition that it was already in. The first aid kit sitting near by, the African American continued to work on applying proper pressure to the still bleeding parts of the wound and gauzing the other ones.

Giving a heavy sigh at Russel's insistence of silence, 2D turned his head and made his dark eyes focus on one of the more distant walls of the building, his line of sight traveling just past Sam's head. The man was standing near one of the shelves, examining the dust covered lines of food and goods that lay before him, though he didn't seem interested in them specifically. His mind was elsewhere, but then again so was everyone else's. Even Murdoc was refraining from speaking or making his usual smart assed quips as he set against one of the windows near the locked door, his arms crossed and his two colored eyes staring blankly at the floor.

Kara and Noodle were down further than everyone else, in a section of the store that was smaller than the rest and seemed to lead to a back room of some kind. Kara was flipping idly through magazines that bore recent dates but were withered and worn as if they were decades old. Noodle seemed to just be staring at a cold fridge that was currently powered down, her expression frighteningly similar to Murdoc's.

Blinking a few times in slow succession, 2D slowly turned his head up towards the grimy window that was positioned off to the side of the cigarette case that was hung from the ceiling. His head tilted to the side, catching Russel's attention as his eyebrow lifted on his forehead.

"Sum'in wrong?"

"…you feel…'nyfing weird, Russ?" he asked, his voice much softer than usual. Russel sat back a bit, his hand still carefully around 2D's wrist as he stared in confusion at his younger bandmate.

"…no, I don't."

"Define weird," Sam suddenly spoke up, his head lifting to gaze at 2D directly. Making a face, 2D could only shrug after a long moment of silence.

"Can',"

"Can't?"

2D shook his head slowly, finally giving up and actually looking at Sam despite the fact that he knew the man's skeptical gaze would just make him feel more uncomfortable about even bringing up the strange feeling that had settled in his stomach.

"No. Can'. I's like…I'unno. Sum'fing bizarre. I's no' like I can describe i',"

"Huh," Sam grunted, beginning to turn back to the shelving and whatever it was that he seemed preoccupied with before.

Before he could, though, the rising sound of someone outside of the store screaming could just barely be heard, almost as if the darkness was acting as a muffler against it. In the relative quiet of the store, though, everyone heard it, and all heads turned towards the window that Murdoc was sitting at. Even Kara and Noodle broke away from their area to come look.

Murdoc sat up, looking over his shoulder with a confused yet still mildly curious expression. Slowly, as the sound drew nearer, he rose and turned one knee on the crate that he'd been sitting on. He pressed his hands to the cold window, trying to see past the inky blackness outside.

"Wut the bloody hell is 'at?" he muttered, though he didn't expect to receive a response. It wasn't like anyone else knew, after all.

He received his answer in the form of a ragged, disheveled looking man tearing by the window at breakneck speeds out on the sidewalk. Murdoc managed to catch the man glancing over his shoulder and the look of absolute terror on his features. Through the window he could hear the words 'help me' and 'oh god, its going to kill me!', and the pitch of the man's voice was high, shrill in his panic.

Both eyebrows arched high on his head as he turned his head to look at the rest of the group, each of them returning his gaze in pallid worry and anxiety. Eventually, as the sound of the man's horrid screaming faded, Murdoc let himself stare out the window once more only to be met by darkness.
He gazed into the shadowed ink that was once a busy Portland street, full well knowing that something was out there. His gaze drifted to the right, toward the source of the screaming man's flight.
There, he found himself face to face, if one could call it that, with something obscene. All he could make out in a moment of blinding panic seemed to be a single, blood-toned eye and flesh as pallid as snow. Long, lanky streams of black hair dangled in the face that seemed to dissolve out of the darkness, while filth-encrusted bandages covered what must have once been an eye.
The creature, if that is what it was, melted back into the dark as Murdoc tumbled backwards off of his roost, yelping in what the others could only assume was shock. Shock, rather than what it truly was: absolute terror.

"WUT THE BLOODY FUCKING HELL!" he proceeded to shriek after landing, caring more about the fact that his heart was actively pounding in his chest than the fact that his tail bone was now suffering from the impact. Everyone stared at him but it seemed that no one was willing to put forth the question of what, exactly, he'd seen. For Kara and Sam, it was more out of confusion and their own level of worry. For the three remaining Gorillaz, it was due to the fact that they knew if it had scared Murdoc, it had to be bad.

Slowly Murdoc managed to lift himself off the floor and dust his pants off with his hands, which just so happened to be trembling slightly, though not enough to be seen by anyone outside of a foot radius to him. Noodle approached from the side as Kara moved to where Sam stood, her arms wrapped around herself and her torn Dickies jacket hanging awkwardly on her frame.

"You saw something, didn't you Murdoc-san?" Noodle asked, her voice more demanding than what one would have expected coming from her. Murdoc halted his hands above his pockets as he turned his mismatched eyes towards the Asian girl.

"'course I di'. Why else would I make such a fuss?"

"HAH!" Noodle suddenly cried out, placing a hand on her hip and pointing her first finger at him, damn near getting in to his face. Murdoc's eyes went wide for a few seconds until he dawned on him that he was about to get lectured once more, "You see now! Now do you believe me! There really are monsters!" she started in, keeping her voice down low so as not to bother everyone else. Regardless, Sam and Kara could hear just fine, as they were on the other side of the shelf, and 2D and Russel, though unable to make out the words, could tell that Murdoc was just thrown in to a verbal lashing.

"Wut do yeh fink they're talkin' 'bout, Russ?"

"I have no idea, D…"

"Oh Jesus," Murdoc groaned, rolling his eyes and snatching his pack of cigarettes out of his pocket. He shoved one in his mouth, only to have Noodle slap his arm.

"Don't you dare light that while I'm talking to you!" she snapped angrily, clearly frustrated enough that she was not only ordering him around, she was steadily raising her voice towards him. Murdoc grunted again and crossed his arms over his chest instead, letting the smoke dangle between his lips as his teeth grinded, waiting for her to finish and hoping that his resolve would hold out long enough that he wouldn't start yelling back.

"Fine, talk,"

"You didn't believe me,"

"I didn'," he admitted, his tone clearly holding no qualms about it.

"How! How could you not believe me, after everything that happened? After what happened to the train?"

"I though' i' was a bloody car, Noods," he hissed, his teeth gritting together tighter. Every time she asked a direct question that she expected him to answer his ability to hold back from snapping at the girl became harder to control.

"A CAR! AFTER EVERYTHING THAT WE SEE AT KONG!" Gone was the soft toned voice of the normally calm and composed Japanese girl. In its place a full on shriek of utter contempt for the man had simply erupted from her, causing everyone to flinch, either in surprise or worry that her yelling might bring something's attention to the store. Her voice echoed in the mostly empty building as her hands flailed in the air, and Murdoc finally felt that tiny bit of self control snap in to tiny shards. Turning on her, he let the cigarette fall from his lips as he began yelling back.

"Don' fucking ask me, Noodle! I dun' know crap 'bout wut's goin' on, jus' tha' we're in a whole FUCK LOAD of trouble, an' yer yellin' is only makin' thing's WORSE! I dun' know 'ow we go' 'ere, I dun' know wut's goin' on, and I have NO. FUCKING. CLUE. 'bout wut the hell I jus' saw or wut the hell caused all tha' shit outside!" he bellowed back, his voice literally filling the store as he gestured to the window with a gnarled, pointed finger.

Silence, save for his own slightly labored breathing, descended just as quickly as it had left as Noodle could only stare at Murdoc. Rather than look at him with hurt and surprise at the fact that he had actually, for the first time in the five years they'd known one another, yelled at her, she only glared from beneath her mussed bangs, her cheeks flushed pink from her own rise of emotion.

Kara and Sam slowly peered around the corner of the shelving unit, their eyes wide and expressions full on mystified. 2D and Russel simply stared from their place behind the counter, jaws dropped as they half expected Noodle to start tearing in to Murdoc physically rather than the way she had been.

Before anyone could say anything, or even move between the two to prevent a physical fight, Noodle hurled a full, unopened pack of cigarettes at his head, the corner catching him just above the eye. Murdoc cried out in momentary pain, stumbling backwards and holding a hand over his eye. She yelled something at him that wasn't in English and turned on her heel, storming off to the door of the back room that the store had just beyond the turned off refrigerator units.

Murdoc watched her go and went to say something that may or may not have been an apology, but realized what exactly she had thrown at him. Bending down, he snagged the pack off the ground and grinned, letting out a short, dry laugh.

"Apology accepted!"

Whatever Noodle screamed back at him, it couldn't have been nice…

Ten minutes had passed since the fight, and Russel finally finished bandaging 2D's arm. The rest of the group had gone back to their own silent musings, with Murdoc simply standing and staring at the window as if expecting to see something more than what he'd already witnessed. Noodle had remained in the backroom, seemingly content to just hide and stew over the fact that she had an unnaturally violent urge to hurt Murdoc with more than a pack of cigarettes.

"It's the best I can do, D," Russel was saying to the blue haired singer, his white eyes down as he examined the tightly gauzed arm, "Its still gonna bleed, man, but at least this will keep it from getting infected or something. Try to take it easy with it, though,"

"'kay," 2D muttered, sighing once more and slipping off the stool, turning to the cigarette case, finally noticing that the lock was broken on the glass door that covered it, explaining how Noodle had gotten a hold of the pack that she'd pitched at Murdoc's head. Tilting his head to the side, he slid the glass back and began examining the contents, looking to see if by some unlikely chance that his brand was in there. Russel simply let him, taking the time to clean up the first aid kit and put it back in the duffel bag that had been assigned to 2D.

Sam, finally bored with staring at random shelf items, made his way over to Murdoc's location, hands shoved in the pockets of his cargo pants. He stopped next to the greasy bassist, his own gray eyes on the window as well, though he, unlike the other man, wasn't expecting to see anything more until the hazy daylight returned once more.

"So…" he stared, his foot tapping against the crate in front of him, "What exactly did you see out there?"

Murdoc gave his trademark grunt and glanced over at the man, one large eyebrow twitching upwards. When it seemed like he wasn't going to ever respond, he let his gaze go back to the window as he took a long drag off the cigarette that was in between his lips, the smoke drifting lazily out and up towards the ceiling.

"Why should I tell you? After all, sometimes i's better no' t' know wuts ou' dere,"

"…because, if you don't tell me, I'll hi-"

"Hey, look!" Kara suddenly cut in, pointing up the street and beyond the store, something being seen from her angle that couldn't be caught at the position the boys were looking from, "I think its getting brighter out there."

Murdoc and Sam jerked their heads in the general direction of her gesture, seeing that the town was, indeed, growing brighter by the second, the hazy light moving more like a sunrise on a cloudy day than the creeping darkness that had come on before. Grumbling, Sam turned to Murdoc who was now giving a rather arrogant, snaggletooth grin to the man. Pointing a finger at his face, Sam went through a series of facial expressions and a few sputtered words before finally uttering 'Later' in a vaguely threatening tone and stalking off to speak to Kara.

The next few minutes were slightly chaotic as everyone scrambled to gather belongings, additional supplies, and anything else that they either needed or wanted from the store. As they worked towards preparing to leave once more, the light grew steadily brighter, making it easier to see than it had been with only a few candle-positioned two-cell A battery Maglites that they had set up around the shop for illumination. Even Noodle was coaxed in to emerging from the back room to fill her pack, though she refused to even so much as look at Murdoc, indicating that the pegging of the cigarette pack was obviously not an apology.

Soon the rusted, dark world that had taken over was completely gone, vanished as if it were little more than a memory, and the group was ready to leave, to find either explanation or escape, whichever came first.

They all stood before the door, Sam at the front with his fingers pressed against the deadbolt lock, a hint of hesitation in his otherwise calm features.

"What…where exactly are we going to go once we get out there?" Kara asked, finally voicing the one question that was on everyone's mind. Sam flipped the switch and swung the door open inward, the old fashioned announcer bell dinging loudly and causing an unnerving echo up and down the empty street.

"Maybe we can catch a bus out of this apeshit crazy hell hole," he finally answered, taking a step out on to the sidewalk.

"…the busses were all dead, man. No one was drivin' them," Russel pointed out, being the first one to follow him. Sam's lips twitched upwards in a smirk.

"I never said we were gonna let some one else drive…"